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 ch
amber 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
