Hey everyone –
So I’ve been a bit remiss in updating the blog, but I’ve returned now with a heaping, steaming pile of new stuff that will (hopefully) please whatever followers I have left.
One of the reasons I haven’t been updating too frequently is because the last few weeks have been mostly WORK. I put all of the interesting stuff on the blog, vacations and the sort, mostly because I know people don’t want to read about all of the prep (homework) that I have. The interesting, fun stuff is just interjected in between assignments to make it all bearable.
Now I don’t mean to sound like a pessimist, because even within the work, stuff is quite interesting. I recently started sitting in on Peace and Conflict Studies classes – it was a course I was interested in taking during orientation week, but bureaucratic conflicts prevented me from signing up for the class. So, a few weeks into this term, I started going to PaCS anyways, and told the teacher I was really intrigued by the material, and would like to sit in on classes without signing up officially. I’ve been in the class for maybe a month now, and am enjoying it a lot – we’ve had discussions about just war, addressed psychological aspects of aggression and violence, and frequently talk about current events. My involvement in the class is also nice because, if I feel too overloaded with other classes, I can just stop going to lessons. I’m going to try to keep it up for as long as possible, though.
A couple weeks ago, a student showed up at our school that I had a fantastic time talking with – his name was Prestige (or that’s what people called him), and he was the Swazi NC studying at UWCUSA. It might clarify some of this jargon (what the hell is an NC?) to know that I’m the American NC studying at Waterford.
Maybe that doesn’t help. Basically, in the same way that I was sent to Swaziland by the US, Prestige was sent to the US by Swaziland. He’s currently at UWCUSA, the United World College in New Mexico, studying the same diploma programme as me. Since the US is on holiday now, he came back home to SD and visited Waterford to meet other IBs.
We talked for the few hours he had at the school about all sorts of stuff – UWC ideals and expectations, our personal experiences with IB, and even some of the same places we have been in New Mexico (specifically, Ghost Ranch). It amazed me at how small the world is becoming – here I meet a Swazi guy, coming from a completely different cultural background to me, and we’re chatting about our favorite hikes at Ghost Ranch. It was kind of comical at one point, because he was asking Anne Caroline and Sofia (my American co-years) who they knew from interviews that made it into UWCUSA, and when he turned to me to ask, I told him my situation was a little messed up, and my interview group has already graduated because I had to delay my admission at Waterford for a year. His eyes widen a little and he says, “Oh man, you’re the cliff guy!”
I was pretty taken aback at first (alarm bells were going off in my head), as I contemplated how a Swazi I had never met, spoken to, or even heard of knew about my accident and delayed admission. I found out later that his link family (like a host family for exchange students) are people we were in contact with when I had fallen.
Like a said, small world.
A couple weeks ago was the 24-Hour Run, an event loosely based on the 12-Hour Relay for Haiti hosted at CDO High School (… maybe I have that reversed?). Everyone was really stoked for all of Friday, and at five o’clock on Friday afternoon the event began.
Man, it was a treacherous twenty-four hours.
For starters, six of the twenty-four hours were occupied, for me, by rehearsals for my play (covered later in this post). On top of this, the team I was on scheduled me for a running shift between midnight and 2 a.m. One of the ideas of the event is that there should be a person from every team on the track for the entirety of the run. So I got the golden midnight shift… typically I would have had some fun with this shift, as everyone is quite delirious and a little loony by this time. The only problem was, it was SO COLD. I’m not sure how I can emphasize it enough on the blog, so let me just say again:
SO
SO
SO
COLD.
While everyone in Tucson was baking in 105, I had turned into a giant ice cube with legs, waddling around a track in temperatures well below freezing. Once again, the culprit of the weather was the wind, which made regular cold turn into my-hands-would-shatter-if-I-hit-them-hard-enough cold.
However, I had no say in the matter, and had to run from 12-2, regardless. Luckily enough, I didn’t have the 2-4 shift, because at around 3am the power went out (classic Swaziland) and the wind picked up. The only people that stayed on the track fell ill the next day (big surprise).
Despite my time being dominated largely by rehearsals, I still managed to do a fair number of laps (50 laps = 20 km = 12.5 miles), and while it was total hell during the event, I look back on it with (mostly) positive feelings. Shoutout to Mom, Dad, Gramma, Grandpa, Katherine, and her father for their sponsorships (especially the latter two, as I know Katherine was prepping to head off to school. Cheers, and good luck!). Reports in the future for how much the event raised in total!
The reason I had so many hours of rehearsal during the event was because we performed the day after the 24-Hour Run finished. The piece was entitled “Quiet”, a devised piece by director Philine Gessner and cast (consisting of me, Anne Caroline [US], Sebastian Kern [Germany], Ane Grinstad [Norway], and Ibraheem Baqai [Pakistan]). The performances went really well, and on the whole I was VERY happy with the production and the results of our efforts.
The piece was essentially a critique of modern society, and the dichotomy between how people act and how people really feel. There was no dialogue, but it included synchronized, contemporary, and ballroom dancing. There were no characters in the conventional sense; rather, we all were ‘the common person’, although we could construct what that meant for ourselves in our own minds.
Working with the play was definitely an interesting experience. At times I became very discouraged and frustrated, worried that the ideas that we were devising wouldn’t be understood by our audience. Imagine watching an entirely silent play that’s an artistic criticism of society, and searching for the deeper meanings within the acting.
Lemme give an example..
We had a scene where we all walked in silently and began a long a tedious process of getting dressed in our Sunday best – as fancy as possible. We took our sweet time getting dressed, making sure every thread and hair was in its proper place. We then all got together and began to decorate a table in a similarly lavish fashion, with many candles, streamers, perfectly placed cutlery, etc etc. We then carried out, in a very regal fashion, a tiny cake, which we then took ages to decorate. Then, all at once, we grabbed a piece of cake with our hands and chowed down like pigs.
The scene was critiquing the fact that we spend so much time getting everything so fancy and ridiculously nice, but in the end we eat like pigs and finish before we even know what had happened. And as one of the people that devised it, I thought the message behind the scene was very cool and insightful. I was worried, though, that the audience wouldn’t appreciate the message of the scene if they had to watch for half and hour as we silently and compulsively decorated a table to look perfect.
As it turns out, my assumption turned out to be totally false. People came up to us after the play and seemed to get the hidden meanings in all of the scenes, saying they really like the intensity of the more drawn out scenes. All of us were a little shocked that people understood our artsy-fartsy production so well, but it was a pleased kind of shocked. We got a lot of positive reviews from students and teachers, and on the whole it was definitely a success.
And as I always like to end these posts with a positive or funny note, the other day my friend from Germany got a care package from home that contained Pop Tarts. I saw and said something to the effect of, “Score, Pop Tarts!” (or something equally uncool). He looked at them for a moment with a puzzled expression, and then turned to me and said, “What are they?”
WHAT.
So I had the pleasure of teaching my German co-year about the wonderfulness of S’Mores Pop Tarts. What a great night in hostel.
I think that’s about all I have to report on for now. I leave in just a few days to go backpacking in the Drackensburg Mountains as part of a South African Global Youth Summit. I couldn’t be more excited, and although I’m going to have a horrendous amount to catch up on when I get back… it will be totally worth it. I’ll bring a small journal with me so I can write thoughts night to night, which will then be transcribed onto my blog for you, creeps of the internet.
As always, love you all. I haven’t started an official countdown yet, but in a month from now (give or take a few days), I’ll be touching down in Tucson. Excited as all get-out :)
Cheers,
Eli
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