Dance Club

We've had to put our latest medley on hold,not only because we have had a few new members joining us but also because we have not even recorded the last medley yet :/
Teaching has been quite difficult for me. I did not realise it would involve so much repetition but lucky for me, the 'students' are actually quite decent dancers and they show difficulty where it is expected. We've managed to rehearse about 2 dance routines so far: Salsa and Move Your Body.
We're much more further than we thought we would be.
For our next plan of action, I intend on ensuring that we film our previous medley as well as our- and I use the term loosely- salsa routine.


Learning Outcomes achieved:

Undertaken new challenges.

Planned and initiated activities.

Shown perseverance and commitment in activities.

Developed new skills.

The Return of Monday Sports Club

Since Mr. Gray left us, the sports club which was held every Monday was put on hold until about 3 weeks ago when Mr. Short asked if we would not mind reviving the club for a number of students whom he thought would benefit more from it. So of course we agreed but the first week proved to be quite disappointing as no one actually showed up. But the second week,we had 2 new members and last week, we had 4 new member making it a club of 8 including the 2 teachers and the IB students. Overall, attendance is not much of an issue. We will just have to make do with those we have.
We play hockey, basketball and football as well. I'm fine with playing basketball but the other two are so hard. There are a lot of fast breaks in hockey and football but not as much in basketball. This is probably because so far, we have only played half-court. And the coordination needed in hockey when hitting the ball can be quite frustrating especially when you are on the losing team :P
In,football though, my feet seem to have a mind of their own and keep on tripping all over the ball or aiming in the wrong direction. Honestly speaking, I prefer being a goalie in hockey and football. I am much more skilled at blocking the ball when I feel like it is about to smash my face.
I plan on trying to work on my foot work for next term which ,hopefully, will not be as embarrassing as it is now.

Learning Outcomes achieved:

Increased their awareness of their strengths and areas for growth.

Undertaken new challenges

Worked collaboratively with others

Developed new skills.

Halloween/Bake sale

For the halloween dance, I helped out by carving pumpkins. I actually enjoyed it as I got to try out something that I'd never done before. I managed to carve about 2  big pumpkins and I had to use quite sharp knives so that was fun :D
It was quite difficult to find a way to cut through the pumpkin and it took me a while to come up with a method whereby I could successfully do so . It sort of aggravated me whenever I did not ave smooth edges to I took quite some type going over my carvings trying to get it to smooth out.

There was also a bake sale at lunch time on Halloween and I baked a cake without using cake mix for the first time. It was quite tiring mainly because I did not want to use an electronic mixer so I mixed everything by hand. I went for a simple vanilla cake as I did not want to try something more extravagant then mess it up.
The recipe was quite straightforward and simple:

Ingredients:

• 1 and a half cups Milk
• 3 Eggs
• 3 cups of Flour
• 1 teaspoon of yeast
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar
  
• 2-3 cups of white sugar
• 450 g of margarine

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180° C 
• Mix sugar with margarine until smooth and fluffy
• Add eggs one by one and mix
• Sieve flour into mixture with yeast and vanilla sugar
• Add milk
• Mix either by had or with electric mixer until batter is smooth.
• Place into baking tin then into over for 30 minutes + or until a knife can be put into the cake and it comes out clean.
  
  The cake actually came out better than expected and it is definately something that I would consider doing again. I realise that there are two cakes in the beginning but unfortunately....I lost track of time when baking the second one and....basically it burnt. -_-

           

Dance Club

I realise that I have been apologising more often than I should about late posts but...once again,due to unforeseen circumstances,I was unable to post for quite a while so now I'll just dump a whole load of what has been going on.

In our dance club,we decided quite a while back that we need to be practicing different forms of dance because it would be fun to learn something new. With our Salsa Week having just passed, we thought we would now dance tribal house/ Southern African house.
This could prove to be quite challenging as my moves are quite limited and just consist of small movements which only last for 30 seconds max before they begin to become repetitive which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. We have not yet decided whether we would like to dance to "Kwateni Omnona" by Gazza or to "Come With Me" by Homeboyz. The only problem with "Come With Me" is that it's about 7 minutes long so we would have to select which part of the song to dance to and for how long and etc.
 We also have a new member in the club so we've gone back to teaching "Move Your Body" by Beyonce as a warm-up. Other than that,all that is left to do is to video-tape our dance routines and finally post them.

Michael Jackson!

I recently became rekindled my obsession for  with Michael Jackson's "She's Out of My Life" because of the emotion that Michael is able to evoke just by his voice alone. I believe the simplicity of the song assists in setting the whole atmosphere of empathy that he portray and soooo I decided that it would me feel SO much better if I can manage to sing his song with accompaniment before I get tired of the song. I have no idea when that will be but hopefully before Christmas.

International Day

The concert actually went quite well ...besides the order that the contestants were put in. The stage was elongated so that the drums as well as the piano could fit on it and it actually looked pretty decent. This year, people could see the stage much more clearly as the stage was placed right in the centre of the gym so that the chairs were placed in a semi-circle shape around the stage. The practices also went smoothly except for when I had to go around looking for contestants that had forgotten their scheduled time.
Apart from that, our performance was pretty decent. I was really nervous and my hand was more shakier than my voice but it felt good performing. It is definitely something I would not mind doing again.
Videos will follow very soon ;)

Update

I apologise in advance for the long post that is about to follow. Unfortunately I have not had any access to the internet for a while.

Dance Club
We have been a little low on memebers lately so last week,we decided to have a special 'Salsa Week' where we would learn a new dance genre that is completely different from our usual dance routines. We advertised this via flyers in the school registers and announcements as well.  It took us about 2 weeks to learn the routine which is being done to the song "Yo No Se Manana" (sp) by Enrique Iglesias. I actually found the routine quite challenging as it involved a lot of quick,fast and smooth movements. Most of which I am not capable of. Not to mention the hip movement involved :/
Either way it was definitely a fun experience.
Today we had the club and only had 2 members join us. It was quite lower than we expected but we went ahead with it anyways as we did not want to disappoint those that had attended.
We only managed to teach half of the dance because we ran out of time but it was fun! I actually enjoyed teaching and demonstrating the dance. It was agreed upon that the Salsa week will be pushed into the week when we return to school after the half-term. Other than that...I hope that more people will be able to join :)

International Day- Concert

Wow. Well the progress with international day has been quite drastic. I shall start with the simpler things i.e my performance. We had a lot of difficulty finding a song that I could sing to and David could beatbox to. We tried "Shake It Out" by Florence and the Machine then we tried "I believe" by Yolanda Adams and they were both ridiculously challenging to adapt to. Thennnn I chose "Breaking the Law" by Emeli Sande and we asked Ho Geon to play the guitar. So far, to the few that have heard us,we sound quite decent. I feel as though I need to strengthen my voice though as well as project it more because of the long note that comes along in the chorus. Hopefully this won;t be a problem when we perform tomorrow.
Now, the concert's organisation itself involved finding each and every contestant and asking what they were doing,with who and what they would need to perform. I was quite pleased with the job of assisting in organising the concert as I have my experience from the Talent Show in June which I believe was quite successful . This academic year however, I had to collaborate with Mr. Russell seeing as it is the schools's tradition to have the music teacher organise the concert on internaitonal day.This was difficult as Mr. Russell only comes to school On Mondays and Tuesdays. This was especially frustrating today when we had to organise the seating arrangments and the stage set-up without him being there even though he evidently had a few suggestions to be made. I shall not get into detail about this but we decided it would be safer if we just waited for him to come in tomorrow but in the meantime, we tried to fix a few things, such as the lack of space for the sound assistants and performers on the stage and dancers that will be dancing of the stage. We fixed this,sort of, by moving the stage forward and adding extra squares to make it bigger but anywhoooo...we also had to deal with the decorations. Mr. Russell asked me to make a few flyers to ask students to bring in the flags of their country. So I put some in the registers and on the notice boards asking for the flags to be in by today (Thursday) and only like..4 people gave them in so we all split up and made announcements in the class to ensure that more flags would be brought in tomorrow.
Alyona and Polina stayed behind after school and hung up the flags in the gym and in the hall and we are all very grateful to them for that :)
Other than that...all we can do now it twiddle our thumbs and wait for tomorrow.
Bye.

International Day Concert

At this point,we've managed to get about 9 people to sign up for the concert excluding those that have signed up with Mr. Russell which is a great improvement compared to having 4 last week :) 

We decided that since the sign ups were quite slow,we would have to go around to the classes and make announcements in order to ensure that people were informed about it as opposed to just seeing it on one of the notice boards that were already filled with other announcements.

We have already allocated a group of people  (Thanks to Natasha) that will be arranging the hall and carrying the chairs and the piano into the gym.

One of the problems that we have already encountered is that Ms. Platt does not have enough supplies for the decorations such as making flags and whatnot. So we've decided to ask one of pur talented year 13s to help with that as well as find as many students that can actually bring in their countries' flags so that we could use those as well.

Other than that...everything seems to be going according to plan.

Basketball

Basketball this week, proved to be quite interesting. This week I was placed as a forward as opposed to being placed in the back last week. Unfortunately,since Mr Giddens and Mr Gray left,it seems as though some of the regular members may have forgotten the structure that we were used to last year. In addition to this, I definately tried to shoot more even though I missed all of my attempted shots. Next week,I plan on being more assertive and yelling whenever I'm free. I also need to make myself more available...for being passed to.
This of course,will involve a lot more movement around the court as well as the improvememnt of my lay-ups.
And I will definiately take pictures and videos next time.

New Term Plan

This term,we may be occupied with all our university applications so for now I will try and keep things simple. The clubs I will be partaking in are as follows:

1) Dance Club: Our first session in dance club will be this Thursday. We will be discussing how to film and record our dance medley that we completed last term

2)Basketball : First session this Wednesday. This term I would like to focus on my lay-ups as I never shoot using this method at all :/

3) (Tennis) : this has not been confirmed yet however,it is most definitely something that I will pursue by the end of this month..hopefully.

At the moment,we are organising the concert that follows on every afternoon of international day :D 

I was asked to assist seeing as I organised the talent show at the end of the school year in July. I will also be participating in the talent show with David and Francesco,but that is not final as well :/ I'm sure that by the end of the week everything will be confirmed though. :)

 

Old Age home follow-up

I apologise for the late post but I am finally able to post pictures about my visit to the old-age home.
My sister and I spent the night baking about 98 cupcakes...the other two may have disappeared into our stomachs,I don't know how. We used cake mix as well as brownie mix to make the muffins and we made the icing as well! It was quite tiring though :/
At the old age home,we arranged the cupcakes onto plates along with the other snacks that others had brought and we served it to the residents after the small "concert" that was made for them.
Overall,it was a really interesting experience. Not to mention that I felt so much more happier after I left because I was able to contribute to their happiness :P
Next time,I'll be sure to get enough time to actually speak more to the residents as this time, we stayed quite late and the residents had to rush to their bungalows after the concert as there had been an incident that required them to now have a curfew to be home. :/
Hopefully,next year we'll visit more often as well as make more cupcakes! :)

Follow-up

This Saturday,I will be going to visit a local old age home that my sister recently found last year and has been regularly visiting with her singing group. My sister,her friend a I decided that we would bake a few cupcakes for them just to brighten things up. This will be the hardest part cos that'll mean baking about 100 cupcakes but I'm sure it'll be worth it. Stay tuned for the pictures!

This was my way of improving my baking while making others happy as well with the charity work.
Hopefully,pictures will follow tomorrow as well as recipes :D

Apologies!

This post is long overdue and for that I apologise. It's been three weeks since we finished school and I've had a few more ideas as to how I can continue my CAS activities. Unfortunately, I have not been able to post a plan due to unforeseen circumstances so I thought I would quickly skim through what I plan on doing this holiday and then attempt to post up pictures and more detailed posts as soon as I get the chance to.

1. Donations of old clothes to those less fortunate
2. Improvement on baking
3. Visitations at old age homes
4. Reading! :)

I really apologise for the abruptness of this post and I promise that the next time I post,there will be much more to read! :)

Talent Show- The Final Round

It didn't go as I expected it to go,but other than a few minor glitches,I guess I could say that it was enjoyed by the students :)
I prepared a checklist before hand to avoid me forgetting anything.
First of all,I had to run around the whole morning trying to find all the contestants and make sure they were actually there and had their equipment prepared as well as outfits. I also had to talk to Dina (the hostess) about what to say,when to say it,who was going in first and in what order. Thankfully,Mr Gray saved me the hassle of trying to organise the gym with the chairs,stage and P.A system. He also got a few of the guys to bring in the drum set and the piano which was very difficult for them so many thanks to them as well :D
The contestant had to be in the gym at lunch time in order for us to go through the whole show and see what it would be like and it was a bit hectic so I had to use my outside voice once or twice :)
According to my checklist, I realised that I needed someone to stay by the P.A system and turn the microphones on and off,or to adjust the volume to the microphones and music with the fading away and fading in. Luckily,I managed to get Pablo and Ndina to do this for me.
The judges were also told how to walk in and to what music they would be doing it do and if you ask me,they looked pretty intimidating especially with the music that was playing.
Concerning the voting process,the judges did a magnificent job! They made the atmosphere quite tense at one one point. We decided that from the 5 contestants,2 would be eliminated by the judges and then the audience would decide who would win 1st place,2nd place and 3rd place by moving around to the specified areas of the room. These were the winners:

• 1st- Mr Gray and David (beatboxing and drums)
• 2nd- Gaeun (piano)
• 3rd- Louisa (singing)

I also got Han to video tape the entire show so hopefully I could have the footage by Monday or Tuesday.

I would NEVER have been able to achieve the show if it wasn't from the help I received from various people. So I would sincerely like to thank everyone that assisted in the whole setting up and preparation of the show. This includes Mr. & Mrs. Gray, Ms Oxana, Dina, Alyona,Polly, Julien,Mr Giddens, Yaroslav, Pablo,Ndina,David,Måns and Han. 

Hopefully I didn't forget anyone...and If I did,I'm sorry :/
Stay tuned for the video of the show! :D

Talent Show Update

The final talent show round will be this Friday, June 14, in the school gym.
Unfortunately,there may be quite a few problems:
1. There is a possibility that there will not be enough contestants to actually participate as many seem to have almost forgotten about it (entirely my fault)
2. I might not get enough time to practice with all of them and add some improvements so that performances are not too quick and not to fast.
3. One of the participants have not yet confirmed whether or not they will be able to perform because one of their members might not be in school and that will bring the number down to about 4 contestants in total. That's not good.
4. I am not entirely certain who or what will be handling the P.A system.
5. We will need music for gaps in between performances
6. Students will need to vote for the winner and I am not entirely sure how they will do so yet.

But,not to focus on the negatives,here are some of the things I've managed to fix so far:
1. Those that will actually be there,will be able to attend practices
2. Lucky for me,Dina accepted my offer to be a presenter of the show but we'll also have to practice quite a lot for that part cos she'll need to know who goes on when and so on and so on
3. We actually HAVE  a P.A system.
4. I still have 3 days to straighten out the HUGE knots in the programme.

Dance Club

We had a new member in dance club today! That meant that we had to re-perform our older easier routines as we did not really now what sort of level she was at. The dance moves proved to be quite difficult for her even though we thought they were quite simple so we showed her some of our other routines to perhaps let her pick one of the ones she preferred the most. And for some STRANGE reason she chose one of the difficult ones. We spent about an hour working on the first minute of the song. It was a bit tiring because of all the rapid movements I had to do repeatedly but I guess it was worth it...I think. However,we weren't exactly perfect either. We forgot some of the moves seeing as it had been a long time since we had last performed the dance move and I was quite distracted most of the time as I wasn't used on focsuing on the same parts of a song for so long :/
Other than that....I guess it was quite successful. In a way

Next week hopefully,we'll manage to do perhaps another minute and a half? :)

More Art stuff!

Our last art expedition was with the year 6's from school 7...I think. :P
This time we decided to use macaroni again but this time to make necklaces! The students had to paint their macaroni and decorate it and then attach some string or a ribbon of their choice into the macaroni then use it as a bracelet or as a necklace. Unfortunately some of them didn't have the patience to paint each piece by piece so they just sort of dipped the macaroni in the paint and this proved to make it difficult for the macaroni to dry off. :P
But we soon found a solution to that and we moved the wet macaroni onto new paper and we played pictogram while it dried. Unfortunately for some of the students, it proved difficult to put the string through as the paint was not dry on the inside and this made the string soggy and hard to make rigid. So instead they had to use ribbon. However,one or 2 of the students who painted each macaroni individually managed to make the string get through and I was actually proud for a second.
Next time,I think it would be best to tell the children EXACTLY what to do instead of assuming that they would know what would be the suitable to do. In addition to this,it would have been better to have a few back-up ideas in case something went wrong.It would also be helpful to have a prototype for the children to follow so that way they know it's possible.

The first finished bracelet :D

Art Week with the "young'uns "

Art week for the younger school children seemed like a lot of fun for them. I wish I could say the same for myself. I began to appreciate what primary school teachers have to go through everyday with children being so hyperactive :O 

I found it both fascinating and intriguing at how a majority of the children always seemed to have energy. I was drained after the first lesson! We were out into groups of four for a 1 hour and 30 mins intervals. In our group,it was Michal,Ho Geon,Ndina and myself. Michal and Ho Geon had the first 30 minutes of the lesson and taught the children how to create pretty accurate reflections of paintings by folding a paper in half and then painting one side and pressing the paper in half to create a more or less exact replica. I thought this was an appropriate activity for the occasion and the children had a lot of fun doing it as well :D
Ndina and I made an activity whereby the children were required to make a monster face with macaroni but because we were a bit short on macaroni,we decided that it would be better if the just filled in the places they wanted to fill in with the macaroni after sketching the monster on a paper.They were also asked to name their monsters which was quite fun as well :)  In addition to this,there were some communication difficulties regarding the glue. We needed liquid glue in order for the activity to be more fun but we only received glue sticks. So instead we had to substitute the liquid glue for hot glue guns. These were a bit dangerous to have with children especially those that were in year 1 :/ However,the children were quite well behaved and we had some assistance from the class teachers and it turned out pretty well. The second session went pretty well as we found some liquid glue from the school and this allowed the children to have more time gluing the macaroni even though it dried much slower than the hot glue. Having hot glue guns would have been risky as well in this case because we had children from reception. Whenever we had some time left over we would just play charades and/or pictogram :)

Overall,I found the experience quite a challenge but it taught me a lot about organisation skills and interpersonal realtions...with the kids of course. 

The sketching

Some of the final sketches

A quick game of charades :)

the final products!

My favourite! :D

More of the final products

African Charity Bazaar

This is long overdue but unfortunately I had some problems with retrieving the pictures from the event.
The bazaar was quite successful! We managed to sell 6 booklets of raffle tickets (60) which were 100 rubles each. and we also managed to sell most of our food and our products. Overall it was fun for us as well seeing as there were performances from countries like Angola,Madagascar,Russia and so many more.
We were selling Namibian artifacts like wax key chains,tea, traditional vambo dolls and cups and a few t-shirts as well. It was quite fun even though in the beginning we had troubles with finding change cos many people were paying in large amounts for small things. But that was not a big issue as we tried to convince them to just buy more stuff :P
In addition to this,it was quite difficult to serve the food as the containers were not facing us but the containers had to face the customers in order to attract them to the food. It was a bit troublesome at first but we managed either way. There were many other products to buy from all the other countries so the competition between the stalls was good as we managed to raise more money for the children :D
The draw for the raffles was pretty exciting as many people won really nice things from trips to anywhere in Africa or a night at a dacha or some really fancy coffee.
I would definitely love to do it again as I learned a lot about other countries traditional dances and foods which were extremely delicious by the way and we also managed to raise a lot of money for the children.
.The great news is that we were able to raise over 30 000 rubles for the children! I have attached a video of one of the performances from the event as well as a few pictures enjoy :)

The food that we were selling :)

African Charity Bazaar

Me and a few of my friends recently volunteered to assist our embassy at a charity bazaar that would require us to sell products from our country (Namibia) as well as model a few of our traditional dresses in order to raise money for a charity organisation.
The entire bazaar starts at around 10:00 and ends at 16:00. We are going to have our own stalls and we will be selling boerewors (sausage) ,oxtail and a few other things such as raffle tickets and 'Big Five' t-shirts. The money raised will be going towards an orphanage that specialises in helping African-Russian orphans that have been abandoned by their parents and sometimes have to suffer from discrimination in their day-to-day lives. Hopefully we will be able to raise enough money for the children.

Art!

I am not an 'arty' person. So when I was informed about the art day that was going to take place at school 7 on Tuesday,I took the opportunity to try and do something I would not usually do. A lot of the year 12s volunteered and we will have to be supervising about 20 children. I don't see much of a problem with that as the science fair proved to be quite fun and it was an interesting experience. Not to mention BIS students are normally well-behaved.
We will be making macaroni faces and perhaps pottery with macaroni as well with our group. It may turn out  quite messy but since the other ideas I had in mind were not realistic,I think this one should be okay. I plan on creating a prototype before we actually get there but that depends on whether or not I get enough time. Other than that,I shall blog as soon as I have something more to blog about :D

Basketball and Dance Club

Basketball
Our first week back after the first term was a but difficult as I was quite unfit. Mr. Gray commented that I had been doing a good job of always trying to stay open especially when someone has been cornered with the ball. However,next week,I would like to focus on my shooting skills. Last practice,I attempted to take a few shots but none of them actually went through the net. Our Teacher vs Student match this Wednesday could prove to be difficult for me as I am in a team that is FILLED with well-skilled and fast players.
I plan on practicing on my shots until then as well as working more on running from one end of the field to the other seeing as I tend to tire quite quickly.

Dance Club
Today,dance club was quite intense. We warmed up with a few house songs where we were just freestyling but it honestly tired us out. We also continued working on our routine for 'Get Busy' by Sean Paul. I realised today that it would be helpful to learn some dancehall moves that with the reggae-like tone of Sean Paul's music. These movements are often fast-paced and involve a lot of energy as they just look retarded if not enough heart is out into it :P
Next week,we will be teaching a year 7 girl on of our old routines and hopefully that will go well. I'm really looking forward to it. :)

Beatbox Cover: The Parting Glass

A while ago I had the idea of singing one of my present favourite songs (The Parting Glass) and having David beat box to it. So that's what we did today. It was challenging at first cos the song was sort of really slow but together we managed to create something audible. We plan on recording it and adding some extra instruments with the help of Måns. That way,we will have it in Mp3 format and we could make it sound all cool and professional :P

Well...here it is. Enjoy :)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3RyylucHkk

Dance Club: New Beginnings

Adele and Childish Gambino

Today we tried out about 4 more songs to work on after we have finished video taping our dance medley. One of them proved to be quite difficult - Rolling in the deep by Adele (Jamie XX remix ft Childish Gambino). The beat is REALLY fast paced with several climaxes in it that make it difficult for us to try and actually dance to it without having to take WEEKS to come up with the appropriate moves. This one will require a lot more complicated and hip hop-ish moves . It will be a lot more challenging :D

Another one of our choices was Hydrolics by B5 featuring Bow Wow. This one is a bit easier than the previous one but could be difficult to complete as the beats basically repeat themselves too much and this could lead to us repeating our moves instead of trying new and different moves.

The third choice was Get Busy by Sean Paul. This one was probably easier but it was hard to dance to without any direction of what sort of dance genre we will choose. However,the beat makes it possible to dance to this with the genres that we are familiar with.

The last choice was Swilili by Mampi. This is a Zambian song and will involve quite a lot of hip movement which could be difficult as there's not much of a variety to choose from. But it seems interesting and we wanted to have a choice that was more close to Namibia I guess :P

Hopefully,as soon as we finish the final video,we will pick a song and then begin on our new dance routine :D