At the moment, we’re working on our yearbook. I am working as designer and co-leader of the project. So far, we’ve done huge portion of work such as design, data collection, planning and we started finalizing work. In week or two I will provide you with the final version of it.

       In this CAS I’ve learned a lot about communication, especially about planning and organizing projects, I improved my designing skills and finally, I collaboratively worked with others.

Links I recommend you to visit:

• United Words – The official UWC students magazine
• Facing “The SAT” – by Franjo Ivanković

       The idea of taking nursery home as my CAS this year was not as tempting as I hoped it would be. I took it because there was almost no interest and I automatically became student leader and only person attending that CAS. Soon enough I got two more students, Maja and Berina (Bosnia and Herzegovina); and, later on in the year I got Herda (Albania). First several times on the activity I was insecure and very scared for the reactions of old people – I simply wasn’t exposed before to so many people of that age. But soon enough, after several introductory sessions and a bit of chattering, I have made some of most valuable friends I have ever had. From them I got everything I needed – friendly smile and fun, but also very mature and tremendously valuable advices and tips for the life. I was taught that material is not everything and that no matter how old one was, they can always have fun and enjoy the life!

       We took our activity very serious though, we prepared numerous of games, activities such as theater plays, move watching, music listening, feast, tea parties and lottery. I can confidently say that the highlight of the year was lottery on the St. Nicholas day, when we were giving away various prizes to lucky winners (such as mugs, picture frames, food, decorations, and other stuff). Even though I can be proud of various moments such as playing chess, singing old traditional and folklore songs, dancing traditional dances and playing cards. As the spring approached, we often went for a walk around the city or by the river.

       All in all, I find this CAS to be very fulfilling and worthy, it taught me a lot about life and showed me how I have to appreciate life, differences, friends, family, health and everything I was given in my life!

        First of all, there is CAS which stands for Creativity, Action and (social) Service. It is great experience we have, especially when it comes about social service and it expands our horizons and gives us eye-opening experience that we’ll remember for long. It is compulsory to have 3 CASes they are so-called core CASes, each from one area – creativity, action and service and students are encouraged to take one more, additional. I have 3 core CASes, and 3 more additional ones. From action I took yoga and I seriously don’t regret taking it because I have problems with pain in lower back and this is helping me a lot, and it comes as good weekly exercise. When it comes about creativity, I have robotics, which is absolutely fabulous, the aim of the CAS is to build a robot for the US FIRST competition in Israel. I think this will be the third time we participated. I’m also part of Creative writing/Linking group where we attend all kinds of writing workshops and we also write articles for UWC web magazine. It is a lot of fun and it’s great improvement of grammatically correct and proper English. One more creativity CAS I’m taking part in is theater. It’s great explosion of amusement and fun, especially when we have projects of making theater play we perform in front of entire school. It’s a great CAS that leaves you a lot of space for imagination. But more than any creativity or action CAS, I’m most grateful for the social service CASes. My core one is Fun with elderly. It is volunteering in the nursery home, hanging out with old and helpless people from which some have disabilities such as blindness, deafness, or are not able to move. The saddest thing is how happy they are when they see us, because how lonely they are. I wish I could move in with them and hang out with them more often (we are doing more hours there than we’re supposed to). As the matter of fact, there is my article about this CAS in our school’s newsletter, you can find it in the list of links on the end of the post. The last CAS I’m active in is Special needs school. I think the name explains it all. We are volunteering in one special needs school in Mostar and it is great pleasure to be aware that tyou helped kids in needs. Well apparently I love these CASes more than I was aware, to make this post a bit shorter I’ll stop now (because there’s a lot more to write about) and I will promise I’ll talk more on CASes in the future.

        If you think that would be it, you’re wrong. Second of all, there are only six subject. But don’t let the number to deceive you. It is not easy to deal with those six, believe me, there are 5 too many! Now the catch is that even though we have “only” six subjects, we get complete general education (I’ll explain later something called TOK) and also we do in-dept study of six subjects of our choice. Firt of all there are levels. At higher level you’re expected to learn more and you have stricter criteria than in standard level. You have to take 3 HL and 3 SL subjects, even though there are exceptions when students take 4HL and 3SL or in some cases 7 subjects. Subjects are chosen as follows: Group 1 – studies in language and literature, popular as A languages. Here, most of the students pick their native language but also if some students are really familiar with certain language and they’re ready to work hard, then they also take it from this group. Group 2 – language acquisition, popular as B and ab initio languages. Those are second languages and languages “from the beginning” what ab initio stands for. Group 3 – individuals and societies, also known as humanities – that’s where you can choose from psychology, history, economy, geography… Group 4 – experimental sciences – also known as natural sciences – physics, biology, chemistry… Group 5 – mathematics and computer science, where one can pick from different level of mathematics or computer science, obviously. And group 6 – the arts, where you can take theater or visual arts, or if you’re not exactly artisctic type then you cane take one more subject from any of subjects from group 1 through 5.  Again you have huge freedom to choose whatever is your point of interest. Absolutely great, isn’t it. Well, FYI I took: Croatian A1 HL, English B HL, Mathematics HL, Psychology HL, Physics SL, Spanish ab inition SL…

        Third thing I’ll write about is TOK. It is an special subject you’ll get in second term of first year and deal with it till the end of the first term of second year (I’m about to get it). That is the subject that gives you the rest of general knowledge and the good thing is that you don’t get the grades from it but all you can get is an additional point in your IB diploma if you were good and active student and did your essay right. So like I said, here one studies about general knowledge such as sources and variety of knowledge, types of proposition, perception: the methods of natural sciences: the problem of induction, the methods of social sciences, deductive reasoning: valid and invalid arguments, some common fallacies, the nature of mathematics, mathematics and the physical world, historical knowledge, value judgements: the grounds for moral, aesthetic and political judgements, religious belief, free will and determinism, theories of truth and knowledge. So yeah they cover most of our national program except for Latin, don’t they?!

        So I could go on and on with these arguments that are pro IB. But there is only one contra, even though after you finish IB you put that one in pro group as well (that’s what alumni say), and that is – the huge quantity of work that has to be done. But yeah, that could also be a topic for itself and I might write soon about it so visit us regularly. Meanwhile, read more about what’s mentioned in the post:

- UWC in Mostar

- IB diploma programme

- UWC Mostar robotics team – Spirit of United Neretva (SUN)

- United Words, UWC student magazine

- UWC Mostar newsletter – December, 2011 (look for “Fun with elderly” article)

- US FIRST robotics

Isn’t it beautiful? I mean, the Old Bridge in Mostar, such a historical beauty, saw a lot, went through a lot, but it’s still there, today. And it is as beautiful as it ever was. I love this bridge personally because it represents some symbolic to divided community as the one I live in. And it shows that we can overcome the differences and stand together as unite. But the question is what’s the background story of this beautiful bridge?

Well you’re looking at really old bridge that dates back to 16th century, the Ottoman empire period. It crosses river of Neretva. The bridge was untouched for over 4 centuries until the civil war, when it was tore down. Over a decade later, it was rebuilt and open for the tourists and citizens. Ever since it is great attraction for tourists. Each year a lot of tourists that arrive to Međugorje, due to the religion tourism, also visit Mostar and the famous Old Bridge. But actually, it’s biggest fans are Turks who visit it throughout entire year. Fun thing is that one Turkish soap opera had scenes shot on the Old Bridge. All in all, it’s really famous and one nice peace of art, I would say.

There is also one more fun thing about the Old Bridge, and that are the jumps. Since I’m very lazy to write about that, I’ll just give you one nice quote I found on Wikipedia:

Others writing about old bridge:

• MIT: Bridging the divide
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Old Bridge area of the Old City of Mostar

Nature around my house is utterly beautiful and untouched. The picture presents the woods and grass-field behind my house. Since I’m living in the village, there is a lot of it around and so few houses and people. This grass field you can see on the picture is very important for me. In the middle of it there is one big perfectly shaped tree, you know then it looks like gigantic umbrella… Me, my sister and my cousins occasionally played there – we played ball, tag and even war, it was so much fun. In front of my house there is a little hill and on the hill there is one big stone. I don’t have any pictures right here right now, but I promise I’ll put one as soon as I go there again. And on that stone we were playing pirates and we were barbecuing each weekend in the summer. If you look on the side opposite of my house, you’ll see an endless are grown in tress and full of grass-fields that look like little spots. Somewhere between those trees there is one small cottage where people from the village usually come and have nice meals. I remember few Sundays I went there with my father or neighbors and I remember very nice delicious traditional food and a lot of fun driving in our pickup truck through the “wildness”. I have put wildness in the brackets because there are no dangerous animals. Only during the summer, there is one dangerous snake specie and it’s really rare. Maybe we had sight of black widow once in then years or so. There are scorpions here but they are really nontoxic and  not dangerous. And that’s it. Except for butterfly, you won’t be able to see anything else, except for cats and dogs. Though if you take dog and go to hunt, you can kill one wild animal or two.

In my lifetime, I’ve touched the snake 3 times and I wasn’t bitten ever. So yeah, not dangerous at all. I kinda love that safe and green surrounding I had in my childhood. I have so many memories connected with the nature and I have nostalgia for those good old moments.

Yes today’s topic will be about drinks, non-alcoholic of course. When it comes about non-alcoholic beverage, I like to drink pretty much everything except for water. My favorite ones are powdery drinks Cedevita, and my favorite taste is lemon (shown in the picture). And I love to combine it with cocoa and cold milk (also shown in the picture). It is actually very good energy boost. I drink that mostly at the times I have to pull all-night study for big exams. Also its really nice and tasty!

I also like to drink squeezed orange and lemon juice. There is nothing good as 0,5l of that juice in the morning or afternoon. Especially in summer because I just love it because it freshens me up and gives me strength to fight horrible Herzegovian heat.

Of course, as every other person who lives in Mostar, or somewhere around, I love coffee. Coffee is part of my everyday life. It’s my routine. When I’m in college, I drink it once a day, occasionally sometime in afternoons. But when I’m home, coffee is consumed at least three times a day. One in the morning, one after launch and one in the afternoon. It’s really funny how people here usually start to drink it at age of 14/15 and keep that habit forever.

All in all, I like to drink, we all love to. What’s your favorite drinks?

Yes, I’m serious! The third post in my 365 project is my living room. After all, that’s the place I spent most of my life in: long cozy nights with family, but long working nights as well… You know how weird it is when everything around you changes but you stay the same… Well I remember many versions of this specific room. When it was yellow and peach-color, when it was cloudy pink and soon it’ll be chocolate-brown. So many changes happened there for the past 10 years and I still love to sit there on the sofa, watch TV and be lazy. Well that’s why I hate this room – it’s very hard to concentrate your thoughts on working when you have so many memories…

Oh well, I could go on and on with this forever, but one thing I know, even when I leave (if I leave), I’ll still remember constant phone ringing, big spot on the wall reserved for my diploma, and all those bright and vivid colors that played important roles in my childhood…

My very first project week was awesome. I think I’ll remember that moment forever! On the picture on the left, you can see me with Melika and Merima (B&H) and Elena (Germany) in front of waterfall in northern Bosnia. We were on our very first project week. According United World College, project week is:

“In addition to community service projects that take place on a weekly basis in the local community, UWC also encourages project weeks, where students  are given the responsibility to identify opportunities and take the lead. Projects take place  at the local, national and international level.”

And if you asked me, I would say it’s one amazing week on useful fun! Project I was on this year was in Sanski Most, north Bosnia, in school of agriculture Sanus Futurum. We had task to explore the curriculum of that school (non-national) and life in it and compare it to our IB curriculum and life on college. I have to say that I’m very grateful for their hospitality and amazed by natural beauties we’ve seen there. In the following link, you can see the Facebook photo album where Sanus Futurum school’s page published some photos from our project week.

When it comes about project week, believe me, it is yet another reason to apply to UWC or even to support it because it’s amazing how it makes you grow as a person in just 7 days!

[Link to Facebook photo album]

 And in case you want to know more about UWC movement, visit following [link]! 

Second post in my project 365 will be about two little devils named after two saints – Ivan and Filip. They are the naughtiest yet most fun two little naughty kids ever. Both of them are my brothers. The one on the left is Ivan (6 years old at the moment) and the one on the right is Filip (5 years old). They’re so funny  and each of them has their own specifics what makes them special and awesome. Ivan is extremely smart, it scares me. He is so quick with answers and not rarely he will troll people. Whereas Filip is the funny one. He can make me laugh in any time and any situation.

The reason I put them in my second post is due to their amazing ability to instantly make me happy or laugh but also mad and pissed. But it’s fine I still love them no matter how many times they made me angry!