First off, I'm really not well at the moment so I apologise in advance for the lack of sense in this post.
Soooo, Linguastars. What an insane two days. We arrived at something like 9:45 on Tuesday 12th and had an icebreaker session to get to know the group. Our first impressions of everybody else? Well, we all had to make animal noises at people and 'find someone of the same species'. I was a chicken...I can't make chicken noises. Awkward. We then got given a bunch of balloons and straws and had to try and make the tallest tower out of what we had. Ours was, well, rubbish... The majority of our building time looked like this >>>
After balloon building we separated into language groups and the Spanish group went and sat in a computer room for about half an hour attempting to figure out what we were doing as our 'stand in teacher' didn't speak Spanish. We ended up doing some research on Universidad de Córdoba, which is apparently somewhere near Malaga. I'll warn you now, just for future reference, there is no information at all about catering at the university anywhere online. Guess what my research topic was...
After that, we went to an AMAZING Linguistics taster session with a cool Bulgarian woman. We talked a bit about grammar and sentence structuring in English, and then we did some Vietnamese grammar. I seriously shouldn't have enjoyed learning Vietnamese grammar quite as much as I did, but it was SO cool. Chim nyo ku'ng thay chim to - the little bird also perceives the big bird. And then we talked about Latin alphabets vs. Cyrillic alphabets and Chinese alphabets.
After lunch we had a terrible World Cinema taster session with a guy who just read out a research essay for an hour about western films. It was basically media theory but he got several bits wrong. From there, we went to our second Spanish session where the teacher, María, had us ringing her friend in Spain and asking him questions in Spanish. She started the lesson by talking about how she wanted to break down the fear barrier that language students have so she decided the best way to do that would be to make us ring her friend. As you do. It was a really odd experience but lots of people said afterwards that it did give them confidence, and it definitely did for me.
In the evening, we did 'University Challenge' in random teams. The best round was the playdoh/pictionary round where we'd be given random things to model and the rest of the team had to guess. I think my most random object was 'piano'. We also had to make a team mascot out of sweets... meet Nemo.
Wednesday began with presentation preparation in Spanish. We decided ours was going to be 'Cita a Ciegas' (Blind Date) where a uni student had three potential flatmates to choose from a lineup. After Spanish we had Russian (:D) where we learnt some of the Russian alphabet and were taught some basic words and phrases. The aim of the lesson was to demonstrate that learning a foreign alphabet, like that of Russian, doesn't have to be 'scary' or 'too hard'. By the end of the session, I was able to remember a fair amount of the letters.
We then had a UCAS workshop which was, well, dull, and then another Spanish session to finalise our presentation preparation and rehearse. My group ended the day with Interpreting, which was also quite a cool experience. We had to take it in turns to try out the different types of interpreting (English to English) including going into the booths and using the headsets or having to remember the entire speech and recite as much of it as possible.
The day ended with presentations and certificate-giving. Our presentation definitely got the best audience reaction...if only because Adam (one of the student helpers) was interpreting for everybody and couldn't speak any Spanish. I was the contestant that ''hated everything and only liked animals and fish''. It's interesting having to shout ''odio el helado'' and throw a fake ice cream across a room in front of complete strangers when you're losing your voice (if anybody reading heard me today, you may now understand why I could barely speak...) The two other girls in the picture are Carolina (in blue) - the shy one, and Becky - the insane one. Becky was one of my actual flatmates for the night we spent in Charles Morris halls and Carolina, I believe, was part Portuguese/had been brought up speaking Portuguese.
Overall, the two days were absolutely exhausting, but amazing at the same time. It was SO, so good to be around people with a passion an obsession for languages. There was one random guy who sat with us for lunch on Wednesday who asked if he could look at my apple juice bottle because it had Norwegian on the label. Yes! That is absolutely the sort of random thing I would do too.
Today was the second Induction Day at college and I was in English Language then on the Amnesty stand at the Enrichment Fair. More on that when I'm less ill.
Besos ♥
Rachel
Today was officially my last day of Y12. Tomorrow is technically the last day, but I'm at Linguastars (more on that later).
Firstly, what a weird day. SLT decided to cancel all morning lessons for CoPE people who still hadn't managed to finish what is possibly the easiest qualification the college has ever offered. So, it just so happened that I was supposed to be in Psychology first...which ended up being the room I was also supposed to be in to register with my form (which was handy, because they only announced it in the common room, apparently). I sat in there for about half an hour and then got told to go to the LRC where we all got very patronised by SLT. Because we'd all finished our CoPE on time and been 'good little chickens' (yes, I know, shut up Leon...) we were given the filler task of 'writing a letter to say how good college is'' to go in the prospectus. Most people didn't bother, I only did because I'm in SOS and part of the letter had to be about giving advice (which is what SOS basically are there to do). Plus, it's not like I had anything AT ALL to do with my day as all of my lessons were in the morning. Grrrrrrr.
Once we'd been freed from the LRC, Fern and I ran around trying to find all of my teachers so I could give them thank you cards and then we spent quite a while sitting outside B block talking with Sarah. We also had quite a lengthy rant to Suzanne (Head of Psychology) who seemed more than happy to rant back, haha. It was obvious from the beginning of the day that teachers weren't very impressed at the situation either. We then actually went in B block and I gave Nigel his cat mug, where I was also cornered by Lindsay wanting me to fill in a Poland feedback sheet, so me, Fern and eventually Eliza went and sat in Nigel's room while I attempted to fill it out seriously and Fern kept going ''I heart Poland'' in a weird accent. I think the heat combined with the weird morning sent her slightly insane...
There were some other things that occurred, but a) I'm aware this is all rather dull if you weren't involved in NC's latest surprise CoPE day, and b) I'm not entirely sure I want to share them on here (don't worry, nothing bad, I'm just strange).
It amused me that I started and ended Y12 in the same way - in CoPE. In that way, it's like I've come full circle and am back where I started. Yet, as a conversation I had earlier today pointed out to me, I absolutely haven't. College has changed me (a lot), and while I'm still deciding if that's a good thing, there are many things I'm thankful for about the college year (and also plenty that I'm SO not thankful for...):
New people: Keyana, Katie (even though I technically knew them both before, we never spoke), Adam (Amnesty), Kerry, Eleanor, Poppy (My CT!), Sophie, Jess, Jess, Jade, Bethan, Stevan, Emily, Becky (Team Sheepish!), James (Spanish), Chloe, Talor, Chelsea (English). The list could go on. I've met so many truly lovely people who might not realise quite how much I've appreciated getting to know them. There are some on there (e.g. Chelsea) who I don't even speak to much, but who are just genuinely lovely people who always, without fail, cheer me up when I do speak to them.
New experiences: Amnesty International group (obviously!), Rob's Mediocre Choir, Working Title, SOS, CIN/RND, Poland, languages study day, etc etc. The one I owe the most credit to here, really, is choir. I only went because Aiden was, and then I met Poppy who is just the happiest, most fun person I have ever met (PS: she's on World Challenge in India right now and I've been itching to share this link with you all). More than just making new friends, though, something about choir helped me to somehow find the confidence that I just completely lost when I started college. But if you've been reading for a while you might already know my thoughts on choir. If anybody remembers that afternoon after I'd spent all morning sitting in an office with Tim and my dad crying, you might also remember that I had a choir performance all afternoon. I wouldn't have got through that day without choir.
New outlook: Basically, my general outlook on college life at the moment is ''turn negativity into productivity''. I wrote about it in that stupid letter I had to do because for me, it does seem to work. I wish I'd spent less time worrying and stressing at the beginning of the year and just done something about it instead, but seen as I can't I owe it to myself to try and keep it up for Y13.
Tomorrow morning, I go off to a residential at the University of Leeds. Thankfully, it's only one night. I'm not a fan of uni accomodation after Brunel (it was basically a prison, made worse by the fact that my keys didn't work for either of the doors they were supposed to be for), but it doesn't look too bad for us. The residential is basically two days of Spanish (for me and James) and French (for Sophie) - we've nicknamed it 'language camp'.
So, while I may be ending Y12 in exactly the same way as it started, I'm also ending it doing the thing I enjoy the most. Not too bad :)
Besos ♥
Rachel
Soooo, Linguastars. What an insane two days. We arrived at something like 9:45 on Tuesday 12th and had an icebreaker session to get to know the group. Our first impressions of everybody else? Well, we all had to make animal noises at people and 'find someone of the same species'. I was a chicken...I can't make chicken noises. Awkward. We then got given a bunch of balloons and straws and had to try and make the tallest tower out of what we had. Ours was, well, rubbish... The majority of our building time looked like this >>>
After balloon building we separated into language groups and the Spanish group went and sat in a computer room for about half an hour attempting to figure out what we were doing as our 'stand in teacher' didn't speak Spanish. We ended up doing some research on Universidad de Córdoba, which is apparently somewhere near Malaga. I'll warn you now, just for future reference, there is no information at all about catering at the university anywhere online. Guess what my research topic was... 
The day ended with presentations and certificate-giving. Our presentation definitely got the best audience reaction...if only because Adam (one of the student helpers) was interpreting for everybody and couldn't speak any Spanish. I was the contestant that ''hated everything and only liked animals and fish''. It's interesting having to shout ''odio el helado'' and throw a fake ice cream across a room in front of complete strangers when you're losing your voice (if anybody reading heard me today, you may now understand why I could barely speak...) The two other girls in the picture are Carolina (in blue) - the shy one, and Becky - the insane one. Becky was one of my actual flatmates for the night we spent in Charles Morris halls and Carolina, I believe, was part Portuguese/had been brought up speaking Portuguese. 