Hello, my name is Tro Mirzaian, I am a 17 year old Armenian boy with a Syrian nationality who's been living in Lebanon since 2012... that's UWC material...
A year ago my friend from school who's is in ISAK JAPAN now, applied to UWC. She told me about it but it was already too late, I had missed the application deadline. So I waited, I waited an entire year and applied went through the process and all and finally got accepted to UWC DILIJAN, which happens to be in Armenia... my motherland that I have never been to before, hence all the more reasons to be excited.
On the 29th of July the Lebanese NC had its joint orientation camp with the Palestinian NC... I cannot explain in words how much of a wonderful time we had on the 29th, 30th of June and 1st of July. Till that day I had a slight idea about the ways of UWC, but during this camp I saw what a wonderful concept is putting people who literally have the least idea about each other together and see them be a family in a matter of seconds... at least that's what happened and that's what we witnessed.
We gathered in the headquarter's of an organization called ULYP(Unite Lebanon Youth Project). It was a wonderful spot. The house was amazing and on top of that it had a pool... pool=FUN. There were very friendly people over there who prepared food for us and took care of everything, people from ULYP, and everyone was connecting to someone, there were people connecting on political issues, music, UWC experience, Anime, TV shows and science... in other words, it didn't feel like we were away from home for 3 days, it felt like we still were in home, and that's where it struck me and I realized that UWC is all about making everyone feel like they belong and feel like wherever they are, that is their home.
We played some football (soccer) and did activities, I have to say, even while doing the activities it felt like we were having fun instead of being obliged to do something. Apart from all of this the service and the food they prepared... one word...AMAZING
after having such a wonderful experience, I came home and started counting the seconds of the minutes of the hours of the days that was left to join my bigger family in my motherland... Armenia...
P.S THE LEBANESE NATIONAL COMMITTEE IS AMAZING AND I LOVE THEM