AHISS Alumni

My name is Paloma Estay Hollands and I am 10 years old , I have been going to Ardmay House for 4 years. The reason why I am going every year is because Ardmay is a creative, fun, welcoming, international and good place to learn stuff in the funnest way you could imagine!

We stay in dorms with the girls and the boys separated you will be staying in rooms of 8 people, 4 or 2. Also everyday everybody is looking forward to the night because we do night activities like Scottish night, movie night, get to know people night, circus night, drum night, party night which is the night were you will dance to music and will be given an AHISS T-Shirt where everybody signs your t-shirt so when you go home you have little memories of them.

You will get to do all kind of activities like rock climbing, kayaking, gorge walking and a lot of other fun activities. Personally my favourite activities are gorge walking and canoeing. A lot of people have asked me in the past “what an earth is gorge walking?!” same for weaseling. Gorge walking involves walking through and across streams and rivers. It also is jumping from rocks into the water (which is very fun). Weaseling is an activity who involves crawling through cave holes.

I very much like Wednesdays and the weekend because on these days we go on excursions to Glasgow, Edinburgh and museums. We also get to do some shopping on the weekends at a shopping mall. We also do projects in groups with posters and drawings.

Onto another subject, every single year I come back from Ardmay House telling my mum how much I enjoyed myself and every time I tell her that my favourite thing about Ardmay is that it is a place where you will meet amazing people who might even become your best friends. On your first day you are too shy to talk to anyone and by the end of the week you will be there crying so much saying goodbye to people. The really amazing thing about Ardmay is that you feel like you are family with the whole camp.