Friends are a part of our lives. As the saying goes, a life without friends is a life without a sun. So, you can definitely see the importance of friends. However, friends can be divided into two groups, which are good friends and bad friends. When making friends, you should learn to distinguish between good and bad friends.

As for me, having one true friend is better than having a hundred bad friends. A real friend is someone who you can trust very much. You can tell him or her anything without reward. And you will treat him or her sincerely. On the contrary, a bad friend is someone who will try every means to obtain benefits from you. Thus, we must be careful in choosing friends.

A friend who always treats people with honesty is a good friend. Inversely, a friend who flatters you to your face is not true friend. All in all, we must make friends with those who have good character and a kind heart.

The worst feeling in the world is to be alone and have nobody to share feelings with.

If you share your feelings with a person whom you think is a friend to you, and that person does not pay attention to what you say, this should be able to tell you that this person is indeed not a true friend, because he/she does not care about you.

In short, friends play an important role in our lives. We seriously need to learn how to deal with the different kinds of friends we have, so we can not only protect ourselves from the bad friends, we can also stop wasting time with them.

by Ayam Anand

How to keep long distance friendships ?
Keitaro Tsutsui

Key points
• Keep creating your own shared experiences
Two things happen when you see a friend regularly: One, you
develop a collection of memories that both of you share, and two,
you have a more intimate understanding of what they’re up to, in
a general sense.

• Accept that it’s going to take more effort than it used to.
keeping the friendship alive across so many miles won’t be nearly
so effortless as getting it started.

• Help each other adjust
Being far away from a friend means that things will change. You
won’t see your friend as often, your lives will be different with
different people, and it’s even harder to stay in contact if there is
time difference involved. My advice is to not get mad when you
don’t hear from your friend for a longer period of time and don’t
be mean or jealous when your friend is spending more time with
other people.

• Hang out
Who says you can’t hang out when you’re miles apart? With the
technology we have now…

Conclusion
• It is hard to maintain friendship with others in distance but,
there is technology, and you can talk or hang out even you’re not
next to friends. Keep contact is the biggest key point to maintain
your friendship. Good Luck.

A sandstorm in Geneva… it’s not a common thing and not what we are used to have on a February day.
However in many parts of Switzerland, we were gifted with this strange phenomenon… on Campus and on the slopes.

This event took place in northern Africa and due to the strong southern winds, a little bit of it got to us all across France.

Little drops of sand and water fell from the skies leaving the floors, cars, benches with sandy stains which the next rains will certainly wash away 🙂

https://lenews.ch/2021/02/06/the-cause-of-the-apocalyptic-skies-covering-switzerland/?fbclid=IwAR0pH0vblvRxA9DNc0FZ9PfTScL8p6mQmqrjIWcMTWL3WQAEq6AL2ZbeHrg

Topic of today’s House meeting: Can virtual friendships become real friendships? Can they have a constructive place in our lives? Can we rely on them? Can we deny them?

These questions lightened an important debate and the truth is that we didn’t really reach a formal conclusion as there are pros and cons and it all depends on how we deal with the situation, how much we put into it and how much we ask from it.

We all acknowledge the dangers of the virtual world: fake profiles, dishonest people, scams and hoaxes are part of the internet these days and one needs to be cautious about it.

However, one can’t deny that there is still room for positive interactions and the possibility of connecting with people who might become important and be for us a source of support, friendship… or even more.

The fact is internet is becoming a lot like real life. Whatever you find in life, you may find on internet as well, only in a different shape. And the precautions we take when we meet someone in person, need to be adapted to the virtual world online.

It is undeniable that internet has brought the world together and that is actually the topic on our last Pillar, in our Programme. Our conclusion is that it’s undeniably a good thing but to be taken carefully and with a pinch of salt, aka care, since a lot in the virtual world, might just be virtual… and we are not.

An interesting discussion with a lot of good vibes and pertinent discussions… 🙂

With a smaller group than usual, we had a more informal House meeting. We chatted about everything in general, the past few days, the wellbeing projects, the plans for the break.

The difference between “peer pressure” and ” encouraging” was the topic to a small debate which allowed Aryan to learn the meaning of the word “connotation” 🙂

It was easy to find a consensus… in general, peer pressure is linked to something negative whilst encouraging is normally out of a good intention.

In Portugal we have a saying… “Conversations are like cherries”; you have one, and another one, and another one… and it was this way that we ended up doing a quick briefing on how these first weeks after the break have been. Ghassan confessed that it was taking him time to get back to his normal weekly pace but he was feeling more “focused” now.

These moments are quite invaluable, random conversations can be a source of appeasement and it’s good to share with the people who you live with.

For the Respect Week, all the Boarding Houses made an effort to show our Respect for environment and the places we call ours.

We have then organized a littler picking action with the rest of the Houses.

From Léman Ayam, Elmar, Iman and Raphael spent some time outside collecting rubish and cleaning up the beautiful pathwalk behind our school and the stream of water that runs along. The bag was fairly heavy of minor things who do not fit in a scenery like this. Mother nature is surely happy in Versoix.

There are no little efforts and the few bin bags CDL Boarding gathered represent the fact that if we all take care of nature a little bit, a difference can be seen.

Well done to all those who participated 🙂

A relevant topic of our Wellbeing session today.

We all have been exposed to peer pressure, we still are and somehow, in a way or another we end up conditioning our actions to please and be accepted. It all can happen in a very natural and subliminar way. It happens spontaneously and it’s hardly noticeable sometimes. It’s just there, wherever we go.

Anuar made a very relevant remark… as to how us, as adults, are still exposed to it. The conversation was enlightening and there are good news:

• As we grow older we tend to be more comfortable to say “no”
• There are positive types of pressure and these can be beneficial.

This topic feels like something absolutely natural, taken from our daily lives and it touches everyone in a deep and meaningful way.

… it smells deliciously 🙂

Iranian soup … Wellbeing at its best 🙂