When Do We Take Action? NOW!

Posted on May 9, 2012 by admin

(Lakefield Ontario Young Round Square Conference: April 22-April 27 2012)

Last week, we had the privilege of attending the Young Round Square of the Americas’ annual conference, held at Lakefield College School in Lakefield, Ontario. Our French teacher, Monsieur Maurice, accompanied us. We both agree that this was by far the greatest experience we have ever had.

Nous ne savions pas à quoi nous attendre. Est-ce que nous allions écouter des conférenciers parler pendant une semaine? Nous étions excités de voir ce qui allait se passer.

We made long-lasting memories with our billeting families: Zack’s time consisted of activities such as bowling, while Holly enjoyed a succulent culinary experience every night, which was a great start to the week’s events. We were truly saddened when it was time to leave, yet happy to have had such a great time.

The conference was quite an adventure. People came from all over the world: From Canada and the United States to Bermuda and Peru! But the farthest travellers by far were from Tokyo, Japan. We met many people at the opening ceremonies, where we listened to what was to become our inspiration for the rest of the week. On the first day of the conference, it became clear to us that this experience would forever change our attitudes towards making a difference in this world. The first presentation was from a 15-year-old motivational speaker who impressed us to no end. Bilaal Rajan, UNICEF’s youngest ambassador, has raised over $5 million since he began his quest at the age of four, selling clementines. He is also in grade 11 at Lakefield College School, our conference’s host school. The main message he was trying to convey to us was: “When do we take action? NOW!” That was when it hit us, the eye opener to the potential we all had. It was at that point when we truly realized why we were, at that moment, sitting in that room, listening to Bilaal. The theme of the conference was immediately clear: “Find your passion, take action!” We too began to hope to make a difference in our world. But the question was how would we go about it in just one short week?

Puis, nous sommes allés au Camp Kawartha. Il a fallu affronter plusieurs défis qui nous ont appris à combattre nos peurs! On nous a dit qu’en essayant des choses qui nous font peur, cela élargirait notre zone de confort. Et nous pouvons vous dire que c’est complètement vrai.

Nous avons aussi visité le centre écologique de Kawartha où nous avons discuté d’enjeux et d’inquiétudes en relation avec l’environnement partout dans le monde. Nous avons surtout aimé le jeu de « Guess that Watt? ». Plusieurs appareils électroniques étaient branchés dans un appareil qui nous disait combien de watts étaient utilisés pour leur fonctionnement. Saviez-vous qu’un grille-pain consomme dix fois plus d’énergie qu’un ventilateur?

After an amazing two days in Lakefield, we departed for the Me to We Facility in Bethany, Ontario, where we spent the last three days of our trip. We were greeted after an hour’s drive by an amazing lunch for our famished stomachs. The food was fantastic! There was an ongoing competition in which we had to answer questions or partake in silly challenges before getting our food. Now, when do you think we ate?

Le groupe était séparé en quatre équipes aves lesquelles nous avons fait de nombreuses activités en rapport avec le travail en équipe et la communication. Souvent, nos yeux étaient bandés, et nous devions travailler ensemble sans parler! Nos solutions étaient toujours créatives. Nous avons aussi appris quel type de dirigeant nous sommes, et ce qu’on pouvait faire pour s’améliorer. Par exemple, nous devions créer une tour avec nos souliers qui étaient encore à nos pieds!

Of course, it wasn’t just all work and no play! We had our fair share of fun time, including many inside and outside games, campfires and two dances on the last night! First, some aboriginal dancers came in and had us certified in aboriginal singing and dancing 101. We competed for the title of best singers and made up our own dances. Then it was time for the “must have” social dance, where DJs mixed popular tunes to end the night.

On the last morning, we worked together with Monsieur Maurice on proving a formula that would lead us to make changes in our school. Passion + issue = change. We made a list of ideas and initiatives, which we intend to introduce at LCC.

Durant la cérémonie de fermeture, les directeurs nous ont demandé de réfléchir sur notre semaine. Plusieurs d’entres nous ont dit qu’elle était amusante. Ce n’était pas encore évident de voir comment nous pourrions faire une différence dans le monde. Mais, la réponse est venue comme un éclair : le travail en équipe et la communication. Il faudra surmonter tous les obstacles, prendre des décisions critiques, analyser nos problèmes et les résoudre. Avec tout ce que nous avons appris cette semaine, nous pourrons faire une différence. Nous avons seulement besoin de notre passion pour agir.

Over the course of the weeklong conference, we were given many tools and tips to help us figure out how to make a difference. We met new people and bettered our communication skills. This experience truly taught us how to communicate with others, and showed us what goes on outside of our little bubbles that we call our world. We made many new friends, and some were even teary-eyed as they waved goodbye to their friends’ buses.

This was a great opportunity for us and we are grateful to Monsieur Maurice for accompanying us, and to LCC for allowing us to participate in this eye opening experience. More than 25 schools and 85 delegates attended this conference, but LCC was the only school from Montreal. Round Square really had a great impact on us, and we are itching to put what we learned into action. We encourage anyone and everyone who has ever wanted to “be the change they wish to see” in their community to put Round Square philosophy in practice. – Holly Faria ’15 and Zachary Shine ’15

Peru: A New Adventure

Posted on April 4, 2012 by admin

Wow, I cannot believe that one month has already passed since I arrived in Lima. This trip has been more amazing than I ever imagined, the friends I’ve made, the places I’ve been to and the things I’ve seen are all unbelievable. Since I arrived, everyone has been very welcoming and so kind. My Spanish is improving, my understanding of the language is great and everyday I learn something new. I still have trouble speaking but I manage to explain myself with all the different words I know.

During my first week in Lima, I saw some familiar faces when I joined the LCC group on the Gold Duke of Ed trip for the afternoon at a service project in Las Palmas. Even though I only stayed for a couple of hours it was great fun helping, getting covered in cement and seeing all of the work LCC has done in the past year or so.

This week I went to Lunahuana on a four day trip as a counselor with 11 year old kids. Getting to know the kids was my favourite part. I had a group of 12 kids and we were three counselors: a French exchange student, a Markham Grade 11 student and myself. The kids all practiced their English with me which I really appreciated. I got very close to them and it was a different experience as before I had always been a camper but never a counselor. It was great to switch roles!

My favourite activity was white water rafting in level 3 rapids. We took part in lots of other activities like horse riding through the Peruvian mountains, zip-lining across a river, repelling and rock climbing and Inca-teering (exploring the old houses of the Incas, the founders of Cusco). Finally, we performed a service activity when we went to a primary school and made a vegetable garden!

Le weekend prochain, j’irai à Cusco et a Macchu Pichu ( une des sept merveilles du monde). Nous partirons pour cinq jours durant le congé de Paques. Je suis tres excitée mais en même temps un peu decue car une fois de retour de ce petit voyage dans les montagnes, il me restera seulement 4 jours à Lima et ensuite c’est le retour vers Montréal. Je suis tellement triste que cette merveilleuse experience se termine mais toute bonne chose doit avoir une fin!–Eloise MacIntosh ’14

My Exchange to Australia

Posted on March 30, 2012 by admin

I am very proud to say that I had the opportunity to spend six weeks in Melbourne, Australia. This was a great experience. I was welcomed into a very hospitable family who took very good care of me. During my stay, I had the chance of visiting many tourist attractions such as Australia’s Great Ocean Road, Eureka Towers and Victoria Market.

School
I absolutely loved my six weeks at Carey Baptist Grammar School. Carey is a school with very accommodating students and professors. During my stay, I was able to attend classes that are not even available at LCC.. Carey is a school where students can choose the courses they want to do starting at 8th grade. Courses that are required are: English, math, physical education, ethics and religion, science, history (only mandatory for 1 semester) and health. The students are to choose a language and three other courses of these choices: food, media, technology, fashion, economics, woodwork, metal work, French, Mandarin, Spanish, German, Indonesian, theatre, music, arts etc. … At this school there are four semesters and at the end of each term, students have the choice to change their course selections. I think the idea ofletting students choose their courses is a great idea. Students will be much more motivated to do well because they will choose courses that they like. Another thing I liked about this school, is that as soon as you leave a class, you are in the fresh air of the outdoors.

Eureka Tower
Eureka Tower is the tallest building in Melbourne and the second largest in Australia, measuring 297.3 meters. This building includes 556 apartments and is 52.000 square meters of windows. A total of 92 floor which is divided into 3680 stairs, a basement, a 9-story parking area, 84 floors of apartments (some are on the same floor as the parking lot) and an observation deck. It weighs a total of 200,000 tons. I had the chance to get to the 88th floor where there is an observation area. There are glass windows that gave me a spectacular view of the city of Melbourne. On this level, there is an area that is entirely outdoors in the open. It was fantastic. I even had the courage to enter a glass cube which is a kind of elevator that brought me three feet outside of the building. All this was worth doing for the spectacular view of Melbourne.

AFL Match
The Australian Football League is a crucial part of Australian culture. Every Australian boy or girl has a favorite team in this league. Australian football is the most important sport in the opinion of most Australians. This sport is similar to rugby, though they still have their differences. At every football game, there are about 36,000 people attending. Australian football is played in an oval of 171m by 146 m, including 18 players from each team are on the ground at once. I saw a pre-season game between : The Kangaroos North Melbourne, Hawthorn Hawks and the Richmond Tigers. The Kangaroos defeated the Tigers, Hawks beat the Kangaroos and the Tigers beat the Hawks. Each team finished the evening with a victory, which made my experience very interesting.

Melbourne Aquarium
The Melbourne Aquarium is home to over 10,000 animals. And there are many different creatures in the water such as: sharks, penguins, shrimps and even octopus. I really enjoyed seeing all sorts of creatures that I did not even know existed. One can find sea snakes, sea spiders, crabs and all kinds of fish at the aquarium. One part of it that I loved the most was a water tank of 2.2 million liters which had: sharks, jellyfish, crabs and all kinds of rare fish. This is the largest water tank in an aquarium in the world. I literally saw the creatures swimming around me. It was an unforgettable experience.

Melbourne Zoo
The Melbourne Zoo is where I finally saw a kangaroo, a koala and many other animals. The Melbourne Zoo is one of the finest zoos in Australia. It contains over 320 species and about 5,120 animals from Australia and all around the world. I especially liked my visit to the zoo because everything was very well decorated. The scenery was so realistic that you would thing that you were in the jungle by visiting the animals. When I was younger, I used to watch “Phineas and Ferb.” In the show, Phineas had a pet platypus. When I watched this show, I did not even know that a platypus is a real animal. Some years ago I realized that the platypus existed, so I really enjoyed seeing one for the first time in my life.

Vic Market
The Victoria Market is a major attraction in the city of Melbourne. It is also the largest open market in the southern hemisphere measuring a total of 17 acres. This market is named after Queen Victoria who ordered the British Empire from 1837 to 1901. This market is one of the three major markets of Melbourne which is still in place. The other two, the east market and the west market were open before the Victoria market, but closed in the 1960s. At the Victoria market almost anything can be bought: fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, clothing, jewelry, candy, etc.. I can honestly say that being in this market was one of my favorite moments of my trip. First, the atmosphere was incredible, there were many vendors shouting words such as: $3 watermelon, come buy jewelery, best quality clothing, etc. .. Secondly I really appreciated the fact that you could buy everything and at good prices. For this reason, this is where I bought most of the gifts for my family!

Great Ocean Road
The Great Ocean Road is an Australian national heritage that is 243 km long, in southern Australia between the towns of Torquay and Warnambool. This road was built between 1919 and 1932 by soldiers of WWI. This is the largest memorial of WWI. I had the chance to spend three nights and four days there. During my stay, I surfed, I visited a lighthouse and saw the Erskine falls. I liked surfing the most, of all things I did during my stay. Lorne is known for its excellent surfing conditions and I can tell you first hand that the surfing conditions really are great. The Great Ocean Road is by the Indian Ocean, which is very very cold. Therefore, we had to wear wetsuits. My exchange student and I were able to get up several times on the board. Having finished surfing, we jumped in the car and headed for the Erskine falls. The Erskine falls is a 30 m waterfall, in the woods. The falls and the surrounding landscape was really spectacular. When I learned that it had fresh water, I immediately tasted the water. The water was cold and tasted like bottled water, it was quite refreshing. At the end of the day, we were completely exhausted, but most certainly had fun. –Matthew Kaspy ’14

Peru Exchange: New is Cool!

Posted on March 28, 2012 by admin

Ever since arriving in Peru, things are very different—and it all started with the airport. When I arrived, I got a little lost because I couldn’t really understand the Spanish signs telling me where to go. But the airport is definitely not an interesting thing about Peru; there are much better things.

My first day of school was awesome. I met so many new people and wandered around getting lost looking for the classes. Even though people would tell me where to go, I still got lost. It was kind of scary when we drove up to the school. There are huge fences that have wires on the top with certain entrances with security guards watching. It was kind of scary but after a while I got used to it. The school itself is very different from what I’m used to. Everything is outside; only the classrooms are inside. The lockers are like you see in movies, with the locks built into the lockers and set up outdoors. On my first day for some reason the benches around the school intrigued me. The benches are made out of big pieces of wood with a straw cover on top of them. It looks really cool.

The first weekend, Eloise, Camila (her exchange student), Matias (my exchange student) and I went to a friend’s beach house, which was also like the movies. We drove on a dirt road overlooking a big cliff and then arrived at this garage. We walked down stairs for five minutes and then we got to this amazing house, which was completely built into the rocks and looked awesome! The house had an amazing view of the bay with really awesome boats anchored in the middle with the desert in the background. I didn’t really understand why there was a desert behind but it was just huge mountains of sand. Spending the weekend at this home was a real luxury.

During the first real week at school I learned how to get around and made many friends. The kids are really nice here. The school day is a little different from my usual routine. I wake up at 6:00 am to make it to school by 7:00 am. Classes start at 7:30. We have 40 minutes for lunch and a 25-minute break at 9:30. School ends at 2:40 pm. It makes our daily schedule at LCC look so much better. The one thing I am excited for is to getting back to waking up late, or at least 7:00 am at home.

The fruit here is probably my favourite thing. They have awesome smoothies and I have one or a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice every morning. Sometimes I go to Wong’s, which you can’t compare to any grocery store because it is too awesome. They sell 1 litre of fresh squeezed orange juice for 6.50 solos, which is about $2.30 (CDN). I love just eating fruit, and the mango is awesome! The school sells food too. The price is reasonable and it’s great! Their juice boxes are better than our Tropicana!

The two other weekends that I have been here, I’ve gone to the host family’s beach house. It is also amazing and very relaxing. I tried windsurfing at the beach. One weekend the wind was very strong so I didn’t have much success and the second weekend there was not enough wind. On the way to the beach there is a shop that sells small little breads (I’m not really sure how to describe them). They are very good and cost 2 solos for 10; not even $1 (CDN). They’re made in wood burning pizza ovens and smell amazing. There are long lines for the bread because everyone stops even though it is in the middle of nowhere. The only thing they sell is the bread, Coca Cola, and Inca Kola. In my opinion, Inca Kola really isn’t that good. To me, it tastes a lot like very bad bubble gum.

Yesterday, I went on a community service activity after school to this building that I think Markham owns. They are going to send students there to teach the young kids after school and tutor them. The students are still painting the building. I went yesterday to help out and we ended up tutoring a 9-year-old child. I was with a friend from school and she was teaching him, but because I don’t really speak Spanish well, I couldn’t really talk with him. He was a very fun little kid though who loved playing soccer, or this game where you catch the ball and try to throw it at someone (very silly game).

Tomorrow all of the exchanges and some S5s (grade 11s) and also the P6s (grade 6s) are going to Lunahuana. It is a four-day trip that’s a lot like the LCC grade 7 Nominingue trip. I am going as a counselor, which will be fun. I am very excited to meet the kids. We will be going rafting, Incateering, climbing, horseback riding, and hiking. It should be great.

My Spanish has improved but I still can’t understand everything and can’t speak very well. I know a few important things to make sure I can get home or get food. It’s coming along slowly. Most of the time at the beach everyone speaks Spanish so I try my best to understand but they speak very fast so it’s a challenge.

About a week ago one of my friends from Canada, Kristen, was in Peru visiting friends and family because she used to go to school here. She took me to her old school which was an American international school called Roosevelt. I was surprised to find out that even the social life was in English. It was nice to have a break from all the Spanish and hear some American accents. It is very tough to not understand anything that most people are saying, I remember the first week; by the end of the day I needed a break and wanted to go to bed early because I was looking forward to dreaming in English.

I made some friends from the American school and hopefully before I leave I can get together with them. It was very nice to see Kristen because she gave me a great tour of the city and also took me to some places I never would have seen.

So far Peru has been one of the coolest trips of my life and I’m excited to see what happens next, or what happens at Lunahuana. –Malich Altman ’14

Australia: New Experiences

Posted on February 28, 2012 by admin

For just over a week, I have been living like a true Australian. So far, I have had the opportunity to visit the CBD of Melbourne, attend a footy game and appreciate Australia’s outstanding nature.

Here I am at Carey Baptist Grammar School, a partly outdoor school in the middle of the summer, while back home there are temperatures of below zero degrees! I have learned many new things about a country that used to seem so foreign to me. I now feel like I belong, having done nearly everything that an Australian would do on a daily basis.

My host family did a very good job at giving me a warm welcome to this country. On the very first day, it was a pleasant discovery to taste Tim Tams, which are incredible Australian cookies! On my second day, I went to school and made many new friends. My teachers were extremely kind to me as well. After school, on my third day, I had the opportunity to experience some of the beautiful nature of this country. I went to Studley Park and enjoyed the view of massive and stunning trees as well as exotic flowers.

On the Friday of my first week, I had the chance to attend an Australian “footy game.” This sport is mainly played in Australia and is similar to rugby. However, in contrast to rugby, to pass the ball to a teammate, you are allowed to throw or kick it. In order to score a goal, you must throw or kick the ball through goal posts. It was my very first time even hearing about this sport, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching a game. The game I attended was a preseason game in which three teams played: the Hawthorn Hawks, the Richmond Tigers and the North Melbourne Kangaroos. That night, each team versed each other once. In the end, they each had one win and one loss. I loved this experience!

On the weekend, I visited the CBD, Central Business District, otherwise known as downtown Melbourne. While I was there, I went biking along the Yarra River. Just two days later, I went kayaking on the Yarra River! Both activities were very amusing and exciting. I found it quite interesting to travel to downtown Melbourne from the bike path and waterway as there were things that caught my attention from kayaking on the Yarra River that I had not noticed when I was biking along it.

All in all, this has been a most amusing week and I am keen to know that there is much more to come. I have yet to see a kangaroo or a koala, but by the end of my six weeks, I will surely have done it all!–Matthew Kaspy ’14