Alan: Conquering the Canoe

Welcome to another edition of #Snapshot, where we bring you a glimpse of what’s going on at Summer Search.

We’re in the heart of our 2016 summer programs. This means that our mentors’ inboxes are being flooded with exciting and inspiring photographic updates from our students along their summer journeys… like this one.

This is Alan from Summer Search Bay Area. He just completed his FIRST summer experience, which took him on his first plane ride far from home to the wilderness of Minnesota on a canoeing expedition with Voyageur Outward Bound School.

The firsts didn’t stop there. Alan had also never been canoeing before, so this was definitely going to be a challenging trip. However, he was excited to embrace these new experiences, even if they seemed scary.

And embrace them he did, taking to canoeing like a duck to water—a duck with whitewater rapid skills!

Alan described his excitement to his mentor Francisco about the experience in the photo above, when he had the chance to ride the rapids in the front of the canoe for the first time.

“I was normally not in the front of the canoe, so when I was there I thought ‘finally!’ I felt like I was going to fly or something. When we were going through the rapids the canoe went up really high and I thought ‘WOW, this is really great!'”

Seriously, look at the joy on his face!

We’re so proud to see our students conquer challenges like these, helping them build confidence and transform what they believe is possible for themselves.

Well done, Alan. Really great, indeed.