Gold

A girl who was very special to me, taught me how to tie my shoelaces on our Bronze expedition, before then I had never known how, but she sat me down in the middle of nowhere and began to show which bunny ears went where, she left the school and moved back home to the US not to long after this expedition, it has been 2 years seen I've seen her and I still think about this day a lot and I hope it holds a special place in her heart as-well.

17

The most challenging thing Ive found came from the expeditions, "A team is only as strong as its weakest member' this phrases was drilled into my skull by award leader so often and I thought she considered me the weakest member when I personally believed I was far from it, I struggled with adapting to the team environment because I was so used to doing everything in my team and became a roadblock for my team hence being the weakest member, but that's not what the saying means it means working as unit and using all our strengths and weaknesses to our advantage, I learned so much about teamwork but believe me it took such a long time.

Zambia

I am now an avid guitar player due to my award activity and even formed a band with different people from my school, our band name is 'See Once More'

Unfortunately I hold the most infamous DoE story that has ever been told at my school, during our first day of our expedition we travelled through marsh into a secluded area of the estate we were on and came across some low hanging crates of some sorts that were hooked to a tree, they were red in colour and had resembled a water basin used for horses. Our expedition guide knew we were lost but as he should remained quiet for the time, I decided to corral my team and investigate these basins as I thought if they contained water we could refill. As we approached ,our guide got curious to the contents of the crate, my teammates let me take the first look inside but for some reason I thought it would be smart to violently shake the crate in order to hear the gushes of water, right as our guide peeped in I was already in full swinging motion of the crate, no water came out as the crate actually turned out to *bee* Beehives, a swarm of Bees emerged from the crates and rightfully so attacked us like crazy, in the photo you can see me(left) vigorously applying bite cream into my ear as a bee got trapped their and went to work on my ears, our guide can *bee* seen questioning my stupidity all while trying to tend to his bites, luckily my team was far away but as for me and my guide, we weren't so lucky. After the expedition we had our award ceremony at school and I was given a Bee award in honour of my ignorant curiosity along with a sting kit and roll of tissue as my prize, I took it like a champ and made a memory I will never be forgetting and Im sure the guide will not be forgetting too. The time a Dofe participant nearly ended his life with a swarm of Bees.

Participant