The First of May - in Britain (this year) just known as May Bank Holiday - is in fact a special day in many ways. It ushers in the most beautiful month of the entire year. It is the day of an ancient central and northern European pagan tradition which celebrates the halfway point between spring equinox and summer solstice by having people dance around a Maypole. Also on this day, the international proletariat unites in symbolic solidarity in their fight for workers' rights and ownership of the means of production. We did a bit of all of this - come rain or shine - by lighting a small bonfire (inside a barbecue) and gathering in our garden festively decorated with red balloons, listening to Guatemalan singer Gaby Moreno and having halloumi on flat bread with humous, olives, grapes and a glass of elderflower cordial. A nice couple of hours break in a day otherwise set aside for revision. 

The annual Easter egg hunt turned out to be more of a wild Easter bunny chase. Rumor had it on Thursday that in the forest there were a gazillion of chocolate bunnies, so after lunch time register - on ready, steady, shoot - we all ran out to try and track down the well hidden, gold plaited lagomorphs. This was no easy undertaking as they are pretty small and the foliage had been coming out on trees and shrubs over the last few days.  Some of us didn't find any, despite having searched the Dorter jungle, savannah and adjacent border river for quite a bit of time. There also seemed to be a handful of big, main-prize bunnies and we think they were all tracked down eventually, but we will find out in winter for sure, which of those 80+ rabbits had not been found. Not that that's any help or consolation for those of us who went empty handed. At the end of the day, it was announced that a few more chocolate rabbits had been spotted on the terrace and in the house itself, and so everyone did find at least one. It was great fun. 

Please keep donating for a good cause. Click on image, thank you!

As an extension to our charity week, we did a sponsored sleep out, or rough sleeping, in support of the earthquake victims in Syria and Turkey, the proceeds of which will eventually go to our house charity, the UNHCR UK, the UN's refugee high commissioner. We really wanted to do this in March and not in the summer term, when it's all balmy and dry, because refugees cannot choose the weather either. Luckily, we have the Dorter garden and adjacent forest, yet with rain forecast it was a case of spanning a huge blue tarp from the columns of our portico to the heavy duty garden benches to provide some sort of shelter from the elements. And what a night it was! Gusts of up to 45 miles per hour from 1am onwards, after the initial calm before the storm, and non stop rain from 2am. The tarp, which for technical reasons had no central high point support, soon filled with water, and Mr Rohmer stayed up all night to re-adjust the entire contraption half hourly and drain it of the litres of rain water which started lowering our roof so that otherwise it would have squashed us underneath. Of course, those of us, who slept towards the sides (i.e. came out last to set up their bed steads) had to take one for the team and got a bit wet. 

Ten Dorter girls eventually took part: Alana, Maxima, Lena, Caitlin, Phoebe, Jolie, Julia, Johanna, Ella and day boarder Maya, who showed great commitment by coming in for this. First of all, we had to think about the how. The mattresses must not be too hard, insulated against the cold floor and big enough, so we had decided to build them of cardboard layers, with plastic bin liners as the bottom layer against humidity from below and use old blankets, duvets and pillows from Matron's Narnia (the place where tons of interesting things are stored). For more than a week, including weekends, Alana, Lena and Maxima had collected cardboard from the back of the kitchen, where most of this could be found. Flattened huge boxes, banana boxes, card board egg trays, everything. We even found a couple of uncooked meatballs in one of them. Alana tested one such bed stead in the garden the day before and found it so comfy that she did not want to come back in. We then laid it all out inside the house in the afternoon of March 21, first day of Spring, the mess of it all! Every girl designed and built their own bed and then at 10.30ish we carried it all out so that by 11 pm after some hot drinks we were sound asleep. Despite the storm and inclement weather we slept until 5am, 5:50am and most of us until 6:50am. That's almost 8 hours, despite some of us waking up hourly. All in all a great experience for a great cause! We have already raised more than the combined activities of the charity week and the fundrasiser is still open. So, please donate here if you can. We have already raised £510 prior to the event, but we are relaunching this. Thank you very much!

Our Dorter dramatists have been really busy, too. The L6: Lily, Lola, Can, Nadja, Amelie K, Esther and Charis were all involved in their devised pieces performance, a take on the refugee crisis based on the Frantic Assembly company's approach to staging and acting. The author of this article has been priveledged to witness the exam performances (sorry, therefore no pictures) of two of the groups and was impressed by the completely different yet hard hitting interpretations of the subject matter. The acting was very good, Can's stage presence, Nadja's facial expressions and Lola's delivery of lines, entirely immersive and believable. The plight of the boat refugees was palpable and a quite cathartic experience for the audience. Keep going, girls, lots of lead roles for you next academic year! 

The U6 was in action too, with top notch performances. It was their Drama A Level component 2 performance. Verity, Anna and Anoushka performed monologues and then a 30 minute excerpt from a play. Anna and Verity did a play called "The Truth" and Anoushka did a play called "Swallow". “Anoushka, Anna and Verity did a brilliant job in the portrayal of their characters. They performed beautifully and challenged the audience in each of their performances. Well done!"

In our annual charity week we raised money for the UNHCR earthquake appeal for Syrian and Turkey, and a handpicked Ukrainian charity. The biggest money spinner turns out to be food. Tonia with help from Mdme Ganivet made pancakes in the home-ec kitchen while some of our new prefects waylaid anyone who came by and let them into the place. Without any fancy toppings Tonia made around £150, not bad for less than an hour's work. After Bingo night and the second hand clothes sale, this was our third charity event, with the sponsored rough sleeping yet to come.  Coincidentally the school had borrowed Albina's Ukrainian flag in order to fly it at the entrance of the main campus in commemoration of the anniversary of the unprovoked Russian aggression against this independent nation, which highlighted the urgency of our charitable work. This war is not over. 

To celebrate the World Book Day, Bede’s hosted a reading event in the Miles Studio, where staff and students took part in reading a short extract of their favourite book. Maxima wanted to read a very inspiring short story called ‘Bachelors ill luck’ written by Franz Kafka. Coincidentally, the ingenious author lived in Austria as well as our speaker. Therefore Maxima decided to read the extract first in German and then in English. Her choice of text received a ton of compliments and even more applause from the audience. Many other readers took their turn in reading their story and each and every one of them differed from the other. 

On February 10, we finally set off on the long anticipated 5 day German & History trip to Berlin! It was tough the first day as we arrived super early and had hardly slept, but was it worth it! Us Dorter girls: Cailtin, Maxima, Can, Charlie, Maya and Prithvi-Ann formed a distinct ALevel-worthy subgroup of maturity and willingness to learn and embrace of the culture, history and language of the place - us amongst 30 something lower school day students of History (;). And, believe you us, we made the most of it! Berlin has so much to offer. We got a feel of the Berlin Wall or what's left of it by going to the amazing immersive art installation by Turkish-German artist Asisi at Check Point Charlie, which allowed us to experience the Berlin Wall as it looked in 1985 night and day, viewed from the west. This got us into the right mind set to make sense of it all, one such was the Stasi prison in Berlin Hohenschönhausen, where Mr Rohmer complemented the tour with his own experiences. 

There was a lot of grim nazi history to be witnessed too, but interesting nonetheless. Unbelievable stories of survival and defiance delivered by our outstanding local guides. Just to counterbalance all of this dark but important-to-know history, we watched Hertha BSC at the (also historic) Olympiastadion, in what was only their fourth victory of the season. It must have been us! The atmosphere was electric, the fan culture in the 1. Bundesliga, the choreographies directed by the Ultras and all, is so much superior and fascinating than in the no-standing-blocks-allowed Premier League. The highlight, however, for us 9 culturally minded, intellectual and art-appreciating girls on the trip was that we got to see the ballet of all ballets, Swan Lake, at the Admirals Palast! The food, the stories, the fun we have had in Berlin - augmented by the fact that it was also Can's birthday - these memories will stay with us forever! 

Sachsenhausen

On our third day in Germany, we made a trip to the concentration camp ‘Sachsenhausen’. The day seemed to match the occasion as many dark clouds were in the sky, perfect for this day. As we were seated in the bus, driving towards our destination, we could feel the tension. In Sachsenhausen, we were divided up into two groups with two amazing tour guides. The tour began with a short introduction of the concentration camp and how it started. As our guides carried on telling us about the horrible stories that happened here, many of us slowly started to be more confident to ask many questions about the holocaust. When we heard that prisoners were called to ‘roll call’ every morning, the Dorter House decided upon return to rename our ‘roll call’ to ‘check in’, as it seemed a more appropriate thing to do. To put it in a nutshell, this tour will forever stay in our memories. It was interesting  and horrible at the same time to hear about such things. But our teachers decided not to end the day in a concentration camp, so we went to watch a football game in the ‘Olympiastadion’.

Swan Lake

Mr Rohmer took a group of us on a surprise trip. We had no idea where we were going or what we were doing, it was so exciting!! We arrived at the ‘ Admirals Palast theatre discovering we were about to watch the famous Swan Lake ballet by Tchaikovsky. The performance was incredible and, as a dancer myself, I could appreciate the technical ability these dancers showed on stage. We took lots of photos, got programmes and leaflets to bring back home with us. We had the best time and made great memories together. I couldn’t believe that Mr Rohmer managed to get these tickets for us. 

Berlin TV Tower

On the evening of the day we arrived in Berlin, we went on the tram to the Alexanderplatz station, to see the Berlin TV tower. At night you can see red lights all over the tower, which are flashing. It’s 368 meters high and has a viewing platform half way up the tower. We went to the platform in the elevator, which had a glass ceiling, so you could see the square in which we were going up. The platform was big and wherever in the circle you looked out of the bent window you could see all over Berlin with all the lights at night. I’m very happy that we were there at night. That changed the whole vibe. There was a bar with drinks and snacks and we all got a glass of lemonade. In front of the window were pictures and information texts about the TV Tower and the City of Berlin. Amazing experience. 

Stasi - Prison

On our fourth day in Berlin, we went on a trip to the Stasi - prison in the east of Berlin. On that day, we learnt a lot about how the Stasi was different to the Nazis. Instead of using violence to make life for the prisoners harder, they used psychological measures which in a way seems just as brutal. The stories we heard were as horrible as the ones in Sachsenhausen. Our tour guide provided us with very detailed information about the treatment of those prisoners, which gave us a better understanding of DDR times. We learned many things that day, which will stay with us forever. 

The boarder's Christmas party was exciting. It's been a while since we have had this as a whole boarding community event. The format is this: Everyone sat down in friendship groups but according to a seating plan. There was a three-course meal, with Christmas crackers and paper crowns and all, the food was pretty much the same we had for formal, nice chicken, anytime. In between the meals each house had to lead a game. For us, traditionally, it is the 12 Days of Christmas song, which means that all tables were given one of the verses and had to jump up when it was their turn, singing it at the top of their voice, which lead to a frantic up and down. Other houses made us balance a slice of After Eight from forehead to mouth without using your hands, and the funniest, finding out by making animal noises from as many people as possible what type of animal was given on a piece of paper to them in order to attract creatures of your species to form flocks and packs and pigsties of 20. After the meal club DJ Ron from Vienna dropped the beats and kept everyone happily dancing with his well composed set (see video). This was the best part indeed. Highly enjoyable. 

Watching the World Cup matches has become a rather big thing in recent weeks. The Germany - Costa Rica game on our big telly was a crowd magnet as all the German students from other houses were invited. Parallel to it the Dorter & Crossways Spanish speaking girls joined by Sakura watched the Spain - Japan match on the laptop on the floor, with both match commentaries topping each other. It was loud, it was wild and everyone was hyped up on soft drinks and quality street. At the end of both matches half of us were happy (see video) and the other half was not. It did not really matter, though, as things went exactly as they must and only half a week later the entire Group E had been sent packing, in Germany's and Spain's case deservedly so. Meanwhile the England games were watched by far fewer due to those being shown on the massive screen in Dorms. We are now supporting either France or Argentina in about equal measure and guess what, they are both in the final.