Exeat in Mahabaleshwar

Olaa! (:

It's tuesdaynight now, and yesterdayafternoon I came back from exeat. I went to Mahabaleshwar, a hillstation on a three hour drive from here. When the British were here, they needed a place to go on a holiday, where the weather is cooler, so they decided to make hillstations: little towns/villages on the top of a hill. I went to what is called the 'strawberry hillstation': it's full of strawberry farms, yay! :D I was planning to go with my friend Louise from Brasil, but at the very last moment Rashi, a secondyear from Delhi, joined us. The three of us left on friday and shared a hotelroom, and the six others came on saturday. The hotel we stayed in was really shady! I paid 8 euros for three nights!! But the shower didn't work, there was mull on the walls, our window looked out on another wall and the matress was like wood. But I liked it! (: I had lots of dosa (a really good Indian dish, I think the best way to describe it is as a sort of very thin and not sweet pancake with masala in it), tons of strawberries and an overload of fun! We hung out with the whole group, there were nine of us: we went to strawberry gardens, went to viewpoints to see the amazing view, took a lot of touritsty selfies,... At night, we gathered in the most fancy hotel and played games together. There was a nice market, without cars, so I shopped a little bit ;) Strawberries there are really cheap (less than 1 euro a kg), so I brought 4 kg to campus! :D Something specifically nice about this exeat was that it was such a random group, no one really knew each other, and after these few days, we got to know each others and got close to each other! Here are some photos.

The whole group

Alvaro (Guatemala), Me

Louise (Brasil), Sonia (Poland), Daniel (Switzerland)
Rashi (India), Trisha (India), Ritika (India), Lan Anh (Vietnam)

The typical 'bar' in Mahabaleshwar
Rashi and me

Just another shop in India.. a slightly fancy one actually

Louisetothesecondpower

The view (on a viewpoint)

Strawberries everywhere!

From white to not so white

Sonia and the view

That will be enough photos (:

Except for this, nothing much is going on. It's still 30 degrees here (just to make everyone back home jealous). There was American Regional Evening last week, which was really cool, stuffed with latino-dances and more ;)

Here, an inspiring sentence to end with: 'I found myself alive in the palm of your hand.' THINK ABOUT THAT PEOPLE.

Yours sincerely,

Louise

PS: OMG I ATE A GRASSHOPPER!!!! I ATE A GRASSHOPPER GUYS I ATE A GRASSHOPPER. It was gross, but I did it! (: (: (:

The real thing

Hi there!

It's been almost two weeks since I arrived back on campus and the routine has come back into our lives. It feels like I have never left, but there are some small differences: there are now mice and ants instead of frogs, there's a lot of Belgian chocolate in my cupboard and the campus is more beatiful than before. The weather is comparable to a summer in "le Sud de France"  and the overall scenery became a bit more yellow/green-ish, because there is no more rain now.
And then there is one big difference: the weight on my shoulders! Our secondyears had always told us how the second term would be so much more work and stress than the first term, but I didn't think it would be such a big difference. When I was in the first term, I thought I had a lot of work and stress, but only now I realize that the first term was a party, which is now over.
But that doesn't have to be a bad thing! It is very normal that they gave us the first term to adjust to this college and campuslife, and that now, the time for work has come. The holiday is over, this is the real thing. At least, that's what I think, let's see what my secondyears would say about that! :)

Sad news is reigning on campus: 9 faculty are leaving in May. With the departure of one of my favourite persons in MUWCI in December, and now the departure of another 9 faculty, we as firstyears feel kind of left over, without our secondyears (which is normal, but hard anyway) and now also without 1/3 of our faculty. I wonder what MUWCI will be like without these people here.

So, what is happening in the trivenis or other activities?

• Breathing yoga
  I am not the kind of person who can be very serious and deep and all that kind of things oftenly, so most of the times, I am just laughing inside about what we have to do, and how funny it would look if a camera was filming us. But when I am actually in that kind of mood it's a really nice moment to relax.
• Girls' football
  I've wanted to attend this triveni from the beginning on, but somehow it never worked out in the first term, so now I officialy joined this triveni. There's four of us, which is really funny, and we're training a bit on shooting and passing and stuff, it's really low expectation and the most important part for us is to run around and have fun I think (:
• Night school
  I really enjoy this triveni! Teaching the guards gives me a lot of satisfaction. It is so nice to see how they progressed throughout the first term. This is an activity that really makes me feel like I'm useful, which is, I can assure you, a very nice feeling.
• Cooking Club
  My first Cooking Club session will be happening in two days, so there's not a lot to say so far. What I can say, is that this term's goal is that we, as members of the Cooking Club, will all lead one or more session, making food typical for our home country! I'm excited! Anyone any ideas what I could do for Belgium? (:
• Gomukh On Campus
  Though I joined this triveni late in the first term, it has become one of my favourites. Maybe I haven't explained what Gomukh exactly is? Gomukh has its own on-campus farm, where we are ORGANICALLY growing all kinds of vegetables, fruits and herbs. There's also a Gomukh off campus ORGANIC farm, but I never went there, since Gomukh is not my CE. In last session, someone from off-campus came to talk to us about different crops, when to plant them etc. My good friend Louise (yes, she has the same name as I do) and I made a crop calendar with all this information, so now we know exactly what to do and when to do it. The nice thing about Gomukh is that it's one big whole: there's the on campus and the off campus farm, there is farmers market every friday (we're selling ORGANIC stuff: all kinds of food, toiletries, notebooks,...) and there is community kitchen every saturday (some people make dinner with the ORGANIC ingredients from the farmers market, and than other people who signed up can come & everyone has a nice meal together.) As you can see in how much I wrote about Gomukh, I'm very enthusiastic about this triveni.
• Fun with Tiny Tots
  FWTT is my CE, and thus very important. I must say that I like it more now than I did in the first term. This triveni started this year, so in the beginning, we weren't sure about what exactly we wanted to do: teaching English, playing,...? We have now found a good balance between teaching them English in the classroom and teaching them outdoor through doing activities like making origami, teaching them dances, organising a sports afternoon,...
• UWC Skills Course
  After the break, UWC Skills course completely changed. Before, this weekly session was guided by MUWCI's head of UWC experience: Usha, one of my favourite people on campus. Every weednesday night, we came together and discussed culture, MUWCI,... Sadly, Usha left campus for good in December, due to health problems, and now the UWC Skills Course has undergone a transformation. It is now lead by Raïsa, head of Communication, and she is now teaching us about facilitation. I think facilitating is a skill I'll be able to use later too.

Tonight we're having a woodfire pizza event, hosted by Gomukh! We're fundraising for someone in the off-campus, who has leukemia and needs money for the operation. We are going to make a fire, there will be a silent movie playing,... I'm helping out and I'm really excited for it!

Before that, there's a sessino to reform our triveni program. There are some aspects of our current triveni program which could improve, so we will be having meetings regularly from now on, to discuss what exactly we want and what we don't want. We're planning for a complete change, so future firstyears, be prepared! :D

That will be it for now! Sitting on the wall of my courtyard, I can see some Gomukh people making pizzadough. It's friday afternoon, that means no homework, so I'll go see if there's anything I can do.

Love
Louise

PS: Applicants for the Belgian National Committee will know soon if they got through the first round. Good luck guys, you can do it!