Fun with the Camera

Unlucky us, Amelia and I stayed at Luca's house up in our bedroom all of Friday night while everyone else got to go somewhere with their hosts (eg the Christmas markets in the center of Brussels). While Amelia was in the shower, I took out my camera and did some more playing around with it....Here are two of the best results.....

I love the colours in this photo and the way that the background is blurred....

Debate

Amelia was competing in Debate and Original Oratory. The Debate was hard work; she had to write two speeches, for and against Nuclear Power. (Amelia and Tari were pretty scary durning their affirmative debate. They kept doing 'points of information' and the opposing team were getting pretty scared! It was REALLY funny to see Amelia scare these guys who look like they write debates for fun!)

 And on top of that she and her debate partner had to do an impromptu debate as well. The topic for the impromptu debate was "Service to the community should be obligatory for teenagers." And Amelia and Tari were debating for that. 

The Semi-finals for Debate

Lunch Time!

After we had done our first round of disciplines, we went down to the basement to eat lunch. They have a pretty epic cafeteria, unlike our school (not that Mike's Place is bad, it's just not like this was...). They had nice pastas and yummy deserts as well as a hot food section and a interesting salad bar. 

My Disciplines

Maaike and I before our first Duet Acting

My first discipline that I would be competing in was Original Oratory. I have to say, some of the other speeches were pretty strange....The other two that I was participating in was Duet Acting and Oral Interpretation (reading a section from a book). The acting was meant to be light, so Maaike and I did a funny piece about two idiotic girls going camping. The oral interp on the other hand was meant to be serious, so I read an excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book about 9/11. 

Maaike and I had been practicing our piece for at least a month and a half and we were pretty confident with it (unlike another one of the acting duos from our school who forgot lines while practicing that Friday!), so we were ready to perform.

The judges sat at a table to watch us and graded us on use of space, characterization and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember. :)

The Theater

Unlike our school, the ISB has a proper theater, which is where we met up after ditching our stuff and had the 'Welcome in the Theater!' I'm so jealous of their theater, it was SO cool! I want one!! :)

So we got told what would be happening over the next two days as well as getting assigned a number (I was D39) and getting a water bottle. 

AMAZING theater!

Water bottle from ISB

ISB - International School of Brussels

The tournament was being held at the ISB, a preschool, an elementary school, a middle school and a high school. Oh and on top of that, they have their own 'chateau'. I mean, how many schools have their own 'chateau'? (And if you didn't know...Chateau = Castle).

So, on Friday, Amelia and I woke up at 6:45, ate breakfast and were out the door with Luca and her mum by 7:30. School was in session that day, even though we were basically taking over the top two floors of the middle school building. 

The 'Chateau' which is more like a reception building

The theater/gym on the right and the abandoned high school on the left (they were building a new one). 

Maaike, Ines, Fergus (who was the only boy on the trip) and Amelia.

We ditched our stuff at the middle school, where we ended up spending most of Friday. 

Bathroom Quotes

All over Luca's bathroom walls were quotes. Some of them were thought provoking, and some of them  were just plain silly like, "PICKLES :)" Below are some of my favourite ones