The Edge of the World, Field Trip and UWC Day

Hello world,

UWCiM is an open campus college which means that we live in different residences around the city, mine is Musala which is the closest to the school, it can be a bit messy and dirty sometimes and very lazy but it's amazing I love it. Mejdan is about 15 minutes from the school and it's in the heart of the old town and Sušac which is the farthest it's at the edge of the world (about 30 minutes from school) and it's the biggest residence and unfortunately it's where all my friends live which basically means I have a long distance friendship but regardless of the 30 minutes walk I spend most of time there with my friends and I have slept over there over two weekends which was so much fun, we hung out, cuddled, watched Shutter Island and as goes in Sušac fell asleep 2 people in a bed in the weirdest positions ever.

(mandatory Sušac mirror selfie)

On Monday the 14th it was the jewish new year (Rosh Hashana) and the Jewish society in Mostar invited us the Israelis to dinner and I wasn't sure if I should go because I'm not Jewish but I really wanted to go and experience it, my second years told me it was totally fine to go so I went with them and it was really amazing to experience a traditional jewish new year dinner.

(from left to right, Avigial my second year from 

Israel, me, Romi my other second year and Marie

a second year from Germany)

So that week on Thursday we went to a Visual Arts field trip and instead of talking about it I'm going to attach pictures.

(beautiful Zdenk from Czech Republic)

So my week ended with UWC Day on Saturday which is a day we celebrate cultures from all around the world, every country had a stand in the park next to our school displaying their food, national costume and anything that represents their country and it awesome to celebrate all these different cultures and at the same time realising that we're actually more alike than different.

(Marta from Spain)

(from left to right Lejla from BiH, Emma from Italy,

Clemens from Austria, me and on the bottom Lola from 

Belgium/Spain)

(Marwan from Syria)

(The Arabs)

Peace and Love,

Malak.

Routine, School, New Home?

Hello World,

So week 3 of being in Mostar is about to come to an end so far these 3 three weeks have been amazing and so so full and busy so I’ll try to remember as much as I can and update you.

So we started the week with the interresidencial football games which were so much fun even tho we lost to Sušac. Like twice. By a lot of goals. A lot. (s.o. to our only goalscorer Marita) and we lost to Mejdan too but we scored 5 goals so it wasn’t so bad. Over all it was so much fun we chilled with music played the beautiful game of football and cheered on our teams (maybe a bit too intensely).

Speaking of football, I went with a few people to watch BiH against Belgium play in some bar in the town, we were with mostly locals all of us holding BiH flags and then Lola who is from Belgium (half Spanish) with her Belguim flag, shirt and face paint a tiny red dot among all the yellow and blue everywhere. Belgium won in the end and the whole way back Lola was trying to cover her red everything. It was really fun but sitting there surrounded by everyone concentrated on the game patiently screaming and cursing I really missed home and especially sitting on the couch with my dad watching every single football match we came across fighting and teasing each other and my mom complaining about our very passionate football watching.

So in school I'm taking English A Lang and Lit, Spanish ab intio, Biology, Global Politics, Math and Visual Arts. So far Spanish is the most fun class, we're only like 8 people in the class and our teacher Irma is amazing and I'm really trying to study all the time because I really want to at least be able to have some small talk in Spanish at the end of the two years. 

Visual Arts was probably the class I was most excited for coming here, so far it's okay but I'm struggling a bit now because I'm more of an abstract person and we're doing traditional drawing now which I'm not so good at but I'm trying and hopefully I'll improve.

Math and Biology are pretty okay for now the teachers are cool and what we're learning now I already know so I'm doing pretty well I hope it'll stay that way. (Our math teacher is Italian and he has the cutest accent ever.)

English is pretty boring for now the classroom is always hot and we don't turn on the lights for some reason and I always feel like sleeping. And Global Politics just started to get interesting and we're having really nice discussions and it's awesome to hear point of views of people from all around the world about political topics.

Our Israeli 8th year came to Mostar this week and we hung out with him a couple of times, it was really nice to hear how things changed or stayed the exact same since 8 years and he was a really amazing person we all clicked with him so well but when I was sitting there with all the Israelis I suddenly felt really lost and confused about my whole situation here and about my identity and just about everything and at that moment I really missed home and I just felt like a hug from my mom.

(from left to right, Romi, Me, Yuval our 8th year, 

Avigial and Aviv)

This post was so long but so much happens here in a day let alone a week and it really feels good to just look back and document all of this and I'm sure Malak in 5 years will really appreciate looking back on this experience and I hope maybe future generations will also benefit something from this blog.

I'm gonna finish with a couple of pictures like usual.

Love,

Malak.

First Week

Hello World,

Induction week done.

Meeting 200 people, having parties, doing activities, getting used to a new home. Madness.

For now it looks like a summer camp, 200 teenagers living together with no parents, but now school starts and its starting to get real, it still hasn't sunk in that this will be my life for the major part of the next two years.

Induction week was amazing thanks to our amazing second years, we went swimming, did crazy activities under the old bridge, bonding time, intense water fight, had the best breakfast ever and so much more.

It's overwhelming to see such a big amount of people at once and shake hands with everyone and introduce yourself and where are you from, it's hard to really get close to people that way buy slowly I'm finding people, slowly I'm getting to know people more and more and start calling them my friends which feels amazing. Being alone in this kind of situation would have been horrible so it's nice to know you have someone to go to whenever you like (s.o. to my amazing israeli second and co-years who too have become my close friends).

There was so much pushed into this last week that it's hard to say in words so I'm gonna attach many pictures as they say "A picture is worth a thousand words".

Peace out, 

Malak.

(Having the best thing ever at Palacinka's with our second years)

(My room on the first day)

(View from my room's balcony)

(Under the old bridge)

(Some really bad thing in Serbian)

(From left to right: Ashley from Honk Kong,

Hana from BiH, Josh from Australia, Sam from the

Netherlands and Tonia from Jamaica at the back

and me and Andre from BiH at the front)

(At Kravice waterfalls)

(First lunch out in the old town)

(With the best second year Avi<3)

(My way to school)