On Sunday we had our fourth House Competition.

This was the MasterChef competition in which Leman 1 was tasked with creating a dessert to impress the judges. We put our best creative minds together and thanks to their culinary skills managed to put forward a good creation.

Our dish was a Trio of Desserts based upon the weekly fruit delivery that we received. Each week we are fortunate to receive two deliveries of fresh fruit which consist of bananas, apples, pears, oranges, etc. As sometimes we have more fruit than we need, we get creative and make desserts. However, for the competition, we upped our game from our traditional cakes and crumbles.

We had Red Wine Poached Pear with Swiss Chocolate drizzle. We had cooked Apple stuffed with Apple Crisp Crumble with custard. And finally homemade banana Ice Cream!

Our boys dressed up well and adorned the judge’s table with place settings, napkins, candles and classical music.

We have now successfully installed our Committee Member board in our Leman 1 hallway which is now alongside our House Captain Board.

The Committees are an important part of the Boarding Community and allows the students to have a voice and for their opinions to be sought on issues of importance to the student population.

We have our House Representatives who act as ambassadors for the rest of the Leman 1 students. They meet twice a month with Boarding Management to discuss issues which affect the Boarding House and to seek their thoughts on important issues.

We also have our House Mentors who are trusted members of the Leman 1 House who we have been given roles of responsibility to act as mentors to new House Members and those who need extra help or support.

We have our Dining and IT Committee Members who represent the House in sharing their views towards IT and the Cusine

So far we have had three House Competitions this first marking period.

Our first competition was the Sports Day, in which we had to compete head-on against the other houses in a series of different sporting events.

The second competition was the Quiz. We had to put forward our best two quiz masters of the House in order to answer general knowledge and CDL related questions.

The third competition was the Pumpkin Carving competition. This showed off the creative side to our House and we went for the pure Halloween scare.

With a House of 28 teenage boys, it can be a challenge to motivate them in many aspects. As they navigate these developing years they have a mix of priorities which are always changing and a self-imposed pressure to confirm and impress others.

We are extremely proud that they are able to put this aside and bonded together and formed a House spirit in order to want to compete. When they have put their efforts into it they have done extremely well, placing 1st in the Sports Day, 1st in the Quiz and 2nd in the Pumpkin Carving.

This weeks wellbeing tutorial was continuing on the second pillar of Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity.

We focused this week on Diversity. We have over 120 different countries represented in Collège du Léman. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to experience new cultures on our very doorstep.

In order to put this into perspective, we discussed as a group why we go on Holidays. Of course, the obvious answer is to relax and unwind, but if we think deeper about the choice of place we go to – it is usually to experience and try something new.

New food, new people, new scenery, new activities, new experiences- its all about exploring a new culture.

Being in an international school we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn about new cultures from each other.

We then did an exercise within our groups to really explore and gain information about each others countries.

We split into pairs and each pair had to answer the following questions about their partners country.

• An interesting historical fact
• Something unqiue to their culture
• A place in their country they would recommend to visit
• A geographical feature of their country
• The most famous person to come from their country
• What their flag looks like.

It was a very simple exercise but one that demonstrates how much we can learn from just taking the time to sit down with somebody different and to ask and listen. We encourage our students to mix with people from different nationalities and to take advantage of this international community.

Kirill blew away his opponents during tennis this morning . He seemed to be everywhere at once on the court.

This evening we had our annual pumpkin carving extravaganza.

This was also our third House Competition.

We put forward our best pumpkin designer and carver for this task who were Henry and Junqi.

They made a gruesome creation and we hope it scored well.

Bullying

We have now moved onto the second pillar of our wellbeing programme and our focus is on Protecting against Bullying and Respecting Diversity.

Bullying is a tragic part of many students school lives. A reported 1 in 5 students may experience some form of bullying. It is also an unnecessary part and avoidable!

In our small groups, we first sought to understand what the student’s definitions of bullying were. A few struggled to put into words their thoughts on this and from the different nationalities and backgrounds, we had different definitions.

What is Bullying?

When a person uses strength to harm others

When someone seeks to harm

Its an action against others to harass a single person

A repeated, unwanted, aggressive behaviour

Threatening, forcing and dominating weak people

We then discussed our views on this and agreed bullying had to be a repeated offence. That the act had to be unwanted and that it was an imbalance of power.

Our formal definition is

Bullying is a deliberate and repeated unwanted aggressive act or word, involving a real or perceived imbalance of power. Bullying can be verbal, social, or physical, and includes communications made in writing or electronically. Students who bully use their power to control or harm others. Power can be physical strength, popularity, or access to embarrassing information.

We then continued to discuss situations in which we have felt the impact of this. How this made us feel and what we did about it.

We then discussed what we as individuals and as a community could do to try and prevent bullying here.

The student’s thoughts were:

We need to be respectful of others opinions

We need to show an understanding of differences

We need to smile more

We need to be more resilient

We need to educate people on the harm of bullying

We need to show a zero-tolerance towards bullying and if we see something, then we should say something

Last weekend we finished our water programme as the water temperature starts to drop and we brace ourselves for the upcoming winter. Throughout the last months, we have enjoyed wakeboarding, banana boating, kayaking and paddleboarding. We are very fortunate to be so close to the lake and to have these activities on offer each weekend.

Last weeks heros were Vansh and Mikhail.

We are delighted to announce that Leo was inducted last night into the National Honor Society (NHS)

The (NHS) is a worldwide organisation established to recognize outstanding high school students. More than just an honor roll, NHS serves to recognize those students who have demonstrated excellence in the areas of scholarship, leadership, service, and character – the four pillars of the organization.

This weekend we had Dmitry, Kirill and Mikhail taking on the advanced biking activity. This is only for the most elite riders who elect to go off-road and into the forest woods to do the biking trails.

One of our newest activities which is turning out to be very popular is our cooking activity.

Each weekend the students have the opportunity to learn how to cook some fine dining meals. This is done with our very talented chef Fred.

This week it was Chicken Curry, however, as you will see from the presentation it is of exquisite quality.

We had Dmitry, Luther, Spencer and Junqi taking part on Saturday.

Admir, Adam & Tensho braved the cooling temperatures and went out on the lake on Saturday.

This week in our Wellbeing Tutorial we decided to get out and get active! Following on from last week in which we discussed exercise and activity we used our time to go for a walk.

Our mission was 30 mins of walking to the local supermarket and back. Secondly, we also ventured into Coop to find something healthy that we had not tried before. The boys took this challenge on board.

It was a good opportunity to get some fresh air, go for a brisk walk, mingle and talk. In the supermarket, the boys eagerly found new items of a healthy variety which they had not purchased before.

Zihao, Ayam and Vansh whip-up their patisserie skills at a cookery class, taught by CdL`s very own chef.

 
On Saturday morning, the advance mountain bikers take off towards the local forest. They follow the tree lined footpath that runs next to the local stream and nearing its source somewhere amongst the forest. The pace of the biking was fast, and everybody was working hard to stick together. Once in the forest, it was time to find  the central path, it is large and heads in the direction of school, and most importantly in travels down hill!  At the bottom of the forest path when the treeline comes to an end and the bikers enter the morning sun, a small drinking spring is located by  the path to provide the thirsty rider with a cold mouthful of refreshing spring water. After giving the legs a couple of minutes to recharge, onward towards school, the final one kilometre, cutting through the back streets of Versoix.

Bought you say……. No ! I say

The finest cakes you will ever see, made by the hands of our very own Ayam. Yum Yum!

For my Discovery Day I went to Château D’oex at the Swiss Leadership Camp  with all IB1 students, on the 17th to the 18th of September, it took us 2 hours to get there by a tour bus. I shared a room with 4 other students.

Upon arrival, we were separated into 5 groups according to our advisory class. We all participated in an activity called “The Amazing Race”, where we competed against other groups to finish as many activities as possible, to get points in 4 hours. We were supposed to navigate through a forest with a map, our group had 3 advisers. I was in group 1, the first activity for our group was tightrope walking, it went smoothly. Next, we had to build a catapult with bamboo sticks and rubber bands, we were supposed to shoot balls with it and catch it from a distance with a bucket, I was the receiver for my group, it took a short time for us to finish this challenge.  After that, we had to cross a river with a zip-line, my whole lower body got wet, luckily, I took my shoes off for this activity. The last activity was building a big pyramid with 4 layers of smaller pyramids also made of bamboo sticks and rubber bands, it took our group 16 minutes to build the whole thing. My group won The Amazing Race because most of us tried. Later that night, we gathered in our groups to finish our science group 4 project, part of it was entertaining.

The next day, along with 19 other students, I went to Leysin for caving, we wore wet suits, helmets and a harness. The entrance of the cave was very tight, so we had to apply Vaseline to slide through. After going through the entrance, we attached our harnesses to a rope, and we were climbing in the dark cave. The whole activity was over in about an hour, we hiked down to get back on to the tour bus and headed to school. The whole Discovery Days experience was mostly positive.

By Luther

This week we started the annual House Competitions. These are events and challenges run throughout the year which pits Boarding Houses against each other in order to have an overall winner at the end of the year. Competitions include cooking, skiing, quizzes, talent shows and many more.
The first event was the Sports Competition in which we competed against the 14 other houses in a series of different mini-games

I am very proud to announce that Leman 1 won!!!!

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