Hello everyone! I'm updating my blog about two months late again! I guess I can't say its really very blog-ish to write like...4 times a year, so sorry about that!
Once again I attribute this, and can now more than ever before, to having a ridiculously busy life and wanting to do more things every day than there are hours for!

However, here's what I've been up to, in brief.

We gave our school the Halloween experience last night! We had trick-or-treating in some North Americans rooms and then threw a dance part, which was really fun!

The other exciting thing coming up for me, and all of us, is the election... (I'm actually listening to some of Obama's speeches right now) I'm incredibly excited/anxious to see who wins and am increasingly feeling the importance of this election on, not only the next 4/8 years, but on our future. As a lot of my energy is currently focused on the future, with exams and university applications/decision, I can't stop thinking about how drastically different it will be depending on which of the two candidates is elected. Anyway... fingers crossed everyone.

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING

Most of my time right now is being spent on school, this term of the IB is very busy, we have lots of internal assemsments happening, SAT's to study for, like I said University apps, etc.
I'm trying to keep up Viola practicing, I'm playing with a quartet I organized with my roomate (Phuc - vietnam), his first year and an Italian first year.
I've been playing guitar and writing songs with Diana (UK) also, which is very fun and exciting. We have recorded a few and I just cut a quick video to one that we wrote for our first years and am working on another music video to a song Diana and I wrote last year for the IB show for our second years.

The one from this year is up on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBjt--VmuFk


TRIPS

In the last two months, since I arrived with Vittoria at the end of August, I've also gotten to take a few very cool trips, one to Arezzo, for a conference on European goals, a long weekend in Ravenna and a three day trip to Torino for a Slow Food conference which was also amazing.

In Arezzo we went to a few conferences, in Italian, about what is is to be European and how Italy is becoming European, which was very interesting, especially as a non-european who knows very little about Europe! We also got to see the city, which is gorgeous (they filmed "La Vitta e' Bella" in one of the piazza where we're standing on the ledge!) and eat a lot of food very ceremoniously (an Italian thing).

The long weekend in Ravenna was sort of a last minute thing, just to get out of Duino for a while and see more of the beautiful country we're in.
I took lots of pictures, saw some gorgeous chrches and slept.

SLOW FOOD

The last trip, to the Slow Food conference in Torino was really neat. Torino is in NorthEastern Italy, near France, about a 7 hr. train ride from Duino (about the longest train ride you can take between any two points in Italy!). The concerence was headed by Slow Food, which is a huge international organization promoting Good, Clean and Fair food. Claudia Garcia, an ex-student of UWCAD was able to organize 5 tickets for college students, I requested to go and got to. It was myself, Lily (Netherlands), Adrian (Argentina), Earth (Thailand) and Peter (Canada). We stayed at the Olympic Hostel (where they hosted 2006 olympic athletses) in Bardonnecchia, a town about 1.5 hrs. outside of Torino, with probably at least a few hundred other young people (mostly University aged) from all over the world that had come for the conference.

Discussions and workshops tended to be on topics like food security, sustainability, the use of biofuels, getting people involved in agriculture, making food production/consumption a more local process, food on campuses, etc. The main philosophy behind the Slow Food movement is that food should be an important part of our lives and, in order for it to be good, clean and fair, it should be local. There is a lot of emphasis on getting people re-connected with the land.
One of the neat things about this conference, which has been held in Torin twice alread, in 2006 and 2004 (and had 7,000 participants!!) was that it was the first time to introduce young people in the process, officially. The Youth Food Movement was introduced (YMF) which is an organization based on Slow Food USA that is trying to get young people re-connected with food and educated/involved in food issues.

We came into this whole process as students brought to the conference with the mission of bringing Slow Food back to the college. I think there are aspects of it that fit really well with the UWCAD mission, so we are giving a presentation on it on Monday in assembly and are hoping to do a project with local agricultural producers for project week in the spring.
A lot of the things being done now on university campuses, like co-op housing, organic gardens, organic caffeterias, etc. can't be done on at a school our size, which is a shame, but I think some cool stuff will come out of it.
GETTING BACK...

Anyway, besides that, getting back to UWC was great, especially seeing friends and meeting new ones. The first years are great, a very fun bunch of people.

I haven't felt like I have the time this semester to enjoy the UWC experience as much as I did last year, which is too bad. I feel like last year I was very involved in the college and excited about the movement and about Duino. This year its difficult to be doing so much with these things because of the amount of school work/academics we are doing, as second years. I think things will calm down a little after christmas break, because second semester should be a little less demanding. I'm looking forward to it!
This winter I'm planning to stay in Europe, go to Street Performance in the Czech Republic and Poland (with Anne Caroline who's coming just before the end of the school year), go to Paris for a few days, then leave AC and go to Diana's house in Cardiff, Wales, along with my coyear Heidi, just in time for christmas. I'm very excited!

Next weekend I'm also going to Bucharest with some friends which should be fantastic!


PUGLIA

The end of my stay in Puglia with Vittoria was great, I got to see the area and spend lots of time with here and her family, go to the beach a lot, relax, play guitar and write my EE.
We took an overnight train back to Duino the night before the opening of the residences, it was incredibly exciting to see Duion again!

Anyway, I better go as the internet cuts out in 2 minutes, (12pm), but I'll finish this post as soon as I can and insert pictures/videos!

Ciaociao!

Catching Up

Hey Everyone! (if there are any of you out there who still read this!)
Sorry I have been so neglectful of my blog for so long, the end of last school year got really crazy, and I didn't seem to find the time.

But, perhaps my neglect is the best description of what the end of the year was like! - listen closely all you uwc-bound youngens! - The fact that I didn't take the small amount of time to write on my blog tell a large group of friends out there what I've been up to, shows how busy, sleepless, emotional, stressful and incredibly fun the last two months of school were!
Regardless, I'm sorry. I have a goal this year to improve the regularity of my updates (and possibly to make them a bit more entertaining), so keep checking it out!

To summarize the events of the last 5 months however, I better give you a bit of a rundown:

I think I last posted on my blog in like.... March (sounds pretty bad putting it that way), and we had about two months of school left.
During this period we had lots of exams, the second years had all their IB exams throughout May, and a study period before, so they weren't in class most of that time. I also was taking the SAT's for the second time, as well as planing things for the summer, and organizing acts for the IB Show (show we did at the end of the year when the secondi finished their IB exams) as well as doing some concerts with "Sitting on the Sidewalk," a band some second years started that I was playing bass for - can't remember if I told you all about that yet or not - but it was great.
Anyway, the end of the year sort of drug on forever/went way too fast, and May 28th showed up, at which point everyone left, which meant about three sleepless nights of packing up/saying goodbye to people (who conveniently left at all hours of the night on buses - so that we sat out on the street all night saying goodbye to them, often for the last time)
Anyway, as you can imagine, this was all very emotional and stressful, and, rather fun.

Then, I spent about a week after school finished (at the end of may/beginning of june) traveling in Slovenia and Croatia, with Keleigh and Lorenzo. We also met up with Caterina (Slovenia), Urska (Slovenia), and Uny (Hong Kong) in Ljubljana and traveled to this lake outside of Ljubljana and had a great time! Then, as Lorenzo was forced to return to Duino due to a minor bike accident, Keleigh and I took a train to Pula, Croatia, and spent one night there at a hostel on the beach!
Lorenzo and Keleigh returned to the College for a conference on Climate Change which involved students form loads of UWC's, which sounded very cool, whilst I returned home, via two days in Paris, and slept the large part of 3 days upon arriving.

Now, I know this is a blog about my experience about UWCAD, but I will give a quick summary of my summer... if you want to get back to Italy quickly, skip down to where it says VIESTE!
This summer I spent two weeks at the Colorado Suzuki Institute Chamber Music of the Rockies, partaking in intense classical string quartet training. Basically, I played viola for 7 hours a day (and played ultimate frisbee for the rest of them!).
I then had a week during which I visited my seconda, Lucy, in Durango, which was a blast.
I then spent another week playing music of a different genre: Western Swing! I got to go to a camp that famous swing musician Johnny Gimble puts on each year. It was really fun, and tied into the topic of my Extended Essay (EE) which I should probably be writing right now, instead of going to the beach in 10 minutes!
I also spent two weeks looking at colleges, mostly on the East coast, and in Ohio, where I also got to visit Cassie, a friend from Suzuki Camp. I visited 10 schools, and liked most of them, so now all I have to do is decide (and put in all the applications, to add to the crazy work load I'll already have this fall)!
Anyway, I was also at Ghost Ranch for a week with my mom and Anne Caroline, Bo and Malia Reeves (fellow Taoseno and seconda form UWC - Atlantic, Wales), helping with a workshop on social justice and peacemaking! We also spent a few days camping, swimming, and diving off of large cliffs!

About a week after that, in which I tried to see all my friends that I hadn't gotten to see all summer, I left for Italy again! I know, that was brief summary of my summer, as we're already back for my second year. I left home on August 10th, and spent three days getting from Albuquerque, to New York (where I spent the night with good family friends), to London (where I spent a not-so-good night in the London Airport), to Milan, then by train to Foggia (a city in the mid-southern part of the country, near where my friend Vittoria lives).
Upon arriving, I met Vittoria and her father, Michelangelo, and we drove to Vittoria's town, Vieste, where I have been for the last 6 days!





VIESTE

Vieste is small, beautiful town located right along the coast of a very beautiful sea with lots of beautiful beaches.
It's beautiful.
It is hot, and different from the Northern part of the country that I've seen. Upon arriving, actually, it reminded me quite a lot of various parts of Senegal and West Africa which I haven't seen in a long time (which was a fun thing to remember!). I guess it was partly the heat, but also the smell, and the white buildings... the climate in general, I suppose. I believe it is safe to say that the culture is quite different, but the region has a similar feel.

So far, I have spent a lot of my time on the beach (there are wide, sandy beaches almost the entire length of the town - which isn't that small)! Other time has been spent going dancing at night, which then requires even more time to recover by sleeping. During this part of the summer (most of August, actually), there are a lot of tourists, and therefore a lot going on at night. But, as Vittoria tells me, apparently everyone goes out dancing every night during the summer, even when there aren't as many tourists. So, pretty much every night I've been here, we've gone out dancing! And, as Italians eat dinner at home around 9:00pm, that means you go out around 11:00pm, or later, and stay out dancing until somewhere between 3:00am and 6:00am the next morning. I actually have been finding it a bit exhausting, but I suppose it's a cultural experience!
Anyway, I've gotten to know a lot of Vittoria's friends, who are very nice, and I'm having a good time. I've also been doing some work on my Extend Essay (EE), mostly transcribing interviews with Johnny Gimble and fellows that I did this summer. I've been to church a few times, with Vittoria, when she plays piano, I've practiced some viola, taken pictures, played guitar, sent important emails, and gotten to relax a little bit!
Vittoria's family could not be nicer and more hospitable, and my Italian is somewhat coming back! I haven't been doing my Italian homework just yet (which will hopefully help me remember all the grammar I forgot), but it's becoming more comfortable to speak, and I am learning a few words in the local dialect!
Today we got up early and took a boat ride that goes to Le Grote (the caves) along the coast to the south. There is a very neat series of caves and arches/rock formations along the coast that we drove by (I took lots of pictures - see above) and then stoped at a nice beach for a little while and swam!

Well, I believe that is a sufficient catch-up-summary. I will be here for 7 more days, Vittoria and I take an overnight train to Monfalcone from Foggia on the 26th. I'm really looking forward to going back, seeing my friends, meeting my first years and getting back into the swing of things. I miss UWCAD!

I hope you are all doing well in your various parts of the worlds!

Ciao da Vieste!

It's Already March!

Ciao Tutti!
I've put some panorama shots I've taken just for fun in the last couple of weeks that are of places in Duino. Mostly Fore (my residence) and other places. (photos - Adriatic Sea and Duino Piazza!)


I know I’ve only updated my blog once this semester, it’s amazing how the weeks have been flying by!
In general, I am doing more homework than I would like to be, still playing quite a lot of music, same sports, soccer, basketball, volleyball, I stopped bowling (my official “winter activity”) and have been skiing a couple times. I’m planning on going this weekend again, actually!

(photo - entrance to Fore)

I’ve been working on some pages for our yearbook here, I’m organizing an entire-college photo at Porto for Monday, which will probably be on the cover or the opening page. Other things, same as usual, we had a spring break of sorts that ended about ten days ago. Some friends and I had organize a trip to Slovenia to ski, however, due to some sicknesses we canceled the plans and I spent most of the break (five days or so) here in Duino. It was a nice chance to catch up on things.
In that time I also put in my application for the chamber music of the Rockies program this summer, which I’m hoping to attend. I spent about 6 hrs. a day playing viola for probably at least 4 days in a week! I’ve never played for that long in a day before, yet I did it numerous times. It was actually quite fun, and I got the application DVD sent in…

Some of my Second Years organized a vegetarian dinner, for which I managed to make enchiladas pretty much from scratch (tortillas and all!) – to my surprise, they came out really well! There are a surprisingly large number of vegetarians here (also a lot who don’t eat pork), so we organize these quite often.

(photo - Fore Balcony)

I’m running for the position of Student Representative for next year, we are having elections next week I think. There are two second years each year who act as student representatives and attend faculty meetings and meet regularly with the headmaster, so I am interested in trying to do it.

I’m also putting out a photography book of various portraits/snapshots I’ve taken, as part of the Photography class I take, between this and yearbook things I’ve been doing a lot with photos (which I really enjoy).

I’m playing Bass Guitar in two bands right now, Jazz and Rock. One is with the guy who I started the band with first semester, Joar, form Norway, the other is a Second Year band that asked me if I would play with them. It’s different form normal electric guitar, it’s been a fun experience!

We took a recent Choir trip that was really fun, we sang for the Italian National TV at this little winery in a town nearby, it was very fun, took half the day, we missed a few classes. We take these trips all the time, I love seeing all these little towns in the area that are half Italian, half Slovene, sort of tucked away in the hills. Very cool.
Anyway, I took a few nice pictures, here they are!












This picture with the wine so typical of the culture this area, I just had to put it in!
(photo - Choir, photo - Me and Simone (co-year from Canada)





Anyway, as you can probably tell, I’ve been really busy. We’re doing all these internals in school now that start the internally graded part of our IB Diploma (so they actually matter!), and they tend to pile up quickly, coming from all classes at different times!

We have a break for Easter in two weekends also, some of us have talked about a trip farther down the coast of Italy or to Croatia where we can find warm weather and beaches! The weather here has been pretty weird actually, we had some really nice warm days and now it is cold like in the middle of winter and the “Bora” (famed hurricane-like wind) is blowing pretty ferociously, so you can’t really be outside!

Here are some pictures from my social service the last couple weeks. If you remember, this is the “Band Service” – we go to mostly old peoples’ homes (sometimes schools or other place/events) and play music! It’s quite fun, I’ve been taking pictures because of the yearbook, so here are a few.

Here's one of Stefano (Music/Choir Teacher and my Tutor) and our group twice.
































Also, here are some of the pages I’ve made for the yearbook. They accept pages that groups of friends can do and submit, I did a couple:




Italian is getting to be pretty comfortable, I think I’m at the point that I can understand almost everything (if said in a relatively normal accent!) and can speak comfortably, but I make a lot of mistakes. It’s alright though, it’s nice to be able to communicate easily, it really makes it more fun to interact with locals!


Hope everyone is doing well!

Bacii,

Remy

Warm weather...

The weather has been great lately, which has promoted my taking lots of pictures in the last few days, and deciding to update my blog!
I have been doing less schoolwork lately and focusing on some projects and other things such as yearbook pictures and various 25th anniversary projects I'm excited about. The most prominent of these is cleaning up/landscaping a garden area by one of the residences and dedicating it to the 25th anniversary... I'm pretty excited about it and am currently drawing up plans for what we'll do and what materials we need etc.

I didn't get to go biking last weekend because the weather was really bad, but I'm planning on going tomorrow (legs permitting) - I tried to go play soccer today but my legs cramped really badly and I couldn't run... I think it's just irregular (intense/no) exercise.
That's the plan for the weekend along with working on yearbook pages etc.
I've been playing Viola quite a lot, we had a concert on Wednesday, and we now have a small "sinfonietta" (chamber music group).

I took a lot of pictures this week of my residence, Fore. I figured it would be cool to give people a sense for what it's like here.

Theres a picture (a little romanticized, but entirely accurate and typical) of entrance to my residence, with Abdu and Natayla.

I also threw in this picture of a typical lunch for me here. It's actually pretty good, but it starts to get repetitive after a while.


Theres a picture here of our day-room and the door to my room (right next to the day room).

There's always a beautiful view, but it's sooooo nice to be outside, I can't wait for consistently warm weather.... we have a lawn right next to the residence, and Mensa (the cafeteria) is the same building as my residence, but downstairs. The beautiful balcony with the view of the castle overlooking the sea, is also part of our building... its amazing.

I've been enjoying the photography a lot, we get to each put out a book for our final project for the activity (advanced photography)... I have to decide on a theme! But it's been really fun doing all of that, I'm planning a photo-shoot for this weekend to get some pictures of people in national costumes (for a calendar) and others for the yearbook. Yesterday, Malika (volunteer at the college from India, she's very cool) and I set up a date in the beginning of March where we're taking the entire school to the port and taking a photo from a boat on the water (hoping it will be the yearbook cover)....



(my room is the one on the left before the glass doors in this picture)

Anyway, lots going as usual!
Hope everyone's doing well out there,
we have a long weekend in two weeks and we're probably going skiing in Slovenia, I'll let you all know!

Ciaociao!

Back at school...

Hi Everyone!

I'm back in Italy, as of Jan. 12th, 2008!

I flew from Albuquerque, to Chicago, Brussels, and finally Venice.  Then went form Venice to Duino on trains and buses (fortunately I was on the same flight from Brussels with my seconda from Norway, Andrea - so I didn't have any trouble getting from Venice to Duino).

School is as it was before, it was great to see everyone.  

I switched from my physical activity of sailing (since it was cold) and started doing bowling at a nearby alley, which is fun.  I wanted to be getting some exercise though, so I went to Basketball the third day back, twisted my ankle, and was on crutches the rest of the week!  I'm just getting over that now, I still don't know if I can play soccer, but I can play Volleyball, and pretty much run, etc.

One of the more exciting things I've done since being back to meet Italians who road bike!

This was a goal I had from last semester, so I'm very glad I finally took the initiative to do so.  I basically went to a bike shop in Sistiana, nearby, asked if they new a group that biked regularly around the area, got a telephone number, called the guy and went to meet up with them the next day.

However, I didn't meet up with them, because I couldn't find them, but in the process of trying to do so, I met other Italians that invited me to keep biking with them, so it worked out really well. 

I went biking with them then (on Friday) and again on Saturday, and I'm going this Sat. also.  

It's great to get to bike with other people and to get to practice speaking Italian, so that's been really fun.

I also started to get sick, so took yesterday off school and slept and stayed inside... It's amazing how much I tend to get sick here!

This semester has been a lot harder than the last, I actually have work all the time and it occupies a lot of my time these days.   I've been surprised by the contrast to last year's work load.  We've started doing internals in a lot of classes, which effect our final IB grade, so I guess now it's actually started!

That's all for now, I don't have any pictures because I haven't been focusing on it much.   I've been playing my viola a lot and the weather has been really nice until today.

ciaociao!

UWC-USA Visit

I visited UWC-USA yesterday and today, mostly in light of bringing Motema, Porfia and Alice (UWCUSA students staying with us over Christmas break) back to school. I also had been wanting to go to visit various people such as Sahil (coyear who I met at my interview) and Antonio (one of the USA students who came to our campus in Italy). I got to see both of these people and lots more, it was really fun.
It was a very different experience to be there after being at a UWC that, I found, to be largely similar. I really felt like part of the community, I made friends and met some people that I really like and would like to keep in touch with, even though I was only there for 1 night.
It was exciting, also, to be there when everyone was arriving back from break; I suppose it’s a taste of what I will be experiencing at school in less than a week!
Everyone was out and about and welcoming friends who were arriving up until around 3:00am. – The weather was quite bad and the drive from ABQ was apparently much slower than usual.
Another thing I especially noticed was the difference in atmosphere because of all the Americans at that campus. UWC-USA has 50 American students, compared to 6 at UWCAD. Contrary to what I expected, I really liked this atmosphere a lot. Because of the large number of USA students, you get a very wide range of Americans, from all sorts of backgrounds and cultures; but they all still share the (what I feel like is) underlying United States culture. It felt familiar while still being international and diverse. I was pretty surprised by this dynamic. I kept meeting people who I guessed came from the middle east, Asia, or Africa, but introduced themselves (generally in an American accent) as from Ohio, or Georgia! Many of them came from multinational families and seemed as interesting as the international students to me, yet they were quite American and familiar in their mannerisms and interactions. I must say, I liked it.
I haven’t decide yet, however, if the experience I’m having (while being a little more difficult) is more impacting on a student or not. I kind of feel like living with a vast majority of people who come from totally different cultures with totally different backgrounds, morals, values, ideas, habits, etc. is a stronger experience, but visiting UWC-USA made me want to go to school there, so I think I would have been very happy even at this campus in my home state!
Overall, the experience was great and I met very interesting people, had great conversations, and feel very much more like a part of that campus.

Street Performance 2007

School got out for the winter holidays on Dec. 14, ’07, but before returning home I went to the Nordic countries on a student-run initiative called Street Performance. Street Performance started 2 years ago, and took place last year in Spain. The idea is that students who want to participate travel to an area (in this case Sweden and Finland) and sing in the streets, hold concerts, talk in schools, hold workshops on initiatives and global issues and talk about UWC.

This year, the money we raised (at least 1,200 Euros) was donated towards building a school in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
There were about 40 students on the trip, including a number of the choir members and other musicians, dancers and just people who wanted to come along.


We flew from Venice to Stockholm, took a ferry to Helsinki, a train to Lapland in Northern Finland and returned to Helsinki (I returned to Stockholm and then New Mexico on the 24th).
The trip was a blast. I had never been to that part of the world and it was very fun to see it. I also enjoyed visiting the various schools we went to and the interest and involvement the students and teachers there showed. We slept in the airport one night, at Axel’s (2nd year from Stockholm) house another, on the ferry, in a schools gym for a couple nights, on trains, and with host families in Rovaniemi (Lapland). I think the host family was the best experience, it really helped me get a feel for Finish culture and the people were very nice.

It was also very different to be in the Arctic Circle for the shortest day of the year! There were only about 5 hours of daylight, which was a very strange feeling, I can see how it could effect peoples moods and lives a lot!

We visited two schools (in Helsinki and Rovaniemi) and held workshops in both. Theses were pretty much hour-long sessions in classrooms at the schools that their students attended, in which our students presented on different topics such as Global Warming, Brain Drain in Latin America, or even something as straight forward as information on Italy and Italian Culture or Hong Kong. I wasn’t directly involved with any of these, but I played a pretty prominent role in the performances singing and playing guitar and viola.

I spent the night at Axel’s house again on the 22nd on my way home, and got to meet his friends who came over and their friends (a girl from Australia on exchange and a guy visiting from California), I increasingly find it very fun to be around an international group of people. Axel’s family was really nice when we met them the first time with the whole school, and they were very nice and hospitable in having me the second time.


I wasn’t particularly looking forward to coming home when I left school, but by half way through Street Performance I had started to. I think the exhaustion was setting in pretty well, and it sounded nice to be at my house with my family and friends in a calm, familiar environment. I was delayed in Newark on the flight back and arrived very late in ABQ, so I didn’t actually get home until Christmas Eve Day!
However, it was great to be home and to be with my family, I really have enjoyed the break.


Ciaociao