Student Diary Blog

This week was my turn to write the Student Diary Blog for the official AC website. I wrote about my Thursday, and it's in more detail than most of my blog posts are, of a regular day for me with no special event going on.
It should be on this website soon:
http://www.atlanticcollege.org/student-diary-blogs/

But here is the early copy ;)

Abi Drummond, Cayman Islands

Thursday 2^nd February, 2012

7:14- first of the three alarms goes off, snooze from China.

7:20- second alarm, grumbling, shuffling, but yet again snooze from Canada/Columbia.

7:24- third and final alarm, slowly France and Cayman get up and start to prepare for what is to come…

And the day begins. AC-style.

Walking to breakfast by 7:45 has become a regular routine that it’s often not given much thought in my foggy waking mind. But today I took particular notice. The grass has become frozen and crunchy, the birds are making strange morning calls and the lanterns are still glowing, making minor impact but setting a perfect wintery atmosphere I’d never experienced before coming to good-ole Wales. From seven houses students join each other on main drive; the nationalities of the world making their way to the 12^th-century castle, or as we see it: breakfast.

I eat my muesli with two of the second-years from my house (Morgannwg) -Carys from London and Penelope from Quebec. We end up talking about our sleeping habits. It so happens that I managed a full nine hours last night, a great success in every AC student’s life. They look at me in admiration but also with a knowing smile as if they know what’s to come. Maybe they do…but for now I know that they’re jealous. Sleep is a precious commodity.

Today is my ‘Castle Day’. The amount of students around the world that get a chance to say this isn’t nearly enough. I’ve dubbed it this simply because I arrive for breakfast and then all of my codes are moving around the castle rooms until after lunch.

Geography- 8:00-8:50, in what used to be a castle bedroom. Beautiful carvings are engraved in the wood, with heavy doors, a chandelier and bathroom ensuite.  Lucky us. Tjekk, a teacher-in training from the Netherlands is taking our class today.

History- 8:55-10:25, Double-Code about the Great Depression led by Kate from Hungary. Up a spiral staircase into what must be the coldest part of the castle. Someone once whispered to me ‘the owners of the castle hundreds of years ago would never come up here, they’d freeze for sure’. It’s probably the coolest part though, so we deal. Today it’s discussion on the impacts of the Wall Street Crash and the countries affected by it, with representatives from a few: Japan, USA, Chile –we have our own personal comments on how our family felt. Typical UWC History class I’m sure.

Break- 10:25-10-45, by law you must drink hot chocolate. It’s practically in the handbook.

Environmental Systems and Societies- 10:45-11:35, argument breaks out whether it’s worth being sustainable by not eating meat. Is it more sustainable to eat fish than beef? It may sound simple, but any debate can become spontaneously heated when you get passionate teenagers together. Fierce.

Lunch- 11:40-12:30, ‘EARLY-early’ lunch is at 12, so I stop and check my e-mails in the library before going that way. It must be done a few times a day for this is how everyone communicates at AC, you miss something important- nine times out of ten you didn’t see the e-mail in time. Lunch is pretty standard, besides the nationalities. There’s USA, Amsterdam, Germany, Italy, Nicaragua, Canada/Columbia and Cayman sitting together. Rave, to put it mildly. Amsterdam bites Nicaragua’s finger in his attempt to feed her some fruit cake- typical.

English- 12:35-1:25, usually would be in the Languages department, but hey! It’s sunny! Doesn’t matter the temperature- let’s read Medea in the Beast Garden! And so we do. Sitting in a circle we read our characters out loud in the company of the stone beasts with the sun making its best efforts to warm our skin.

And the codes are done for the day. No activity or service till later. Walk back to the house with Avrah who grew up in Liverpool but has Indian parents. Study for a French vocab test; feel thirsty…to the dayroom for some green tea. Hour long conversation with Heidi from Norway thus commences- procrastination at its finest my friends.

Gym- 3:00-4:30, Try to make it to the gym every day to keep active, and often succeed. My goal is to be able to run the 10k on the treadmill by the time the lifeguards have to run it outside in just over a month. 7k today!

Mission Based Class- 5:00-6:00, one of the really unique AC things we get to do. This particular class is run by two second year Chinese girls Lin and Yuexin, and they’re teaching us about the political regimes in China for the last… four thousand years or so. However we got off topic today and spoke about China currently, and how their school systems are all about scores and examinations, what they think about the Communist Party and whether it would ever change. Ricardo from Brazil and I were exceptionally interested, spouting question after question. The things you learn everyday go undoubtedly far beyond the classroom.

Service- 7:00-9:00, I’m part of the best service. Obviously that’s Atlantic Outdoor Centre. Ironically tonight we’re doing what another service does- training for the NaRS pool lifeguard, so we can do swimming sessions with children groups when they come to visit. Various tows, pick-ups and getting the casualty out of the water are taught. My partner was Ine from Norway, such a gentle and sweet girl. Yesterday in service we were practicing different Initiative Games to play with children. From the human knot to logic puzzles, we do all of the games ourselves so that we know them perfectly when it comes time to lead sessions- which I will finally get the chance to this time next week. It’s going to be a ropes course with a visiting school group, along with Jack Chan from China and Sofie from Norway. I’m psyched; we’ll get together and plan our session this weekend.

Open House- 9:30, the most anticipated night of my week. We get to go into the houseparent’s house, for some coffee/tea (or as I like to do, a good cold glass of milk) and each week a different dorm gets together and bakes something. Can I just say that I have never had better apple cake in my life as Dorm 8 made for us. We all sit around the dining table and the couches and chat as a big family. Paula from Germany told me about her service session in Performing Arts, working with Jonathan, one of the kids with dementia. She inspires me.

Duty Dorm- 10:15, we go in a Rota of the 12 dorms of who has to tidy up the kitchen and take out the recycling. Fun times. Over our pajamas Chloe and I suit up as if we’re going on a trek across campus, when in reality it’s less than two minutes, running (with the occasional scream added in) holding the cardboard and plastic crates. To be honest, I find it quite adventurous.

Sleep- 11:15, ready for bed at long last. Not the earliest, not the latest. But it’s been another busy day and I’m ready to relax. Sigh.

 I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Human Rights Focus Week

(copied straight off the e-mail just to show how cool my school is briefly ;) )

HUMAN RIGHTS FOCUS WEEK

Today (Tuesday)

Silent Stories: If you see someone walking around with an orange jumpsuit or a cardboard sign, read “their” story

WORKSHOP: Right to assemble and protest (Albert + Chee + Ben) 18.30 – 19.30

Wednesday

WORKSHOP: Western violations of human rights in the Middle East (PK and Ameed)

Surprise, surprise

Thursday

WORKSHOP: Socioeconomic human rights (Erasmo + Sugar + Michael) 18.30 – 19.30

Surprise, surprise²

Friday

Sweatshop Simulation Check-In-3AM+ in the Library (more information to come)

Saturday

Movie screening 14.00 – 15.30 (more information to come)

Sunday

Movie marathon 13.00 – 19.00 (more information to come)

Love, Abi

AC MUN 2012

Dear Delegates,

It is our pleasure to welcome you to the Disarmament and International Security

Council (DISEC) of the 2012 Atlantic College Model United Nations (ACMUN).

DISEC, the first committee of the General Assembly, deals with disarmament and

related international security question. This year, DISEC will be focusing on two

pressing global security issues, the Iranian nuclear crisis and East Asian Security

Focusing on North Korea.

This was the committee that I signed up for. It was a great two days J in my committee there were these people:

1.    Abigail DRUMMOND Morgannwg Delegate DISEC China (Cayman Islands)

2.    Anantya SAHNEY Pentti Kouri Delegate DISEC Qatar (Russia)

3.    Andrew ROY Pentti Kouri Delegate DISEC Canada (New Zealand)

4.    Bernie ETIM Whitaker Delegate DISEC Chile

5.    Carol ALDRIDGE Whitaker Delegate DISEC Vietnam

6.    Cheryne JONAY Sunley Delegate DISEC Japan

7.    Diana REN JIE LIANG Adriatic Delegate DISEC France (Hong Kong)

8.    Elaine FUNG Pentti Kouri Delegate DISEC Germany

9.    Emma WOO Tice Delegate DISEC Costa Rica (Canada)

10. Harry NEUERT Powys Delegate DISEC Iran (USA)

11. Ilya ANDRUSHCHENKO Powys Delegate DISEC USA (Russia)

12. Jacob MOERCH Pentti Kouri Delegate DISEC North Korea  (Norway)

13. Julyen RENAUD Morgannwg Delegate DISEC Saudi Arabia (Canada)

14. Maxime SANDERS Sunley Delegate DISEC South Korea (Kenya)

15. Maya GAZIT Maastricht Delegate DISEC Russia (Israel)

16. Michael MANNING Tice Chair DISEC N/A  (USA)

17. Prabana MENDIS Sunley Delegate DISEC Pakistan

18. Ryan CHIN Gwynedd Delegate DISEC Israel (Singapore)

19. Shimon JINNAI Tice Delegate DISEC DR Congo

20. SINA HANZAEI Tice Delegate DISEC Zimbabwe (Iran)

21. Srabasti SARKER Tice Delegate DISEC Brazil

22. Tariq ABID Whitaker Delegate DISEC UK

23. Theo WILSON Sunley Chair DISEC N/A  (UK)

24. Xue Li CUI Gwynedd Delegate DISEC Afghanistan

25.   Zoey CHONG Pentti Kouri Delegate DISEC Cuba

Not sure where every person is from so I put in brackets the people that I did. We met for the opening ceremony at 2:00 on Friday in Bradenstoke. Everyone was suited up and looked very professional, joyous times. We had to go through security where they checked through our bags and pretended to check out bodies for weapons. As our opening speech happened we had a terrorist attack where they stole one of our Chairs, the security showing us a video of retrieving him. There we also people from others UWC’s Adriatic and Maastricht and the local Llantwit comprehensive.

We then split up into our various groups; mine was in the Economics room. The issue that we were discussing on the first day was of the Iran nuclear weapons. From my research China seemed to believe that Iran’s nuclear program was not an immediate threat as they didn’t believe that Iran had the technology to weaponise highly enriched uranium, or the facilities, equipment or technology that it required.

I wasn’t used to the protocol of ‘the chairs would smile upon…’, ‘the delegate of… has a point of information’…’moderated caucus has began’. It was also really funny that the issue we were talking about had a guy from Iran named Sina, who kept saying ‘the delegate of Zimbabwe would like to point out that Iran…’ having far superior knowledge than anyone else.

Friday night I went out for a dorm dinner for Ruyi’s birthday which was fantastic. We then went to Marcross where Chloe’s mum and brother Seb arrived a bit after we did, (now adopted as my little brother). I think everyone had such a great day- it must be one of my favourites.

As I ended up staying awake pretty late Friday night I forgot to set my alarm for Saturday morning for the start of the next MUN session. One of the best wake-ups in my life. You know how sometimes you hear a noise and it becomes part of your dream? Well all of a sudden in my dream there was a stampede, and I was in the jungle running away from the noise. Turns out it was people coming up the stairs. I open my eyes to see about a dozen of the DISEC committee, suited up, in my room. My first response: ‘Welcome to Dorm 12 everyone’ in an extremely sleepy voice. They had come to retrieve me. Bless their cotton socks. After a tiny bit of coaxing I agreed to get ready as soon as possible. So I went to the next session, half an hour late- but China was represented.

Went to the cottage that Chloe’s family was staying in for some lovely Gluten-free chocolate cake and then we went to Marcross for a superb dinner.

Now Sunday, probably should do some work? I suppose…

**Chloe got her test results back! She’s not gluten-free. But I swear for the rest of my life I’ll always be conscious if whether what I’m eating has gluten in it. As for the no meat, it’s all going well J One month down baby!

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