Living in a boarding community and surrounded by an amazingly diverse range of people, it is impossible to not find common interests and make new friends.

We promote diversity and internationalism within boarding and encourage students to mix with people from other cultures.

With the huge amount of different activities, trips and excursions on offer, these are excellent ways to interact and meet others in the community.

Wellbeing Pillar 3- Building Positive Friendships

@thatboardingvibe Friends good friends #wellbeing #pillar3 #thatboardingvibe #schoolstaff #boardinglife #goodfriends #positivefriendships #toxicrelationships #rob #max ♬ You’ve Got a Friend in Me – From “Toy Story” – The London Film Score Orchestra

This week we continued on our Wellbeing Journey of Pillar 3- Building Positive Friendships. We explored the topic of Boundaries and how these should be a healthy part of any friendships, partnership and relationship.

An example of this within the context of boarding are the boundaries we have as part of our boarding rules, or indeed the agreements in place with roommates. These are normal parts of our lives. We should feel comfortable and open to be able to share our boundaries with friends too. Even more so in relationships.

Being so close to the Swiss Alps we have the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful snow on the mountains. Each weekend we have been able to offer activities on the slopes, from snowshoeing – to snow tubing- to sledging- and of course this coming weekend to Crans Montana for our 2nd Mountain Weekend.

On Saturday we celebrated “L’Escalade” a traditional Genève festival that celebrates the victory of the Geneva republic against the Savoy’s Army in 1602. Each year we buy a chocolate marmite full of candies. By tradition, the youngest and the eldest person in the room smash it.

For more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Escalade

Our amazing Amir played a stunning piece of music as part of his upcoming concert with the Geneva Conservatoire.

He did a fantastic rendition of Beethoven moonlight sonata 3rd.

Here is a small teaser….

This weekend we had our annual Christmas Dinner. A lovely opportunity for the whole Boarding Community to come together and have a formal evening. The students dressed very smartly and we had some beautiful food.

This week we had our Boarding Award Ceremony to celebrate some of the achievements made during 1st Semester. We acknowledged those in each House who showed outstanding enthusiasm, motivation, and involvement in the Boarding programme.

Winning the Boarding Life award were Gabriel and Karim. Both these boys are polite, respectful, and courteous to both their peers and staff. They are held in high regard amongst their peers. They are happy and willing to assist the House Parents and often take on extra responsibilities within the house.

Winning the Activity Awards were Ablaikhan and Hector. These boys enthusiastically participate in the afternoon activity schedule along with enjoying the sports facilities on offer during social time in the evenings. They also eagerly participate in the weekend programme, taking advantage of the trips on offer or the activities offered.

Finally, we also awarded those students who achieved the highest grades in their year. We were very proud that Gabriel and Nadim achieved these awards.

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On our journey for Pillar 2– this week we explored Community Service and Charity.

This is something we are incredibly passionate about in the Boarding Community. It is a way for us to give our time, energy, love and support to those in need or who are less fortunate. It is an important educational moment for students to learn empathy for others and to appreciate the position we are in and how we can use it to spread kindness.

We had our Boarding Counsellor come to give an introduction to Empathy. In her conversation, we concluded that empathy is the first step in making us sensitive to the importance of community service. When we help others, we express our empathy. When we help others it is the best way to combat social differences, and it also gives us a glimpse of the meaning of life from a perspective that is sometimes completely opposite to ours.

This week Dias gave the presentation.

This week we had a wonderful Lebanese dinner. It was another way we promote Diversity and celebrate the Internationalism that we have in our Boarding Community. Each week we have an offering from a different country.

This past weekend was another busy one. With plenty of activities on offer for the students to take part in. We had our usual offering of tennis, Cooking, Running, Volleyball, Climbing, Photography, Woodworks, Baking, Chess, Biking and Zumba. However this weekend we also had the charity events of Samedi du Partage a trip to Gruyere and our Community Service.

For this week’s part of our Pillar 2, we focused on Discrimination and Diversity.

This week Hector did our presentation.

Keeping Pillar 2 in mind, one way of promoting diversity and protecting others is to think of those less fortunate and who we can help. We, therefore, felt that for Christmas we could do gift boxes for those in other countries who are desperately in need of even the basic essentials, plus a little treat for the festive season.

The Boarding Community came together financially but more importantly with their time, energy and love to create these boxes.

This weekend the school had their first internal volleyball tournament. This was well represented by Leman 1 in which we had 7 students participating. As our students were mixed in different teams which means some more success than others, however, we still had Leman 1 players in the winning team!

This weekend we continued our weekly Community Service by tidying up our campus and the local area. We feel we have a duty to care for where we live and the land we borrow from nature. It is important for students to be able to give their time and energy and take this moment to reflect. Everything that they pick up, has been dropped by another person. If only we all took responsibility for our own trash and recycled it, we would all be living in a better place.

Following on from Pillar 1. We have embarked on our second Pillar.

Under the umbrella phrase of “Promoting Diversity and Protecting Against Bullying” we wish to focus on two takeaway points;

Bullying happens in different social settings – deals with the fact that bullying is not just related to racism and physical violence. It can be found in a lot of different social contexts and takes place for various reasons. It links with discrimination, and it is one way of expressing it.

Diversity: how can we work together? – As an opposite to discrimination we have diversity and all the options we have available to tighten our bonds and learn more about each other, again in a whole lot of different settings. Community Service and Charity allow us to perceive the world and people from a different perspective and encourage us to fight our stereotypes while at the same time granting us the possibility of working together for common causes.

Tonight we enjoyed the festivities of Halloween Night. The dining room was decorated, students and staff dressed up, pumpkins were carved and the party commenced at New Portena. It was a great effort by all and a huge amount of fun.

Today we had our second House Competition. As it was also Halloween night the challenge was pumpkin carving. Much to the tradition of House Competitions, some houses were very inventful with their interpretation of the expectations.

Community Service is something that at CDL we feel very passionate about and try to instil in all the students of the school. Within the school, they work on the REACH programme which promotes the students to address the areas of Health and Activity, Responsible Citizenship and Creativity. They must complete thirty hours per year during their school career.

Within the Boarding House, we accomplish many of these by providing activities and opportunities to take part in events and projects.

Today the students of Leman took it upon themselves to do some litter picking in the forest path running alongside the campus. This is a path used frequently by students and also the public of Versoix and it was therefore nice to show the responsibility we feel we have towards our local community and keeping it clean.

One of the wonderful benefits of being so close to the lake is the option to do water activities. These have ranged from sailing, paddleboarding, kayaking, wakeboarding and banana boating. This weekend we had the option of Water Skiing. Two of the Leman students who were experienced wakeboarders, but had never water skied, took the opportunity to learn a new skill. Both got up and did very well, while also enjoying the beautiful lake.

On Wednesday after our first Boarding Assembly, we had a Swiss Welcome Dinner. This was a lovely occasion for the students to dress smartly, enjoy some Swiss cuisine and meet each other.

Leman 1 is open and we can not wait for the school year to start.

We look forward to welcoming back our returning students and hearing their adventures from the summer. Additionally, we look forward to welcoming our new students who get to experience CDL for the first time.

This year the House will be staffed by Mr Rob, Mr Max and Mr Gordon.

Samedi du Partage is an event organized twice a year in order to collect food donations for the Partage Charity.

The Partage is a food bank in Geneva that collects unsold food items from local supermarkets in Geneva and redistributes these to where they are needed. Over 13,000 people receive aid from the food bank each year. In addition, the food bank packages 5000 emergency food aid bags each week which are distributed globally.

This weekend on Saturday they had one of their food drives in which they mobilse the public of Geneva to donate food items. We had volunteers from CDL located at the local supermarkets in Versoix to help with this collection.

This Saturday we had two teams competing in a tremendous feat of endurance.

Arsenii from the Olympus Boarding House had a vision and brought it to reality. At the start of the year he joined the weekend Running Club organised by Mr Rob. After completing his first 5km run he set his goal on being able to complete a marathon by the end of the school year.

Arsenii challenged his House Parent Mr Tom who is a cycling enthusiast to a competition. Could Arsenii complete a marathon in a faster time than it took Mr Tom to ride around Lake Leman? This challenge grew over recent weeks to create two teams.

The runners were Mr Rob, Coach Pierre and Arsenii. The cyclists were Mr Tom, Coach Jamie and Coach Moores. They did this challenge in aid of the World Bike Relief Charity.

Leman 1 came to victory again in their 2nd tournament match this time against New Portena.

Another step closer to winning the Boarding Championship!