ISTA Scene June 2010

I stay cozy with my parents at one side. My favorite
teacher is Miss Whitelaw. That is because she gives us
sweeties if we are very good, what makes us want to be
good, and she is an excellent teacher because she is fair
to everyone. I love Miss Whitelaw!
On Thursday I was so excited that I couldn’t wait for the people
that I was hosting to arrive! I was so nervous all day at school. I
couldn’t wait for the end of the day! We all went up to the
secondary hall and watched all our visitors coming in. When
everyone had arrived we were put into squadrons. Mine was blah.
We practiced all our instructions – Blast off!!! Zero gravity!! Heavy
Gravity and Code Red!!!
At the end of the night my parents and my visitors went back to
my house. My mum had made pizzas for all of us BUT she didn’t
know that they had pork in them. Polen and Defne were muslim
and they came from Turkey – so of course they don’t eat pork. We
had a few giggles about this. We had great fun gossiping on the
bed in my room.
On the Friday the weather was not great – this was
disappointing as we were on a day out in Lisbon. Although I live in
Lisbon I have never actually visited it so well!! We went to Pasteis
de Belem, Jeronimos, Discoveries monument and the Planetarium.
The bit that I liked most was the pasties de Belem (I bought some
cakes for us all) and the Planetarium.
On the Saturday here are some of the activities that I did: I
loved doing the red nose clowns! The clown race was really cool
too. Officer Godfrey was really funny! I also did drumming rhythms;
on drums we had to do lots of types of rhythms. It was really cool
plus it is really fun! I wish that I had had the chance to do all the
workshops. Then we started doing the Patso de Gama and I was
the President!!! At the end of the day my mum and dad took us all
to the beach first then to a Brazilian restaurant where we told the
waiters not to bring any pork to the table but I really wanted to eat
pork. Unfortunately when it came to the table I felt so uncomfortable
as the girls were staring at me!!! So I couldn’t eat it!!
On Sunday we got into our groups and practiced for the final
performance. I wasn’t nervous – I really enjoyed it. My mum and
dad came to watch. Then it was time for Polen and Defne to go
back home. I was really sad. We exchanged our e-mails and
promised to keep in touch. What an excellent experience.
I will definitely go next year!
A CAS PROJECT
By Joana Fernandes, chaperone from host
school, St Julian’s School, Portugal
I was responsible for the group that came from Dusseldorf. My job
started when I went to the airport to pick them up. We came back
to school by bus, one hired by the school. My group was the first to
arrive and activities would only begin in some time so I walked
around the area with them, including a trip to the beach. The kids
really enjoyed it, especially because in the middle of so much rain in
Lisbon, that day was particularly pleasant and sunny. When the
activities began I wasn’t needed so much, only at dinnertime and
when we had to allocate the children in their host families. The next
day there were no activities, the whole group was going on a trip to
Belém, an area in Lisbon with several monuments and museums,
interesting and very much related to this year’s theme. The day was
quite exhausting especially because of the bad weather, however I
think all the children really enjoyed it, and the adults did too! The
other days of the festival I wasn’t needed anymore since everyone
already knew their way around school so I only participated in the
two first days, overall I worked in the festival for about 16 hours. I
really enjoyed being involved in this project since I really like working
with children and I love seeing their enthusiasm in participating and
in learning new things. It was really fun accompanying them on the
trip and also to help them learn a little about the Portuguese culture
and traditions. Overall I think the ISTA festival is a great project since
it brings so many kids from so many different cultures to meet, learn
and have fun together for something so important, not only in
children’s lives but in everyone’s life, that is the arts. I would
definitely get involved in a project like this again. It was such a
rewarding experience that I would surely repeat. Having the
sympathy and love of children that barely know you, like it
happened to me doesn’t happen everyday.
I got attached to those children even though I got to
stay with them for so little time.
A few moments from the festival
My name is Joana Fernandes, I’m 17
years old and I’m Portuguese. I live in
Lisbon with my parents, my older
sister who is 20 and my younger
brother who is 11. I study at St.
Julian’s since I’m 6 and currently I’m
in year 12 of the IB. I intend to study
in London design for advertisement
and one of my passions is Ballet.
For the IB we are to complete a CAS project. CAS stands for
creativity, activity and service. This means that over the two years of
the programme we have to complete 50 hours of each of the three
activities. So I joined the ISTA festival to get some service hours
since this was the activity where I was lacking more hours. I had
never participated in an ISTA festival, however I roughly knew what
it was about. I knew that it involved several activities related to the
arts (drama, music, etc). In this festival I was a chaperone, this
meant that I would have a group allocated to me and I would
accompany and help this group throughout the festival, in this case
Scene | 2009-10 June Issue 4| 21