Tea and things like that.

One world is only two weeks away and like most other students, I spend most of my time going to rehearsals/making costumes and trying to keep up with the schoolwork. There is a bad cold going around on campus and the stress-levels among students seem to be quite high. Pearson is amazing, but in times like this it is easy to get stuck in routines and become unable to appreciate all the beautiful things that are going on here. So other than studying, sleeping and rehearsing, here are some of the things I have experienced at Pearson lately.

For Valentine's day, some students and a teacher organized the annual Valentine's day dance. We don't really have any other "formal" dances, most of the times we just have parties with loud music and some improvised lighting in the common room. For this dance however, a lot of people dressed up really nicely, the cafeteria was decorated and a band from a local high school came to play. It was sweaty, fun and over way too soon. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures right now, but if I find any I'll insert them at a later point.

One Tuesday evening a bunch of students and staff went to the dress-rehearsals of the Opera "Lucia Di Lammermoor" in the Royal Theater of Victoria. About three times a year we get the chance to see different operas and no matter how good the opera actually is, just getting the chance to dress up, leave the college on a weekday and then turn up in front of the Royal Theater in a yellow school bus (like the ones you see in movies) makes it quite an exciting experience.

This week we had our last special topics day for the year. Special topic days are days with no classes, where the whole school listens to presentations/goes to workshops/does activities and discusses a specific topic or issue that we feel is relevant. We have had one about peace and conflict, the second one was about gender issues and the last one was about inequality. Our second-years had arranged workshops on different topics that had to with inequality, everything from sibling inequality, to inequalities in education, theater of the oppressed and a workshop about the economic theories behind inequality. It was a very interesting day, especially as I learned a lot more about the varying backgrounds of people at Pearson.

February in general has for me been a month full of birthday celebrations, walks in the forest, late night rehearsals and lots of schoolwork. Something that has made it a lot easier to find the energy to make it through is the fact that spring seems to have arrived. After a few days of sunshine and 11 degrees, flowers coming out and the days becoming brighter, I have a lot of faith in winter not returning. We'll see how that goes.