Breaking Down The Walls

HEYO!! I am posting this blog because earlier this week on Wednesday I was part of a program called Breaking Down The Walls. It is a program that was held all week were students got to take an entire day off to be apart of it. while there we "break down walls" such as racial, gender, and other differences between people. It is a really great program. we started by getting in a circle, well more like a square, that went around the entire gym. we then had to link arms with either a person on the left or on the right of us to be a partner. the person with the longest hair, me in my case, would go to the inside of the circle. we then introduced ourselves, my partners name was alex. after that we played a game called birdie on the perch. it was alot of fun. the two "lines" would go in opposite directions and then when the leader person who was running the program says "birdie fly home" all those on the inside, designated as the birdie< go running to their partner to sit on their knee. we do three times each time with a new partner, and the third time those on the inside switch so everyone is a "perch" once. After that we did that, we moved around and got new partners and talked with them about our "crazy" families which was really interesting. after talking we switched partners and we then talked about a personal story. In my case i talked about the time i broke my nose and my partner talked about when he got hit in the head with a golf club by his sister when they were five. it was really fun and interesting. we then made new parnters again, and we switch partners alot, and then based off of what we know from just meeting them we had to guess what cereal what car and what vacation place they would go to out of the three provided by "breaking down the walls" organizer. after that we talked with our partners about the "real you", which basically was we talked about who we really were as a person. i met alot of great people during this. then the pairs of poeple would get into groups with anouther pair for a game of tag, there were a few conditions though, first we could not separate from our parteners we had to stay linked in some way, hand or arms, and secondly when tage we had to spin around before we go chasing after our tag pair. me and my partner were untaged the most and it was really fun to just play such a simple game. after this we sat in our groups of four and we all discussed our own personal fears, be it dark, clowns, bugs, failing school, or whatever. after that we thanked our parteners and we all went into the bleachers and we where set into groups of around 10 people. in the groups we palyed a few games asked tons of questions and made sure we were attentive and respectful of each other. before we could get lunch we had to have the people in our groups to use there bodies to form words and/or letters. our group was the third to get release to lunch. while we were eating lunch we continued ask question to each other which was interesting. After we finished all of our group discussions we did something called "cross the line". the purpose of this was the director would ask a question, and if it applied to us we would cross the line. we did have to option of yes, no, or choose not to answer, and if you chose not to answer you would not cross the same a no and if yes you cross. he starts out with very basic, somewhat personal questions like "are you left handed" and other similar questions. as it went on though it would get more personal such as "have you lost a close relative,(brother sister parents)" or "have your been raped" or "are you depressed" and "have you tried to commit suicide". it is a very heart touching/breaking thing to do. after this all the guys got on one team and all the girls went on anouther and we hand to go in pairs through a jumprope with no stops inbetween each pair (one rotation of the rope = one pair goes through) niether team succeeded on any of their trys. we then got into one big group and had to go in 6's and we succeded on the first try, one because there was no competition, and everyone one cheering each other on. afterwards we made stickers with a comment to give to people we met during the program. it is a very good program and i loved that i was a part of it.