On 26th of July, an annual alumni meetup was organized at Skolkovo campus in the open air. It has taken us a long time to prepare and indeed it was something big for CIS, something we have not taken courage to do before.

Early Sunday morning, we are in the middle of summer break, the several months' lockdown is fading away with open spaces starting to operate. The feeling we had as organizers were like those that you have early in the morning of the first day of the new school year when you expect students to return from their break. Well, this is incomparable, as we were expecting some students whom we have not seen for years.

Here are some memories from Aylin, graduate 2020, Skolkovo campus:

“Graduates from 2013 to 2020 were present on that day which made it extremely interesting since we had the opportunity to talk to each other about future goals, see where everyone is at this stage of one’s life and exchange our experience and knowledge. In addition to that, we had our great nostalgic conversations about how things were at CIS before or remembering various funny stories that occurred in the halls of our school. On that Sunday I was surrounded by so many nice people. The school has put together a variety of entertainment activities such as archery and air rifle shooting under the supervision of the Russian national team athletes. As well as that the caricaturist painted our comic portraits. After the lockdown, we got the chance to finally be in a company of each other. Of course, we had a group photoshoot with teachers and students, pictures were not only taken on a professional camera but also on our phones and polaroid since photos are tangible memories that can be kept in a photo album. We were, moreover, very lucky that day because the weather was perfectly splendid. To conclude this event, we were invited to the main hall where graduates of 2020 were congratulated, and I had given a graduation speech. It is an outstanding tradition to follow in the next years as it gives the opportunity to keep in touch with teachers and students as well as to stay a part of CIS Alumni Association. Thank you very much for such an excellent event!”

I would not be able to add much more. We were extremely happy to host such an event, especially considering circumstances we all found ourselves at a time. We aim to strengthen the bonds between alumni of different years and we want our CIS Annual alumni meetup to become not only an event you all want to attend to see and chat with good old friends but to derive into a networking platform, which allows building relationships, that will ultimately evolve in friendship or partnership, and of course, maintain the relationship with the school, that we all have in our hearts.

Aylin Byuyyuktosun, Graduate 2020, Skolkovo campus
Bachelor student at City, University of London, speciality Business with Marketing

Aleksei Kalimullin, Maths Teacher, Skolkovo campus