on uwc red cross nordic

judit reached out for a little reflection as part of UWCRCN's 30th anniversary publication. here's what i sent over.

I remember choosing not to go to bed the night before grad. Closing my eyes and falling asleep meant acknowledging the fact I had a last night — and I didn’t want to wake up. I wasn’t quite ready to leave.

So I stayed up. We stayed up. We huddled outside Norway house and ate that burnt hot dog. We ventured to the dock, the abandoned house, and the breakup bench one last time. We made our vows to visit each other across continents. We became the night owl’s night owl, polluting the city of Flekke with our laughter. For once, we were pardoned for the midnight rule.

I believe it takes about 2 years — or rather 2 generations — until you are officially outside of RCN, a final and sentimental bursting of the Flekke bubble. The first year after graduating, I had my firsties to stalk. The second year, I had my firsties tell me about their firsties. By the third year, I am out of juice. Or saft. All I’m left with are the shadows of photos I was once tagged in, dated 3 years ago.

I am met with a harsh realisation: when I scroll through my red circle of Instagram stories, I am no longer met with new first hand videos of life at RCN. Naturally, I don’t follow anyone currently at RCN anymore. And that’s okay. No more midnight dayroom birthday surprises, no more snippets of Høegh parties, no more long complaints of IAs.

I remember RCN started off bright. Lots of hiking with wet socks and ticks for those in shorts. Lots of where-are-you-froms. Lots of dances, college meetings, and sponsor evenings. But as the darkness arrives, it becomes a lambent moment for us, now that we bring our warmth closer to each other. Surprise snowball fights by upper road. Cozied up roomie dinners. Shovelling snow out of your house leader’s entryway. Volunteering to do your roommates’ laundry to save them an extra freezing walk. Lots of skiing and falling.

Eventually, the slush melts, and I am reminded Plath said it best: By March, we’ll be rested, caught up and human. The grass turns green, and the robot lawn mower is spotted again. Cramped bus rides to Dale’s football pitch resume. We start spending cookie breaks outside again, basking by the Fjord, and before we know it, exams come and the end of May rolls around. Lots of cries follow.

We used to complain about the long queues in Kantina — today, I’d gladly wait, even if it extends all the way to Haugland. Even if it was salted cod being served. Here’s an RCN lesson: One never forgets the taste of certain tears and fish.

Since graduating, I have found myself biking to a Buddhist monastery with a Swede in Thailand’s jungles, catching a late-night bowl of ramen in Tokyo with an Indian, going Asian grocery shopping and run-coffee-hopping with a Canadian in Toronto, hunting deer in the Arctic with a Norwegian, visiting an Uzbek in law school, playing board games with a Moldovan, enjoying jazz with a Dutch in Brussels, sitting in a HK park with a Dane and Lithuanian, day-drinking with a Belizean in a shady pub, and crashing a Argentinian-Spaniard and French-Greek at their cute Eindhoven abode. Truth is, cities aren’t just places anymore; they are forever named after an RCN person I cherish. RCN is no longer just in Flekke. It is scattered.

Today, I’m back in university within the four-walled jungle of Hong Kong and I thank RCN for where I am today. No cold email or LinkedIn request to alumni has gone unreplied and that’s some true unspoken cross-generational camaraderie. As our final act, we will all set off to become what we once said we were going to do in our CAS reflections.

Unprompted, I don’t talk about RCN a lot. Not because I don’t want to, but because I find it hard to encapsulate what it truly entails in a mere string of tokens. A sacredness. That’s why when I bump into the RCNer on the roads, I take a moment to indulge myself in some rumination, since there is a mutual appreciation that some feelings can never be described, only experienced.

I’m excited to be back for the 10-year reunion. But I’ll change one thing, though. Perhaps, as I go back to that corner upper bunk of mine in Sweden house 104, I’ll finally rest my head on that hard blue IKEA mattress, to close my eyes and peacefully recapture that last night of sleep I never had — for now I know RCN could never leave me.

All along, I hadn’t actually left RCN.