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

Roma!
We took a school trip to Rome and Milan for 8 days from November 13th to 21st. The entire student body along with the staff and other guests made up a traveling bunch of about 250. We had almost an entire train to ourselves on the overnight trip to Rome!


In Rome the students stayed in two monasteries at the heart of the center, within walking distance of all the famous places: the coliseum, St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican, etc.

It was really amazing.



We saw the Pope on the first day, and had a private audience with President Giorgo Napolitano (of Italy). At the Papa Benedetto's appearance 5 of us or so got to go up to the front row of everything and see the pope from about 5 feet away. It was really a neat experience. There were other events; a conference on Eastern Europe, a recital by ex-music scholars, and various cultural visits and dinners; but besides these, we had lots of free time to see the city and get to know the area. I feel pretty confident now that I know my way around central Rome!
I took loads of pictures.
It's hard to say what I liked the most about Rome because there was little about that part of the trip that I didn't like. I guess highlights include lunch at Circo Massimo with Shashank and Ammar, taking pictures of the Coliseum at sunrise, taking pictures in general, having American food at Hard Rock Cafe with Heidi, Diana, Salma and Elroy, getting lost with Urska on multiple occasions, cozy cafes, and just wandering around Rome in general.
On the last day I got to see Lucy's sister Nora who is on Rotary in Sicily, and got to have dinner with Lillian, an old friend from Senegal who's been in Rome for about a year.

Then, on Monday (Nov. 19th), we all took buses to Milan where we stayed with host families! We had a meeting with the Mayor of Milan and other important people, but the best part of the experience in Milan was, for me, the host families.
Adesso parlo italiano!
Now I speak Italian! This is a little bit of an exaggeration because I am still very far from being totally comfortable speaking, but I can communicate now and after about 1.5 days with my family/host sister and their friends, I was communicating quite comfortably.
La mia sorella italiana si chiama Beatrice. My italian family couldn't have been nicer and more hospitable and invited me to come back and stay when I'm in Milan next!
I loved hanging out with Italian teenagers for the first time and really speaking the language for a while with people my own age.

Both the cities were lots of fun, I had a great time in general.

We took buses back to Duino on Wednesday, and had school off on Thursday to recover. Coincidentally enough it also happened to be thanksgiving so the Americans spent the afternoon cooking and we had dinner at Anne and Jean-Paul's flat (teachers and residence tutors of Pala) because Anne is American. They had a 25 lb. turkey (which I of course didn't eat) and we had loads of other nice food.
It was fantastic.
Then we had school on Friday, and the weekend again!

I realized that tomorrow I will have been here 3 months and that yesterday we only had 3 weeks left until winter break!
It's weird how fast it's gone but how I still feel like I've been here forever. It will be nice to be back home for a while though to see my family and have some familiarity, but it will also be hard to be away from the people here for so long.

Ciao!

November 12, 2007

Ciao Tutti!
We had a show for the 2nd years this weekend called the EE Show which is celebrating the 2nd years' finishing their Extend Essays (a 4,000 word essay that factors into your IB score, on a topic you choose).
The show was stressful to put on because, at least I, put a lot of time into it. There were some great organizers (Samantha, Lilly, Diana) who did loads of work that I'm really glad I wasn't involved in, but I did do lots of acts, my band played, I made some movies, etc.
The show was Friday night and was sooo much fun to do. It was know as the "Red Carpet Affair" and was movie themed, so the 2nd years came in assigned couples dressed as assigned characters. The whole event was just fantastic. We put it on in the new school auditorium, which was great, and it would have reminded those of you who know, of the shows at UWCAD. Lots of skits, dances, LOTS of music - classical to vocal and rock.
I have been getting much busier with school in general. I feel like I need to study outside of class in order to keep up, and it's very hard to do with so much going on!
On Saturday, I went to Aviano with Heidi (USA) and Diana (UK). Aviano is an American military base N.E. of here, at the base of the dolomites. One of the residence tutors and wife (Anne) of a teacher here was really nice to drive us (about an hour) so we went and bought American food and went to a Taco Bell and payed in American Dollars etc. They have a sort of strip mall on the base for the soldiers that has a big grocery store, a general wall-mart-like store and some fast-food restaurants and a barber (I got a hair cut/buzz). It was really fun and really different to be back around Americans and American food and products.
You can only enter the base if you have an American Military ID (which Heidi does because her father is in the military) or if you are a guest of one of said people.
Anyway, it was lots of fun, we came home, made Fajitas, and today I ate Bagels and Cream Cheese for breakfast and Digiorno Frozen Pizzas and Ranch Dressing for dinner (with Heidi, Diana and Kristina (Canada)). I also bought things like egg waffles, cheddar cheese, tortillas and grape nuts cereal that I just miss being here. It's nice to have the familiarity also.
Anyway, that was a nice little trip back to the U.S.

In general here things are going well, the weather has been pretty nice lately (still cold though) and I have been mostly playing soccer for exercise. I've been playing guitar more (with band) and viola less.

I've been hanging out a lot with Urska, Lucy, Diana, Heidi, some with Lilly, and, of course, with lots of people all the time in different contexts. I reiterate that everyone here is exceptionally interesting, fun and nice.

Tuesday we go to Rome and Milan for 8 days with the school as part of the 25th Anniversary celebrations. It's impressive what they've done to mobilize 200 people!

I'll write about that trip when I'm back, I won't have my laptop on the trip because the school is allowing us to bring them in light of theft, and power problems with all of us plugging in at the residences we'll be at.
I will have my cameras though, so there should be lots of good media!

Hope everyone's doing well!
Ciao!

Here is the video I made for and of the 2nd years, enjoy.