My First Camp

On Wednesday, I went to Treloar College with Whizz-Kidz. I stayed there for three days and two nights. At first, I was so nervous because this was the first time I had been away from home with people I don't know. This was a chance for me to see how I would get on with it all. I settled down soon enough, it helped that I was able to call home because talking to my mum calmed me down.

When I arrived, I was surprised that the college was only on one floor because I thought there would be two or three floors. It took about an hour to drive there, my brother came with us. First of all, my mum and I went in to see the nurses at camp, we went through some paperwork, things like my medical history and consent forms, and my mum had to sign some bits. This took about half an hour to an hour.

Then we were shown to my room, and we put my suitcase under a desk that was in my room, it was just the right size. My room had a sink, mirror and a couple of drawers and cupboards and a bedside table. The drawers in my bedside table were broken, but that didn't matter. My bed had wooden sides, with a slit in the middle, so imagine a plank of smooth wood, and then a gap, then another plank of wood at the top. Sorry if I didn't explain that very well. I was woken up just before eight, the first morning I rolled over and looked at the clock, and thought ugh, it isn't even eight o' clock yet... As you can tell, I'm a bit of a lazy ass!

Then we got together to introduce ourselves, I only knew one person there. I was very nervous about meeting everyone. We had a name tag each, so that helped me remember everyone's names.

Most of the corridors were wide, I think they were a lot wider than the ones at St Vincent College! It didn't look as big from the car park, but it was huge! Sometimes I almost went the wrong way, luckily the Whizz-Kidz staff noticed and pointed me in the right direction!

I did a few activities, I will explain what they were separately.

On Wednesday, I was shown how to make a bed... I already knew how to do that, but they did a bit more than what I usually do. Firstly, they found out what people knew. Then they told us how to put a sheet on the bed, which was quite simple. Then they showed us how to put a pillow case on, turn it inside out, grab the corners of the pillow and pillow case, and just pull.

Next, there was poetry. In poetry, we had to pick a picture, and then write about it. Some wrote words, and some wrote paragraphs. Next, we wrote a sentence on a piece of paper, then folded the paper over the sentence that we wrote. We did that until we ran out of paper. After that, it was read out to us, it didn't really make much sense, but it was amusing.

Another activity we did was wheelchair skills training. This was a chance to improve on our wheelchair skills. There were obstacles put out for us to go around in our wheelchairs. Not to be modest or anything, but I think I did pretty well. Some people did another challenge where they had to go around an obstacle course made out of corn flakes whilst they were blind folded, but I didn't do that one because I need to be able to see my controller to drive my chair.

I also did a bit of cooking. There isn't much to say about that activity, apart from I got really messy!

On Thursday, we had take-aways, the choices were Indian take-away, or Domino's Pizza take-away. I bet you can't guess what I chose. Drum roll... I chose Domino's!

I also took part in a karaoke session, I absolutely loved that! I sang my heart out... Probably sounding like a strangled cat, but oh well! Who cares? It was a bit of fun! I sang Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"! It was so funny when I tried to hit the high notes!

I also gave out lots of my business cards. I went round to each table to give them out, this was a challenge in itself because I spoke about my petition in front of people that I had only just met! I think this whole experience has been great for me! I drove my electric wheelchair lots, have grown my confidence and I have met new people... All good!

This is what the other people at camp wrote about me

This is my certificate

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my time away. I'll see you next time!