On Wednesday 10th to Friday 12th November, Room 3 and 4, went on their EOTC Activities, with the Aoraki Polytech Teachers. We were split into two groups for the first two days and participated in either rock climbing/abseiling or kayaking. We went to Salt Water Creek for kayaking and Spur Road for the rock climbing/abseiling. There were four or five Polytech people taking us for each activity. When we were rock climbing/abseiling we had to wear a hard hat to protect our heads from falling rocks and had a harness around our bottoms for the carabena to attach the rope to us. Then we climbed up the rock faces and we had a Polytech person be-laying at the bottom. This means that they are attached to the rope that we are attached to and they feed it through the carabena while we are climbing. We also went abseiling, which is going backwards over the top of a cliff. It was very scary because you had to walk backwards and then all of a sudden you are going down a big cliff face. This was very challenging, most of us achieved this! When we went kayaking we had to wear pfd's (personal floating devices) that are the same as life jackets. We each had a kayak and a paddle. Before we got into the kayak we learnt about the blades on the paddle and where we should have our hands. Toby also told us how to use the paddle, spoon side facing into the water. We had to paddle over to the other side of the creek and raft up, this means all line up side by side and hold onto the other persons kayak. One of the games we played was when we were rafted up and two of us had to change kayak's, we had to walk over the top of the kayak's. A lot of people fell out of their kayak's but most of us remained dry! On the Friday we all went to Peel Forest together to walk in the bush. We went on the Acland Falls walk. Once again we split into two groups and went up at different times. We looked at the leaves on the trees, talked about the tracks that we were walking on and looked at the sign's pointing us in the right directions. When we got to the waterfall some of us filled up our drink bottles and others of us wet our heads and hats, it was really hot. We played a game after lunch called Scarecrow, which is a mixture of bullrush and stiff candle, it was fun. After that we went on the big tree walk, Neil talked to us about the tree and then we all went around it to see how many children we could fit round it. When we got back to the bus, we thanked the Polytech for taking us over the three days and then we got back on the bus. Because we had been so well behaved and it was very hot, we stopped in Geraldine and had ice blocks! It was a fantastic three days where we learnt a lot about kayaking, rock climbing and walking in the bush.