A Salty week or not?

"PDW: a wasted week away from the classroom."

This wasn't just a PDW. It was a week of experiences, meeting new people, enjoying the time with old and new friends and gathering skills at an incredible pace. Personally, I think it would be an understatement if I were to call this the best PDW by far.

This was a week of laughter, learning, bonding and overall, simply an amazing experience. The first evening by itself already jump started the whole experience with the smoke from the kitchen setting off the fire alarm for several seconds. And although there might have been slight mishaps along the way, it was still one of the most amazing weeks I remember for a long time.

Now for one of my favourite moments of the PDW - droogvallen. So many memories were made throughout this trip, but this, playing rugby on the sandbanks with everyone, even our delightful dog Storm (whom I miss already), was one I hope I'll never forget. Their was so much laughter, fun to be had and in the mix, education when we found jellyfish whilst running around at low tide. Now of course there was more education than just the jellyfish, but I'll come to that soon.

The three words which I believe resonate with this trip would be cognisance, friendship and ingenuity. Cognisance because of the sailing and knot-working we all learnt whilst simultaneously being aware and appreciative of the environment, friendship because of the deepened bond we have with old friends as well as brand new relationships that were built throughout this trip. Now this is one of the most important arguments against the statement that this was just a useless week. When you're at school as a student, you mainly try to talk with the people you already know and feel comfortable around whilst very rarely going ahead and widening your social circle, you barely split off from your heard. However, this week was completely different, on this trip we talked to people we usually didn't talk to before, or barely knew about in the first place, as well as the new people who as usual, turned out to be a great group of people. This certainly was the week were a lot of this years friendship's will have been made and old ones strengthened. As for the last term, it certainly did take some ingenuity to solve the problems we had throughout the week, such as the small issue with the smoke on the first evening in the kitchen, barely two hours after having left Harlingen, just before we found out that the oven wasn't working properly. To come around all of these issues we found new ways to solve them by adjusting our meal plans to match the changing circumstances.

When it comes to improvements, it's hard. Hard to think of anything that could be improved. My only suggestion would be to lengthen the whole trip, something I think we could all agree on immediately in my opinion. No-one really wanted to leave on Friday but instead asked if they could stay the weekend.

As for the education within the trip, we all learnt something new when it came to sailing, be it the knots or the names of the different types of sails we had available as well as when we should use them. We also learnt about all of the rules of being on a ship, what is acceptable and what you shouldn't do. Furthermore, we learnt on very important lesson, which although has been taught to us before, that it is crucial to work together as a team, no matter what differences you may have had with someone else. Now in my opinion this is something we did extremely well, as soon as we were needed somewhere, either above or below deck, we would be there and motivated to help out no matter the task.

This was most definitely not a wasted week from school, having practiced all sorts of organisational skills, leadership skills, sailing skills etc. Overall, this was most definitely the best PDW I've experienced since my first one back in grade 3.

But it wasn't just the activities, it was the people (and dog) I was allowed to talk to and bond with who made this trip truly special and memorable. That is why to finish off this post, I would like to thank all of the Salty Salmons, the fam, the captain, Martin, the chaperons and the grade level leaders for organising such an amazing and thoroughly enjoyed week.

And as for Storm: thanks for letting all of us play with you, thank you for always keeping up the morale with your incredible enthusiasm, endurance and cuteness. I'll never forget you bro ;)

#PDW #Nederland #Waddenzee