Michael van Ellemeet  (1971)

Jennifer Ferrie  (1976)

We met in Singapore, fell in Love and have been married since 1984. 

We have 3 lovely children aged 23, 19 &16.                                                                                     

Donald Robertson (82-84)

Sam Welch (82-84)

We are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this year. We met at our first Amnesty International meeting in our first term. We started going out in the Spring of 83. Don was captain of cliff rescue, so I spent many Saturday nights at college because he was on duty. We had a fabulous August period and one memory was of Don rescuing HRH Prince Charles off the cliff at the seafront. Don asked me to wash the boiler suit that Charles would wear.

We’ve been together ever since. We have a 16 year old son called Alex. We’ve grown together, seen the world together and gained much solace in our shared experiences of the college. Don has supported me through a life changing illness. We are soul-mates. ‘Traveller there is no path. We make our path by walking it’

Sharon Jenkins

Knut Etzel (81-83)

We were both in Kumalo House and met on our first day at UWC Atlantic College. It took a year for our friendship to develop into something more. We have now been together for 30 years, married for 22 years and have two lovely sons. UWC Atlantic College was a fantastic experience, and it's great that we can look back on it together.

Laura Butler 

Jesse Prupas (95-97)

Jesse and I both attended UWC Atlantic College, he was a coastguard from Cantwell Corn house and I was photographic service from Ripley Tice house. Though we were not a couple at UWC Atlantic College, we were friends and feel lucky to be able to share so many memories from this time. We stayed in touch after college and became a couple while Jesse was studying in Paris in 2000. After a long distance love affair, I moved to Jesse's home town of Montreal in 2002 and have been here ever since. We were married in 2006 and our first daughter Aria Chaya was born in 2009 - her initials are AC and it isn't a coincidence. Our second daughter Talia is now 2 months old. My dad attended UWC Atlantic Colelge (65-67) and we hope that our girls will be fortunate enough to attend a UWC if they would like to. UWC Atlantic College was a wonderful and formative experience for both of us, impacting our personal and professional lives profoundly - I work in Human Rights Education and Jesse is a movie producer. We recognize the responsibility that comes with the opportunity we both had in attending UWC Atlantic College and we want other young people to have this too. We make a monthly donation to the UWC Atlantic College scholarship fund and we encourage anyone else who feels lucky to have attended the college to do the same.

Rosie and Rainer Bischoff (69-71)

We think we were probably one of the very first couples of UWC Atlantic College. The information prospectus I was sent made it clear that UWC Atlantic College was primarily a boys school. Whilst this initially struck me as an indefensible position, pupils were otherwise accepted regardless of race, creed, nationality and so on. The idea of an international boy’s school was quite irresistible, so I applied anyway.

Ours was not love at first sight. As there were far fewer girls than boys it was very much the girls' choice and those second year boys, especially from Beach Rescue, were so much more interesting! In the second year, my dorm volunteered to move over to a previously all-boys house which was going co-ed. They wanted a few second year girls to welcome the new girls. It was during this time that romance commenced and we found all kinds of places to meet! Whether all this was good for Rainer I don’t know, but the fact is he started going grey as soon as we joined forces, as seen in the photo.

All this reminds me how much has changed. There are now many more female than male students at the colleges. The colleges have become much more culturally and religiously diverse than they were. Finally, we do have another claim to being 'firsts'. As far as we are aware, we are the first same year couple to have produced a UWC alumnus ourselves. Our eldest went to Nordic college (97-99).  

Miriam Neuber and Stephen Barrett (1983-85)

We met at UWC Atlantic College 29 years ago and the legacy of our time there lives with us in a very tangible way each and every day: We have each other (very happily married) and our 2 sons to show for this meeting, as well as the fact that many of our very closest, enduring friends are contemporaries of our two years at St.Donat's. UWC Atlantic College’s impact also goes beyond this very personal timeline: We’d like to think the values we started to articulate during that time still guide us, our interactions and our reading of the world. The fact that we have grown together from that shared starting point – young, motivated, idealistic - reinforces our relationship and can function as a kind of moral compass. This translates into lots of small things – often as important as the big ones in the day to day –and we simply can’t imagine our lives - personal or professional - without our crossing paths in South Wales.

Driek Desmet

Preeti Khandelwal (1984)

Driek and I both finished UWC Atlantic College in 1984. I was introduced to him on the leaver's bus, going to Paddington Station. I made nothing of it, but somehow our fates were sealed then! We met again in 1988 at a wonderful Reunion on the little island of Fjardlang in Sweden, organised by the Swedes in our year.  Driek and I became friends on that magical holiday. I was on my way back to India, he was heading off to the US for an MBA. When he finished his studies in 1991, he went travelling to Asia and suddenly gave me a random call from Madras. He was going to stay with the parents of a business school friend in Bombay, so I asked him to come stay with me instead since we were doing UWC interviews anyway then. The rest, as they say, is history!  That was in 1991 when we actually started a relationship.  We married in 1994, and had our two children, Rahul and Amrita in 1999 and 2001.

Love between us is a wonderful thing because we also share very strong relationships with many of our UWC Atlantic College and UWC friends around the world.  UWC has given us much more than the two years at UWC Atlantic College; it forms a strong part of our daily lives. We have lived in the UK, the Netherlands and are now in Singapore, where our children attend the new Tampines campus of the UWCSEA. We feel truly privileged that our children can enjoy the UWC ethos already at such a young age!

Frauke Moeller (1969-71)

Christoph Nehrkornn (1966-68)

Frauke Nehrkorn (born Moeller) was invited to the meeting of the German selection commitee in spring 1972 as a recent ex-student, having been at UWC Atlantic College from 1969 - 1971. I had been at UWC Atlantic College from 1966 - 1968 and was invited the second time for the selection of new college students. We met at the breakfast table in Bad Honnef, where we all stayed together in a youth hostel. 9 years later we got married in Freiburg, and had a daughter and a son. We lived mainly in Germany, except for a three-year secondment to Baghdad/Iraq and a four-year work posting in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Jan Verspoor (99-01)

Becky Stewart (00-02)

Last October 18th, my partner and I celebrated 11 years since our first kiss in the Dyfed House dayroom (it has become and I think always will be the anniversary that we celebrate).  We now have two children, Isla (2.5 years) and Caelan (4 months) and live in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Despite being together for so long, our formative year together at UWC Atlantic College is replete with amazing memories. To this day, we still appreciate the generous approach that our house parents, Kate and Gabor, took to enforcing the rules about being in the wrong dorm after check-in…we like to think they saw something worth nurturing :)  We also owe a special thanks to Richard & Denise Hamilton and Richard Naylor who organised the March 2001 project week in Mallorca where we our relationship really took off. That short period from March until the end of term is an eternity in our minds, and sowed the seeds for a commitment that would see us through the next year apart.

Anthony Chan (81-83)

Edith Ngan (82-84)

It was a rare sunny morning after first year camp.  By then I’ve met most of my HK second years except 2 who had been away on an EMU excursion.  I was walking towards the castle from the science block when I saw two Asian/Chinese faces approaching down from the Hobman Shed.  A friendly “zhou sun” rang across the chilly air and I retorted “good morning”, thinking how inappropriate it was to speak in Cantonese at UWC Atlantic College. That was the beginning of an enduring friendship and love between Anthony Chan (81-83) and Edith Ngan (82-84).

It was not until National Evening preparation that I got to spend more meaningful time with Anthony and there I found him energetic, responsible, resourceful, and full of ideas, willing to contribute and generally fun to be with, not to mention the beautiful piano pieces that he played.  We worked well together and delivered a memorable event for the college.  We would bump into each other and care about each other as friends.  

Anthony continued to pursue medicine in London while I went to college in California to join my family where they emigrated.  We were good friends but because of the distance and our different path, we didn’t see much future in taking it further.  Yet, despite this we wrote each other and called each other from the dormitories. We made time for each other whenever we were home for holidays and we grew fonder of each other despite the distance.

As they say, the rest is history.  We married once Anthony finished medical school.  Have two lovely children Ian (20) and Adrienne (17) and as our 23^rd anniversary approaches, looking at empty nest in a year or two’s time when we will be back to the two of us.

Liv and Yuma (2002-2004)

We went to UWC Atlantic College 2002-2004. Both of us lived in Gwenedd, both of us were in EMC, and we were both part of the choir and the madrigal group. Despite all these hints that we were meant to be together we never even spoke to each other during the first year. In the beginning of our second year we started to become friends, but it wasn’t until two months before we were about to leave UWC Atlantic College that we became a couple.

After college we had a long-distance relationship for five and a half years (!). Yuma went to university in Japan and started working. Liv took a gap year and then studied in Scotland.  It was tough sometimes, but we learnt a lot about each other, each other’s cultures and about successful communication in a relationship. We used skype and email to keep in touch, and we both worked hard to save enough money to travel to Japan and Scotland/Sweden each winter and summer vacation.

In 2009 Liv moved to Japan, and we got married in 2010 (three times! First legally married in February, and then with wedding ceremonies in Sweden and Japan during the summer).

We lived in Japan until the tsunami. At this time Liv was pregnant and due to give birth very soon. Because of the possible danger after the disasters at the Fukushima power plants, we decided to leave Japan. We flew to Sweden and our daughter was born two days after we arrived. After a few months we moved to Thailand where we now live happily together all three of us.

Ana Alexander (1976-1978)

Juha Eskola (1976-1978)

Juha was one of the three students sent to UWC Atlantic College from Finland. We did not know each other during the first year, even when we were at the same English class. Juha and me finally met and became friends. After we left college we did not plan to keep our relationship, thinking that it would be almost impossible, me being from Venezuela and Juha from Finland... But the day Juha left, I promised him I visited him as soon as possible. It is 34 years since we left UWC Atlantic College and we are still together!I went back to Caracas and began University, studied  preschool education and got enough money teaching English. I kept going back and forth Finland and Venezuela during the 3 years it took me to finish my studies.  After that I moved to Finland, to experience my first long Winter, and try to learn the language. My dorm mate, Mariann Rand, from Norway, could not believe me, as she remember me being freezing all the time when I spend my first Christmas at her house in Norway in 1976. But here I am still... I was so lucky that by January 1982 I had a job,  I happened to read in the newspaper that a group of people were getting together to open a Montessori-preschool here in Oulu and they did not have a teacher, so I called the person that wrote the article and told her I was a teacher specialized in the open classroom method so I started working in August of 1982, at Oulus Montessori-preschool, and today I am the owner of the school.We got engaged in 1982 and went to get my work permit from England. I visited UWC Atlantic College of course, and met our friend, Alex, who became our best man; we got married in 1983 in Caracas.After 4 years Alex and his wife became the Godparents of our first son, Jussi, and came together to OULU. Juhas dorm mates, Luigi Boscarelli and Ian Primrose, are our second son´s Antti´s Godfathers and Ramsay Fuleihan and his wife are our daughters Anna-Leena´s Godparents. So we are a truly UWC Atlantic College family and proud about it!

Annibale Brandolini d'Adda

Ghislaine van Lookeren Campagne (74-76)

My husband and I are a UWC Atlantic College couple (UWAC 74-76). We met in first year camp and we finally married in December 1992. The relationship was initially totally based on the fact that Annibale was a regular customer at the coffee shop (great consumer of McVities Milk Chocolate Digestives), I saw him daily because he had a four pack a day habit. We met up later in life at the London School of Economics and, subsequently, I kept in touch through postcards. Finally, I called him in 1991 on my return from Washington DC and we were married in December of the following year. He was still the same old gung ho Bani of old - very reassuring that one doesn't really change throughout the years. We are now the proud parents of three.

Mazlan Omar & Deborah Kirk

UWC Atlantic College (74 -76)

We met in September 1975 in the Brecon Beacons. We were the Second Years sent ahead to set up the First Year Camp. It was lunch time on the first day whilst we were sitting around enjoying sandwiches and drinks amongst the hay bales! Things 'clicked' within half an hour of the attached photo being taken.

We were married in August 1980. We have two amazing sons; Zachary (AC 2005 - 2207) and Jared (AC 2010 - 2012).

Matti Joutsikoski (84-86)

Janice Truscott (83-85)

We first met in September 1984 but noticed each other properly in March 1985. We spent a very cold project week together surfing in Newquay, Cornwall with Beach Rescue and who knew blue was a romantic colour and that a 5mm wetsuit was fashionable beach wear!About 11 weeks later, term ended but not the relationship. After Matti finished at UWC Atlantic College, it took us 16 months before we saw each other again - thanks to Matti's year of military service and then waiting for university exam period to finish before travel was possible again. A couple of summers working together at EMC brought us back to where it all started and then we got engaged during EMC summer work in 1988. In September 1990, Matti returned to the UK for an MA course at Warwick University and we took the opportunity of being in the same country to get married the following March. Since then we have lived together in the UK, USA, Canada, Spain and now in Switzerland near Zurich - growing our international understanding further and testing our cultural adaptability from time to time!We also have 2 wonderful sons who have been to a number of our UWC Atlantic College reunions and are quite interested in following in Mum and Isä's (Dad's) footsteps there one day… we'll see.Thank you UWC Atlantic College - 2 years that totally changed our lives, opened our minds and put someone very special in our hearts. Happy Valentine's Day, now where's the chocolate!

Meredith Andrews and Sami Lill (93-95)

We remember meeting in the first days of college and most memorably in the Brecon Beakens at first year camp. We were good friends throughout our two years in South Glamorgan, spending a great deal of our time together in the Art Department where we both studied Art Higher with Marten Post. After UWC Atlantic College, Sami went to college in Falmouth, UK and Meredith in Montreal, Canada. In 1999, Meredith moved to London where Sami was living and working in advertising. The pair moved in with another UWC Atlantic College alumni (Sam Grace). Since 2000 Meredith, who is a photographer, & Sami, a creative, have been a couple, getting married in 2009 and welcoming their daughter Freya to the world in 2009 and more recently their son Henry in November 2011. They currently live near Sami's family in Sweden but often return to Meredith's island home in Bermuda.

Sophie and Danny

We met on main drive, kissed on the seafront, and fell in love during EMC. Nine years later, we got married and were very happy to be surrounded by so many UWC Atlantic College friends. Thank you UWC Atlantic College for introducing us, and a very happy 50th birthday to you!

Rob Hayward (74-76)

Sarah Thorpe (75-77)

We were only a ‘couple’ for one month at UWC Atlantic College.  Rob was at the end of his second year, me at the end of my first. We knew each other vaguely as friends of friends, and were both in beach rescue.  But we paid no attention until a Tythe Barn dance at the end of March reading week, when most people were still away.  A subdued sort of affair, but with so few people there, politeness meant we inevitably said a few words.  Then he cut in for a dance.  Turned out it was his 18^th birthday. 

It took another month of once a week dances before we both realized there was no logic to this thing but no fighting it.  Sadly there were other people in the picture, and they got hurt.  As I see my own kids at the same stage, such things seem inevitable.  For the last month, we just found ways to be together every second. 

Then our time together at UWC Atlantic College was over.  Travelling Europe one last time, Rob visited my home in Devon for one week that summer.  After that, four years of the challenge called a ‘long distance relationship’, before email, before skype, with international calls still a rare luxury. I finished UWC Atlantic College, had a gap year and started university in the UK.  Rob finished his degree in the US.  It was touch and go a few times along the way.

Reams of paper and some bank-breaking transatlantic flights later, we decided it was all or nothing – and married on July 5^th 1980, at 21 and 22.   In 32 years, we have lived in 12 homes in 6 cities in 2 countries.  Our children are adults and the truly conscientious global citizens we dreamed we might become.  We remain never happier than in each other’s company. 

Whatever else our lives may or (more often) may not have achieved, they have been defined by the deep personal journey of an international marriage, in which the most profound challenges of ‘international understanding’ have to be worked out, lived out, in every detail of every day.  After 36 years together, perhaps we now understand its meaning, for better and for worse.

Yael Sandbank and Sven Tågerud

1 + 1 = 9 + 2

September 1973 – it said click at first years’ camp and on the 19th of September Yael from Israel and Sven from Sweden became a couple (1+1=2)

Paula was born in 1981 and Helen in 1984. (1+1=4) The family lived in Israel 1986-87 and in the US 1992-1995. After that the family settled again in Sweden and in 2009 the first of 3 grandchildren was born. Now, in February of 2012, Yael and Sven feel very blessed with two nice sons-in-law and 3 wonderful grandchildren (Smilla born in July 2009, Edde born in June 2011 and Itai born in August 2011). (1+1=9)

Johan, Helen, Edde and Smilla Lundström – Yael & Sven Tågerud – Edson, Itai and Paula Valdivia

But the UWC Atlantic College-bonds extend also beyond the immediate family. Yael is the Godmother of Jan Becher, the son of Helke Voss (Yael’s dorm-mate) and both are the Godparents of Kristy Twaalfhoven, the youngest daughter of Felix and Ruth, who was also a dorm-mate of Yael in room 9, also known as cloud 9, in Howell’s House. (1+1=9+2)

Sven is professor of Pharmacology at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Yael works at the same university where she shares her time between teaching intercultural communication and coordinating Professional Development activities for the university’s staff and faculty.