Having been here for only about 30 hours it certainly feels like I’ve been here a lot longer. On my arrival at Trieste airport I was met by Gabriel, my British secondo (a second year boy is a secondo, a second year girl is a seconda, multiple of both are secondi) and Graciela, my second year buddy (each secondo gets a primo to be a buddy to) from El Salvador. We then joined a number of other students whose names I immediately forgot after greetings (as it’s happened, these past 30 or so hours have been a constant stream of introductions: ‘Hi, I’m Robin from the UK’ ‘Hi I’m Filippo from Italia’ and then around 5 hours later ‘Hi I’m Robin from the UK’ ‘Yes, I know, I’m Filipo from Italia, we already met…’).
Gabriel showed me my room, number 11, situated in the Foresteria Residence (everybody calls it ‘Fore’ pronounced ‘Foh-rray’), which is the smallest 4 person room in the residence, but also one of the few with a fantastic view of both Duino castle and the bay of Trieste.
I was swiftly informed that there was a swimming test to be taken, at half five, which would allow all students who passed to swim unaccompanied. This left just half an hour for me to try and grasp some kind of an idea of where I was.
Fortunately, I visited Trieste and the area, and spent a day in Duino, the village in which the college is situated, with my family just a couple of weeks ago, so I knew the way down to porto, or the harbour area. The whole of the this part of the Adriatic coastline is pretty much all cliffs; porto is one of the few areas where the land is of a gentle enough gradient to have had a harbour constructed, and there is also a small man-made beach (a tiny bit reminiscent of Brighton beach, due to the fact that only small pebbles can be used. This is because the Adriatic currents are too strong for sand). A rectangular area of sea maybe 50 metres by 15 is protected as a swimming area, due to the fact that there are large amounts of jellyfish in the seas nearby. Another hazard, as I was immediately informed, was sea urchins, which are ‘unlikely to be really fatal, but very toxic’. Cheers… Anyway, back to the swimming, which was really only a simple matter of swimming 20 metres to a secondo and then back to the shore.
On my way back up the hill to Fore a very kind Mexican secondo, Pablo, gave me a short tour, but I’ll tell you more about the ‘campus’ later…
I have to say that after that test, and just before dinner, which is at 7 o clock, I really just felt so overwhelmed. Having forgotten my phone charger, the moment my phone battery died was quite symbolic in a way: it was like a link had been cut, which only made me long for home.
However things picked up a bit at tea (as in dinner): I sat with an Italian, Davide, and a few others (literally I have no clue at the moment who everybody is, it’s like ‘so where are you from again?’ It’s really cool). Davide is one of my tutor group (I’ll come onto that in a bit) and I had already spoken to him on facebook, so it was nice having that contact, especially with an Italian (and a nice one at that!), who number 29 in the college, the largest of any nationality by far.
After tea we played a few icebreaking games (‘hwah’ for anyone in the know, and also that one where you lie on other people’s tummies and try not to laugh….). This was nice because it was just with people in my residence, Fore. Fore is the largest of the six residences (I only know one of the others, ‘Pala’. I think it stands for Palazzina. Or something) which is in some ways a good thing (lots of people to get to know, nice view, the mensa or canteen is on the bottom floor, so no ten minute walk to lunch or dinner for us) and others a bad (less opportunity for privacy, kitchen gets a lot dirtier). And then after the icrebreakers about 10 of us primi played frizbee with a few of the secondi, which was really fun, especially as we were playing with a lighted frizbee in the dark. I digress…
In fact at first it was a bit overwhelming again as it seems like everybody is doing something, so why aren’t you? But then you realise, these are secondi, going to visit friends or whatever, who know exactly what to do. And when you look at it there are actually plenty of secondi around where you are anyway… And you can just go down to the day room (also known as the common room, where we eat breakfast, get internet for our laptops, have the kitchen etc etc) and find someone and start speaking to them…
Rather exhausted from everything, I went to bed (relatively early apparently for UWCAd life) at about eleven. I was then shortly joined by two of my room-mates, Zaid, from Iraq, and Raza, from Mauritius. Gabriele, my third and final roomo was down in the day room talking with some of the other Italians. As I write now, one night on, he is again in the common room, while Zaid and Raza are asleep. I suppose it helps that for him there are so many people that you have more in common with, namely, his mother tongue.
The next morning, Wednesday, I was awoken by movement in the room. For some reason all the other three had decided to wake some time around 7… rather than 8. We only had to be ready by 9. Graciela (my buddy) said that it’s like this at first but then everybody gets so energy sapped they just take all the sleep they can. At least it meant I could take a leisurely shower, then spend a good half-hour checking out how the internet cable works and setting up all the passwords etc.
Then we had what was certainly a very unusual thing for me, something that I think it is pretty much unique for UWCs, and maybe in this way for UWCAd. I don’t know… At 9 was our tutorial breakfast, which is basically where (normally on Mondays) you eat with your tutorial group, but instead of in your residence you eat your tutor’s house. My tutor in this case is Lydia White, a really kind Welsh alumnus of Atlantic college in Wales. Met by Gilbert, our Ugandan secondo, the rest of us primi in Lydia’s tutor group (me-obviously, Maryia, Hannah, Davide-the same one I talked about before, Sana and Christian) went to Lydia’s flat, which is the upper half of a house seemingly divided into two, just a minute from Fore. When I know everyone’s nationality (nearly there) from my tutor group I’ll tell you. After a few reassuring words and a relaxed breakfast in Lydia’s flat we then had assembly. Rather ironically, Lydia had been ‘reminiscing’, if you can call it that, with Gilbert, how last year they were late for the welcoming assembly… We did exactly the same. Only about two minutes late…Peter Howe, the Canadian rettore, led the assembly, and then following that all the staff introduced themselves. Interestingly all the staff are referred to by the first name, although I’m sure I’ll whittle on about that some other time.
We then had a residence meeting, led by our residence tutor, Rimma, where all 55 of us met with Rimma in the day room, mainly to go through ground rules. After lunch, served in the mensa, where I started talking to a fellow primo named Francesco (Any guesses where he’s from?), who is from Torino (Turin) who started explaining to me about some of the political issues between north and south Italy. I’m sure I will find time to talk about that some other time, though… Anyway, we then went to the UWC store with Raymond, who is our fellow primo from Hong Kong (and by the way, who speaks English with an accent almost more ‘english’ than my own. Very impressive) where we all purchased UWC hoodies. Primarily to be worn in our own countries I suppose, due to the fact that everybody has them here.
After that I had a maths placement test, to determine whether I should do maths standard level for the IB, or maths higher. Whilst the maths teacher informed us that if we only wanted to do standard level we did not have to do the test, I decided to do it anyway, just in case, to give me an option. As it happens, although I haven’t received the results, I doubt I did well, as the problem was I recognised everything, but with most of the questions I couldn’t remember exactly HOW to solve them. The post summer mush that is my brain has ejected most of the mathematical information it contained previously post-GCSEs. And then I had English placement tests. Which were unbelievably difficult. I have to say it really is strange being in a situation where being a native English speaker is being in the minority, and in some ways it’s quite nice (certainly easier as all the academics are in English) but then also hard (no private conversations on skype, no learning another language- eg if Spanish was my native tongue I would learn, Spanish, English and Italian, whereas I learn only English and Italian).
After dinner we had a tutorial meeting in the school building which was really going again in more detail though the ground rules, looking at option choices (I’ll do another post on that), and most importantly it was really nice that Lydia is a past student, so was able to give really good advice. Like don’t listen to the second years too much. Apparently they’re always really excited to have primi and like to show how much they know…
Ok so basically this entry has taken the form of a detailed diary. I don’t think it’s always going to be like that, I suppose what I’ll probably do is give a brief overview of what I’ve been doing every entry and then focus on or two things.
Ciao!
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