Florence, Italy

   Good Morning from Florence, Italy!  This is Shaked's and my third day on the road by ourselves :)  We drove from Mostar to Zadar, Croatia on Thursday evening the 22nd of October 2009 with Leah, Isabelle, Andy, and Nicolai where we parted ways and they drove on to Venice (hopefully) and we stayed the night in a youth hostel to catch our plane to Pisa the next day.  All the girls in the back learned to make friendship braclets and then we curled up and slept for some of the drive along twisting mountainous roads of Bosnia.  The theme song of the car ride was "Tonight's gonna be a good night!" and oh it was amazing indeed.  This is the first time that Shaked and I have both traveled by ourselves and it is epically amazing!  (They told us at the hostel that we were the youngest people to stay there haha)

Preliminary disclaimer:
     For all the parents reading this, the trip is going amazing and very smoothly.  We haven't had any problems or complications.  We have stayed at really great hostels in Zadar and now in Florence.  Don't worry!  There comes a time when we need to spread our wings.  Be proud of us because you have taught us so much about life and traveling and now we are finally old enough and mature enough to put everything you taught us into practice.  Mom and Dad I love you!

    Friday morning we woke up at our hostel located right next to a pretty marina on the Adriatic and headed out to adventure.  We caught our one and a half hour Ryanair five euro flight from Zadar to Pisa and then took a bus about an hour from Pisa to Florence.  We arrived in front of the train station around five o'clock in the evening.  It was pouring down rain, so our first purchase were two umbrellas which have become our fashion statements - but rain couldn't stop us from exploring!  We found maps at the tourist office and started on a trek to find our hostel for the night.  We showed up in front of Plus Florence and it is great, I would definitely recommend it to anybody traveling here.  (We also stayed at one in Venice during the summer.)  After checking in we headed out again to see the Fortezza da Basso which is a palace about five minutes walk from the hostel.  There is so much more to tell...but we want to head out this morning to see the whole city - Florence in one day, is it possible?  Yes we can!  The iternary for the day includes the Duomo and the Uffizi and as many other places as possible!

The adventure continues...
Love,

Hilary

350

UWC 350 Initiative

Meet the Students at an Integrated Bosnian High School

 Article from the Bosnia Daily e-newsletter.  

  Meet the Students at an Integrated Bosnian High School 

And you thought your high school cafeteria was tough

By Nicole Itano

GlobalPost

     The Mostar Gymnasium, a bustling high school of  50 students, lies at the crossroads of Bosnia’s divides. Located on a boulevard that once served as a front line between Croats and Muslims during the country’s brutal 1990s war, the brightly colored, recently renovated building stands out among its neighbors, most of which are still in ruins. But it’s not the discordant splash of peach amid the rubble that makes the school conspicuous here - it’s that inside, Croatian and Muslim students attend school together. Fourteen years after the Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war,  Bosnia’s children are growing up more isolated from other ethnic groups than even their parents did.  The war largely succeeded in separating the country’s three main people, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks.  But the peace cemented those divisions into law.

Touchy Subject 

     According to the Dayton constitution, nearly everything in Bosnia is divided along ethnic lines. The country is partitioned into two largely autonomous entities.  The country has three presidents, one from each group, and a parliament in which Croats, Serbs and Muslims each have a third of seats.

   Education is a touchy subject for all three of Bosnia’s peoples, each of which interprets the past through the lens of old grievances. Culture, history and even language have been imbued with the politics of difference. Officially, there are even three languages in Bosnia: Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, although everyone can understand each other. And every parent, in this country, has the right to educate his child in his own language.  "I was optimistic about the future, but as long as the schools are separate, the problems will not stop," said Branka Barac, a Serbian English teacher at the Gymnasium, herself a graduate of the school before the war, when it was named after a famous Bosnian Serb writer. In Mostar, a  city still divided into Muslim and Croatian sides, the Gymnasium is the only mixed school. After the war the school - by then renamed for a Croatian priest - had only Croat students who attended lessons on a single floor of the building, then still in ruins. In 2004 it was renovated with donor money and began accepting students from both sides of the city. What Side Are You From 

     But even here, the integration only goes so far: there are two separate curricula for Croatian and Muslim students. But sports, school activities and a few classes, such as technology, are combined. On the school’s third floor, the United World College high school, which shares the building, has students from all three of Bosnia’s groups drawn from around the country, as well as ones from around the world. But it is run by a private foundation - which offers its select students free tuition - and instructs students in English using the International Baccalaureate system.
    Darija Coric, a second-year Croat student, had never gone to school with Muslims before she came to the gymnasium.  Now, she said, she has Muslim friends and even knows of a few relationships that cross ethnic lines. But she’s never been to a Muslim student’s house and says she doesn’t like to go out at night in the Bosniak half of the city.  "I would like for Bosnia to be united and everyone to be equal, but I don’t know if that’s possible," she said.  "Even when I introduce myself and say I come from Mostar, people ask what side I’m from."
     But Armin Pekusic and Voljen Gubeljic, who became friends at the school and are now finishing their last year, said their time there has made ethnicity less important.  "We thought when we hung out with  each other there would be problems," said Pekusic. "But we found out it was easy."

Slow Progress

     The current principal, Bakir Krpo, is a Muslim who graduated from the school when Bosnia was part of  Yugoslavia. He said that during the war he was imprisoned in a camp by one of his former students, a Croat, and for a while, he despaired that Bosnians could live together again.
    "We thought, ’were we bad teachers that our students could behave this way?’ But now there are friendships, dating. They’re on the debate team  together, the newspaper," he said.
    He had hoped that when the Gymnasium proved integration worked, other schools would follow. But so far, it remains the only integrated public school in the country. And politicians sometimes talk about closing it. Only time can heal Bosnia’s wounds, Krpo said.
     "In essence, I’m an optimist," he added. "But it will be very slow. I don’t think I will live to see it. Maybe my grandchildren."

Grace like Rain

Raindrops are fallin’ on my head…

Da da da du-da du-da-da daaaa..

Da da du-da du-da daaaa…

                I woke up this morning to the pounding pitter-patter of raindrops on the tin roof, my window was open and I could feel the cool, clean air filling my lungs.  For a moment I thought that I was back in Portland, because so many mornings I would wake up to the same peaceful  canon and lie in bed and think, or read, and enjoy a steaming mug of hot chocolate or tea.  Mom would always come to wake me up with something soothing to drink to start the day.  The thunder from the dark clouds over the cross is booming now, but the rain is abating to a light pitter-patter pitter-patter.  The cars are driving through the puddles, splashing the water on wayfarers hurrying along under umbrellas. 

                Leah just walked into my room as I was staring out the window, we are getting ready to go to church about a fifteen minute walk away.  I am finally going to use my raincoat and my boots.  I have reveled in the beautiful sunny autumn weather until now, but I love the rain.  And like a true Portlander I can smell it coming, and the anticipation is wonderful.  This is actually the second time that it has rained since I have been here in Mostar.  The first time was several weeks ago and Shaked and I woke up and ran down the stairs and out into the  rain and danced until we were soaked, the water streaming down our faces, our wet hair flying as we twirled.  The clouds are grumbling again.

            A moment of contemplation, Portland, my first home I love you, you are dear to my heart.  All the people at home you are irreplaceable.  But Mostar is now my second home - a place for my UWC family.

Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me

Hallelujah, all my stains are washed away, washed away

United Words

    This website is a link between all the UWC schools, with articles, comments, pictures, videos, and insight from students.  It was created in 2007 by UWC Atlantic.
    Here in Mostar we have a links group that supports connection between all the UWCs.  I firmly support this connection, the more support that we give to each other, the more ideas that we spread, the stronger our movement will become, we must live United!
     There are some exciting opportunities this year to enhance our inter-college relationships.  For midterm break Isabelle, Leah, Shaked and I are traveling around several cities in Italy, and then stay in Duino for a couple of days at the UWC Adriatic with the hopes of forming connections with their college and sharing our ideas from the environmental project.  Also, later this year Isabelle is hopefully setting up student exchanges with other colleges for a month.

http://interuwcmag.wordpress.com/

UWC Venezuela Article

This is an article that Andy and I wrote for the UWC Venezuela student magazine concerning the environmental project that we are spearheading here at UWC Mostar.

UWCiM Environmental Project: iM Green

We are putting into action a student-lead initiative at the United World College in Mostar, aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the school.  The goal of the environmental project is to increase our school’s long-term sustainability and to conserve both natural and economic resources by reducing excess energy and resource usage.  Though green projects are becoming quite commonplace around the world, this is something very radical for the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is still recovering economically from the wounds of war. Therefore, up until this point, attention to and legislation concerning the environment have been almost non-existent.

                Beginning with fundamental projects such as changing light bulbs, composting, and reducing waste greatly diminishes the impact of our school’s carbon footprint.  Many people are unaware of the huge impact that these seemingly menial tasks can have.  Therefore, our hope is to raise community awareness, in collaboration with the Ecology Group, locally as well as in the whole country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Previously, this took place in the form of paper collections for recycling and local garbage pick-ups.  We received tremendous appreciation for our work as well as many volunteers who jumped right in to help us.  Now we hope to expand these projects and start new ones to continually embrace our responsibility for the stewardship of our planet. 

We have both short term and long term initiatives. We are implementing many of our projects immediately; however, more drastic measures must be taken to accomplish our goal of becoming self sustainable.  The best way to become completely sustainable is to fully utilize local resources, readily available in your area.  In our case, we are blessed (and sometimes burdened) by exorbitantly strong winds (called the “Bura”) in this mountainous region of Herzegovina. It is our hope to employ this resource to our advantage by generating renewable wind power to support the energy needs of our school. That is to say, our goal is to create Bosnia and Herzegovina's first sanctioned wind-power generator. It is projects like this, which are daring yet attainable, that can really truly combat against environmental degradation and act as a role model for the beautiful vicinity in which our school is located.

                Furthermore, this month has seen a movement throughout the UWCs to support the 350 initiative, which emphasizes the growing necessity to protect the environment and consciously reduce harmful emissions into our atmosphere.  350 is the calculated limit, in parts per million, of carbon emissions that can be released into the atmosphere before we cross the “threshold” of irreversible climate damage.  This underlines the importance of projects like UWCiM's which, together with others, can protect our precious environment.

                In the spirit of the UWC movement, we hope that our project will inspire other UWCs to initiate or continue their own environmental projects, and that an exchange of ideas will develop between the colleges, so that together, we can significantly reduce the harmful impact on our home. 

Simply Part 1

Mostar, Bosnia - six months ago I could not have located this city on a map, and now it is my second home, I don't believe that it is a coincidence that I am here, too many pieces of this crazy puzzle that we call life have fallen together in perfect order.  This first month at the United World College in Mostar has come full circle.  I started out in a completely new place, meeting entirely new and different people from all over the world, memorizing so many names and places back on August 28^th the first day of our official introduction week, and now I just greeted my co-year from Iraq named Hussain Aziz, who just arrived here in Mostar from Baghdad several hours ago.  First, I came here with no idea what to expect, and now I am introducing another individual to life here in Mostar.

On one hand my time here thus far seems like the blink of an eye, but on the other looking back so much has happened that it is incredible that it has been squeezed into the space of only a little more than a month.

Before I begin to relate all the amazing adventures, struggles, challenges, and new friendships, I am going to tell you a little bit about our specialized vocabulary here at UWCiM.  Since there is such an assortment of languages, we start to use a little bit of everything.  (Unfortunately, my English vocabulary and writing skills are decreasing, because the majority of people here do not speak English fluently, so their vocabulary is limited, but everybody is learning)

UWCiM Dictionary

            UWCiM – United World College in Mostar

1^st year (firsty) – students who are in their first year of the college

            2^nd year – students who are in their second year of the college

Note: If somebody refers specifically to “their” first or second year, it means from their own country.  My second years are Andy Hemphill and Leah Reynolds from the US.

Co-year – somebody who is the same grade as you

            Note: My co-years from the US are two girls named Ingrid Fiedler and Dane Jones.

Local – the language that we speak within the college.  Here in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are technically three national languages, Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian but they are the same except for a few exceptions.  We refer to it as local to avoid bias for one language.  Holding on to the minor differences between their languages is one example of the divisions that still exist between the ethnic groups here even so many years after the war.

Musala – one of the two college residences (my home) It is located next to Musala square, only two blocks away from the Neretva River on the East Bosniak side of Mostar.  It is approximately a seven-minute walk from school, which is very convenient with so many different activities happening at all hours of the day.  In addition, it is about a ten-minute walk to Old Town.  About half of the students live here, in a three-story building.    

Susac – the other college residence (with the blue roof, which is visible from almost every high point in Mostar) A long walk from school and from Musala, almost 25 minutes, but it has a great atmosphere.  Also a great destination for runs in the evening.  (On average, it takes about 11 minutes to run there, 30 minutes of socializing, then 10 minutes to run home before you are late for curfew)

Curfew - During the week, all students have to be in their rooms by 11 o’clock, on the weekends people over 18 can stay out until midnight.

Canteen – we have three canteens, one in each of the residences, and one at school, where we eat our meals and general centers of social life.  In Musala, especially people are always in the canteen cooking, eating, talking, playing music, chess, or studying.

Spanish Room – the center of college life, when the school first began four years ago all classes were held in this one room.  Now that we have expanded, it is our assembly room and the main study room during the school day.  It is on the third floor of the school.  Everybody goes in and out of the Spanish Room at least four times per day.  It is the heartbeat of academics and activities at the school.

The Library – It just opened a few weeks ago for the first time, and it is my oasis for studying and quiet solitude.  It was just remodeled and it is a beautiful, but small space in the attic of the Gymnasium.  Skylights let in streams of natural soothing light, and the big desks and study spaces allow me to spread out all my stuff, collect my thoughts and work hard.  Nobody dares to say a word above a whisper for fear of breaking the hallowed silence in the room.  The bookshelves are half-empty, but soon they will be filled.  All three schools in the Gymnasia share the library, but it is still a well-kept secret because very few people take advantage of the study space.

Velic – a house converted into more classrooms and office space right across the street from the Gymnasia.  All languages are taught there as well as some psychology and history classes.

         Gimnazija Mostar – Officially titled the Mostar Gymnasium.  This one building houses three separate schools.  UWCiM on the top floor and the labs on the second floor, and two national schools, one Croatian, and one Bosniak (Muslim).  Just as this country has three official languages, it also has three separate school systems – each learning according to their own individual curricula.  UWCiM is the first integrated school system in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina – teaching students in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian.  The building itself was just refurbished last year by a generous grant from the Council of Europe Development Bank to restore it to prewar conditions.  The building architecture is a classic example of Austro-Hungarian influence in the decades before World War I.    

Neretva – the river that flows through Mostar.  When the city was originally built, the river was necessary for trade in the southern region of Bosnia (back then referred to as the Ottoman empire) It also flows through Sarajevo from the snowcapped mountains to the north.  Now, it provides hydroelectric power – but it is quickly becoming polluted from sewage waste.  Protecting the Neretva River and its environment needs to become a priority.  During the first weeks of hot weather, it was a refreshing treat to go swimming.    

Croat – Hrvati are one the ethnic groups within the Balkans, and one of three constituent peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  They speak Croatian and are primarily Roman Catholic.  The western side of the Neretva River is known as the Croatian side.  (The school is located on the front line of the fighting during the war.  Susac is also on the Croatian side.)     

Serb – are another of the ethnic majorities within the Balkans.  They are traditionally Orthodox Christian, speak Serbian, and write principally in Cyrillic.  They are not a majority in Herzegovina in southern Bosnia, but are a majority in the Republica Srpska in northern Bosnia near the Serbian border. 

Bosniaks – are the third primary ethnic group in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  They are characterized by their connection to Bosnia historically and their Islamic faith.  Bosniaks live primarily on the eastern side of the Neretva river, where Mosques are abundant.  Musala is also located on this side.  The differences between the two sides of the river are subtle until you become aware, and then they are startlingly obvious.

Bosnian – refers to the overall national identity of all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  When people formally introduce themselves, they first say their ethnicity (Croat, Serb, or Bosniak) and then say that they are Bosnian.

Roma – The Roma people are known in the US as gypsies.  They live throughout most of Eastern Europe as primarily nomadic people, moving from camp to camp depending on the seasons and resources.  In Bosnia and Herzegovina many Roma are treated very badly, because during the war many of their identification papers and proofs of citizenship were destroyed, so they are denied many of the basic rights that are available to citizens, such as education, housing, financial aid, healthcare, and jobs.  Throughout the city, mostly around Old Town, some of them beg tourists and the people of Mostar for money.   

IB – International Baccalaureate, the curricula that all UWC schools follow.  www.ibo.org for more information J   

CAS – Creativity, Action, Service – part of the IB diploma requires all students to do at least one activity in each of these categories and log a certain number of hours over the two years.  I am doing as many CAS activities as possible; if it were possible, I would really enjoy doing all of them.  There is not a single activity not worth doing.  My core CAS activities are creativity: Model United Nations, MUN, action: Futbol, service: ecology group.   

House Mom – Her name is Sheila and she takes care of our residence.  She is strict and does not understand very much English – but we are all alive so far ;)

Head Teacher – Mr. Paul Regan is the head teacher of UWCiM.  His role is similar to a principal, and he makes all executive decisions about the college.  He is a very distinguished and intelligent man, who is very supportive of us as students and truly wants to keep building our college.    

Boom!  Roasted! – a phrase used when somebody gets majorly burned

BiH – Bosnia and Herzegovina

Roomies – roommates, mine are the best in the entire world (Shaked from Israel, Milica from BiH, and Maida also from BiH)

University vs. College – here University refers to that period of school after high school, College is the equivalent of high school

Futbol – soccer, as you probably know Futbol is a huge deal in Europe, and especially here in BiH and even more so in Mostar.  In Mostar we have two teams, Zrinjski and Veles, and the two support groups are the Ultras and the Red Army.  Zrinjski is the Croatian team from the West side (and they were league champions last year.)  Veles is from the East Bosniak side.  Tonight they had a match against each other and it is considered dangerous to go near the stadium because fighting regularly breaks out, and there are swat teams on the streets.  People here take their Futbol seriously!  (Don’t worry it sounds more dangerous than it actually is.)

Celsius, Kilograms, Liters, Meters (cm, km) – all the units that I need to use here, because nobody knows about Fahrenheit, pounds, gallons, and miles 

CIA World Factbook: Bosnia and Herzegovina

If you are interested about Bosnia and Herzegovina check out this website with very informative explanations and statistics.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bk.html

Mighty Mighty Mostar

Every where we go, (Every where we go)
People stop and ask us (People stop and ask us)
Who we are (Who we are)
And where do we come from (And where do we come from)
So we tell them (So we tell them)
UWC in Mostar (UWC in Mostar)
Mighty Mighty Mostar (Mighty Mighty Mostar)