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• Slovenia WSDA Trip Pathways School Gurgaon
  
  August 1

Over the course of the summer holidays, a couple of friends and I took up an interesting opportunity to not only participate in a debate tournament with people from all across the world, but also travel Europe as a nice bonus on the side. The trip began as any would, meeting at the airport, getting through the check-in, security, immigration, and whatnot. At the airport, we met with the conductors of the trip who would be taking us along with them to Europe, as well as the students from other schools across India that would be traveling with us and participating in the tournament. They seemed… affable enough to get along with, but I still couldn’t fully gauge their character.

We took our flights, watched our movies, slept our fill. And after a layover arrived in Vienna, the first destination for the trip. We took a bus to the hotel and checked in. We had an hour to freshen up and unpack in our hotel room. After that, we immediately went sightseeing with the help of a local tour guide and once again, a bus. Vienna was, frankly, beautiful. It’s hard to describe it with any other word. The streets were clean, the architecture was stunning, remnants of the monarchy that once ruled the place were left all over in the form of palaces and grand structures and museums. Oh, and most importantly, we saw a lot of cool cars there as well.
We went back to our hotel, rested, and got ready for the next day where we would be departing to Slovenia by a method of transportation you are probably familiar with by now, bus. But of course, we couldn’t sleep before having our fun. We goofed around, cracked jokes, interacted with students from other schools, and overall had a great time poking fun. The next day, we packed our stuff, and left for Slovenia. The debate academy was hosted in a town within Slovenia called Kranjska Gora, known for being a ski resort in a mountainous area. The bus ride there was long and energetic, I was mainly sleeping and listening to music but the people at the back of the bus got wild from what I could hear.

Once we arrived at Kranjska Gora, I was taken aback by the natural beauty that surrounded us, the view from anywhere in the town was incredible, and the skies were unimaginably clear. We swiftly checked into Hotel Ramada, the place we would be staying within for a majority of the remaining trip. I made myself comfortable in my room and then headed to the scheduled activities for the day. For the first and major activity for the day, we were first given notebooks and pens to keep for the rest of the academy, and then we were divided into groups along with other participants and a trainer, who would conduct activities in the group.

My group consisted of me, a couple of girls from another Indian school, and two Palestinian students who I quickly befriended due to the fact that we shared similar interests. The activities were a nice way to get the newer participants comfortable with the idea of debating and public speaking, but really, they were nothing too memorable. After the activities, I made sure to use all my free time to get to know as many people as possible from different countries, people from all across the world were gathered here, people from countries like Italy, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Palestine, Qatar, The UAE, Hungary and more were all gathered for the sole purpose of debating.

Nothing really noteworthy happened for the rest of the day, so I’ll just skip ahead a little bit. The next day, we began following a schedule that would become the norm for the coming days, which consisted of lectures, electives, and practice debates. We were first divided into groups based on our prior experience and assessed skill level. Once I got to the designated area for my group, the lecture began, and I immediately was impressed with how thorough and high quality the teaching here was. You could tell the trainers knew what they were talking about and had years of debating experience to back it up. Over the course of my lecture, I was able to make friends with two main people who would continue on to be some of the best friends I made on this trip, we still stay in touch. One of them was from Hungary and the other one lived in Qatar, however, he was Indian, so we quickly got along. After the main lecture, we had practice exercises in further divided groups, which helped us apply the learning from the lecture. Then, we had electives, where we could choose out of given options as to which topic, we want to attend a lecture for. It was nice having some freedom over what we would learn, and this system really helped keep the learning at the academy engaging.

The next couple days were more or less the same thing, attend lectures and electives, and mess around with friends, we goofed around so much and made so many jokes that I can’t even begin to describe how much fun we had together. We climbed mountains and realized we were late for our lecture, so we ran downhill, tumbling. We watched Bollywood movies together at midnight while preparing for the upcoming tournament. We taught people from other countries Hindi (sometimes incorrectly) and much more. Many of the days simply passed by like this.

We had a few special days though, because every evening the organizers of the academy would host fun activities for us to partake in, one especially memorable one was the country exhibition, where everybody wore traditional clothes from their country, brought items that displayed their culture, and danced till they dropped unconscious. We genuinely had so much fun at the country exhibition and not only did we discover other countries’ culture from a close up view, we also got to display our own culture and share our identity.
I guess I should talk a little bit more about what we actually learnt instead of just the fun parts. Well, as you would expect from a world-class debate academy, the learning was immense, we covered every debate topic from A to Z, starting from basics like argumentation, case building, clashes, rebuttals, negation and more, moving onto more advanced concepts and tips on how to structure our speeches and maintain a stylistic approach to them for extra points. We also learnt about more than just debating, certain electives were on specialized topics like current affairs in the EU, political parties, AI, and other common debate topics.

Finally, near the end of the academy, the tournament begun, and we would be able to display our learning while competing against the friends we made along the way. Now, there were 2 divisions to compete in, Novice, and Open. We were supposed to be in Novice since we had less than a year of experience in the debate format, but due to the fact that we registered a bit late, we had to compete in Open, alongside the national level teams from Slovenia who compete in international debate competitions. We didn’t know this at the time, but this would be important later.
The debates went smoothly overall. On the first day, we lost our first debate, but managed to win it back strongly in the second debate. On the second day, we won our first two debates, but lost the last one as we were against the national debate team of Slovenia, so it was a tough matchup. Nevertheless, I gave what I believe was one of the best speeches of my life and put up a tough fight against them. Due to our great performance in these debates, we qualified for the quarter finals in the OPEN bracket. Not the novice bracket. This means that even amongst teams with years of experience in the format, a team like ours, with no prior experience in this debating format had ended up in the top 8 teams overall.

Of course, we were excited, and stoked going into the quarter finals, but it was kind of hard to maintain that confidence when our opponents were not the Slovenian national team, but the team that trained the Slovenian national team instead. One of the best speakers from the whole tournament, David, was on the opposing team. But still, we tried our best, and we got close, but ultimately lost the debate. Look, if I had to lose to somebody, the best speaker in the tournament would be one of my first picks.
So we lost, but now we were free, we didn’t have to prepare for the semi finals or finals, and that meant we could watch more Bollywood movies in the night, so we went to the supermarket, stocked up on snacks, and had a celebration as to how far we had come. We went to sleep, and the next day after the semi-finals and finals, we had the award ceremony. Now of course, I was expecting to get our quarter finalist certificate. But what I didn’t expect was to receive a certificate for being the 5th best speaker in the tournament overall. Amongst people from national teams, I somehow managed to place 5th overall in the tournament. Wasn’t expecting it, but I’ll take it. The rest of the day proceeded as usual, and eventually, the time had come, we had to say bye to the friends we made here and hopped on a bus to Venice.
Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t really have anything special to add about Venice, we did typical Venice things, go on a Gondola ride, buy souvenirs, eat pasta, and pretty much everything else you imagine when you hear the word Venice. We enjoyed our final days on the trip and prepared to return back home. We packed our things, went on a bus (again) to the airport, took our flight back home, the remaining holidays zipped by and boom. Here we are back in school again.

Okay, quick summary. Best part of the trip? The people we met and friends we made. Worst part of the trip? The fact that we had to use toilet paper. That’s all from me.
By: Mihir Malik, MYP 5C

Over the course of the summer holidays, a couple of friends and I took up an interesting opportunity to not only participate in a debate tournament with people from all across the world, but also travel Europe as a nice bonus on the side. The trip began as any would, meeting at the airport, getting through the check-in, security, immigration, and whatnot. At the airport, we met with the conductors of the trip who would be taking us along with them to Europe, as well as the students from other schools across India that would be traveling with us and participating in the tournament. They seemed… affable enough to get along with, but I still couldn’t fully gauge their character.

We took our flights, watched our movies, slept our fill. And after a layover arrived in Vienna, the first destination for the trip. We took a bus to the hotel and checked in. We had an hour to freshen up and unpack in our hotel room. After that, we immediately went sightseeing with the help of a local tour guide and once again, a bus. Vienna was, frankly, beautiful. It’s hard to describe it with any other word. The streets were clean, the architecture was stunning, remnants of the monarchy that once ruled the place were left all over in the form of palaces and grand structures and museums. Oh, and most importantly, we saw a lot of cool cars there as well.
We went back to our hotel, rested, and got ready for the next day where we would be departing to Slovenia by a method of transportation you are probably familiar with by now, bus. But of course, we couldn’t sleep before having our fun. We goofed around, cracked jokes, interacted with students from other schools, and overall had a great time poking fun. The next day, we packed our stuff, and left for Slovenia. The debate academy was hosted in a town within Slovenia called Kranjska Gora, known for being a ski resort in a mountainous area. The bus ride there was long and energetic, I was mainly sleeping and listening to music but the people at the back of the bus got wild from what I could hear.

Once we arrived at Kranjska Gora, I was taken aback by the natural beauty that surrounded us, the view from anywhere in the town was incredible, and the skies were unimaginably clear. We swiftly checked into Hotel Ramada, the place we would be staying within for a majority of the remaining trip. I made myself comfortable in my room and then headed to the scheduled activities for the day. For the first and major activity for the day, we were first given notebooks and pens to keep for the rest of the academy, and then we were divided into groups along with other participants and a trainer, who would conduct activities in the group.

My group consisted of me, a couple of girls from another Indian school, and two Palestinian students who I quickly befriended due to the fact that we shared similar interests. The activities were a nice way to get the newer participants comfortable with the idea of debating and public speaking, but really, they were nothing too memorable. After the activities, I made sure to use all my free time to get to know as many people as possible from different countries, people from all across the world were gathered here, people from countries like Italy, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Palestine, Qatar, The UAE, Hungary and more were all gathered for the sole purpose of debating.

Nothing really noteworthy happened for the rest of the day, so I’ll just skip ahead a little bit. The next day, we began following a schedule that would become the norm for the coming days, which consisted of lectures, electives, and practice debates. We were first divided into groups based on our prior experience and assessed skill level. Once I got to the designated area for my group, the lecture began, and I immediately was impressed with how thorough and high quality the teaching here was. You could tell the trainers knew what they were talking about and had years of debating experience to back it up. Over the course of my lecture, I was able to make friends with two main people who would continue on to be some of the best friends I made on this trip, we still stay in touch. One of them was from Hungary and the other one lived in Qatar, however, he was Indian, so we quickly got along. After the main lecture, we had practice exercises in further divided groups, which helped us apply the learning from the lecture. Then, we had electives, where we could choose out of given options as to which topic, we want to attend a lecture for. It was nice having some freedom over what we would learn, and this system really helped keep the learning at the academy engaging.

The next couple days were more or less the same thing, attend lectures and electives, and mess around with friends, we goofed around so much and made so many jokes that I can’t even begin to describe how much fun we had together. We climbed mountains and realized we were late for our lecture, so we ran downhill, tumbling. We watched Bollywood movies together at midnight while preparing for the upcoming tournament. We taught people from other countries Hindi (sometimes incorrectly) and much more. Many of the days simply passed by like this.

We had a few special days though, because every evening the organizers of the academy would host fun activities for us to partake in, one especially memorable one was the country exhibition, where everybody wore traditional clothes from their country, brought items that displayed their culture, and danced till they dropped unconscious. We genuinely had so much fun at the country exhibition and not only did we discover other countries’ culture from a close up view, we also got to display our own culture and share our identity.
I guess I should talk a little bit more about what we actually learnt instead of just the fun parts. Well, as you would expect from a world-class debate academy, the learning was immense, we covered every debate topic from A to Z, starting from basics like argumentation, case building, clashes, rebuttals, negation and more, moving onto more advanced concepts and tips on how to structure our speeches and maintain a stylistic approach to them for extra points. We also learnt about more than just debating, certain electives were on specialized topics like current affairs in the EU, political parties, AI, and other common debate topics.

Finally, near the end of the academy, the tournament begun, and we would be able to display our learning while competing against the friends we made along the way. Now, there were 2 divisions to compete in, Novice, and Open. We were supposed to be in Novice since we had less than a year of experience in the debate format, but due to the fact that we registered a bit late, we had to compete in Open, alongside the national level teams from Slovenia who compete in international debate competitions. We didn’t know this at the time, but this would be important later.
The debates went smoothly overall. On the first day, we lost our first debate, but managed to win it back strongly in the second debate. On the second day, we won our first two debates, but lost the last one as we were against the national debate team of Slovenia, so it was a tough matchup. Nevertheless, I gave what I believe was one of the best speeches of my life and put up a tough fight against them. Due to our great performance in these debates, we qualified for the quarter finals in the OPEN bracket. Not the novice bracket. This means that even amongst teams with years of experience in the format, a team like ours, with no prior experience in this debating format had ended up in the top 8 teams overall.

Of course, we were excited, and stoked going into the quarter finals, but it was kind of hard to maintain that confidence when our opponents were not the Slovenian national team, but the team that trained the Slovenian national team instead. One of the best speakers from the whole tournament, David, was on the opposing team. But still, we tried our best, and we got close, but ultimately lost the debate. Look, if I had to lose to somebody, the best speaker in the tournament would be one of my first picks.
So we lost, but now we were free, we didn’t have to prepare for the semi finals or finals, and that meant we could watch more Bollywood movies in the night, so we went to the supermarket, stocked up on snacks, and had a celebration as to how far we had come. We went to sleep, and the next day after the semi-finals and finals, we had the award ceremony. Now of course, I was expecting to get our quarter finalist certificate. But what I didn’t expect was to receive a certificate for being the 5th best speaker in the tournament overall. Amongst people from national teams, I somehow managed to place 5th overall in the tournament. Wasn’t expecting it, but I’ll take it. The rest of the day proceeded as usual, and eventually, the time had come, we had to say bye to the friends we made here and hopped on a bus to Venice.
Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t really have anything special to add about Venice, we did typical Venice things, go on a Gondola ride, buy souvenirs, eat pasta, and pretty much everything else you imagine when you hear the word Venice. We enjoyed our final days on the trip and prepared to return back home. We packed our things, went on a bus (again) to the airport, took our flight back home, the remaining holidays zipped by and boom. Here we are back in school again.

Okay, quick summary. Best part of the trip? The people we met and friends we made. Worst part of the trip? The fact that we had to use toilet paper. That’s all from me.

By: Mihir Malik, MYP 5C