People

In a terrible act of disrespect, I have yet to describe my new primi. They, as a general rule, are amazing and great and fun and nice and smart...but there are some that stick out more than others.
First: my roome. I'm now in a small all-girls residence called scholtz, rooming with a second year (Corina from Greece) and two first years, Ximena from Uruguay and Lamira from Western Sahara.
It's strange, because I seem to be repeating the room I had last year with completely different people: my new roommates correspond exactly to my old ones. Lamira = Nevin, she's Muslim, so she wears a scarf and prays (I was so sad to be leaving that with Nevin, I missed it so much over the summer, and now I have it again!) and she seems shy and quiet at first, but that's only because her English isn't too good. Actually, she's talkative and sing-ative and funny and energetic (exactly like Nevin, but I don't think she's quite as crazy. Or at least I hope not :$ ). We've been known to walk up the street at midnight singing My Heart Will Go On at the top of our lungs and waltzing, and this is just within the first month, I have a premonition it will only get stranger.
(This is me and my roomine -the new one (Lamira) on the left and the old one (Nevin) on the right)
Ximena = Marta. Firstly, they have the same birthday (in a week, I need to plan something!) and they also do random creative things, like decorating paper and drawing and stuff when they should probably be doing homework. :) Ximena also really likes videography (though I don't think Marta does), she made a video of her and all her friends before she left, and she showed it to me and Lamira and her latina friends. She hangs out a lot with the Latinos, and so my Spanish seems to be getting better just because of hearing it so often in my room.
And Corina = Giulia, the seconda who's never in the room, but when she is, is really nice. Like Giulia, she spends all her time in Trieste, and like Giulia, we wake up in the morning to find that she never did come home - her bed's still untouched. But she's so much fun to talk to, Corina and Ximena and Sylvia (our neighbor from Italy) and Boriana (also neighbor, Bulgaria) and I have stayed up till 2 am countless times talking about life, the universe, and everything, and it's great fun.
Next, my Primi:
I've already mentioned Gavino, my primo. He's crazy and cool, but I haven't spent as much time with him as with my Prime.
Prime: Sarah, from Virginia and Lucy, from Colorado. The three of us and Keleigh from Canada and Julie from the UK get along really well together, more than I've been able to connect with other native speakers in the past. Sarah and Keleigh are huge Gilmore Girls fans, so I've seen a couple episodes with them - they're not that bad... and it's fun to talk to them about American issues as Americans.
I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of them yet, I'll add them later.

Choir

(our two choir directors, Vanessa and Katy, after their first performance)

Although it isn't my official aesthetic activity, choir has been an important part of my life here, and I have a feeling it will become more important as the year progresses. So far we've been overloaded with concerts, which is good - they're really fun and we get good food and have a great time, but it's hard to perform after only having rehearsed 3 or 4 times, especially for the first years.
Choir this year is so much better than last year - already I feel like we're better quality and have better songs, even though we've only added 2 or 3 to our repertoire so far. Vanessa is going a great job as choir director, I'm so proud of her...
Last weekend we had three concerts, and all of them were great, especially the one on Saturday. It was a gathering of train workers from Slovenia and Italy and we sang for them all the songs we knew. It was crazy - the first years learned half the songs on the way there in the van, and I was the only soprano who actually knew what she was doing, yet it sounded great. And afterwards they gave us really yummy finger-food (the best part of choir). My favorite part, though, was the people who came on after us, a small band that played dance music (waltzes and stuff). We were so happy and proud of ourselves that we all got up and danced, and Honza (the Czech primo) grabbed me and started teaching me cha-cha and blues and polka. It was SO MUCH FUN! Jumping and spinning around the room, and everyone else dancing too (but not like us, haha :) )...and Honza's now starting ballroom dance classes for which I'm incredibly excited. He's already taught us a couple steps in dance activity and I think it's going to be great, he's a wonderful teacher, making it fun and funny and easy.
Singing and dancing, could life get any better?

International Show

Ok, this is out of order - technically the International Show was on Saturday and the first day of school was Monday, but whatever.
Every year the second years introduce UWC to the first years through an event called the International Show where the first years have to dress up (this year it was a beach party, last year it was 80s style) and the second years put on a show for them.
Throughout the first 2 weeks we second years practiced our acts and got ready for the show, while also showing our primi around and re-bonding with our friends.
I was in three acts, the "Wake Up sketch," a rhythmic cup sketch, and a Angel vs. Devil/ Violin vs. Electric Guitar duet.
The Wake Up sketch was funny - we documented the progression of wake up routines, from the first day (wake up at 6:30 To shower, put on makeup, eat a nice, hearty breakfast, then saunter off to school)to the last day, when the alarm rings at 7, 7:30, 7:45, 8:00 (when classes start) but at 9:00 we're still sleeping.

Then I did a cup sketch...you know the cup game, the one where you move the cups from person to person in a circle doing a rhythmic pattern of clapping and hitting the cup on the table/your hand/etc. It was great fun, and we didn't really mess up too much, which was amazing. The premise was: a row of girls and 2 guys on the end of the table acting bored, then Renato (as "cool guy") comes in and starts doing a pattern with his hands and we're all impressed so we copy him, one after another. Finally it's the (now jealous) guys' at the end of the table turn and they do it really fast and we all turn our attention to them.

Renato gets mad and picks up a cup to do the cup pattern and regain our favor (of course) and we all end together happily.

Then the one I really worked on: the Angel/Devil sketch. It went like this:

I come onstage in an angel costume with my violin, and start playing Meditation from Thais - slow, romantic, beautiful violin music - when, halfway through my first phrase, I'm interrupted by a loud chord from an electric guitar: Renato, dressed as a hard-rock devil, comes onstage and starts showing off on his guitar.

Thus ensues a competition of us each trying to outdo each other with faster and harder and more impressive songs.

Then, in classic UWC style, we ended together, playing a Paganini caprice in harmony.
We had so much fun planning and playing the songs, and everyone loved it ... great success all around.

The costumes of the primi were great...especially my primo. Gavin (or Gavino as he likes to be called) dressed up as a lifeguard, sort of. He was wearing a speedo and a lifeguard t-shirt: Wow.

There were a lot of other acts as well, like Marco's and Margherita's dances, they did ballet and hip-hop "duets."
It's amazing how they can move their bodies so smoothly and gracefully ... I wish I could do that...

There was a rendition of "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago, that was great, really funny and musically well-done.
And Dominika and Ana Maria did an amazing fire dance, spinning balls of fire on chains around and around in complex patterns, it looked so cool!
There was also the traditional Israeli dance, that's performed at every show. It's a series of movements repeated, and each one has a special meaning - very powerful and beautiful to watch.

And the Christian fellowship did a dance that was really cute, all of them singing, "Testify! Testify! I will testify to love!"

All in all, it was an absolute success, I loved it. More on the actual people soooooon. I promise.

Second First Day of School

Well, that was an auspicious start to the year. Out of five classes today I was late for four of them and missed the fifth completely. Granted, the skipped class wasn’t my fault, but still … let’s start at the beginning.
Just like we predicted, my two first year roome, Ximena and Larima, woke up at 6:00 am and 6:30 am respectively. I, being the experienced second year that I am, waited until 7:30 to rise from my blue cloud of slumber. I had plenty of time, but I decided that I should start the year out well and eat breakfast: a mistake. (actually, it was a case of deja-vu, I recall making the exact same mistake last year with exactly the same result) The logical consequence of eating breakfast (an error I won’t repeat in the future) was scarfing down a bowl of cereal and running to World Cultures class and arriving there just barely on time … but the door was closed! (door closed means I’m late = bad) Apparently Henry’s clock was 5 minutes fast, and though I informed him of the fact, it didn’t reduce the embarrassment.
Great class though, a discussion of the different meanings of the word “Classic” applying to everything from Greek civilization to “Gone with the Wind”. And next I had a free block. I spent it in the normal free block routine: do various nothings until you realize it’s 10:00 and you have to run to your next class, wondering where your hour went, because you certainly didn’t use it!
Theory of Knowledge, my next class, moved buildings without prior notice, and the sign on the door directed me to the building I had just come from – ahrg. I arrived at class out of breath and had to sit right at the front of the class in the last available chair. My placement was perfect for becoming Official Scribe for the class, an idea our ToK teacher has decided on – write down everything said so we can remember it later – and so I was stuck typing frantically as everyone else had a lively discussion on the nature of history and memory and the effect that writing things down and taking photos has on them.
Yay: break! So I went back to Schultz, my residence, and had a second breakfast, because the last one didn’t cut it. Once again, I mismanaged time (perhaps it’s the relaxing effect of yogurt…), but still got to the room on time – only to find no one there. My English class had been moved as well. Again I run to the other building (in the opposite direction again), and just as I enter the door I see my teacher coming, so I scuttle into class so as to appear un- late ( maybe the red cheeks and panting gave me away though).
Wow. English class was heaven. After a year of Beth (our last teacher who left) we had all trained ourselves to automatically switch our brains off as we enter the classroom, and this class was a frantic fumble to find the switch back on. We read – and I mean really read – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufok, and discussed modernism in Britain and America and its effects and influences in 20th century culture. I haven’t thought so much in English class since the end of AP English in high school (discounting the math homework I used to do there last year).
Determined to get to Music on time, I was waylaid by my Italian teacher: “I missed you in class today, where were you?” What? I had been devastated that my favorite Italian teacher had been switched to C block while I remained in B block with another teacher…or at least that’s what the list said, and I hadn’t gotten a new schedule to say anything different. But apparently I was switched along with my teacher (yay!!) and missed my first class (oops.)
So, I was late to Music as well, but that didn’t really matter because Stefano doesn’t really care anyway, and we talked about orchestration in the Romantic period and the differences between Brahms’ and Bruchner’s early symphonies.
I was early for lunch though, and had a wonderful time with the other native English speakers excitedly lauding our new teacher and laughing at my blunders. It’s been a great day though, because even though I was late, the classes were all really fun, and I’m so happy to back.