Ironclad

I have some pretty exciting news:
My school has been selected to be one of the filming locations for the movie Ironclad. They are filming at the entrance and the inner cortyard of the school as well as a few other places such as the principal;'s office and one of the towers. They are filming a few times over the next two months and will be filming all weekend. It is really exciting but sort of a pain because they have closed off the main entrance to the school.
But the best part is that....William Moseley is in it!!
Unfortunately I can't really see much of the set and we are not allowed to take photos of the stiff we can see but it is cool none the less

Buy some pancakes save the world

Not much has happened in the last week, but I thought I would tell you all a bit about the climate conference we had at our school on Saturday.

Last week was Evironmemental focus week at our school. All week there were various things such as talks on alternative energy, bike fixing and litter art. However the climax of the week was on Saturday when we had a big conference all day.
We has speakers for most of the day talking about different topics:

Tim Helweg-Larsen: the science and politics of climate change.
Roger Martin: population reduction plans and the ethics of population management.
Leo Murray: how to become an effective activist.

They were all very interesting. I especially enjoyed Leo Murray, who has done some very cool stuff around cilmate change and was really inspiring.
He is an animator by education and has worked on differnt films including a short called 'wake-up freak out' which I have yet to see. And he worked on 'The Age of stupid' which I watched during my first week here and was absolutely amazing (and very scary).

It was all a bit depressing, seeing as we spend a large part of the day learning about how little time we have if we do not want terrible things to happen.
However we also learned about (and did) a bunch of stuff we can do!

1. First off we learned about Cop 15 (which is a huuuuge UN climate negotiation conference) which is happening in Copenhagen in December. And we learned about the campaign 350. This campaign is trying to lower the carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm) from about 387. This is a crucial number to keeping our global temperature from rising 2 degrees. It is imparative that the governments of the world make real goals to meet this challenge in Copenhagen. So groups all over the world are taking photos of themselves in the shape of the number 350 and sending it to the UN. And so we did just that. We are sending our photos (joined with photos from all of the other UWCs) to the UN. There is tons and tons of other stuff that is happening through this organization. If you go to http://www.350.org/ and look at their map you can find out what is happening near you.
2. We learned about another campaign called 10:10. The goal is to reduce emissions by 10% by 2010. We are launching the campaign at our school next Saturday.
3. As well Leo talked about planestupid which targets the aviation industry because flying is the single worst thing an individual can do for the environment.
4. And then at our school we had a letter writing campaign to encourage global leaders to attend/ make real commitments at cop15. Most of the letters that were written were to Obama as he has stated that he may actually attend cop15, and a few were to senetors and some were to our lovely Prime minister. We managed to get 64 letters which is pretty good and we raised all our postage money by selling pancakes and chocolates.

Overall I thought the conference was really great. It was informative about why we must change but also gave us tons of options about what we can do. I know that many people don't think climate change is actually such a big issue and/or we can't do anything about it, but it is and we can. And if we don't do something now we will be remembered as the generation that could have saved the world, but chose not to.

a wee bit of fun

I have some very exciting news this week! On thursday and friday, all of the girls' dorms in my house got new carpets! The old carpet were really gross, and so although it may sound not very exciting, it really is fanastic.
Here is what the old carpets looked like:
ewwww
and here is the new carpet!!

wooooot!

For part of the year, every week has a focus. the first week was sports week. And last week was creative week. All week there was music onduring meals, and there were optional activities after dinner. On monday we made masks (I made one but it didn't really work so I threw it out). On tuesday we painted them (along with other random stuff like binders). I was waiting for someone and was a little bored and my arm ended up like this:

and my face ended up like this:

And then there were a few other things during the week like dance and painting/repairing bikes.

As well, every Thursday our house has an open house where we all chill in our house parents' house and take turns cooking for eachother. This week all the north america's got together (four of us) and made pancakes and maple syrup (unfortunately real maple syrup is very expensive to share and the bottle I brought with me was too small for the whole house so we had to make do with fake maple syrup [not that anyone but me could really appreciate how tragic it was]).

Someone has a recipe that called for whole wheat flour, and Laura wasn't sure if she had enough and so she asked me to go and get some more, as I was planning on walking into town later in the day. When I got to the store I searched and searched for whole wheat flour. They had everything else, but not whole wheat. So I walked down the street and went to the other food store and searched and searched there as well (and mom, you will be proud to know that I asked for help at both places!). But I couldn't find any. At this point I was in a big rush (I wanted to catch a ride with the kitchen van back to the school to save myself a 40 min walk or a bus fare). So in my hast I just bought country grain flour (my brain told me that grain and whole wheat must be the same thing).

When I got back to the house I told Laura what I had, and she showed me what she had: Wholemeal flour.

Wholemeal flour was at both the stores I had looked in.

I felt stupid.

Here is William, our chef extrodinare:

Tilda is not from North America, but we let her help :)

(she wishes she was from north america)

And Laura with our beautiful pancakes

In other news, my daddy visted me yesterday on the back end of his buisness trip in Ireland! It was really really nice to see him.

And he came to watch 'AC's got Talent', in which I sang "hiphopapotamus vs rhymnocerous" by Flight of the Conchords with Killian from my house. It was pretty sweet

Miss you all!

Who rocks the house? Morgannwg rocks the house!

Here is what I have been doing for the last few days:

1) watch you, me and dupre on friday. It was pretty funny

2) Ate the worst meal so far. I personally think the food is not as bad as everyone else seems to think. Because there is always salad and stuff. But even I have a problem with something resembling 'mystery-meat' in my vegetarian meal.

3) Went to Cardiff on Saturday. Due to some problem with the trian our 40 min journey became a 90 min bus ride. Nevertheless we (a small group made up up of first years froma mixture of houses) made it to Cardiff in one peice (I spent most of the bus ride fearing for my life because of the narrow streets). We spent the day looking for various things we had forgotten (it is apparently impossible to buy refill paper that you do not have to rip out of a book) and just wandering around the shopping area in Cardiff. For lunch we took the advice of our second years and went to a chinese food place called 'china china'. It was sooo good. And then we hopped on our bus where we met up with a bunch of other AC students from my house and almost completely took over the bus. Unfortunatley I forgot my camera so I don't have photos :(

4) watched a bit of little Britain on Saturday night

5) Went to St. Donat's church on the campus of the school. It is really old and beautiful. I love it.
And they had a welcome lunch for all the first year students which was really nice. Especially becuase it allowed me to meet some of the other students (there were about 10 of us) and some of the congregation.

6) played Basketball Saunday afternoon. and... MORGANNWG WON SPORTS WEEK. I think we get a house meal or something but I don't know

7) Sunday night was 'British National evening'. All of the people who live in the UK got together and preformed. Some of it was really strange but it was really funny! It involved: pregnant welsh teens, lots of swearing, mugging, 'happy-slapping', a lesson in Scottich lingo, some folk songs, the spice girls, the beatles, cross-dressed guys, construction workers, sheep, many jokes made by the welsh, scottish and Irish at the expense of the British, and handcuffs, admists other things

8) Homework. Lucky me

It was a pretty great first weekend

And away I go

Here are some photos of the last week or so in my life.

this door is for you Emily and Rachael.
It reminded me of the blue door from cornerstone. I would steal it for you but I am pretty sure that one of the teachers lives on the other side so.. probably not a good idea. You will have to survive with just a photo


A Narnian lamppost

Me beside one of the AC flags along the path to the castle.

They may be nice flags but they are super annoying because they squeak when they are blown by the wind

This door actually works! With my service we organize an activity for the kids we work with called attack the castle. We lower the door and throw water balloons at them and they have to try and open it or climb over with ladders and then take us prisoners (I have yet to actually do this but am quite excited for it)

Here is the dining hall.

I get to eat here three times a day!

On Saturday we were finally allowed to leave the college grounds and so a crowd of us walked the 2 miles to Llantwit (the nearby town) to look around and get stuff that we forgot. This is a view from the road we were on down to the ocean

These are two other girls from my house. Sarah (Ile of Man) is on the right and Nora (norway) is on the left

This is the nice welcome sign into Llantwit. Notice the convoluted and completely unphonetic welsh under the English

Here are some more people from my house. We were waiting outside for a few more people after raiding the grocery store.

Last Saturday the 2nd years threw a party for the 1 st years. Basically they showed embarrassing photos of us that they had taken in the first two weeks, impersonated us and gave presentations about how each service is better than all the other ones. After the show we had a dance (Sosh) that was themed 'gangster'. So here are some of the girls all dressed up!

From the Right:Nora (norway), Lin (Denmark), Sarah (Ile of Man), Maria (Spain), Laura (U.S.A.), Tilda (Scotland).

Because there are 43 of us in my house and there were only about 5 plates and 6 mugs in our kitchen our house parents decided it would be good toget some more plates. However we also have the problem that people eat food, and then rush off somewhere more important/exciting and leave their dirty plate sitting in the dayroom. To remedy this problem, we all painted our own plates and mugs and put our names on them. This way we all have something to eat and drink with and if we don't clean people know...and put the dirty stuff in your bed!

Here is my masterpeice with some of my strawberrys (look mommy I am eating good food)

Every Sunday evening we cleanour house and our rooms. This is my clean/organized closet.

I meant to have this photo right way up but it didn't work and due to the slow computers it wuold take too long to fix. If you are confused the shoes on the left are supposed to be the bottom of the photo.

On Monday evening after we had finished our service a gaggle of girls in my house and I watched Across the universe (which I really enjoyed). We all lay/sat down in one of the doors, hauled out various boxes of cereal and goodies we had hidden in our rooms and chilled. In the photo Lin (denmark) and I are expressing our love for both cereal and the movie...and no homework

Here is Tilda and Nora who were also watching the movie.

The Ultimate

I have discovered a new passion: ultimate frisbee.

It is sports week at my school which means that the houses compete in a different sport everyday.
Yesterday was tog-of-war. my house came second (butit was only because I missed it for choir)
Today was Frisbee golf.
After lunch some of the poeple in my house got together to practice and so when it came time to play for real I had a better idea of what I was supposed to be doing, which resulted in me scoring two points!

And even better WE WON!

It was awesome!

Anthem

My house, Morgannwg is the only house with an anthem.
It is pretty sweet!
Here are the lyrics:

In morgannwg
In morgannwg
we live in liberty and peace
In morgannwg
In morgannwg
Our love will never cease

We have a lovely Kitchen
With cutlery and plates
And plates!
And all our girls are ...
Which is why everone hates on us

In morgannwg
In morgannwg
we live in liberty and peace
In morgannwgIn morgannwg
Our love will never cease