I arrived safely in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon, absolutely dreading going back to school. There was a bunch of homework I hadn’t done over the holidays, and I knew of two people who had decided not to return to LPC after the summer.
Third term is quite infamous across UWCs (and probably IB schools across the world) for being the most difficult and stressful term of our 2-year experience. Having only been in school for four days so far, it most certainly feels like I’m drowning in upcoming assessments. This term is the most important term when it comes to university applications, so it really feels like the last few years have just been building up to this term. Although I am rather stressed at the moment, I do think the anticipation of third term is worse than the actual thing. The main source of my stress so far is unforeseen events causing shifting of plans and added responsibility. There are so many things to do before the first-years get here and not enough hours in the day.
Tiffany (finally!) came back to school yesterday, and so we’ve now carefully arranged our furniture. While this room (1/106) is the same size as the one we had last year (1/105), we’ve pushed everything to the walls and so the room feels much bigger now. Our second-year roommates liked their own space, and they had curtains which created a “wall” about halfway into the room. Now the light is being let into the room and it feels lovely and airy.
Miranda mailed me this beautiful lantern and included a very cute letter. The lantern is now hanging on the curtain-rail above my bed.
This is the view from my room around sunset. It’s so nice to have a window corner – no wall halfway through the room this year! The light reaches the whole room.
I now have a camera (yayyyy!), so I’ve been busy taking pictures of anything and everything, so you can expect to be seeing more pictures in the future. Not until after I’ve finished my Math IA, though. For my Math IA, I’m modelling the number of illegal entries to Europe via sea, then integrating my functions to get the total number of migrants. The deadline was technically last night, but I’ll probably be finishing it tomorrow afternoon and handing in my hard copy on Monday. Cool beans.
What with all the homework and TOK presentations etc, I haven’t really left campus apart from going to Circle K to get a Diet Coke every couple of days – since Tiffany and I’s roommates last year gave away the fridge to someone else, this year I’m having to survive by buying drinks on a less regular basis. I suppose not having cold drinks easily accessible can also be seen as a good thing – no more distractions in my room!
The only relaxation I’ve had so far is with Tegz and Simran – last night Tegz and I watched Tangled, and right now Tegz, Simran and I are laying on the beds in my room, doing various bits of homework (or not, in my case?) and chatting about anything and everything.
Fun fact: in Mandarin this week, we’ve been learning how to describe peoples’ looks. While watching Tangled, Tegz and I had plenty of fun describing Rapunzel and Flynn/Eugene:
她有长长的头发。(She has really long hair)
她有大大的眼睛。(She has big eyes.)
他的鼻子很大。(His nose is really big.)
There really is educational value in everything！
Have a nice weekend!
Emma in Hong Kong 