AC life: School, Service and Long weekend

Hi everyone.

I know I haven't posted for ages and I am really sorry. I've been quite busy lately but definitely not as busy as all of our 2nd years who have deadlines after deadlines. It's scary to imagine that next year this will be us stressing.
The workload so far hasn't been too bad but still I am constantly busy because there is something happening almost every night.
Every week we have a different focus week. So far the ones we've had are Environmental, Sports, Middle eastern and Latino focus weeks. During Environmental focus week people were trying to raise the awarness of how to help the environment. Sports week was basically all houses competing against each other. In the end Powys won. During the Middle Eastern focus week we were told about different conflicts in the middle east like the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. It is very different to hear students debating about it than watching the news on tv. Here we have students from both places and they both have different views on the matter. It's interesting to hear what both sides have to say from people who grew up with the conflict.

Every Sunday we have different National evenings. So far we've had the British, Latino, Nordic and Middle Eastern National evenings and next week will be the African one which I will participate in. Altogether I will be in three national evenings. Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures from the African one and post them here.

Today our long weekend starts which means no school until Tuesday =)
Tomorrow I will be going into Cardiff again (I was there last week) with a friend. Then on Saturday I will be going to stay with my link family until Monday morning. A few weeks ago we were introduced to our link families here at school. Mine is really nice. I share the family with another girl from the College. Two weeks ago we went to their house for lunch. I really enjoyed it and they have a little daughter called Charlotte who is really sweet.

Last week Thursday I got to meet the Dutch Prince. He is an AC graduate from about 20 years ago and he comes here quite often along with the Dutch national committee. Along with other students I got to take them to lunch. It was really interesting to speak to them I really enjoyed it.

Now to my service. So far I have really been enjoying lifeguards. It's quite demanding and it gets you really tired but I still find it a great service. I have been told that very soon I will be wishing I had chose social service instead and that I will be envying those who did chose it because they get to drink tea and eat cake while we are freezing in the cold water. Well I guess it will get quite cold but our 2nd years survived so why shouldn't we?
We were all divided into 6 different groups which have two 2nd year group instructors each.
So far we've had three different types of service sessions. One is surfing which is my favorite at the moment and the others are kayaking and fitness. I find all of them quite challenging but manageable. For kayaking we go out into the sea just down at the sea front in the College and for Surfing we go to a nearby beach called Southerndown. Well fitness is done here at the college. It usually starts of with a running, pushups and sit ups session and then we go into swimming. We have to do different sprints and a timed swim which mean that we need to be able to swim 20 lengths in less than 7 and a half minutes. I haven't quite managed yet, I was 40 seconds too slow but hopefully next time (which will be next Tuesday) I will manage.
This morning at 6am we were supposed to have a morning swim but our group instructors couldn't find the key to the indoor pool so it got cancelled.

We all had to chose 6 activities and we got 3 of our choices. Mine are Tour Choir, Operation Smile and Kitchen Support. Tour Choir is twice a week for an hour and a half. At the end of this term we will be having our first performance. In late February/early march we will be going to Poland for a week during project week. I am already looking forward to it.
Operation smile is an international organization. What we do here is try to fundraise for operations on cleft lips and cleft pallid in developing countries. I thought it would be a good thing to join. The stories we saw about those children really touched me and I am glad that there is a way in which we can help them. If you would like to find out more this is the website: http://www.operationsmile.org/ This term we are organizing a show so that we can fundraise for some operations. One operation costs about £350.
Kitchen support is basically working in the kitchen for 2 hours a week. Here at AC we have to do a college service and kitchen support is one of them. Basically what I’ve been doing is unloading the dishwasher and putting things back where they belong.
I also joined some activities unofficially . These activities are School Musical, Music lessons (viola) and modern dance. Unofficially means that I wasn’t signed down for it but I can go anyways.

Last week a few guys got their heads shaved for human rights (Amnesty International). They managed to collect about £700.

There was also a masquerade ball around 2 weeks ago. It was really exciting to make the masks but the ball itself wasn't that great but luckily I found another party to go to which was a lot more fun.

This picture was taken last week for the school calendar. We went to many different places of the castle and had someone take the picture from the watch tower.

This is one of the beasts in our beast garden here at the college. It is said that no matter where you stand there will always be one of the beasts looking at you. There is however one square where none of the beasts look at you and supposedly if you stand there at midnight you will disappear or something like that. Personally I find that garden quite freaky at night.