Seaside

Seaside
22.1.2010

I put pencil to paper
To try and share with you
The magic of the seaside
It’s far too simple
To simply say the sea sways me
Or that I want to fling my soul
Into a passing seagull
You won’t believe me
When I tell you
The joy it brings me
The comfort in the constant change
Of waves on a rocky shore

I put pencil to paper
To try and show you
How the gold on the
Cliffs reflects itself on
My glowing face
You and I
What fun we’d have
Here by the seaside
Tides sweep away worries
Warmth of smiling strangers
I need to be bold
Jump in the cold water

I put pencil to paper
To try and bring you
The secrets of the ocean top
The things I need to say
Share my truth
Alive with the leaving light
Perspectives of indescribable perfection
Water singing to me
My forecast is changing
Goodbye stormy Sundays
Good feelings, keep rolling in
See smiles coming my direction
I have no other
Friend like you

I put pencil to paper
To make you understand
I still don’t know my heart
It belongs somewhere between the
Water and the shore’s edge
No lover can give me this
Warmth, beating down
Thawing out stress and unwelcome feelings
The only place where reality meets
My expectations, seaside
Escape. When I can’t be found
Check by the water’s edge

I put pencil to paper
To say
The silhouettes on the horizon
Are as they should be.
Dreaming with big brown eyes
Cool kiss, bring me back to life
Birds fly by
Taking no notice of the girl
With the notebook
Trying to capture the wonder
Hidden within the waters
Patterns in the sky are picture perfect
Pools of light
Come back yesterday, always tomorrow

I put pencil to paper
To tell you
All that’s left is footprints
Raw in the sand

I put pencil to paper
To let you know
I’m here. I’m alive.

New Term, New Changes

I have now officially been at AC for over a week, but it feels like I never even left this place.

Today is blue skies and sunny, which is a dramatic difference from the snow we had earlier on this week. Just goes to show you how unpredictable Wales can be.
I gave more castle tours to potential students, and giving those tours makes me remember why I love AC. It really never gets old walking through the main gate into the castle. Or seeing the seafront, which the sun sparkling off it's waters.

A couple very amazing things have already happened:
1. On weekdays, I've been in bed before midnight every night. So proud of this!
2. I go to breakfast everymorning. Breakfast really can change your life.

We got to sign up for new activities this term, and I am very pleased. I will be doing callentics, which is a "radical and relaxing fitness". I will also be doing a writing fiction activity, and I am really looking forward to that. It will be wonderful to have stories that I've written here at AC. I also plan on joinging the acappella choir, and improv theatre. I know it's going to be a good term.

Starting next week I will have a 7th class, Theory of Knowledge (TOK). Not only did I get the best teacher for this class, but it looks like something I am really going to enjoy. We get to talk about questions like how do we know what we know? And it seems more like a philosophy class.

So here I am, happy as clam and ready to go do some exploring.

This one is for you Grandpa Frank

As some of you are aware, my Grandpa passed away this December and this blog post is for him:

About Angels and About Trees

Where do angels
fly in the firmament
and how many can dance
on the head of a pin?

Well I don't care
about that pin dance
what I know is that
they rest, sometimes,
in the tops of trees

and you can see them,
or almost see them,
or, anyway, think: what a
wonderful idea.

I have lost as you and
others have possibly lost a
beloved one
and wonder, where are they now?

The trees, anyway, are
miraculous, full of
angels (ideas); even
empty they are a
good place to look, to put
the heart at rest- all those
leaves breathing the air, so

peaceful and diligent, and certainly
ready to be
the resting place of
strange, winged creatures
that we, in this world, have loved.

Return to AC

After a short plane flight and a very long train ride, I finally arrived back at Atlantic College! Much to my extreme delight, the castle and the grounds are covered in a soft blanket of snow. What a sight.

Yesterday was filled with enthusiastic hugs as people arrived from all around the world. I even stayed up into 2am waiting for my Malaysian roomate, Nicole, to arrive. She brought a 20kg box of food, so I know this is going to be a good term!
Waking up this morning was a treat, I slept in and when I woke up it was lightly snowing outside.
International students+snow+free time= tons of snowball fights!


My friends and ventured down the seafront to discover that the outdoor pool was completely frozen over. Then we discovered some sleds, and had ourselves a real blast. Hot chocolate followed and thawed our frozen figners.



Needless to say, but I am VERY happy to be back! Even though classes do start tomorrow..

Amsterdam

What a beautiful city.

Here is short summary of Amsterdam:
1)Lots, and by lots I mean LOTS of bikes
2)Really nice photography museum, Anne Frank house, etc.

3)Cozy little cafe's with warm tea,
4)Snow! (apparently this is not the norm..)
5)Good ol' fashioned jazz cafe
6)Lovely Dutch People
7)Yummy cheese
8) Dankjewel
So far, I am enjoying the Dutch people and their country very much! Turns out they aren't all exactly crazy for windmills and tulips

The Netherlands

So maybe it's been a long while since I've updated the blog.. oops.
Anywho:
Current Location: Laura Brouwers house in the Netherlands
Current Weather: Beautiful and Snowy
Current Feelings: Absolutely loving it!
I arrived in the netherlands yesterday after one of the most uncomfortable flights I've been on in a long time. I'm staying here with my friend Laura, who is another girl from my house. She lives in this picturesque little Dutch village with a great house full of tiny staircases. It's snowing outside, and looks right out of a fairy tale book. We are hopefully heading into Amsterdam today to do a little sightseeing.

Yesterday we toured around Utrecht while I attempted to get over my jet lag. We stopped in this really cozy cafe and I had the most amazing dessert I've ever tasted. It was an apple, covered in some sort of dough/candy-ish substance with marzipan in the middle. Incredible. I'll be sure to put up some of the pictures I've taken.
Originally, Laura and I were supposed to head over the good ol' United Kingdom on Wednesday to stay with a dear friend, Jessie. But unfortunately, she has swine flu and the roads are expected to be bad, so her family told us not to come. That just mean I'll be in the netherlands until Saturday morning. This means maybe two days in amsterdam, a quick visit to my german brother, Nils and lots of Dutch culture. Keep you updated!

Prisoners Dilemma

One of my favorite classes here at AC is my political thought class. We just finished reading Machiavelli’s The Prince and we are now moving onto Hobbes. As an introduction to the issue of morality in politics we looked at the prisoners dilemma.

The Prisoners Dilemma
You have just been arrested and put in jail under a number of charges. Your partner in crime is being held in a different prison and you have no means of contacting him. You are both being questioned individuality and are given the option of confessing to your crime, or not confessing. Here are the potential consequences of your answers:

If both of you confess, then you get a 10 year sentence in prison.

If you confess, but your partner does not then you get out free and they are put in jail for life

If you don’t confess and your partner does, then you are imprisoned for life and your partner goes free.

If neither of you confess then you get 3 years in prison



Now, are you going to confess?

We spent my entire class time debating this issue. And here are some potential things to consider:
-You don’t know who your partner is. It could be your best friend or your mother, but it could also be a stranger, a criminal
-You don’t know what your crime is. It could be murder, theft, or anything in between.
-you don’t know if you are innocent or guilty
-If you just look at the numbers it looks like this:
Confess: 10 years or you go free
Don’t Confess: 3 years or life.
-Could you live with the guilt of having put someone in jail for life? How selfish would you feel?
-life is a long time to be in jail
-Should you just try to save your own skin? How much can you really trust your fellow human beings? Do you have faith in humanity?

What the issue really boiled down to in my class was the issue of trust, and how much you were willing to rely on the goodness of man to have faith in you and not confess. After this entire discussion, everyone had to decide. My entire class except for two people decided to confess. I was one of those two people. I chose not to confess for two reasons. First-I couldn't’t live with myself if I put someone in jail for life. Second: I have to believe in the goodness of mankind. I have to believe that I can trust a random stranger with my life because if not, then my world would fall down around me. If we as people can’t believe in each other then what sort of future do we have? How can we continue to build societies assuming that people will do what is best for the society as a whole? That is why I did not confess. I probably would be put in jail for life because I trust too much, but I would be able to accept that with at least a clean conscience.

Now I ask you- would you confess? Would you not confess and accept that you’d probably spend your life in prison? I’m curious to hear your responses to the prisoners dilemma..