Spanish Immersion

I'm now having an intense Spanish immersion experience, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I've found a wonderful Latino to spend my time with - Eduardo from Peru - and now the world is beautiful and bright, even on cloudy days.
It started on Sunday, when we took a walk down the Rilke Path (the classic romantic spot in the college) and sat on the cliffs, looking out at the sea and talking about life. At some point in the three hours we spent there we changed from being friends to something more, and the rest of the story is private ;) and not for public posting. Suffice to say that I don't think I'll make it in for curfew very often in the future, and my Spanish is going to get really good. (this is where I get mad that blogger doesn't have emoticons, because I'd put a huge grin here)
Our friends are having a blast with it - teasing us to no end - but we don't mind whatsoever. The college tradition in this respect is for each person to adopt the other's secondi, co-years, and especially roommates, so now Marta, Nevin, and Giulia are happily discussing their new Roomo and Rene is my new secondo (though he basically was before anyway, by adoption).
Sigh...He's so sweet, and his language is sooooo gorgeous - having "te quiero" whispered in your ear is an experience every girl should have.
This is him, in case you can't find him in the pictures I've already posted:

I know I've said Life is Good before, but I was mistaken - Life is Fabuloso. :)

Random stuff

There are all these little things that go on without being big enough to warrant a full post, so I'll bunch them up here.
on March 10th we had a Model United Nations conference. It was really fun, I was Haiti. The latinos made fun of me for being the poorest country in the western hemisphere (which actually isn't that funny) and hating the Dominican Republic (represented by my friend Bulat from Russia, so we had a lot of fun insulting each other's countries). I made a joint resolution with Trinidad and Tobago (represented by Camilla from Italy) on the nuclear crisis in Iran and it got passed! (over the US's haha.) Yay.
My poor friends though: Ying Xin (Hong Kong) and Vanessa (Singapore) and Martin (Slovakia) were saddled with being America. Martin did it impressively - he talked about freedom and evil and spreading democracy in all his opening speeches, it was hilarious.
here they are:

I wish we had been able to represent our own countries though, it would have been really interesting to do a true cultural MUN - when else are we going to get this opportunity? oh well, maybe next year.
And then there are the random happy moments of the college that I happen to have photos of:
The day Marta (polish rooma) and I climbed down to Fore Beach and lay there basking in the beautiful sunlight and view and laughing at how wonderful the world was:

And the night (1:30 am ish) Nidhi, Vanessa and I painted henna on each other's hands to match:

Speaking of Nidhi, I officially got tickets to India this summer! I'm going with her and we're going to tour the country, do presentations in schools in her area, and hopefully do some volunteer work while we're there. And so I'll come home on August 1st - I can't wait! Or maybe I can, because it seems like the end of the year is coming mighty quickly and I'm not ready for my first year to be over or (worse) my second years to leave.

Then there was Purim, and the Jewish taster session. It's like Jewish Halloween, so we all came dressed up and had cookies and hot wine and cake and the Israelis performed the story of Esther and how she saved the Jews from yet another extermination:

And the cultural visit to Mantua (where Romeo went, remember?), which was great. Henry gave us the full tour, including the details of the Marquis' scandalous pleasure palace, in which the dining room is covered by huge frescos of an, umm, feast/orgy at Cupid and Psyche's wedding.

(I love this picture of Henry, I think it captures his essence perfectly.)
And in our free time we went to a fair that was happening right outside the gates of the palace and had cotton candy and went on bumper cars and stuff. It was great.
I participated in a science cafe which was themed on the relationship between poetry, music, and science. So I played a cool flamencoish song with Rene (bolivia) and read Recuerdo (by Edna St Vincent Millay). We had so much fun.

Ok, that about sums up the special events of my life recently. Now I have to do a presentation for Environmental Systems on US Immigration (with a Chinese and a Latino - how perfect is that? I love UWC)

Project Week

Every year (except last year because of financial difficulties) UWC has a project week, –a week when all the students scatter to community service projects around the area -– Croatia, Switzerland, Bosnia, Slovenia, Austria, etc, and Italy, of course. I (and Alvaro, from Spain) organized a project to Florence, to sing in elderly homes and do presentations in the International school about UWC and issues around the world. It was wonderful. We stayed in host families for the week, and mine was perfect - the mother was German and the father Italian, so we spoke a combination of Italian (mostly) and English and German. There was a 15-year-old son too, named Carlo, who was the sweetest boy imaginable, we had a great time talking in Italian/English about school, life, religion, growing up (he showed me his toy car collection and where/how he used to play with them and lamented how hard it was getting to play like that now, somehow it didn'’t have the same magic. I could sympathize perfectly, the same had happened to me with Legos and magic princess games, and I was surprised how easily we talked about it, two teenagers who should be "too old for that". It was good for me). On my last night there, we (Carlo, his friend Charlie, and I) played hide-and-seek all around the house and had a great time, another unexpected trip into childhood.
This is them:

And this is us, except Leni, who was taking the picture:

Leni didn't spend much time with us anyway - she had different priorities. For us, the project came first ('cause it was Project week), preferred touring Florence. This led to some social difficulties, quite a bit of animosity, and a formation of 2 groups: her, and the rest of us. The climax of this difference in priorities was her laryngitis to get out of the last concert and then going around Florence all day. We found out about it the next day when our host families said, "Oh, yeah, she went out with us and was perfectly normal and healthy..."ahrg. oh well. The rest of us had a fantastic time, so I don't really care. Wednesday was Cosy's birthday, so as a surprise, we took her to Pisa:

We had so much fun, laughing all the way. Pisa was great, I didn't expect it to be awesome - it's just a big tower - but it was, the feeling of being there and seeing it for real was really cool.
And we went Uffizi, the Piti Palace, and the Academia (Mama, you missed soooo much! how could we have thought that it wasn't worth the exorbidant entrance fee? It is!) My favorite was the Piti Palace - it was so amazingly decorated, and the art there was my favorite, Neo-classical covering the ceilings.

La Primavera and the Birth of Venus were awe-some as well, but on the whole Uffizi had too many Jesus-orriented rennaissance paintings. Amazing, yes, but not quite my taste. Anyway, this is a view Uffizi - very pretty.

And David was fantastic, really. You don't truly understand what is so powerful about a block of shaped marble until you stand at his feet and look up at his troubled eyes, his relaxed but still tense posture, his almost transparent skin...
Our concerts went well, there were some really sweet moments, like when this little old nun started dancing to our songs, and when the people started singing folk songs for us... wow. But we all swore to commit suicide as soon as we came even close to that state - it was so sad, seeing them all degenerating together... I would never want to be like that.
We had a couple mishaps, like the time we arrived an hour and a half late because the place we thought was in Florence was actually in Capalle - a little town 45 minutes away, and then we got lost... I officially hate the Florentine bus system, it's so uncooperative. Unlike Prague (Ah, Prague...). Anyway.
The trip back was awful - we took a night train (2 am-7:30) but didn't reserve seats and got the wrong tickets (for youth instead of adults, apparently it's only up to 12) so we had to pay an extra 64 euros total, and slept in the corridor because people were taking up 2-3 seats to sleep. Ugh. I hate night trains.
It's so nice to be back though...I missed Duino so much. It was great to greet everyone again and hear/tell all our stories. I love this place. Life is Good!!!!