Holyoke teen shares his studies in Wales.
By JOSEPH KASS
UWC Atlantic College
Since the fall of 2012, I have been a student in Wales at UWC Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan, which is part of a group of 12 other schools around the world. It is not a “college” in the American use of the word because the school is only for two years and students go on to attend universities afterwards. The school follows an international curriculum known as the International Baccalaureate, or IB.
One of the college's programs that I have most anticipated is Challenge Camp. I love camping and everything that goes with it, even the mud, the freezing mornings, the early wake-ups. I enjoy being able to survive off of what I can fit onto my back for a few days.
I often go camping with my family at home (well, really just my Dad and brother, my Mom hates sleeping outside!). We have backpacked through the mountains in Maine and New York for a few days, carrying everything we needed on our backs. Comparatively, Challenge Camp was pretty easy and a lot more relaxing.
There was a lot of hype leading up to camp, which made it exciting and just a little scary. There was a lot of speculation as to how it would be, specifically if it would rain (as it does about 90 percent of the time in Wales) and, most importantly, how the food would be and how much there would be.
Now, I had heard multiple times “Your group can do whatever you want with your food. You can plan all the meals out to last over the whole trip or you could have a feast on the first day and starve the rest of the time”.
Naturally I was worried about food, because I am a big guy and somewhat of a big eater. As it turned out this was a needless worry. Even if there were six other big eaters like me in a group, it still would have been impossible to eat all of that food in one day.
One of the biggest “challenges” of the camp was to eat what could be five days’ worth of food in three. It isn‘t exactly easy cooking for a group of six, especially when people have dietary restrictions (and when we‘re missing the kettle and pot every other group had), but we made do (mostly by taking said kettle and pot from other groups when they weren‘t using them!).
The first day we started our activities. We had abseiling, that is rappelling, and mountain biking to start. For abseiling, we climbed up a few decent walls and then an amazing spire that had about a 50 meter drop on all sides. I‘m not afraid of heights, but looking over the edge made me a little nervous and thankful that we were strapped onto the rock, because the area in which you could sit or stand was probably 2 ½ meters wide.
Afterwards we got back to camp, got the treats we earned for doing well at abseiling, and ate while we waited to go biking. Mountain biking got off to a great start for me. After I made it over the small bridge from our camp to where we were biking, my bike‘s chain immediately slipped and got tangled around the wheel, so that it broke the gear change. I then got to walk back and get the bike that was affectionately named “the rock machine” because of how bad the wheels would spin-out.
During the bike trip, we had a couple of challenges that we had to complete, including carrying an egg the entire trip without it breaking, memorizing 12 pictures until the end, and getting above and below a horizontal wooden post without letting our bikes touch it.
We passed all the challenges and got our treat again. Not having to cook to get food was reason enough to work hard to get the treats.
At night, after we had all made our food and eaten it, we set up a bonfire. Sitting around the fire with everyone from camp will definitely be one of the things I will always remember from my time at AC. We had a bonfire every night and every night we told (or tried to remember) scary stories. After two nights, everyone had exhausted their supply of stories and on our last night, we ending up telling all the jokes we knew. We also toasted marshmallows as treats, which ended up getting pretty burnt, but were consumed rapidly nonetheless.
After sitting around the fire, we retired to our tents, which were actually pretty nice. We had all been told the horror story from others how it rained every day and how terrible the tents were. Thankfully, it rained a grand total of about three or four hours the entire three days, and only when we were canoeing and already wet or asleep in our tents. Our tents were also much better than our second years had last year, because they were practically brand new. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring anything to use as a pillow, but I was still able to get enough sleep.
On day two we had orienteering and survival skills. For orienteering, our instructors set up points all around the woods that we needed to find and then stamp our paper sheet. I have asthma, so it wasn‘t easy, but I was able to run for most of the time. We were able to finish the course in about 65 minutes which was faster than all of the other people in our group.
We probably could have improved our time, if we hadn‘t gotten completely lost in the middle of the woods for 15 minutes. Afterward we went to survival skills which was interesting. I learned all about different ways to light fires, using everything from batteries and steel wool, a flint and steel, and a bow to rub pieces of wood together fast enough to make an ember. We then got to cook bread, using our fires which was probably the best part. If there is a recurring theme, it is probably that I ate every bit of food we were given.
On the last day, we went canoeing which took the entire day. I entrusted my life to Sim‘s steering of the canoe, and thankfully Tomas and I didn‘t capsize in open water. We did capsize twice, but that wwas basically my fault. In all the excitement and joking around, I jumped into the canoe when we were still in very shallow water and it flipped right over. When we got to the part when we were supposed to balance and lean backwards in unison, so our heads touched the water, we successfully managed to not fall in. I then proceeded to show how “jerky, uncoordinated” movements were best for canoeing to Tomas and Sim‘s dismay.
Out of everything I have done in the past year and a half, I have to say the experiences of Challenge Camp will probably be one of my best memories from AC.
On Aug. 19, 2012, Unlisted board member Joseph Kass left for the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales to start two years of pre-university education at the United World College of Atlantic in the United Kingdom. Rather then complete his high school education at Holyoke Catholic High School, he got accepted to study for an International Baccalaureate diploma at the first school to grant this diploma as a gateway to higher education.
The college serves some 350 students, ages 16 to 19, and its campus overlooks Bristol Channel. Atlantic was the founding United World College that has programs in 12 countries. For more information visit www.atlanticcollege.org.
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