written by Robbe Deryck (participant from Belgium, Flanders)
Before our first day of school, we visited the school to meet the principal. When we arrived, we saw there was something going on in front of the main building. Everybody was looking at us. We entered the building on the left side. Then we met the principal at her office. She was very friendly and excited. After that, we went to the front of the building. There was a kind of show going on where members of the school were dancing and singing. We entered the stage and everybody started screaming. Some of them took pictures of us. They even called me Ed Sheeran! They brought us a chair to sit at the side of the stage. Then I quick took a picture of the audience. I didn’t knew any of them at that time. If you look close, you can see that they are all looking at us, instead of the dancers and singers. Two months later, I saw that picture again and realized that it were all my classmates in the picture.
Photo 1: This were all the participants from Sorsogon chapter. From left to right: Me, Aili from Greenland, Jule from Germany, Valerio from Italy and Asia from Belgium. This picture was taken at the Buenavista Surf Camp in Gubat. That is the place where Jule lived. She was a volunteer. Aili, Valerio and Asia and I were students at Sorsogon National High School. We had a lot of adventures together that I will keep up for the rest of my life!
Photo 2: This my class. That day it was the Sabayang Pagbigkas. Each class got the same poem. The assignment was to present it as original as possible with the class. Because I couldn’t speak Tagalog, I was in the decoration team. We made our own outfits with the corresponding attributes. Unfortunately, we have become second in our series. But we did a great job, because the difference between the first and the second place was only 0.33%.