Only when the latest issue of INK came out on Monday did I realise how much power I - as the illustrious and salacious gossip columnist - wield at this school. I planned to reveal nothing, but I would make a terrible secret agent because all it really took was Ollie and Simon pinning me down on the Morgannwg dayroom couch and mercilessly tickling my feet. It is my well-known sole weakness (literally), that and a totally irrational and constantly mocked fear of spiders. One would think that the arachnid breeding initiative that is the CAVRA hut would be the best [View Full Entry]

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Only the church goers are awake at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, as I type barefoot while eating the Nutella I stole from the CAVRA perishable supplies with a spoon and marvel at the extremely Welsh wonder that I was woken up by the sun five minutes ago but now there's a pounding downpour. Based on the weather alone, I heave a sigh of very dry relief that we came back a day early from the Snowdonia camping trip. Based on the sheer number of perfect -if often terrifying - encapsulated memories I've got from the past three days, I want [View Full Entry]

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Well, I can finally add something besides "Playing two recorders at once in harmony while hula hooping" to the Special Skills section of my c.v....I can now pitch a tent by myself in 9 minutes and 12 seconds, and I can traverse the CAVRA wall in pointy-toe suede flats. It turns out that the entire focus of August period is in fact the four hours of service which we now have every afternoon. At least, it's supposed to be four hours of service - bettering the community, making a difference, companionship with our fellow man, right? Does a plastic barrel full [View Full Entry]

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I think I can avoid the "wow, what should be my devastatingly witty first sentence of my first blog for my entirely new second year?" dilemma by just writing exactly what I'm thinking. Which is that the second I stepped foot on the plane from Boston, the completely flat line that was my summer started zigzagging and looping crazily off the heart-monitor screen. I mean, I figured that the universe sort of owed me something after the debacle of having to unload ten kilos from one of my checked bags at Logan Airport (as everyone else in line removed the scissors [View Full Entry]

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I wish I had something different to say about every CAVRA hike. Unfortunately the growth of my adjective vocabulary will be rather stunted because all of our hikes this term have been even more "stunningly beautiful, with fantastic views and perfect weather" than the one before. The view from the top of the ridge overlooking the reservoir where we camped, with red stone steps leading down the mountainside past slopes dotted with sheep and the afternoon sun glittering off the clear rippling water, left me as out of breath as the hike up said ridge. It was our first voyage into [View Full Entry]

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Due to my solid week-long chocolate binge during first-year exams week and my necessary habit of not actually wearing shoes anymore, I'm beginning to look more and more like a hobbit. I'm not quite sure what I'm questing for, but the past two weeks have been undeniably epic. It started with a escapist trip to Rosie's house in Stratford; the timing of the whole thing was fantastic really, because all I wanted to do after finishing my English exam two Fridays ago was get myself and my cramped-from-two-hours-of-pretentiously-yet-effectively-analysing-poetry right hand off campus as fast as possib [View Full Entry]

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Sorry about the delay, but you must understand how difficult it is to write when I can barely see through the sheer amount of freckles I've acquired in the past two days. While everyone else frantically revises for first year exams (which start tomorrow. In less than 24 hours my nails will be chewed down to the quick from analysing a poem for English for two hours, but I will also be on my way to Stratford so it balances out really) in stifling carrel units and musty quiet room, habia descubierto el Jardin Azul , that is to say I [View Full Entry]

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I'm trying to decide whether it's been an Insane Dancer Barbie or a Battery-Operated Super Mountaineer G.I. Joe sort of a week. For all the potential A.C. students coming for interviews this past week (affectionately labeled 'zero-years' by us wise, worldly, beyond-sophisticated first years who are, yes indeed, a WHOLE YEAR older than them), the impression was more that of a chubby purple-haired wind-up plastic troll careening rhythmically around the dance floor at Sosh. The 'initiators' of the interview week (past graduates of UWCs looking important with nametags) actually thanked my friends [View Full Entry]

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My bed, or the corner where I believe my bed is, looks quite simply like an archeological dig. It's like Pompeii, if Mount Vesuvius had erupted a deadly river of mismatched socks and random crumpled pages of sheet music. So, inspired by my visit to the British Museum, as well as the fact that by typing this I'm procrastinating the actual dreaded tidying up that will be necessary if I am to find the fifty extensive student-teacher response forms that I have to make into a graph for student council by tomorrow night, I've decided to create an itemised exhibit of [View Full Entry]

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I must first say that Poland was the first trip I have ever been on in which I have arrived in a foreign country knowing onlyhow to say´good beer, darling. Two black and grey kittens!´(see title), a phrase I would love to shout with gusto if I am ever in one of the very very few situations which absolutely demand it. I was basically deaf, dumb, and illiterate, only able to buy cheap shoes by gesturing wildly at the vendors and shrugging with an exaggerated look of confusion, replaced by a very real look of confusion when they responded in Polish. [View Full Entry]

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