Jumble Sale

On the 25th November our school set up a Jumble Sale. I've never heard of it before, but after Mr. O'Conner explained what it is I found it a pretty good and useful idea both as a Service and to get rid of my old games in a useful way. I didn't collect as much as I hoped for since all my useless stuffs were in Hungary, and I think it was the same with everyone. I was surprised how good it turned out finally, even I spent some money on games and movies - which I didn't think I would- and got my games sold. Right after math we all went to the Geography room where things been already set up. There were from 10,20,50..etc rub tables where each item cost as written on the desk. There was even a laptop for 1500rubs, which I think could have been a pretty good business. But who would just let go of his/her laptop like that? Anyway it was a pretty big sacrifice from all of us, organizing the Jumble sale as we edited flyers, posted them on the wall and made the whole thing work. I don't know how much money we finally gathered together but the reason why I tihnk this could be considered as a Service is that we give this money to a charity. This is where the whole idea came from. We figured that if we work collaboratively together we could achieve the Service part of CAS way easyer and more useful!

International Day

On the 21st of October International Day was held in BIS. Since the school is kind of a melting pot with people from a lot of different countries and nationalities it was a great idea to forge relations between each other. We gathered in groups and each group had to entertain lower grade kids for a couple of hours in the morning. Me, Gregory and Tibaut(sorry if spelled wrong :) ) planned an activity, an international food quiz in which all three of us worked collaboratively together, undertook new challanges by standing out in front of a crowd representing foods and asking questions while entertaining also. It wasn't as hard as i though it was going to be, and time passed by really fast. After the quizes there was a big lunch for everyone. There were all kinds of foods from almost every part of the world, and eventhough i love sushi and didn't eat one at all because I ate myself to explosion with Millionaire's shortbread.
 I've never tasted such an awesome thing before. As I found out my math teacher, Ms. Kitchens, made them i inquired for the name and recipie, and made a bounch yesterday evening. Today I gave some to Ms. Kitchens as a gift in exchange for the idea and suggestions. By making the shortbread I also increased my areas of growth, undertook new challenges and developed new skills. Unfortunatelly I didn't make any pictures, but next time I make some, I'll upload it here :)

So International Day. After lunch a lot of people were performing, but I have to be honest, it wasn't about being individuals from another country. Some of them were (singing in Korean, performing a cultural dance from India) but It could have been better. I thought about a hungarian rapp song, but when I finally had the courage to ask if.I can, it was too late :) I definetly want to do it next time though! 

I added the pictures promised :)

Charity

When we got the task to look for charities in Moscow I asked for my mom's help since I don't know Russian at all. First she looked after a lot, then we got a paper from the school with the list of orphanages, and I don't know if the mine is there, but I think I've got it. My mom's company donates a lot to this charity, that's how she found it. The good thing about it is that it's reliable and accepts almost anything: Toys, clothes, tools, household appliances. The only thing to take care of is to be sure that these things are still good in quality and to actually donate these things. We could probably talk about it in the school as a bigger idea, so anyone could get rid off their surplus stuffs and help others. Here's a link and a phone number below to the charity :)

http://www.rusbereza.ru/fund/ashlp/mp.html

Гарнаева Оксана Михайловна

8 (903) 535 2096

http://www.rusbereza.ru/fund/cont.html

Hungarian Flag

In the beginning of the year I made a decision of creating something out of food. I had bigger plans but it finally turned out to be a Hungarian flag. When I arrived to Hungary last saturday I wanted to finish the whole thing, but it didn't turn out as successful as I hoped. A lot of people didn't come and by the end of the next week(this one) I thought I'll never manage to do such thing. I had to make the plans, buy the food, invite the people, and my girlfriend's best friend, Sziszi, offered me to make a video which turned out to be a little different, and it can be seen on my facebook profile.
In fact I don't even know how, but we made plans for thursday to get together. It came out just as bad as on Saturday so it was only my sister, my girlfriend, Sziszi, and me.
We all worked collaboratively together, especially I increased my awareness of my areas for growth in cooking, we all have undertaken new challanges, I planned the activity but couldn't have achieved my aims without my friends, and by helping to cut the video with Sziszi I also developed new skills. my sister, my girlfriend, Sziszi, and me.
Unfortunatelly only at the end we made some pictures, and not so different ones, so I only uploaded one of them. Hope you like it!

Service and Creativity

I have been doing a lot of things lately and not writing about them. I finally decided how I'm going to manage one of the Creativity promises I made up, but it will only take place in Hungary on the 15th of October, and it's kind of a surprise for me as well because I don't know if I succeed. But what I want to talk about today is my Service. Last week I had my first day at the art room. I was basically only carrying white paint around for lower grade kids at lunchtime, but there's more waiting for us. Me and Gregory are going to label all the tools, paints, brushes, etc... in different languages also, so from now on possibly noone will have an excuse for not understanding what the teacher is asking for :P On thursdays both of us helps, and on regular days only one of us cleans up, or gets something else to do. We don't have a schedule yet, but its on it's way :)

Today I also did one of my service projects, specificly the Weather Club Project. Every 2-3 weeks me and Gregory has to check the outside 'weather station', and take notes on the information from the thermometer(daily min. and max., and current temperature), pressure gauge, rain gauge and see how much the clouds cover the sky.
So theres a schedule given for us, which tells what day who reads the information from these devices.
The weather club has been going fro 3 years now, and what our aim is to find out if the fact - what they say about Global Warming - is true. By this we are all engaged with issues of global importance, work collaboratively together, certainly undertake new challenges, and lern how to read the information from the pressure gaude and other things, so we also develope our new skills.
And last but not least on the last friday I turned in my poster for the British International Calendar cover. I'm not going to lie I struggled with it, moreover I went to buy coloured pens at midnight to a 24/7 shop, and coloured it until 1 o'clock so I showed perseverance and commitment, eventhough it's not that big of a deal. I think I did my best on the poster though, so I hope the best for it, and heres the picture itself for you all :) :

My first Basketball Training

Last week I was told to do one more sport to fit the requirements of CAS. The closest thing to me was basketball.
 
After this statement being announced I can say that I was kinda forced into this, but now I don't mind it at all. It was great to play together as a team, which meant working collaboratively with others and  undertaking new challanges by playing against other teams. We haven't got used to each other yet, but I think we'll make a good team.
After basketball we had a pretty good conversation, even decided to go somewhere every wednesday after practise. This made me really happy, since I thought I'm going to spend 2 entire years here alone. We even thought about going out to play paintball, or just to meet up on the weekends. This fact proved me the fact that sports bring people together. :)

IB introductions day

 

On the other day there was an English class in which we discussed a presentation. There are four 'houses' in the school and each had to do a presentation on different themes to indtroduce IB for the future students(10 and 11 graders). We had aobut 5 days to make this  planned and initiated activity work.
Our group was the first one, since the themes were in order for a better understanding. We started from the core of the existance of an IB student: IB Learner Profile. There were ten of the profiles and each one of us had one or two of the profiles to explain. We agreed that I am going to make a PowerPoint presentation so I basically put a picture for each of the profiles, a title and put some animations in it. It took about a half an hour to look for appropriate pictures but there was no problem at all at the end. I think when the time came we all showed perservence and commitment in it, worked collaboratelivly with each other as a group, and considered ethical implications of our action. I think all the presentations were really good and the way we stood up in front of that many kids was calling for respect. We certainly  developed new skills by working on the speech we were about to perform and we were happy to give service to our teachers. We sort of completed each other: the teachers needed IB students who might have a better understanding in such presentation and the smaller kids would listen to us better, and we gave a service in order to complete our CAS blog requirement :) It was fun, and I hope there will be more team-building excersises for us!

My CAS Plan

There are many things I would like to achieve this year. I have long-term plans and also which will take about one day.
Creativity: In the last couple of months I tried cooking and I have to be honest I loved it. I love eating, why not create something for myself? I decided to build something out of food, probably in the spring-holiday at home with my friends to have more ideas about what we are doing. By the way this is not playing with the food around, we will actually eat it, so it won't be considered as wasting at all. I'll probably take pictures and then upload them to the blod so everyone can see. I hope I'll be successeful.
Action. I've been going to a weight-lifting room nearby at 'Novie Cheriyomushky'. It's ten minutes walk from my house so I visit the gym almost every day(6 days a week) for at least 2 and a half hours. Weight lifting is the only sport I love since my goal is weightloss and this is just perfect for me. I'll continue working out through the whole year. At my Weight Loss blog I wrote what I have reached already(77.7kgs from 80). Since then I lost 2 kgs which is pretty good in that short period of time. By the way weightlifting goes with gaining mass, so it's hard to tell what exactly is happening to my body.
For service I have an idea which I'm not sure about. I used to be 110kgs more than 3 years ago and since then I kept losing weight which meant a lot of cloths changing. Now I have plenty of shirts, pants, T-shirts, sweaters, and all kinds of clothes I will never wear again. I never knew what to do with them and I didn't want to throw them away because they are still in a really good condition! I was planning to give them to an orphanage, or a community but I will have to wait untill I go home, because there was no point in bringing those clothes to Moscow. So far these are my plans for my CAS, but I'm sure there will be more!

After the discussion with Mr O'Conner I've decided to summarise all the things:

Creativity:

• Drawing a picture for the BIS calendras cover
• Make some kind of hungarian food for International Day with Gregory
• Build something out of food with my friends in hungary (based on the idea of Epic Mealtime)
  If you are interested in the source of the idea you can take a look at it by clicking on the link below:
  http://www.youtube.com/user/EpicMealTime#p/u/40/0rUEpmbdZLw

Action:

• Go to the gym 5 times a week
• Attend to basketball club every wednesday

Service:

• Donating to an orphanage
• Might donate blood if I have a chance in Hungary
• Cleaning/Keeping everything in order in the Art Room
• Joining the Wheather Club

Sport's Day

This was my first morning without ironing my shirt, trousers and getting my tie knotted around my neck. All I wore was a pair of jeans, a T-shirt with the color of my house(green) and a hoodie against the cold what was waiting for me outside. I have to be honest I felt a little bit of freedom when I stepped outside my doorstep. I was actually really excited about thursday. I think the good idea about the 'dress code' is that I don't have to stand in front of the mirror everyday and ask: What should I wear today? And by the time I decide, 20 minutes are gone from my life. On the other hand on this day everybody had the chance to show a little piece of their individuality.                                                                                              
By wearing clothes we actually wear on avarage days we became more unscrupulous which was awesome. I think the first goal of sportsday was teambuilding and it was successful since we all worked collaboratively with others in each team.                                                We had to do all sort of sport through the day like football, basketball, dodgeball and even games I haven't heard about before. In both new games and the games I played before we definetly have undertaken new challanges  and have increased our awereness of our own strengths. For example I never knew I could run a relay before or even be first out of three runners(not the bests of course :) ). These sports were all planned activities by our teachers and our school, and eventhough it is hard to organize something like this there was no problem at all.
By the end of the day it was probably our team who won according to the score counted so far and I was satisfied and proud of ourselves.

Weight Loss

I made a decision back in Hungary that the summer is going to be perfect.I spent most of the time with my girlfriend and took part in a lot of BBQs. These were moderate meetings with my best buddies. However my oath was that when the school starts I am going to lose the weight I gained in the summer.
A diet is not new for me since I was 109.4kgs more than 3 years ago and had a lot of trouble burning that fat. I have to be honest I stopped at 77.7kgs and I have never thought that I could do a diet again. I was too proud. On the 1st of September I weighted 80.0kgs, and now I'm 77.5 again and just started going to the gym today. I increased my awareness of my own strengths by knowing that I'm still capable of such a thing like a diet. From now on I'm going to do a planned activity which means I'm attending the gym every weekday and go down to 72 kgs. So I have undertaken some new challanges from the first day of school this year and nobody knows how happy I am about that. I do not consider it as 'done' yet, but I'm sure I can handle such a thing again if I did it once. Every start is hard, and I think I'm over with the starting part.

My first day

The first day in school was my first day alone in Moscow. I didn't know the city at all but it wasn't that hard to find the school since I've been there before. I arrived pretty early and was tangling around in the corridor. I felt alone even though there was about 200 other kids around me. Then we were led to the gym and got seated. I got to know Mr. Short as he was talking to us about the school and what the expectations and the services were. By the end of the speech he told us that the first day was to get to know each other so we were going to do some team/building activities. It concluded all kinds of games like building a tower out of cups and sticks, acting, making a circle out of a rope blinded etc. During the games I introduced myself to a lot of people because the rule was to ask for everyone's name in your group. Finally I met someone I hoped for. Gregory as another Hungarian. From that on we didn't really fall apart, so he introduced me the school, told me about almost every teacher and told me everything what I needed.
After lunch we had build a kite in the groups of 3, but there was not enough people so i was in the group of 2 with Gregory. We built a pretty nice kite even though i never knew hoe to build one but now I can say that it was worth to get up in the morning since i learned something.
Later we walked next to forest to try out the kites, but unfortunately we broke ours. Well i don't think it really mattered because it didn't fly well anyway :)
After we started heading back and everyone was allowed to go home. I was done with my first day in school and I was happy that i found a future friend.
During my day I fulfilled some of the learning outcomes such as:

• Undertaking new challenges by participating in the activities.
• Working collaboratively with others as i was building the kite 
• Developing knew skills as Gregory showed me the ways of building a kite out of sticks, string and
   plastic bag.