Maia Abroad: UWC Waterford

I arrived at Waterford Kamhlaba on January 13th. WK (and eSwatini) have been my home for almost a year. I've done all the cheesy cliche stuff - found family, learned new things about myself and the world, stayed up till 3am with friends. I've cried and partied and been hurt and stressed and ate too much chocolate and cried some more and wrote a paper in the middle of the night. The year's almost over. Midterm ended yesterday - I spent it on campus, holed up in my room with my textbooks. It was a far cry from my first, wilder midterm in Jozi. Right now we're in the middle of two weeks of exams, and then it's four weeks until we leave. Until I say goodbye to my IB2s - people who have held my hand through the good and bad parts of Waterford, and laughed at me when I make dumb choices. It's going to be really hard. Right now I'm in exam headspace, so not much else is getting through, but the fact that I'm almost done IB1 is absolutely insane. Exams for IB1...

It's been a while! The last post I wrote was about my term break travelling through Southern Africa, and a lot has happened since. Essentially, the IB continues to ramp up! I feel consistently frazzled, and it's a reminder of how I felt this time last year when I was working for a mayoral campaign that was in the last stretch of the campaign period. But honestly I'm more stressed now. Exams start next week and I've not begun to study. Everyone is overwhelmed. I think part of the issue lies in the fact that all the projects I have now are longer term ones - my extended essay, which I'm expected to spend a minimum of 40 hours on, my 20 page director's notebook, a 12 page bio research paper, a 20 minute Theory of Knowledge presentation. And that's on top of CAS and co curriculars and friends and sleep and sanity. This course is a lot. I haven't cried yet this term, but it's getting to that point. And I still have over one year to go! I'm sorry that ...

Our route (A rough and poorly rendered approximation) The moon was high over the hills of Swaziland when we left the house, and the babe (Swazi honorific for an older man - literally 'father.' Pronounced 'bah-bay') driving the taxi seemed as tired as we were. I was worried about how big my backpack was, whether it would fit into the kombi, whether we would be charged extra. Mbabane was sleepy-quiet when we arrived but some drunk teenagers stumbled by, sobriety beginning to arrive with the rising sun and cold morning wind. By 6am, we had found a kombi to Joburg and had wedged ourselves and our bags into the back. We were joined by bags of flour and bottles of oil, and a good number of tired looking people. However, the kombi didn't actually leave until 10am, because it wasn't full enough. The trip was uneventful - it was faster than our school bus, and the seats weren't uncomfortable. When we got closer to the city, I climbed up to the front to a...

Term has ended! Well, technically it ended a week ago but I've been busy sleeping, eating, and working. It's been nice. I've been staying with my friends Shantzie and Martín - they have link parents who graciously took me in as well for the week, and we've been spending the time working in the sunroom of the house, drinking alarming amounts of tea, and eating all the avocado toast we can stomach. On Saturday, Shantzie and I, along with our friend Julia will set off on the next part of our term break. The plan is to visit 5 countries in 3 weeks! We leave Mbabane early Saturday morning, arriving in Jozi by the afternoon. We'll buy groceries and get US dollars for travelling in Zimbabwe. That evening we take a bus up to the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls, and spend the evening before travelling into Zambia to spend a few days. Then it's several buses and trains across Botswana before arriving in Namibia! We have several stops in Namibia, and we'll eventual...

As I've noted in previous posts, the food at Waterford makes me deeply sad. Iceberg lettuce - previously something I would only consume if using a leaf for a lettuce wrap - now causes a great deal of despair and general melancholy. Pork chops were once something I would pan fry with caramelized apple slices, but now I can only think of the tough, blackened things served here. So I've been doing a great deal of cooking, assisted by my trusty mini fridge Alberta, my small pot that I bought at the thrift store in Vancouver for $7, and a small cache of condiments and other foodstuffs smuggled from the T&T grocery store back home. So, for the sake of curiosity and hopefully future IB1s nutrition, I thought I'd talk a bit about food availability/recipes. Maia's Noodle Stir Fry/Bastardised Lo Mein To my delight, I was able to find very affordable 'Chinese noodles' in the instant noodle section. They're just wheat flour egg noodles, but I think they caused...

It took two days to get to Makhanda. It felt a lot longer. We put fifteen theatre and music students into a very small bus and drove from eSwatini to the Eastern Cape, and I think it was a more arduous trip than any ocean passage. I’ve developed some passionate thoughts about the relative merits of different petrol stations. We stopped for the night in Ladybrand and everyone, (even the Norwegian!) agreed that it was excessively cold. The next day we made it to Grahamstown/Makhanda and immediately headed to the box office to pick out some tickets for the next few days. We were in town for the Grahamstown Arts Festival – the largest arts festival on the continent which runs for eleven days in the college town of Grahamstown (recently renamed Makhanda at the recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, although in Xhosa, the town is called iRhini.) Makhanda is home to Rhodes University and a large number of schools, institutes, and museums. The town is also currently u...

(This was written about two weeks ago but I've been without internet! I'll hopefully post soon about my time exploring the Makhanda Arts Festival.)  It is often hard to get a chance to take a breath at Waterford. Life usually progresses at a frenetic pace and we have to run to keep up or risk getting run over. My friends and I were joking that there's no relaxation time - you're working or you're sleeping. It's a weird phenomenon here, that it's nearly physically impossible to relax, because if you're not concentrating on something, you fall asleep. If conversation flags a bit if you're spending time with someone, it's not unusual to just fall asleep on each other. Unintentional naps are a bit of an issue. This past weekend, my friend from New Zealand invited me and another friend to spend the weekend with her link at a game reserve a few hours from the school. We were staying at a ranger's house and there were dogs...