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