Yet another Monday

Ah sweet second years. I’m quite a light sleeper and as my ear plugs usually fall out in the night as it gets closer to morning I hear things from outside. This morning at around 6 I heard loud screams and my first sleepy thoughts were ‘gosh, these people in Kurt Hahn activity really need to calm things down’. (Kurt Hahn do extreme hard-core outdoor activities) They just kept screaming, but it was far away and I wasn’t really awake. Turns out I should have woken up.

6:30 Oli Ford runs into our room telling us we all need to get up right now. Don’t grab anything. Go. Downstairs. Outside. Barefoot, pyjamas on, into the muddy grass.  Spray some water on us sure, why not? All first years, now say cheese. Yes it’s our yearbook photo.  Got to love the second years.
As the yearbook is for the graduating year we don’t have much to do with it, besides that one lovely picture and various groups that we’re in.
Turns out the screams I had heard earlier were Whittaker, they made them run down to the sea apparently K

***

As I was already awake I didn’t see the point of going back to sleep for only 20 minutes. So I made it to early breakfast for the first time! There’s an ‘early breakfast crew’ that arrives at 7:15 every morning to eat breakfast. Why, I do not know. But I was a proud member.
Since I left the house so early I didn’t see that it was SNOWING until I reached my history classroom. Where I was doing a time-in class essay, Kate probably thought something funny was going on for the amount of times I would simply turn in my chair to be sure it hadn’t stopped. Sadly the ground was wet and it didn’t stay, but for a few hours, without a doubt there was snow :D

***
Ruyi’s showering! My amazing dorm mate is 18 today! Which means she didn’t actually get a showering… she got a pooling! My brave girl. I asked her if she was sure, we could throw her in the indoor pool, and she said she could do it.

The preparations have never been so stressful:

 Chloe and I tried to make a cake. It’s hard to do so when you have no eggs or vegetable oil….

Borrow one egg from Manin, two from the houseparent’s. Still no vegetable oil… hmm… maybe extra virgin olive oil won’t be so different? Okay sure, let’s use that.  No one will know. (Which I don’t think they did to be honest). Try and cook said cake in the microwave oven. An hour later and the bottom is still liquid. Noooooo.  Stress.
Get Ruyi down to the pool without dropping her. Stress that we can’t find candles- wait, Savannah has candles! Savannah leaves entourage going to the pool and runs to Whittaker.
Ruyi into the pool. So cold, she can barely swim to the edge, I freak out and feel like a torturous roommate. Get her out. Throw blankets and towels on her…. Whoops it’s already 10:20, no time for hugs. Back to the house to sing her Happy Birthday.

Sing. And then again in Chinese. 10:30, but the houseparent’s don’t seem  annoyed…

Anyways, our dorm is having a dinner on Friday night to celebrate J

***
AC MUN. Will have to do a further blog about this. It’s this Friday and Saturday afternoon. Should be getting my itinerary soon to know all the details.

***
Student Council. We have a President and a Secretary (now being called Vice-President instead). They’re voted in by the school. There are thirteen people running for the two seats this year, their speeches are tonight at 9:00 in Bradenstoke. Going to be interesting J

***
TOK has begun… next week. I found out I’ve lost my W code. Not sure which two out of the three classes will be gone until my teacher, Alex Bird, tells us what is best for him. I’m quite excited to have him as my teacher, he is in my French Ab Initio class (learning it for his French girlfriend) and seems like he’ll do the job of confusing us, but not too terribly, quite well.

 

Peace Conference

2012 PEACE CONFERENCE

“Peace and Democracy”

Yesterday we had the Peace and Conflict Diploma Period J it was the shortest Diploma Period we’ve had, just for the full day but I really enjoyed it.

There was a speech on Thursday night that I missed because I had to go to service by Jan Egeland. Who happens to be the father of one of my best friends here, Heidi. I ended up going to dinner with him and 7 other of Heidi’s close friends last night to Marcross- which was much more relaxed and really inspiring. He’s an amazing man. If you’ve never heard of him before, in our pamphlet this is what it said about him:JAN EGELAND serves as Human Rights Watch’s deputy executive director of Europe. As UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and as UN Emergency Relief Coordinator from 2003 to 2006, Egeland helped reform the global humanitarian response system and organized the international response to the Asian Tsunami and crises from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of Congo to Lebanon. In 2006, Time magazine named him one of the 100 “people who shape our world.” From 1999 to 2002, he was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser.

^^Pretty nifty stuff right there. Anyways back to the Diploma Period. We started with an opening speech at 9:00 by Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, on ‘Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Religious Conflict’.

He spoke for an hour and then was asked questions at the end. It was mainly about the context behind situations: group rights and grievances. We’re all apart of groups, whether chosen or inherited. There are few wars between countries now, it’s more expensive than profitable, and most wars are internal civil wars between ethnic and religious groups.

What can be done about this? How can democracy work if everyone is divided, the whole ‘1 person, 1 vote’ only works if there are no deep divisions in the society. So you bring about the electoral system, proportional representation (for example if there are 35% of Catholics in the vote than they should get 35% of the seats)… The peace process between political parties must be that – a process. Baby steps and contentious issues for later.

We then had a break out session which I really liked. We all had done some research about our own countries and then were split into about 15 groups and spoke about them. In my group was:Zena Andrews                      UK                   Gwynedd

Clara Bartram-Gurresø       Denmark       Tice

Sam Besceli                          UK                   PK

Chong-U Chua                     Malaysia        Powys

Abi Drummond                    Cayman Islands Morgannwg

Phillipa Hawke                     UK                   Powys

Dmitry Gulyaevskyi             Russia            Morgannwg

Lajdon Hani                          Albania           Powys

Marvin Kirschner                Germany       Gwynedd

Alexandra Lowndes            UK                   Gwynedd

Michele Mattei                   Italy                 PK

Alice Rabourdin                   France            Whitaker

Arjun Raina                           India               Gwynedd

Diego Recinos Escobar      Guatemala    Sunley

Iiris Suomela                         Finland           Gwynedd

Natasha Wickramasekera  Sri Lanka        Sunley

Solveig Xie                            Norway          Tice

Yuxin Xing                             China              Tice

I ended up speaking mainly to Alice from France. It was interesting to hear her talking about a Norwegian woman who moved to France in her twenties and is now trying to run for presidency, but so many people are against her since they don’t believe that she is ‘properly French’.  We spoke overall if about quotas that some political parties must have on the amount of women and also about the social mobility of the people in the political parties à is it more about their connections or can they come from nothing and build their way up?

Lunch and then we had another speech from Srdja Popovic a Serbian who is executive director of the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). CANVAS has worked with the activists responsible for successful movements such as the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” of 2004 and the recent Egyptian nonviolent uprising. Srdja Popovic was one of the founders and key organizers of the Serbian nonviolent resistance group Otpor!, whose protests were instrumental in the fall of Serbian president Milosevic. He served as environmental affairs advisor to the Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic until Djindjic’s.
*It was titled: ‘2011: a bad year for bad guys’

One of the really funny things he said in his speech was ‘You can’t have a revolution without a Serb but you can’t have a strike without a Pole.’ He spoke about a survey which has been done from 1900-2006 of different conflicts and have the 323, 53% of the non-violent ones were more likely to work than 26% violent ones… I’m not quite sure what happened to the other 21%.

I then had a workshop titled: Civil Disobedience against Soviet Union In Baltic States by a guy in my History class called Sarunas Genys, who is Lithuanian. I signed down for it because of the little knowledge that I had over the issue.  Boy am I glad I did!

He spoke about how his grandparents were exiled to Siberia, not coming back till the 1970s, this happened to many people unless they escaped the ‘iron curtain’. You were allowed to freely move throughout the Soviet Union but no where else. He’s an avid basketball player and he gave the great example of some really good basketball players in Lithuania simply weren’t allowed to leave to go and play for the NBA.
It was mainly about the revolutions in 1980s. Most featuring spontaneous singing of their national anthems as they weren’t allowed to sing them. Up to 300,000 Estonians gathered together on one occasion to sing hymns (which was against the law), in their national dress (ditto) waving their own flags (ditto again, as the Soviet Union flag was to go above all others).

My favourite was the ‘The Baltic Way’, where 2 million people held hands throughout the Lativia, Estonia and Lithuania, 600km of peaceful protesting.  That’s a basic overview but I really liked it, Sarunas is super funny.

The link he showed us was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp0h9Z97w1s

We had a final speech at the end of the day. I was that tempted to go to it to be honest because I was quite tired by this point and felt I had benefitted enough from the conference. But I went anyways. The speaker Professor William A. Schabas, Professor of International Law, Middlesex University, spoke about “'Truth Commissions, International Courts and the Challenges of Peacemaking'”. It started off with him telling a story about a guy falling asleep in one of his lectures and he asked the guy next to him to wake him up. The guy who was sitting beside the sleeping man said ‘Man, you put him to sleep, you wake him up’.
I thought it was going to be really exciting from such an interesting start but to be honest I didn’t manage to concentrate wholly.

Overall it was a super day J One of the many extra special things we get to do at AC. Now on to the piles of homework. Joy.

AOC Service

Two pictures we took today for our yearbook photo. I'm in the hugo puffy coat and wooly scarf :)

Quivering Grass

This is quite a rushed blog, I feel guilty for not saying anything in a while but there’s no long posts to write about at the moment.

Peace Conference

Friday! Exciting J

MUN

Next Friday. More to talk about soon, but seems to be a really big deal and very well organised.

Extended Essays

Chosen my topic! The easy part is done… I am planning to do my research essay in Environmental Systems on a Cayman issue of the Lionfish problem. My advisor is going to be Nick Lush, the stand-in Principal of last term.

Amnesty International

I had planned to write a blog solely about my weekend involving Amnesty International Letter Writing. Sadly I felt ill on Saturday night and wasn’t up to going to the library at 11:30 for a few hours to write letters. I heard it was really successful though- one boy even managed to write 101 letters. I think about six people were able to stay up all night long- inspiring!
It’s a great night and I hope to be a part of it next year for sure.

Language B Day

Tomorrow! I’m not sure how successful I will be in this, my French is minimal, my speaking the worst. It’s to make the Americans and British primarily appreciate how easy we have it coming to this school when probably over half the school are speaking and being taught in their second language. Challenge accepted…

MEMS focus week

They did a hilarious song in Assembly today. This is the program:
Monday

6:30                Languages                Sustainable Seafood

A basic introduction to what sustainable seafood is, and why some seafood isn’t sustainable.

7:30                Languages                ‘End of the Line’

THE END OF THE LINE is the first major documentary about the imminent peril facing the world’s oceans. Narrated by Ted Danson and based on the book by Charles Clover, THE END OF THE LINE explores the devastating effect that overfishing is having on fish stocks and the health of our oceans. Scientists predict that if we continue fishing at the current rate, the planet will completely run out of fish by 2048.

Tuesday

6:30                Languages                Debate on Aquaculture

                                                             So what is Aquaculture? Come and find out!

7:30                Languages                ‘The Cove’

Academy Award® Winner for Best Documentary of 2009, THE COVE follows an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers as they embark on a covert mission to penetrate a remote and hidden cove in Taiji, Japan, shining a light on a dark and deadly secret. The team uncovers how this small seaside village serves as a horrifying microcosm of massive ecological crimes happening worldwide. The result is a provocative mix of investigative journalism, eco-adventure and arresting imagery, adding up to an unforgettable story that has inspired audiences worldwide to action.

7:30                Bradenstoke             MEMS Music      

This will be a very relaxed session in the Bradenstoke, introducing the rest of the student body to the Hidden, more Musical side of MEMS!

Bring instruments (whether it be a stylophone, six-necked guitar or just your beautiful voice!), sea-themed songs, and most importantly enthusiasm!

Prepare for a great evening making some beautiful aquatic music!

Both ‘The Cove’ and MEMS Music will be going on at the same time, so whether or not you are musical or just want to gain some extra knowledge on dolphin hunting in Japan, come to either one of them!

Wednesday

6:30                Languages                The True Cost of Oil

                                                            An update on the effects of the BP oil spill now and other issues related to… oil.

7:30                Languages                Commentary on Finding Nemo

                                                            The classic Disney/Pixar film with a bit of an educational twist…

Busy tonight but hoping to go tomorrow night to the movie J

Weekend

A few of my third years came to visit this week. It’s interesting to see them with my second years, and they were here last year when my second years were the first years… something I haven’t quite got the picture of yet.

I also went to lunch with Chloe and her mum which I loved. Even though it was my parent, just being with a Mum and having some ‘family time’ was nice.

Heidi brought me back some yummy Norwegian chocolate as she went back to Norway for the weekend.  Her dad is also here this weekend for the Peace Conference and is taking Chloe, Heidi and I to dinner on Friday night! Yay.

Sorry for being rushed.
Amnesty Activity now J  Topic: Poverty and Human Rights!

Love, Abi

Flag Photo Competition :)

There's a photo competition that is going on for UWC Atlantic College's 50th Anniversary.
I took a photo with my dad over the Christmas break when we went diving.

Check it out :)

http://www.atlanticcollege.org/50th/flag-competition/53/10/40/

Has it only been a week?

Just to confuse you I've written two blogs but am posting them in one post since this has been my first opportunity to move them from my USB to the school computers :)

Happy New Year!

First day of codes started back today and with that a new principal. The school went a year without a principal, my whole time at AC has been without and official principal, Nick Lush acting as the step-in principal. He lives right across from Morgannwg House in what Chloe told me is called the ‘Tardis’ or something of that manner, a Dr. Who reference that went right over my head.

Not everyone is back to school yet so the family isn’t complete, but to simply hear the bustle down the hallway as I type this makes me smile- there’s constant laughter.

We start Theory of Knowledge (or as the second years who are finishing off their essays in the subject say with a grimace- TOK) in the next couple weeks, takes away two of my free codes though! No!

I’ve signed down for my Activities. When I find out which two I got as my official ones I’ll write about them J  Service this week said Archery in the afternoon session and the start of our NARS pool lifeguard in the evening session. Looking forward to both!

Only been back for two full days now so will have more to say very soon – I’m sure of it.

Love, Abi

Okay one week back into at school and the list of things I have to type about is mounting! Need to stop putting it off! Where to begin- hmmmm.

Activities:

The two Activities I will be doing this term are:

Amnesty International

19.00-21.00 Languages upstairs.

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Rebecca.B J, Kaylea K, Almog Z Amnesty activity works to promote and protect human rights around the world and at Atlantic College through direct and indirect action.

And a two Mission Based Classes, one in the first half of the term and another in the second half, the first half is:

History of Chinese Political Thought and Regimes

Lin Shi, Yuexin Zeng

A look at the political systems and regimes  in different eras throughout the 5000 years of Chinese history. This includes: B.C. 2070 (Xia dynasty) – A.D. 1840 (Opium War with Britain) We will focus on different political systems and the connections to cultural development throughout 21 dynasties in ancient China. This includes the introduction of the development of centralization, Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. 1840 (Opium War with Britain) – 1949 (the foundation of P.R.C.)  In this specific time period, we will focus on different political movements and revolutions that carried out the development from Feudalism to Semi-colonialism & Semi-feudalism, and then to New Democracy. In further aspects, we will also discuss the origins and course of Chinese revolutions and the rise of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) 1949(the foundation of PRC) – present This will include a brief introduction of significant historical events (e.g. the Korean War, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Opening up and economic reformation of Deng), as well as political thoughts- – the development in Communism in China (e.g. Maoism)

Really looking forward to both of them J

Service:  

Had my first pool lifeguard training session on Thursday! Was fun, nice to be in the water and knowing I’m learning something I’ll be able to use for the rest of my life. Next week we’ll be practicing a lot of techniques; this first session was simple assists for helping stressed swimmers to the edge of the pool and then how to safely get them out.
I was a lot better at Archery then I thought I would be! Think I’ll really enjoy leading those sessions in a few months with the kids J

Cambridge Law Conference

Congratulations! You have been allocated a place on the Cambridge 6th Form
Law Conference 2012. Just to confirm, the conference will run from the
afternoon of Monday 19th March to lunchtime on Thursday 22nd March. A
provisional programme is still available at www.law.cam.ac.uk/conference

Louis, one of my closest friends from Switzerland and I are both interested in studying Law at University and are thrilled to be given the opportunity to get to go on this conference in a couple of months!

Food

So this year I’ve decided to become more sustainable and stop eating meat. Not sure if I’ll make it throughout the whole year but I still eat fish so I’m a pescatarian.  I haven’t found any problems or cravings for meat yet.

Chloe, my lovely roommate is on a gluten-free diet which I find to be much more challenging though I really respect her for it. Her mum has Celiac disease it’s genetic, so though she hasn’t gotten her blood test results back yet she’s been supporting her mum and being on the safe side until she’s completely sure she doesn’t have it by not eating anything with gluten. (Celiac disease, also known as gluten intolerance, is a genetic disorder. Those affected suffer damage to the villi when they eat specific food-grain antigens that are found in wheat, rye, and barley.) It’s really opened up my eyes to having to be super aware of everything that goes into your body. I’ve always known people with certain allergies like nuts and shell fish but to the amount of food that flour is in has never crossed my mind before.

Extended Essays

We’ve had our first meeting of the scary topic of Extended Essays! Oh boy… Next week we’ll be having talks in all of our classes, seeing examples of past Extended Essays and able to ask our teachers questions on choosing their subject for this lovely 4000 word essay that makes up a point and a half of the 45 in the IB. Each teacher is allowed a maximum of 10 students for Extended Essays- and even that is a huge commitment of work.  I’m thinking of doing mine in either Geography or Environmental Systems, but we shall see.

Afro-Caribbean National Evening

Is in a couple of weeks! YAY! It’s going to be a lot of fun, when we have set plans on what we’re doing I’ll type it up. And the pictures too ;3

Bonding Session

Which brings me to my plans tonight! Amy from Barbados actually brought in her suitcase frozen fly fish and the 9 Caribbean people at this school are getting together for some good food. It’s going to be great.

Peace Conference

Lots of Diploma Periods coming up! Next Friday is the Peace and Conflicts Diploma Period run by my tutor! We had work to do over the holidays on finding out information of our own countries and the rights that we are given, so I’m sure everyone will be well prepared and have a lot to share (as always).

Friday Night Lecture

It’s such a shame I don’t have the notes I took last night with me right now but I went to the lecture which I found really interesting:

"Do we have a right to pornography?"

Loosely based around Dworkin's article. 

Lecture by Tom Theuns. 

Tom Theuns is a Dutch postgraduate student of political theory at Balliol College, Oxford. He did a Liberal Arts degree in Social Sciences from Maastricht University. And even before that, he was a UWC student at Pearson. He was involved in the initial stages and opening of UWC Maastricht.

When I get my notes I’ll tell you all about it.

MISC

Can’t write a blog without talking about the weather! Apparently this morning there was frost on the grass but I slept too late to see it. Chloe is being super optimistic and telling me that it’s going to snow. I really hope it does! It’s colder then when we left in that we can all now see our breath when we’re outside at any time of the day. And to think I still made a twenty minute walk to Marcross with Chloe last night for dinner. Where is the island-girl in me?

Also went swimming with a gang of Morgannwgs’ on Wednesday night and had the great idea of jumping into the outdoor pool at 9:30. BRRRR. I think Nick screamed ‘I now understand why they died in Titanic’. But you’ve got to do it once right? J

Also been running quite a bit. Trying to get into shape... Have ran three 5k’s this week and my nice slow pace on the treadmill in the gym while watching The Big Bang Theory. Could be worse right?

Quidditch

That’s right.  Muggle Quidditch is a real sport, and incredibly popular at American universities.

Have a meeting tomorrow on playing the epitome of all sports at AC. Just to make AC feel even more like Hogwarts.

**And I think that is all.

Love, Abi