zimska šola
the biggest project i had been working on for the past month or so just came to an wonderful close. we just completed the slovenian winter school, and it was fantabulistic.
we had a showing of about 30 or so baha'is at one of the most beautiful locations i've seen in slovenia yet. kranjska gora is quite the mountain. add to that about a meter and a half of snow, and you have tons of picture taking opprotunities, and even a cute little movie.
along with the many slovene and croatian friends, we had visiters from belgium, germany, and the czech republic as well. it was quite the international school.
i learned a valuable lesson about planning with this particular school. actually, i learned many lessons, but the one in which i'm going to share here involves the program. i come from a school of thought that a program should be well structured, so as to build an idea of unity among the participants. they come to the school not only to learn, and to hear the valuable information being imparted in the class sessions, but also to build stronger bonds of fellowship with the other people that are attending. with largely unorganized time, it's hard to really build that sense of community, i think. so, we ended up filling the days with lectures. this is not exactly a good idea. while everyone seemed to feel well satisfied with the lectures, the most entertainment came from a very simple exercize. we all gathered into three groups. each group was given a copy of Lights of Guidance, and then given a question in which to research. the time we spent on this particular activity simple flew past. with all of us together, working together, laughing, researching, and talking together, it was one of the greatest elements of the academic program. i think that short schools like this need to be full of these kinds of workshops, if the schedule is to be academically full. because we're talking with each other, it doesn't exactly feel like time is lost in building those bonds of fellowship.
we couldn't stay holed up inside the entire time, however. the outside was just far to brilliant to ignore. we spent a few hours building snow structures, and it was terribly fun. everything from a snow-bunny to a snow-house-of-worship were built. we even had a group of kids build a preformance sculpture. instead of building the 'traditional' snowman like statue, they instead built a ski jump. well, a snowboard jump, but it's basically the same thing, the just used a snowboard to leap off the ice rather than two skis.
all in all, it was a fantastic winter school, and i'm looking forward to what comes about during the summer school.
we had a showing of about 30 or so baha'is at one of the most beautiful locations i've seen in slovenia yet. kranjska gora is quite the mountain. add to that about a meter and a half of snow, and you have tons of picture taking opprotunities, and even a cute little movie.
along with the many slovene and croatian friends, we had visiters from belgium, germany, and the czech republic as well. it was quite the international school.
i learned a valuable lesson about planning with this particular school. actually, i learned many lessons, but the one in which i'm going to share here involves the program. i come from a school of thought that a program should be well structured, so as to build an idea of unity among the participants. they come to the school not only to learn, and to hear the valuable information being imparted in the class sessions, but also to build stronger bonds of fellowship with the other people that are attending. with largely unorganized time, it's hard to really build that sense of community, i think. so, we ended up filling the days with lectures. this is not exactly a good idea. while everyone seemed to feel well satisfied with the lectures, the most entertainment came from a very simple exercize. we all gathered into three groups. each group was given a copy of Lights of Guidance, and then given a question in which to research. the time we spent on this particular activity simple flew past. with all of us together, working together, laughing, researching, and talking together, it was one of the greatest elements of the academic program. i think that short schools like this need to be full of these kinds of workshops, if the schedule is to be academically full. because we're talking with each other, it doesn't exactly feel like time is lost in building those bonds of fellowship.
we couldn't stay holed up inside the entire time, however. the outside was just far to brilliant to ignore. we spent a few hours building snow structures, and it was terribly fun. everything from a snow-bunny to a snow-house-of-worship were built. we even had a group of kids build a preformance sculpture. instead of building the 'traditional' snowman like statue, they instead built a ski jump. well, a snowboard jump, but it's basically the same thing, the just used a snowboard to leap off the ice rather than two skis.
all in all, it was a fantastic winter school, and i'm looking forward to what comes about during the summer school.