SPLASH! I was thrown head first into the deep, dark ocean. 

Prior to being thrown in, I had been on a big raft that was going out far into the ocean in Valencia, Spain. I was 10 years old at the time. I was with a whole group of kids who were in the same camp as me, and since it was the last day, all of us were going out in the ocean to have a “wrestling” match on a raft until one person was left which had sounded exciting.

After around 15 minutes of everyone rowing the raft out into the ocean, the instructors told us to stop rowing, saying that we were in a good place to have the wrestling match. An instructor shouted, telling us to start pushing people off, which ended up in many of the instructors starting to throw kids off of the raft and into the ocean. I was one of them. 

After several seconds of being under water, I finally managed to make my way back up to the surface. With water in my eyes, the taste of salty water in my mouth, and gasping for all the air in the world, I looked around trying to understand what had happened. The instructors, who were all still in college or had just graduated, must have thought that the kids would be ok and would just swim back to the raft, as they started to row the raft farther into the ocean. At first, when I realized what had happened I didn’t think about it too much since the raft seemed relatively close, but after getting myself to start swimming back toward the raft, all I could feel was the sensation of fear throughout myself, as the current of the water was strong and the raft was going deeper, and deeper into the ocean. My legs got weary because of how deep into the ocean we were and because of the choppiness of the water.

I told my friend, “Let's try to stay close to these other kids and try to make our way back with them.” Shaking in fear since there was the possibility of drowning, we had to fight through the strong waters, trying to make it back to a raft that kept on going farther and farther into the ocean, while trying to keep our minds off of the thought of possibly drowning. 

After swimming for what felt like eternity, we stumbled across a surfboard which gave us an idea. Without even questioning the fact that there was a surfboard floating around in the middle of the ocean, we swam towards the surfboard trying to get on to it quickly. This felt like a miracle, as all of a sudden, our problem of trying to stay up above the choppy waves was solved. After catching our breath for a couple of minutes, we all held on to the board and started kicking our way back toward the raft which was far out and would take a long time to reach. 

Once we started navigating through the choppy ocean, we started to see the raft coming closer and closer to us. After a very long fifteen minutes, and extremely exhausted legs, we finally managed to reach the raft and get back on it. Once we were all back on the raft, one of the instructors finally realized what had happened and came to check if we were ok. The instructors decided to slow everything down, as they definitely didn’t want any more kids getting left behind in the middle of the ocean.