One Month

Once again I am terrible about updating the blog with all the amazing things that have been going on! I’m going to try to post shorter things more often.

This past week.. well classes have been taking over. They weren’t kidding when they said that IB is really hard. I’ve been fighting a pretty nasty cold as well, so it’s been exhausting. With the huge variety of activities going on and interesting people to talk to with coursework, I’ve been having trouble getting enough sleep. Welcome to college!

Activities.. well turns out I didn’t get into MUN. It was a random selection process, and my name didn’t get pulled. So as an alternative.. I am doing beekeeping. This is exciting for two reasons:

1. I am scared of bees. They freak me out, so I am learning all about them (bees are actually so incredible) and getting over my fear
2. Honey is very tasty and not only do I get to work with the bees but also I just used my graphic design knowledge (thank you Mr. Minyard!) to design the label for the honey jars that the college will be selling. I really like the bee keeping so far. I never thought I’d be working with bees in Wales. I’ll post the design up on the blog soon.

Classes have been interesting, some good, some not so much. I adore my Higher Level English class, its a really bright group of kids with a really enthusiastic teacher. We are finishing up reading Lord of the Flies (i think its my 3rd time reading the book..) and it’s been really neat to see the book from a different perspective. I gave my first IB oral presentation, and it went really well! So that was a nice way to start of my grade for this term. Next we will be reading The Collector, which is supposed to be pretty creepy.

For maths (yes, it is called maths, not math here. Strange Brits) its been a bit of an adventure. Long story short, I got kicked out my maths class because I knew too much and I am now in a different class. I like my new class better because I have some good friends in the class and the teacher is Hungarian. So he talks like this “With ze x and se vhy on ze axis, you move zhem like dis so that zhey..”. A bit hard to understand

Spanish is pretty miserable.. I am doing the IB Spanish in one year so I am with second years in my class. I don’t particularly like the teacher, and I’m glad I only have to be with him for one year. He is from Spain, and his accent is incredibly strong!

Design Technology is still really interesting. Right now we are using software to construct desk tidies, and its just really interesting. Plus the teacher is a real crack up, and I look forward to that class. Politics is also really interesting, and we just finished an essay criticizing democracy, and I am discovering my political thoughts more and more. Democracy isn’t always so grand..
West Asian history still hasn’t really taken off yet. We spent the last class discussing nationalism, and we listened to lots of national anthems.
I will confess that when the American national anthem was played I got a big smile on my face and felt really proud. Funny how I have to travel halfway across the world to develop any form of patriotism. I also find myself defending the US quite a bit.. in almost all of my humanities classes people tend to pick on the US and I am becoming more proud of the good things the US has done even though we have messed up a fair bit.

My service (MEMS-Marine Environmental Monitoring Service) has been good. Last week we did a big beach clean up and recorded the disgusting amount of trash. On Wednesdays we get to go scuba diving in the pool (most students don’t have their diving licences yet) and practice the basics. MEMS is another thing I look forward to every week.

Life here is never boring, I go to different things every night! For example, on Saturday I went to see a speaker who talked about psychology and the effect that trauma has on learning and the best ways to treat trauma. It was really interesting. Last night was the Middle Eastern National evening. Every region gets to put on a show about their culture, jokes and anything they want. Last weekend was the British national evening. Anywho, the Middle Eastern national evening was a laugh. Lots of amusing terrorist jokes with some really cool cultural dances. I think the American National evening isn’t until November, so we have a bit of time to plan things out.
Some of my friends from my house, Powys, have been sitting in on the student council and hearing about all the issues that our second years are facing. Speaking of which, all my second years are extremely stressed and I am vowing right now to get lots of my college stuff done over the summer so I won’t be as overwhelmed as they are.

Oh, I almost forgot to add that my friends and I went to Cardiff (the big city in Wales, about an hour and a half away) last weekend and we had a truly amazing moment. I know it sounds cheesy, but it should have come straight out of a movie. There was a band playing the street and we all started dancing and having a ball. Then they played a slower song, and everybody stood with their arms around each other singing, swaying, laughing. People in Cardiff starting coming up and taking pictures of us, and I guess it makes sense. Here we were, a bunch of people from every different ethnic background all holding and hands, smiling and really getting along. I think that’s what AC is really about, finding that you can have that sort of connection with anyone from anywhere. It’s hard to describe how happy we all were and the bond it formed.

On that note, I've been making some really amazing friends here and even though I've just been here one month (hard to believe, right?) I feel so incredibly close to them.

I promise to post again soon with some pictures so you all can see whats been going on!