1st Person

Waiting at home, away from family and friends

On March 16, after the school’s decision to shut down temporarily, I arrived home in Kathmandu, Nepal. Our usually unmanageable and crowded airport was almost eerily quiet, and I got out of the airport with my baggage much faster than ever before. Outside the airport, Kathmandu seemed to be its usual bustling self. Street vendors […]

by Archita Aggarwal

It’s not just my struggle, it’s ours

As one of the many Indian students at the school, I was able to go back home for the spring break, quite excited at the thought of having a stress free week, away from all the academic pressure. Little did I know that my junior year was about to hit rock bottom. There is no […]

by Jinho Yoon

Out of the frying pan, into the fire

On the morning of March 17, four Korean students and I entered the desolate Jolly Grant Airport, Dehradun, welcomed by the few that worked there with glances of suspicion and disgust. It was 10 a.m., a time usually busy for the airport with no empty chairs and long lines, but these days, rarely anyone wants […]

by Sanaya Mehta

Persevering in Ballet

A year ago, I was getting ready for the most important competition of my life. You’re probably thinking about a sporting event or something more on the educational side. Well, it was neither. It was a ballet competition. I had been training for over three years. Every day, I reluctantly got out of bed at […]

by Arnav Kumar

Far, far away: watching the last sunset over the village

Photo by Stephan Eicher As we looked upon our last sunset over Chopdiyal Village, the vibrant hues of brilliant orange melted into each other. We thought back to the impact this trip made on us. On the first day, we woke up to suffocating heat and the screams of village babies. “Aghhhh,” everyone groaned in […]

by Ryan Bajaj

Far, far away: rapidly rafting in Rishikesh

Two pairs of white eyes illuminated in the darkness merely 20 meters away from our campsite. Its eyes prompted horrified faces and shrieks of fear from some of my friends and I. We began to hear growling noises, but it didn’t come from the side of the beach where we saw the white eyes. Eventually, […]

by Janvi Poddar

Far, far away: bonding at a tiger reserve

Little kids chuckled all around me as they ran across the playground of a small government school, just a few kilometers from our resort. I hid behind one of the broken walls of the main school building with little Sunita, while one of the other kids looked for us. We were playing hide and seek. […]

by Raymond Chirwa

Far, far away: reaching Baiyan Top

“I am feeling so tired right now” were the first words I wrote in my sketchbook which would detail my journey to Baiyan Top. It was 6:00 a.m. as we boarded the bus for an 8-hour journey to our campsite. I was pretty excited and wanted to keep an open mind. Otherwise, I knew I […]

by Rushita Paladugu

Life as a freshman

I spent a short amount of time in Middle Years as I joined in 8th grade, but I loved every moment of it. Thus, the transition to Upper Years was filled with mixed emotions. The first few weeks of high school went relatively well, however, the classrooms and schedule confused me. Many people told me […]

by Nupur Agrawal

Understanding abuse

I felt really really lucky: lucky, privileged, and blessed. I was walking into the shelter with a huge smile on my face. However, the expression on my face couldn’t have been more different when I left the place. There were tears in my eyes and I was struggling to keep them from dropping. I had […]