Jasmar De Torres

Well here we are… the last day of school just passed. Classes are officially over. And this will be my final blog. Out of all 5 years I’ve spent in RHS, I would definitely say that it’s this year that’s gone by the fastest. It’s also this year that I’ve enjoyed the most. A big part of that is because of the Global Perspectives program. The connections I’ve made with my classmates, the experiences that I’ve experienced, the lessons that I’ve learned, and the trip… I’ll cherish them forever.

To be honest.. I did not feel like a changed person right away coming back from the trip. It took me about a month to feel changed. The whole Global Perspectives experience is life-changing, no doubt. And about the change that I’ve gone through? Well first, I feel more “environmentally-aware” now than before… I also feel more aware of what I’ve been doing with my life and how I’ve been under-valuing my education. Now I know I’ve really got to step it up for my post-secondary schooling. The changes that I’ve gone through, I’d say, mainly happened because of my classmates. The connection I’ve made with them through Global has really exposed me to who they are. They inspire me to be more like them actually! Like Joyce’s green-ness, Nicole’s nice-ness, the IBer’s determination, Job’s awesomeness, Sandra’s positive energy and Bentley friendliness… I could go on and on about everyone but I won’t because I think you get the point!? haha. Well maybe you don’t get the point so here it is: My classmates have inspired me to become a better person. Before I end this topic… I just wanna do a long-delayed shout-out to Anthony Dang… also a fellow classmate who’s also made me a better person, thanks for everything pal…

I’m glad I’ve gone through the Global Perspectives experience in my last year in high-school and before my post-secondary schooling. It has truly made my grade 12 year a heck of a lot better.

I just experienced mid-blog epiphany. Like mid-blog realizations.. but better.

To the Fijians:
It’s your turn!! Get ready for all the super mega awesome experiences waiting for you! Take the torches, that we’ve been carrying, to Fiji… and go.. go light up their faces with this brand new school that you’re all going to build for them. Light the way to better education. It’s your turn to experience!
It’s your turn.

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Mongolia.
The land of Blue skies,
I’ll always remember.
I’ll never forget.
I love you all.

So yesterday, the Fijians were supposed to have their car wash event and we Mongolians were supposed to recycle the books that was in the global ed trailer but because of the weather and the fact that there were A LOT of people/cars at RHS, the Fijians couldn’t do their car wash. Instead, we all teamed up to clean out the trailer. I arrived at school expecting that there wouldn’t be pretty empty inside but wow was I wrong! The gym area was totally peanut butter and jam-packed with people. I walked around for a few minutes looking for some familiar and I eventually meet up with Sandra, Joyce, Puja, a group of Fijians, Kimran and finally Mr. Matheny (in that order!). From there, I think Mr. Matheny talked to the Fijians how you can’t control everything or something (I’m not sure because I wasn’t eavesdropping). But in the end it was decided that we’d clear the books out of the global ed trailer and bring them to the recycling depot. We started by pretty much taking everything out (because the books were all the way at the back) and then we loaded the books into our cars. Graham and Andrew showed up and helped with the book-transferring with their cars. We all left RHS as a caravan of cars and Tommy tagged along with me. The ride to the depot was pretty adventurous because I really didn’t know where it was and a red light cut Tommy and I from the pack which resulted in a series of driving fails that really doesn’t need to be mentioned here. ANYWAYS! We did make it to the recycling depot in the end; safe and sound!

At the recycling depot, we unloaded all our books onto three containers that were weighed on a big scale. Turns out we had to pay to recycle (what the heck!). But we did go through with it and it was all good. From there, we went back to the school. I dropped Tommy off and went straight to work. Everyone else who was there brought all the stuff we took out back into the container and I think it stopped there.

I’m really glad that I got to work with a lot of the Fijians, it really does show that we’re all just one big family (as others have already said in their blogs) and honestly If they weren’t there to help us out with the trailer-cleaning then we would have been there for a MUCH longer time. So thank you!

Post-Blog notes:

- Thank god I asked Tommy to come with me, it saved me a lot of potential grief.

- 4 missed calls from Joyce; sorry to Puja and Joyce who had to chase us because we took a wrong turn. My phone was on silent, my bad. (if you look at the bright side, it’s good exercise)

- And to Ms. Thomsing: I’m sorry you had to see that turn.

- I hope my dad doesn’t read this.

Today (our Pro-D day), we drove to Surrey to present to the students there about Global Perspectives and what it’s all about. I thought we’d have some time to prepare what we were going to say at the presentation when we got to the school but we actually had no preparation time at all. When everyone got to the school, we were immediately led into their theater room/cafeteria where we were to do our presentations. When we arrived at the room/stage, everyone was already seated and ready to listen to our presentation.

Even though we didn’t do any presentation practice, the presentations went very well (in my opinion). But then again I guess we kind of had some practice already from presenting to the grade 11′s a couple of weeks ago. We basically presented the same material we presented to the gr. 11s so yeah the content was familiar. We had two presentations back to back, I’d guess there were about 200 people in total that listened to us.

At the end of the second presentation, Mr.M quickly asked how many people would maybe be interested in joining the program and a majority of people put their hands up which was awesome. We’ve done what we’ve come to do.

After both our presentations, we went to eat lunch with some of the people who are planning to go to Malaysia with Mr.McCallum’s own GP program. Right now there are about 15-20 of them going but hopefully after our presentations, more people will sign up. So yeah after eating, we all headed back to RHS where we split ways.

Post-Blog notes:
- We met Mrs. McCallum!!
- This made my day
- Tamanawis (the school) was pretty big and the hallways are much less crowded compared to RHS.
- I almost got lost looking for the washroom… but thats ok

Yesterday, I went to my last orthodontics appointment. I was sooooo happy that it was my last one; my visits to the orthodontics are usually painful and boring but not this time. This time I talked with the orthodontists/dentists a lot more than usual. It started when one of the two orthodontists simply asked me:

“So, what’s happenin’? anything new?”

I didn’t really know what to say so I told them about our trip to Mongolia and what we did there. I’m really glad I did, it made the conversation a lot more enjoyable rather than if we’d have talked about something else. I basically started to talk about the program and what we’ve done in Mongolia. I told them how great of an experience it was and all that. They were genuinely interested in the topic that even when my appointment was “officially” finished, I stayed there for a few more minutes and kept talking. I also told them about the dentists and what dental care was like in Mongolia (which kind of spiked their interest because they worked with teeth too! haha). It was nice leaving my last appointment there on a good note(8).

Anyways, I don’t know if it’s just me or what but I really enjoyed talking to them. I mean like they’re like semi-random people who I talked to about the GP. I don’t know.. it just made me really happy HAHA. That made my day yesterday . If I talked to my sister or friends about GP, I don’t think it would of felt the same.

OH. I know why it made me really happy, it’s because they did not know about the program until I told them about it!(I just realized this just now). That was the feeling that made me ! My friends and my sister already know about GP so THAT’S why it wouldn’t have felt the same. I guess talking about GP to other people who don’t really know about it makes my day.

Wow, a perfect segue to talk about Friday’s event.

Yeah.. as for Friday, I’m lookin’ forwards to seeing and working with everyone again after not having done so for a while .
Excited to see Mr. McDavid’s school and future students of his GP class!  It’s nice to know that a program like this is not just in Richmond but in Surrey too.

See you guys tomorrow after school and Friday morning!

Just some notes:
-MID-BLOG REALIZATION, AWESOME.
-The orthodontists and I also talked about cars.
-I did not know segue was spelled like that, I spelled it segway and the red wavy underline popped up… had to look it up in Google .
-(8) = a musical note

Today we had our presentation about the Global Perspectives program to the grade 11s, just as the last year’s group did one for us last year. The presentation started out awesome! The video was really well made; nice job video team especially Katrina! I thought we did a pretty good job with our presentation even without any rehearsal time.

It makes me sad that our group will soon be replaced by the grade 11s and that our year is coming to an end. But that’s all the sad news. As Mr. Matheny said, our journey has really just begun; there’s still the rest of the year to look forward to and there’s no one stopping any of us from continuing to do good in this world. A lucky and deserving bunch of 30 grade 11 students will soon be accepted into global perspectives and begin their own journey. I wish the best for them and I hope they realize how great of an opportunity they’ve come across. I’m excited for the next group, I can’t wait to watch over them and see how they do !

Each trip is like a book, and every chapter represents an event or moments of the whole Global Perspectives journey. Today a new book for the grade 11s have already begun its first chapter. As for us grade 12s, we’re also beginning a new chapter; though a chapter nearing the end of the book as to the beginning.

Today we were given a new assignment; our final project. We’re supposed to find ONE picture from our journey that “represent something significant from [my] experience” and also one “that has brought change to your life.” I think this will be our hardest but most meaningful assignment we’ve done in class. This is one of those assignments that we really have to think about; it’s hard to find just one picture to represent everything. All those things aside, I think this will be a really fun assignment to do yet serious at the same time. I’m looking forwards to hearing everyone’s presentation and seeing which picture they’ve chosen.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like this year’s gone by so much faster than any other years. I mean it’s already April! As much as I want the last two months for the class to go by really slow, I don’t think it will. I feel like I’ve really opened up more with my classmates and after the trip I feel that much closer to everyone. When I came back from the trip; the depression hit me too. Everything I was doing seemed so “useless” compared to what we were doing in Mongolia. And now I realize how truly privileged we are to have education like this.

With my point from the 3rd paragraph, it seems like this book is being read too fast. It’s usually near the end of the book when the reader is really hooked on the story and just wants to finish it. But whoever is reading; they need to slow down!

Where does the time go?

After 5 days and a lot of hard work, the school is done. The closing ceremony started at around 3 o’clock and I could just see how happy everyone was seeing that school. Everyone was just taking pictures of everyone and everything. It was such a positive experience. After the closing ceremony, we all walked back to the dorm and we made a big circle of chairs and just talked. We pretty much talked about the whole trip in general and how we felt about it and everyone involved. I think this was the most emotional talk we’ve had so far. There were a lot of tears, but good tears.

Now I’m not going to lie, I was not feeling too well yesterday and I was homesick. I just wanted to be with my family and sleep in my bed in my time of sickness. Last night I had a dream; a nightmare. This is how it went:

I was back at home for the night with my family and I was resting on my bed. I woke up the next morning (supposedly today) feeling all great. In my dream, I realized that I really shouldn’t be at home but at the closing ceremony instead. I immediately checked for the earliest flight back to Mongolia; thankfully there was still a flight that would take me back in time (there really wasn’t enough time but when you’re dreaming, everything just seems believable). I went to the airport as fast as I could but it was then when I realized that I did not have my passport with me and that I left it back with David. I didn’t know how this could have happened but it was happening; there was no way for me to go back to Mongolia.

Then I woke up. It was the middle of the night and I was SO relieved that I was still back at the dorm and that none of it was real. What I’m trying to say is, even though I was homesick (so homesick that I even dreamt about it), I really don’t want to be back at home now. There’s still 1 week left of the trip and it’s going to be really fun; I wouldn’t miss this for my life.

6 days into our trip already! It’s day 3 on the work site and the school is coming along pretty well. I’m pretty sure everyone is sick to some level and we’re all pretty tired but that hasn’t slowed us down. It’s the supposedly “dreaded day 3” (on the work site anyways) but no one has gotten into my nerves or anything which is a good thing; thought I don’t know if this is the case for some other people. Sleeping is much warmer now that we’re sleeping in a dorm with heating. As for food, it’s been very “safe” for me; I haven’t gotten any case of diarrhea whatsoever even thought I did not take my diarrhea prevention medicine. I did have a bit of a stomach ache though; just once. Anyways, I think we’ll be able to reach our deadline for the school even with the delay we’ve had. I miss everyone at home but at the same time, I’, really enjoying my time here in Mongolia.

It’s been 1 night in Korea and 2 nights in Mongolia and so far it’s been an awesome experience. It was around -30 degrees Celsius at night which is the coldest night I’ve ever had by far. We all slept on gers on our first night in Mongolia and it was REALLY cold, mainly because the heating wasn’t working well (and the door on my ger just wouldn’t stay closed. We eventually decided to stay in a dorm where we all had to fit in 2 rooms because it was just too cold in the gers. At least we had a night’s worth of experience living in a ger. We’ve attended 2 cultural events so far and wow were they surprising. They had performances ranging from their Mongolian roots and performances with modern pop/Michael Jackson music which was thoroughly entertaining. The second one was even more surprising; it was really actually like a party, there was a dance floor and everyone just danced like it was Winter Formal again. On another note, the building of the school is going pretty well and even though there were problems and delays, the school will be done no matter what.
I can’t believe it’s March 17^th here already! Time flies by so fast.

March 12. 1:20 AM.

I can’t help but think: In about 12 hours from now we’ll be on board the plane to Korea, finally making our way to Mongolia. Just 12 hours. One night.

The past year leading up to this has gone by really fast, now we’re this close to our trip. These past 2 weeks especially went by in a blink of an eye; I guess it’s because everyone is busy preparing for the trip and finishing up school work that needs to be done. I hope the following 2 weeks don’t fly by as fast; I really want to experience everything and feel the impact of each and every experience because I know this trip will change our lives in a way.

Everything comes down to these 2 weeks. All the time we’ve spent fund-raising and preparing, all for these 2 weeks. And now just one night separates us from the beginning of something great.

Just one last night.

I can’t wait to work with everyone in Mongolia,
I can’t wait to meet the people there,
I can’t wait to tour the Land of Blue Skies,
I can’t wait to learn,
I can’t wait.
But I have to, just one more night!
THE LAST NIGHT.

We received very sad news earlier this month that Mr. Hammerschmidt would not be able to join us on our trip to Mongolia due to health issues. Of course, we all wish for Mr. Hammerschmidt’s good health and hope to see him join future GP members on their trip to another country. Replacing Mr. Hammerschmidt is Mr. Matheny’s cousin Dave McCallum, Mr. McCallum is also a teacher, a teacher in Surrey who is trying to get a program like this in his school which I think is great. I’m looking forward to working with and getting to know Mr. McCallum.

Though Mr. Hammerschmidt is no longer coming with us to Mongolia, it’s not like he just got up and left us. Mr. Hammerschmidt is still working as hard as ever to get preparations done for our trip to Mongolia. I don’t know the feeling of working so hard for something like our trip and then not being able to go on it but i’m sure it must be devastating. So I’d like to thank Mr. Hammerschmidt for helping us just as much as he has in the past regardless of this sad news.

We’ve been lucky enough to have a hammer with us to help build our way to the trip for Mongolia.  Though at one point the hammer slips from our hands, drops, and hits us surprisingly hard. But we endure the hit, and so does the hammer. Only a few seconds pass until we pick up that very same hammer on the ground to have that hammer again continue to aid us with our build-up. And then we see. We see that though the hammer was dropped and has taken a hit, the hammer still performs and helps us as well as it has before as if nothing had happened.

A hammer is tough and will persevere through the hits without compromising the job that needs to be done.