Liza practicing yoga on top of Monte Cristo

Hello, my name is Liza, I am 17 years old. I live in Russia in Krasnoyarsk. Today we went to visit the most beautiful island I have ever seen Monte Cristo. My impressions of that island are only positive. The island is absolutely gorgeous and picturesque. It seems that nobody has been there before. The one thing that made me worry is the rubbish. The island is clean but in the water you can see some rubbish that comes from the sea or from the different boats so people always have to clean the island to keep it beautiful. This situation made me think how selfish we are. Someone always pays for our selfishness. It is not so hard to keep your garbage with you until you will have the right place to put it rather then  to pollute someone’s territory.

Ciao! My name is Amy Wipfler, I live in the Californian Silicon Valley, and have recently turned eighteen. After a morning of pastries and strong coffee, we started the day with a rigorous cleaning, which I believe will be one of many more. Having completed our chores, we held a series of meetings, both indoor and outdoors, as we continued to approach Elba Island. As we discussed issues related to diversity, I felt that we began to create closer connections, as previously we had only dealt with superficial facts such as favourite foods and our desired super hero. Because we were finally thinking about and discussing with each other the major problems surrounding discrimination, we were able to actually connect to each others backgrounds and situations at a deeper level. The next activity that defined my day involved a swimming adventure. Many of the other members of the group had been itching for the last thirty-six hours to jump from the very tip of the bow into the Adriatic Sea. However, none of these eager adventurers were able to perform this feat during this swimming session. You may think that this would be the end of all swimming for the day, as did I, and I had noticed music coming from the mid-ship deck, so I went investigate. It turned out that approximately a dozen of the ship’s crew were doing an aerobics workout to music. As I was a fan of the songs being played by the aerobics instructor, and I had little else to do, I convinced Clara to join the other crew members with me for the workout. It was extremely enjoyable, and since we had entered the workout halfway, the instructor offered to extend it for another half-hour. I found at the end of the half-hour, was that the captain had offered to allow all of our group who had performed aerobics to be able to jump off the tip of the bow. Only three of us had joined for the second half, me, Clara, and Antonio. I figured that I may never again have the chance to jump fifty feet safely from a ship ever again, and so I decided to go for it. What an exhilarating feeling! I had never before realized how easy it is for your body to change its form as you drop fifty feet with gravity tugging, and so the landing in the water was much less than perfect. While the back of my knees may sting for the next day or two, I wouldn’t have exchanged that feeling for anything. We then feasted on pasta and chicken for dinner, and it seems that the crew have a surprise for us this evening (I think I know what it might be, but no comments now). All in all a very full and fun day, sure to be followed by many others. Signing off! Amy

Hi, name is Alex, I’m 15 years old and I am from the U.S.A. For the last two days, we have been confined to the boat with the amazing crystal blue water just tantalizing us all. Today for the first time, around four o’clock - we were finally given the privilege to plunge into the crisp but refreshing water. This was a much needed break for everyone from the stuffy cabins. But don’t get the idea that this trip is a bunch of kids messing around on a boat. We have all been chosen to represent our countries and ideals through thought-provoking debates. Today was first day in which we have moved beyond getting to know and trust each other to learning about each other’s opinions and possibly challenging them. Our focus for today was discrimination around the world and how we can prevent and cure it. The way that we go about discussing these topics is not one that you would call conventional but it easily involves everyone and creates creative flow that broadens our range of thinking. Today we started our discussion by making a list of how people are discriminated against around the world and we started to create still-scenes of how we envisioned each act of discrimination. After sharing our scenes of discrimination and some critiquing, we began to make scenes of how we can abolish these atrocities and begin to embrace everyone as an equal human. Even though we did not engage in debates, this activity helped us to wrap our minds around what problems we are going to debate and solutions to those problems. After a quick break to relax the mind and body we dove into a somewhat “heated” discussion over specific scenarios and certain places of the world that are still subjected to major discrimination. Today was an especially good day for me because on top of having a great day swimming, I have a great sense of accomplishment that what we are doing during these two weeks _will_ make a difference and hopefully mark the beginning of a better & brighter world.