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!