Ok, so I’ve finally decided on how I’m going to do this blog. For the next two or so weeks, while we are in this sort of ‘settling in period’, I will try and write in the form of a sort of diary. However when I settle more down into a routine so there’s less new stuff to read about I’ll pick out more interesting things and focus on them.
Anyway, I’ll write about yesterday first.
So, yesterday we were able to have our first sort of lie in, as the first item in our schedule didn’t start until 10. Said first item was an introduction to CAS. CAS stands for creativity, action, service and is a key part of the International Baccalaureate. If you fail CAS (don’t do enough of it and don’t show you have applied yourself properly to reach some set outcomes, as well as helping people) then you can’t pass the IB, no matter how well you do in the academic subjects. Anyway, the introduction was actually very brief, as according to secondi it was far too long last year, so it looks like they went for the other extreme. Since the meeting was so short, we had a whole extra hour to add to the previous hour we would have had before lunch. So we (as in me and two of my roomi – room-mates) investigated the library, which is a lovely old attic based library in the main administration building. It has a great range of books in what must be at least twenty languages (although English and then Italian are obviously the primary ones) however the main problem is that there is not really enough money to keep everything updated. Although one really nice feature was that the library had a magazine section where you could read magazines such as New Scientist, Time, National Geographic, The Guardian Weekly etc etc so you can keep up with things (there’s also a newspaper section elsewhere in the admin building which amazingly manages to get The Guardian, The Times and about a thirty other national newspapers every day-although sadly they’re stopping this…). But really there were some books that could do with replacing, e.g. atlases (which I suppose are the most expensive) from 1987, which would be fine if there were more recent atlases. However there aren’t… I suppose at least there’s Google earth…
After that I went along to the shop with a few others which is basically where you can buy all sorts of UWCAd merchandise: hats, gloves, hoodies, t-shirts, trainers, ties, pens etc etc. I now have a grey UWCAd hoodie and a white UWCAd t-shirt.
After a really nice and relaxing (especially after the past few days-which have been full) morning, we had free time again after lunch for a few hours, which was a good time to just lounge around, write my blog, talk to people etc. Then at 4 we had what was called ‘reflection’ basically what you did was find a quite spot anywhere in the vicinity of Fore lawn (I went along the Rilke path, named after the famous poet, along the cliffs to find a secluded rock patch looking over the bay of Trieste, the Slovene mountains, and the flats of Istria in Croatia) with a piece of paper and a pen. Originally the idea was to write a letter to yourself in a year’s time saying what you hope to have achieved etc, to be kept locked away in an office somewhere but then read by you this time next year. However for some reason this was changed to writing simply what you want to achieve at UWCAd over the next two years, what you want to bring to UWCAd, and also a message to whoever reads your paper. This was then put in a bag and then you picked out other people’s (there were no names obviously) so you could read what other people said. Hopefully we will still get a chance to look through them next year and find out writing to see what we said, although I doubt it. Fortunately we did a similar thing with the UWC GB selection committee prior to all the students from the UK starting any of the UWCs, which means that in two years time it will be strange indeed to read it, especially as we hadn’t experienced UWC life before we wrote the letters. I digress.
Almost immediately after the reflection hour, we then proceeded to have a ‘scavenger hunt’, where everybody split into groups of around 4 or 5 and then were given a list of clues that led to places where we would find some words. For example one of these clues was something like ‘Next to hundreds of books, bright minds, passing of time’ etc etc they were unnecessarily poetic and also led to people thinking far too deeply. For example the clue that I just tried to quote was obviously talking about the library, and it turned out the clue(s) were actually pieces of paper saying ‘not done’, however everybody (including myself) thought the post-its were too obvious so were looking under lights, round the back of computers, underneath clocks, everywhere. At least it was fun. In the end the words from various places led to something like ‘We have not done…[erm I can’t remember this middle bit]…old room in the large school’. This turned out to be the auditorium, however our group ended up finishing about 9th. Even though we got to the furthest away (at the end of the jetty) clue before everyone else, the one person not in our team who we told, told just one other person and then in true UWC spirit it spread up the hill faster than we could walk… In case you’re wondering the phrase was ‘large school’. We all had great fun, though; even most of the secondi (those who weren’t involved in the organisation, of course) got involved.
About an hour before dinner (6 o clock) Patrick, the Canadian secondo asked if anyone wanted to go for a swim down at porto. So Moritz, my fellow primo, Egzon, our primo from Kosovo and I, along with a bunch of secondi, all went down to the porto, to jump of the rocks into the (surprisingly warm, but still refreshing) sea. Apparently the water was also a lot clearer than usual. After this lovely swim we all traipsed back to Fore, where we changed out of our swimming stuff for dinner. However rather interestingly Egzon is a muslim (I must admit that even though he is from Kosovo it had never really crossed my mind that he would be a muslim…) and so couldn’t eat until 7.45, due to Ramadan. At the time we got to mensa (the canteen) it was 7.25, and when he said, ‘I need to wait until 7.45’, Moritz, being a logical German, simply said, ‘we wait’. Well actually he’s not quite German, he’s south Tyrolean. So technically he’s Italian but actually culturally Austrian and/or German and/or Italian. It’s complicated. Anyway, I was impressed as I’m sure with me it would’ve taken at least 5 minutes for me to think, ‘hey, wouldn’t it be good if I waited with Egzon. It’s only twenty minutes…’ It was really interesting speaking to Egzon about his background in Kosovo and fascinating to hear about his experience of the war in the late 1990s. After dinner we then had what was labelled as ‘the whole UWC shebang’, which was basically a session run by the second years talking about what the UWC movement means and what it means to be part of the UWC. It was good to be reminded of what the United World Colleges movement stands for: creating peace and a sustainable future through international understanding and broadening our horizons, but you cant help thinking that maybe that’s why we applied to a UWC. On the other hand, an interesting point regarding exactly that feeling came up in discussion later on in the evening. We split up into smaller groups, ours was led by Andrea (a secondo – the o dictates he’s a boy– he’s Italian) and though we were supposed to be going through what each of the UWC aims and principles means to us and how we would apply them we started just having a general discussion about UWC and what was nice was how open people are. One primo/a told how they actually only applied because they were bored, and that they thought it would be fun, but hadn’t really given much thought to the UWC aims and principles. So whilst I think most people were attracted on at least some levels to the UWC movement by its ethos, I think it probably is good to be reminded of them. Having said that, I think that people’s outlooks certainly will change after two years of living with and learning from people from literally all over the world: Israel, Palestine, New Zealand, The Maldives, Bolivia, Mauritius, Iraq are just some of the countries that spring to mind, seven of the 80 odd nationalities represented at the college.
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