Erica Yokoyama (UWC AC ’11-13′)
2013 winter break; following the last winter break in Netherland, Italy and Turkey, I enjoyed one-month travel to Belgium, Norway, and Macedonia, visiting my friends. Here, welcome to my travel journals.
Lukas Hager (USA) (UWC-AC ’11-’13)
2008 was a simpler time.
On the first Tuesday in November four years ago, I stayed up late to watch the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, get elected. As a liberal from a very liberal family, the future seemed incredibly bright with the young, energetic senator from Illinois promising change and a new direction for a country that had been a source of embarrassment me for eight years under George Bush now in office. To boot, Obama had an unprecedented democratic majority in Congress, thus ostensibly making it easier for him to pass new laws. As a 13 year old, I envisioned a huge upswing for America in all respects. I bought into his message of hope, like many of my peers.
Four years later, I found myself sitting in the library watching coverage of President Obama’s race against Mitt Romney at three in the morning. The last four years hadn’t turned out exactly the way I’d expected them to. While managing to pass a monumental healthcare bill, Obama’s perhaps naïve insistence on bipartisan cooperation resulted in much less progress than many anticipated at the beginning of his term. I sat in that library, still an Obama supporter, but much less hopeful than I had previously been. Continue reading
Erica Yokoyama (UWCAC 2011-2013)
On July 27th 2012, the London Olympic kicked off with a glamorous opening ceremony, including a 2.7 million pound of budget, 15 thousand of volunteers, and 70 sheep, a lot of appealing materials were prepared for that moment. The 30th summer Olympics in London seemed to be amazingly cool.
Not only London, but also the whole world was heating up as the competition progressed. The marathon in the streets of London, tennis matches in Wimbledon, exciting games captured audiences’ attention. However, unfortunately, this London Olympics 2012 also became famous for so many troubles which happened during this period. I would like to criticize about several things which occurred in the hottest 19 days in the summer of 2012. Continue reading
Erica Yokoyama(UWCAC 2011-2013)
Since coming back to Wales after 2 months summer break, AC students have been working for each faculty. Now, our new ‘faculty’ system has just begun. We used to have 9 ‘services’-Life guard, ILB, Social Servic, Performing Arts, Atlantic Outdoor Centre, Estate Service, Media Service, Art centre, and MEMS for years at AC. However, from this year, new system called ‘faculty’ starts. There are 4 faculties, Outdoor, Social Justice, Global Justice and Environmental Faculty. We will introduce these faculties in detail, later through this blog.
Then, now in August period, we have just started working under new organizations. I used to belong to MEMS, Marine Environmental Monitoring Service, and worked for saving oceans. But now I am a member of Environmental Faculty and working for all kinds of environment. We still clean beaches, while we make a forest garden. Continue reading
Erica Yokoyama (Japan, UWC AC 2011-2013)
March 11th, this is the day I will never forget. One year has passed since Japan was hit by massive earthquake. 2:46 p.m. It was so shocking to see the photos of wall clocks which stopped moving exact this time. Magnitude 9, the fourth largest earthquake ever they started measuring. 15,854 people lost their precious life, and 3203 people are still missing. The damage of Tsunami was also tremendously huge, and 107748 houses were finally collapsed. I heard that economic impact reached 16-25 trillion yen, which is 30% of annual income in Japan.
♪‘We are going to MEMS Focus Week!’. The girl who came from Sushi country turned into Tuna and sang MEMS song on January 21st assembly. I thought it was really ironic because I was quite sure I consumed most Tuna in whole college! 3 days I engaged with marine environment a lot gave me a huge impact for my thinking.
MEMS- Marine Environmental Monitoring Service; People basically associate this cool service with Scuba diving session, but sadly they have no idea about what exactly we are doing except that. Actually, we have a lot of activities for saving our ocean. Sometimes, we go out of campus to clean the beach, to gather petitions, to talk and listen to people. On the other hand, we are trying to improve kitchen food for sustainability. Everyone in MEMS is really passionate about own project as well. We feel 4 hours in a week are definitely not enough. Also, the important thing is that our ‘marine environmental monitoring’ happens mainly in our daily life. I hope focus week became one of the good opportunities to know about us.
I have changed a lot through half year in MEMS.I knew that there are some hard facts about marine environments before coming AC, but I actually tried not to listen to them. We have to catch fish to eat, use ships to carry oil. We enjoy the barbeque in the beach and scuba diving in the sea. Everyone knows that we cannot live without ocean. However it made us feel like escaping from the reality. Human is selfish enough to destroy the environment and just leave it.
My most shocking experience during Focus Week was watching the movie of ‘the cove’. Before watching it, I had already heard from 2nd year that Japan kills 6000 dolphins per year, but I didn’t believe at all. Fishing whale in Japan is so famous and I used to eat whale in Japan quite frequently. But I had never heard about dolphins. On the last day of MEMS focus week, I finally got a chance to watch ‘the cove.’ People, Sign, atmosphere in the movie were so nostalgic for me, and soon I found dolphin fishing what happened in the movie was true. I was just so shocked and felt shame that I didn’t know anything about it before. I don’t think many people in Japan know the fact. In addition, I did some research about it and I found there are actually a lot of perspectives about dolphin fishing. It seemed a controversial issue. Japan has to preserve the food culture and food chain in the sea. I understand what they say too. However, as a member of service who saves the sea, personally I believe that dolphin fishing has to be stopped as soon as possible.
Many fish we are eating now will not exist 5 years later. But Farmed fish does not always become a good solution from aquaculture aspect. Still oceans are contaminated by human like BP oil spill. Focus Week made me think again about relationship between human and ocean.
Our sea is not a food generator, it is the place we are born and grown. We all who live in the earth have a duty to save our home.
MEMS will continue our marine monitoring until people notice how we rely on the ocean.
OCEAN LOVE,
Behalf of Marine Environmental Monitoring Service,
Erica Yokoyama/ Japan 11-13
