I've been telling myself this for the last couple of weeks, and finally there's only one week left. 3rd term has been tough, lots of school work (not all of it's done yet!) and a very busy schedule that means you have no choice but to keep on keeping on. There have been ups and downs, and we've made it through them all - one week until winter break! We're grinding to the end, and soon I'll have 3 weeks off to catch up on months of lost sleep, hang out in Canada with Mum, Dad and Lani (who are arriving on campus TODAY) and get back on top of all the homework I still have to do. Overall it has been such an amazing term - as they all are. It had it's moments, flecked with stress, discontentedness, the occasional random bursting-into-tears but the good things far outweighed the bad. It's been a very long time since last time I updated my blog, so I'll do a quick summary so you can get an update and if you're busy you don't have to stick around.
May: end of first year, crazy time June: flew home finally!! worked a lot, hung out with friends, went on a Mittagundi follow-up July: same - worked, hung out at home, caught up with lots of people August: left to come back to Pearson, spent a few days with Izzie (New Zealand, year 45) in New Zealand on my way back to Canada which was awesome!! September: orientation, met all the new first years, went to my first hockey game! October: Middle East and South Asia (MESA) regional day, hiked the south half of the Juan de Fuca trail over Thanksgiving, Asia-Pacific (APAC) regional day, went canoeing for a week over CAS week, my second ever Halloween. November: crunch time! went ice skating with my house, North American regional day (NARD), it started raining December: house olympics! lots of fun Cherish trips, studying, exams, Mum, Dad and Lani coming!! Now for those of you who want the details (Nanna, this is for you <3) strap in, grab a cup of tea and a biscuit, and make yourself very comfortable. The end of last year was absolutely hectic! I'm not going to go back into the details, if you want them you can go back and look at the post from May last year, what a crazy time. After PPS (the Pacific Paddling Symposium) I flew out of Victoria as it was beginning to get sunny and warm and summery, to land at Tullamarine Airport, where it was once again raining and cold. But it meant I was home and I finally saw all my family again, after almost a year. I then spent the "summer" break working at Buller Sports, catching up with people and spending lots of time walking and exploring around home. In August I got ready to go again, packed my suitcase and was driven to the airport. I flew to New Zealand and stayed there with Izzie for a few days. We went on a roadtrip from Auckland to Rotorua on the north island, and then I met a bunch of her old school mates. We flew back to Canada together, spent a night in a host family in Victoria and then finally came back to school to see our year again. That was a day full of hugs, hellos and tears, as everyone caught up on everyone elses summer breaks (or in Izzie and my case, winter). We had a couple of days to get settled and ready to welcome first years, and then they all arrived, bus by bus, all day. It was incredibly overwhelming for everyone - we weren't used to our second years being gone and they were completely new to everything about Pearson - and yet we still welcomed them in the normal Pearson fashion, hug first, talk later. In orientation week we got to go to a hockey game, and watch the team coached by a member of Pearson's maintenance staff, Jake. It was so much fun, and with 200 supporters who barely knew what was going on, the atmosphere was great! In October we had 2 regional days, MESA (Middle East and South Asia) and APAC (Asia Pacific). I have absolutely no bias when I say that APAC was the best regional day that Pearson College has ever seen in its 45 years of being. It was a lot of work to organise and run, but so worth it, and heaps of fun!! MESA was also amazing, and for me the vibe was very different to APAC because I'm not in the MESA region so I just got to sit back and enjoy it. Mara (Canada), Noah (Netherlands) and I hiked the south half of the Juan de Fuca trail over Thanksgiving weekend, and had an absolute ball. Izzie was supposed to come, but she got a concussion the weekend before so wasn't able to. There were some sketchy goings-on, and we walked 21kms of what the trail map called "most difficult" terrain on the Saturday, and I think I'm still sore from it. It was bascially 1/2 a day of vertical ascent and then 1/2 a day of vertical descent, including some poorly- (or not at all...) read tide charts, resulting in a little bit of wading through the fringes of the Pacific. It was so beutiful, and such a good break from being on campus and doing school work. October also meant CAS week, and this year I went and battled alongside about 20 comerades-in-paddles. We fought treacherous tides and whipping wind. We saw sea otters and many other marine marvels. We abandoned a birthday boy on an isolated island, and survived it all with soaked rain coats and many, many mugs of hot chocolate. My CAS week was Paddle Sports, so I spent the week canoeing around this tiny town called Kyuquot (I really mean TINY, google it!) at the north western end of Vancouver Island. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and we saw sea otters every day! It was so incredible, I had an amazing week, besides all the wind and rain. And then November came. The month of rain and darkness. Wow that sounds so sad, but it actually just rains all the time, and the days get really short. There were lots of assignments and things due in November, it felt a bit like there was something new due every day, and that I was barely hitting deadlines. I missed a couple which made me fall behind in everything else, and so I spent a few weeks just scrambling to get back up to date. There were definitely fun parts of November too though. Japan House went ice skating together like we did last year, and it was awesome. I had a few stacks, and had a bruised hip for a number of weeks afterwards. We also had another regional day, the last for the year so for the second years, it's our last one ever! It was North America, and it was a lot of fun. The dinner theme was Oscars, so everyone got very dressed up! And now it's December. Early in December we had House Olympics, an annual Pearson event. There are 2 second years each year who run it and the responsibility is passed down to the next 2 at the end of the year. Each year they come up with new activities for the rest of the school to participate in, and this year there were lots of good ones. Japan House came third, a vast improvement to last year when we came last in almost everything! I was the house representative of Japan House along with Pietro (Italy) so we helped to organise and run it which was a lot of fun. With Cherish we had a karaoke night and an afternoon tea at the Tea House which is about a 20 minute walk from school. Cherish is an elderly care facility that a small group of us visit every Monday. It's such a nice way to start the week, we get to sit and have tea and talk to the residents, and its such a 0 stress situation. December is also the season for studying and mid year exams. I just spent my Saturday night off campus with Mum, Dad and Lani!!! They came and picked me up yesterday and dropped me off today. It was so nice to see them again and get off campus, so now I just have to tackle block week and then it's winter break! Overall it's been a long, hard but rewarding and fun term. I'm excited for winter break, to have some time to rest and relax, but I'm also (maybe even more!) excited for next term. Next term is the most chilled out one for the second years, and work is starting to pick up for all the first years so we get some more time off to do fun things, explore and hang out with each other before the big crunch of end of year exams. So, on that note, I'd better get back to studying some Spanish verbs and their conjugations for tomorrow :)
1 Comment
Adam Kirk
25/4/2020 15:25:25
Hi Bella, as someone who graduated from UWC nearly 30 years ago I found your post very moving. Stay strong. Despite the difficult and unfair circumstances of your departure from Pearson you have made lifelong friends who will remain with you forever and who you will see again many times no doubt. I hope you don’t mind but I have shared your post with some of my UWC networks, including some UWC classmates who have children at UWC also affected by the coronavirus shutdown of all the UWC colleges. Best wishes, Adam (UWC-USA ‘90).
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Hey!I'm Bella. I love writing about all sorts of things, and here are a few of them for you to read. I hope you enjoy :) Archives
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