Integration month
The view from on top of the hill
MUWCI… What a little word that can mean so many different things for so many people. In fact, this school is a unique place where everyone lives his unique experience. By writing this text, I would like to share MY experience and my meaning of MUWCI. I won’t be able to tell everything but I’ll try to share the maximum of this adventure with you. First of all, before coming here, I was asking to my self so many questions about my new life at 8000 km from home. I was wondering how would be my first contact with a student from the school, how will be the people I will live with and especially how I will feel. I remember my first “uwc moment”; it was on my second plane at the airport of Dubai. My co-year and myself were supposed to sit on the middle line of plane. After taking my place, I began to watch around me and discover the first faces of Indian people of my life. And then a detail kept my attention. A young girl was sitting on my right and was reading a paper with the “UWC” logo on its top. I realized that it was one of MUWCI’s first years too. I directly engaged the conversation and during the 2 hours travels, we experienced what will be the main conversation subject for the next 2 weeks: learn about each other. Integration week was full of activities to do. This week was planned to let us discover our new world. We visited and learned about the college and his bio reserve; we met the second years and the faculty. Everything was made to make us confortable and it worked. During this week, I also spent a lot of time with my amazing roommates. They were so kind with me. Well, after this discovering week, we began the serious part of our uwc experience: academics. We had to choose our subjects regarding to our preferences and to the presentation of the academic fair. I personally got lost between all this very interesting subjects. But I finally made my choice. This second week was our “trial week”. We were allowed to go to any class we want to try everything and be sure of our first choice. The manner we study here is completely different from my last school, at every level. First, we are a few numbers of students so the teacher gives attention to everyone. The courses are relaxing and interesting; sometimes teachers take us outside on the grass to work there under a beautiful blue sky. I enjoy going to school and learn from people coming from all around the world, which put us in the same situation. I’ve never been able to talk in English without difficulties before coming. But after only 2 weeks here, I improved my language skills more than in 2 years in my last school. Well, for the first month, we had to participate to many program including workshops and weekend’s activities. During the entire month of September, we attended workshops everyday to learn how to improve our skills, think better, organize ourselves, work and be in a group, lead, follow, begin a project and tons of others really interesting subjects. Then for the first weekend of September, all first years were divided into groups to go to different places nearby the school. My first experience into an Indian environment was during this first weekend was I had to go for a homestay in a family of a village at about 1 hour of walk from the school. After finishing their class, kids of the villages came to picks by group of 2 or 3 and guided us to their home. I will remember the hospitality of this family all my life. They live in a one-room house with the entire family and were obviously really poor. But, despite this situation, they made their possible to make us confortable. The little kid with who we were supposed to stay with took us to visit his village. We ended at the village’s school were the other groups were sitting with others kids. We decided to play a game with everyone, Kubaddi. This moment was so intense. I felt so happy to see this smiles on all the faces. At this special moment, I realized that as human, we don’t need many things to be happy, we just need good people to stay with. The dinner was amazing. There was no table, no chairs, and no forks but at this instant we really don’t care about the commodities. We just enjoy being here with this amazing people eating this amazing food. Everyone seemed to be so happy to host us. After a cup of chai, we went to sleep in the temple next to Ganesh’s statue. Not being Hindu didn’t prevent me to feel this kind of spirituality in the air. During the following Friday, we celebrated this very colorful festival, Ganesh. Ganesh is one of Hindus god. We heard stories about him and we began our crazy adventures going down the hill with this crazy tractor carrying a statue of Ganesh and this crazy color powder. Everyone was fighting till being pink because of the powder. We finally arrived at the nearest village where all the people were dancing following a quick rhythm before doing the religious ritual of putting Ganesh’s statue under the water of the river. The day after, I was going early in the morning for a cultural visit into a Hindi temple and a fort named Ticona fort. There is one thing I will remember for a long time: the view. After a “mini hike” up this hill, we could see the entire valley from a high point. This picture of the green landscape overhung by a cloudy sky is still in my mind. Finally, after a MUN break weekend, we went up the entire hill till Mount Wilkinson with an incredible young hippy adventurer named Ben to sit a few hours and meditate about this crazy adventure that we are living here in India and figure out what are our plans for the next days, months, years. By this time, after traveling in India for exeat, I can clearly consider myself as an accomplished MUWCI student. I learnt so much about myself and about so many people of the world and their culture. This mix gave me the need to discover more than “just” India. I learnt that despite being totally different, we are all in the same situation, making us closer and letting us creating unique relation with every single person of this original place. The strangers I met 45 days ago are now a part of my family, and more than that, some of them became my brothers. I’m sharing tons of instants of happiness as I’m sharing some instants of sadness. To conclude this little presentation of my experience here in MUWCI, I would like to quote a very well known word here that I, now, understand the sense: HOME. MY meaning of MUWCI is HOME…
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