Jumble Sale

The Jumble Sale was a fund raiser held by the Year 12, it's aim was to raise as much money for charity as possible, me and my friend Vinit were put in charge of writing the letters, which were then to be sent home to the parents of every student, so we came up with two drafts, which were then put together into one and distributed to the school. You could say that we undertook a new challenge, since never before had we written to the parents of the BIS. Throughout this challenge we developed new skills in order to persuade parents and students to aid us in raising money for charity and this proved a success as we collected several thousands of roubles.

Christmas Disco

Christmas - probably one of the most important celebrations throughout the course of the year, practically for everyone, not excluding the BIS.The IB students were busy preparing for the disco, personally I helped with the Lolly Guess, Food stands, Santa hats and the performance to entertain the masses as well...

I was supposed to focus only on the Santa hats, my job was to complete a survey on how many people were to actually come to the disco, in order to count the number of snacks and hats to be provided, however I decided to go further and joined another group, which was in charge of the Lolly Guess. I helped the Lolly guess out by making posters and hanging them up around the school, as well as counting the number of sweets and buying some for the draw as well. This may not seem like a lot, but it definitely can count. During the disco me and some of my friends helped out with the food stands, selling the goods we purchased, as well as simply preparing the stands themselves. By working together in a team we have shown that we can work collaboratively with others, during the course of several weeks we planned and initiated our own activities, as well as undertaken new challenges along the way. The money we raised throughout the course of the week we gave to charity to help stray animals find a new home, so you could say that we considered the ethical implications of our actions.
During the disco itself we held a christmas karaoke, where we took the song of "V lesu rodilas elochka", a russian song, which was lead by the Russian students in our form, which does include me. This has increased our awareness of our weaknesses and strengths, for, personally, I cannot sing so I may want to improve.
This challenge proved to be fairly difficult, but it helped us to earn more than 20000 roubles and gain new experience.

Hockey - End of the First Round

Time sure does fly and I find myself playing the last game in the first round, so far we are not doing too badly, by positioning ourselves on 4th place, in the new year of 2012, we will be starting a new round with new nerve-wrecking battles, tension and goals.
So far I have been doing well, for a defence-man, 4 goals scored and 7 assists acquired, so I continue to increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth (slowly reducing the amount of areas for growth though). However, I would not have achieved anything if it was not for the team, it is all that I have out there in the icy wastes, we fight together, we win together. This is my 11th year of Hockey and I have not yet lived a single day when I regretted my choice, some may say that this does not show perseverance, however this is my blog and I do the talking so I dare to say that, throughout 16.5 years of life, I have shown perseverance and commitment in this activity, which became my style of life and without which I do not imagine my life.
Everyday I attempt to learn something new, therefore attempting to develop new skills (where I am definitely progressing), personally, if I have not learned anything during the course of the day I count the day lost. Would I have fun during the process if I did not undertake new challenges? Most probably - NO. Life would be boring and listless without risk. Every player risks his life, undertakes pain and I completely understand why, when you go out on the ice, you feel every heartbeat, you feel every pulse and you feel ALIVE!!! 

Contacting Non-Government Charities

An important part of our IB diploma programme is the CAS and within it probably one of the toughest problems to deal with - aiding or in other words providing a service for other people. So I have attempted to contact some non-government organizations, which provide charities for all the desperate people of the world...
The first organization I contacted was Hope World Wide, which is situated in Moscow, Botanicheskaya street, house 33, entrance 5. Although we cannot offer our services to this company we may send a donation to this charity in order to aid orphans and people in dire need. In order to provide money for a donation we may think of a fund raiser, such as a jumble sale and all the money made from selling everything that the students bring in.
The second was "Moscow Animals", this organization helps find homes for stray animals, however in order to do so we must vaccinate the animals ourselves, as well as clean and feed them so they are presentable to the new possible owners of the dog. This again will need a fund raiser in order to pay for the stray dog vaccines and it probably will be dangerous attempting to catch them by hand without any additional support.
The third was the "United Way", this organization helps orphans to start new lives, however most of the organization (if not all of it) must be done by us. We can help by giving English lessons to orphans helping them to understand life a bit better. We can act as blood donors in order to help those on the verge of death.
 tried to contact the "Women and Children First", however my e-mail was left unanswered and their website impossible to view.

I shall aim to help the organizations, which make it actually possible to help, I may attempt to contact other charity organizations.

Board Decoration

Our school is split up into four houses... The Greens (Chekov); The Red (Puskin); The Yellows (Tolstoy); and The Blues (Gogol). These four teams complete different tasks throughout the year, an example being Sports Day, about which I posted back in September, this time around we were asked to decorate our house boards. The task I was supposed to complete was to make it clear that this board was clearly Chekov's board and I think I have done a good job. We worked collaboratively with each other in order to get a good end result. While completing my task of writing the house name, I have developed new skills  and shown awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth, possibly this could be learning to draw graffiti even further. This time round I undertook a new challenge.  The graffiti in the top right-hand is my end result, it took me approximately 3 hours to do and I know I can do better, this activity will probably remain active until the end of the year therefore I will probably update this blog a few times in the months yet to come. This will, I hope contribute to my CAS creativity as I've spent some time on it and it does seem like a piece of artwork to me. This challenge really helped me to understand what I need to work on, it has increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas of growth. I hope I will be able to show perseverance in this activity, since I have some experience in art and design from my IGSCE. 

Football Club

For a few years now I had wanted to join the football club,it is purely teachers vs. Students and the tournament itself consists of 3 teams... the Reds, the Blues and the Greens, otherwise know as the Dynamos, the Maestros and the Galacticos. I play as goalie for the green team (previously for the blues), so far I'm ahead with 17 clean sheets (out of the goal keepers) so I am progressing in the league, this way I plan to undertake new challenges, as well as increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas of growth in the world of goal keeping anyways. I plan to play in the school league every Thursday until I finish my programme and in the near future show perseverance and commitment in my activities. Football should help me to develop new skills to help me in the world of sport. Every week we play ten matches each and recently we have changed the teams in order ti create competition and as a result I got shifted to the Greens along with one of my friends.
The football club in the future may be planned and initiated by us (the future Year 13s) and I do not think we consider the ethical implications of our actions.
This blog will be updated every half-term, along with photos and possibly videos. 

International Day

Half-term came around quite quickly and it was time for us (the year 12 group) to take part in the organization of activities, as well as preparing food for the buffet-lunch in the afternoon. I spent my time in the kitchen preparing and apple pie, I tried something new and, although I do know how to prepare food for myself, this was a new experience for me in the sphere of pastries and sugary treats. The 14th of October started off at a quick and very energetic pace, since I was the one in charge for the equipment for the activity organized be Stefan, Vinit, Kirill and me. The quiz to lay on my shoulders and although I failed my first attempt, but was rather successful in my second, since I became aware of my strengths and weaknesses and was able to take the lessons out of my mistakes. Overall the quiz contained up to 100 question on Football (soccer), Hockey and Basketball, which, in our opinion, are the most popular around the world. The activity itself was mostly based around football, since the activity was a penalty shootout where the questions determined the position from where the penalty kick was due. Points were awarded to the players who scored and correctly answered. It was quite good that we took on the younger groups who seemed much more keen in sports and we attempted to learn new skills, when I say that I mean controlling the Year 7s, it is practically impossible to hold them on one spot! After finishing the quiz and having lots of time to spare we played football matches - the four of us against a horde of small children. It was great to see that most were having a good time, meaning that our efforts did not go to waste. I believe that our team definitely undertook a new challenge and I plan to continue organizing activities for the younger years.

CAS Plan

In order to meet my CAS requirement I must spend time in achieving the three main goals - Creativity, Action and Service (The components of CAS). This is what I will do in order to meet both the components and the learning objectives of CAS.
Creativity - This term I will be doing quite a lot of work on the house score boards, especially (and probably only for my team) Right now I am working on a piece of urban artwork - Graffiti tags. This tag shows the name of our team in our favourite colours and possibly fonts. I plan to take part in all activities in school as well, examples may include... International Day, Sports Day, Discos and so on. However at times this may be impossible do to a great passion of mine shown just below.
Action - My passions lie with sports especially hockey, which I practised everyday for the last 11 years or so, I have a lot of action in my life and I will continue to endure the challenges it will put on me this new hockey season. I have always wished to take part in extracurricular activities and, after I actually receive a diploma from my hockey school I will move on to do another sport, which most likely will be either football or rugby.
Service - This may become a problematic area if not attended, but I am still quite keen in helping clean the world by helping to recycle materials from school along with my friends and fellow classmates. We might try to help the local Green Peace by helping saving Bitsevski Park from the flow of rubbish. Someone has put forward the idea of visiting a local orphanage (a great idea in my opinion) and help them by organizing activities and/or lessons, but I fear this will be extremely hard to organize.

This is basically my plan for this term, I hope to accomplish all of these tasks I have put in front of myself and, although this may seem quite the challenge, I am ready to take it on.

Sports Day

Although sports day started on thursday we spent the start of wednesday preparing our houses for the oncoming competitions. I am the vice-captain of the green house and as a result some preparation was shifted onto me. The year 12 group (that means us) worked collaborately in order to get everything prepared for the next day.
Sports Day finally came the prepared activities and sports tested us to our limits we  worked together in  order to obtain the maximum amount of house points for our houses. As a result we increased our awareness of our own strengths and weaknesses, as well as undertaken new challenges, an example will include "Safety" we developed new skills and strategies in order to win as many challenges as possible. A enormous part of my life goes towards professional sports and I was more than happy to participate in athletics and sports. After football, dodgeball, basketball, "Safety", volleyball ad an awful amount of laps around the school we finally reached the finale of the day... The rallies. Although the activity is fairly simple,adrenaline levels in the blood go sky high and it tests physical strength extremely well, it increases their awareness of their strengths and weaknesses. After the interhouse competitions, the IB students raced against the teachers and, well, we got disqualified after beating the teachers by half a lap.
Generally the day passed fairly well everyone enjoyed it and I hope to plan and initiate activities in the near future. Today we have not nescessarily shown perseverance in our activities, but Hockey will (an entry will come every half-term).   

Hockey - Week 1

My eleventh year of hockey, and a new season begins in parallel with the new school year, sadly it is my last season, afterwards we must either continue our training in other clubs or simply move on and this is what I decided to do. From day one we get into a tough training schedule and this week we focus on athletics in it's lightest forms - running cross-country runs, jumping in height and length and sprinting. We all developed new skills and undertaken new challenges, it increased our awareness of our strengths and weaknesses, the places that need improvement. However our on-land training takes up just over an hour daily, while the whole session takes up just under 3 hours...
The rest of the time we spend on ice it may look like we are professionals, but we still have lots to learn, when on ice we increase our awareness of our strengths and weaknesses (although this sometime may be a rather verbally painful experience), of course we train aspects of each individual, but the collaborative effort we put in as a team is what gets victories in the ice clashes. For many years we have practised our skills, which at first seemed new at the time, however now it is a routine. Since we are the eldest year group we must set an example to the rest of the club's players and from time to time we plan and initiate activities for the small ones. This week we organized a small tournament between the years 1996 and 1997, as well as for the 2000th and 2001st year group. On thursday we organized sports activities like football, basketball and volleyball, the teams had fun and were happy to do something on land that did not involve running hundreds of laps or jumping over barriers.
The week came to it's conclusion on Sunday, this is when our training is put to the test - The Moscow Cup Tournament. We demonstrated good passing movements and teamwork and in the end we finished the game with a score of 8:1. Next week will not be so easy our opponents, too, won their first game and their last year's statistics were generally pretty good. There is no telling what will happen on the ice and what our coach might think of next...
This part of the whole blog will be updated each half term, i'll try to update photos and my statistics.

The First Day Back

The first day back at school, but there is no time to waste, the IB starts today and that means a very tough two years ahead of us - the new year 12 group. After a brief speech from our headmaster we went straight to our activities, which aimed at improving our teamwork and, in point of view, succeeded in it's primary task. It all started from planning and building a tower from a very limited supply of straws and paper and it enabled us to attempt to work collaboratively with others, putting together our ideas and executing together. Although it might seem slightly childish it allows us to both develop new skills and the undertaking of new challenges, the activity itself was fun, it is a shame it was limited to only ten minutes. As we went along the different activities prepared for us by the elders in year 13, we noticed that activities prepared were continuing to get more and more challenging, until we reached the point where we were blind folded and told to work as a team by communicating in order to make different geometric shapes using the five metre rope given. This was a challenging activity, but a very interesting one, I now understand that many objectives may not be reached when working alone, but may become easy tasks if working with others. Another activity that I found interesting was to protect an egg, which is thrown from a three metre height by only using the materials provided. Sadly we failed to protect the egg in the end, but no worries, since now we know that our strategy was not so good as it seemed and maybe, if we get another chance, we will use our previous experience.
The main activity of the day was the kite building activity, where we again demonstrated our teamwork as we worked in groups of three in order to make an actual flying model of a kite. At that moment we were given some light sticks as well as duck-tape, string and a plastic garbage bag and were set straight to work after some tips given by the year 13s. However our group decided to make a small risk, the kite was meant to be a cross, but we made it into a diamond shape with a cross inside it, we increased the mass of the kite and were now afraid that it would not lift off the ground. Throughout the one hour period given we were able to construct a kite and after a break we actually got to fly then out on a plain. There was not much wind that day, therefore we could no lift our kites into the air, although we were happy to see that the kite, after several failed attempts (some of which were quite close to getting the kite up and flying), still held in one piece. We were glad to take part in this activity, the whole group seemed to felt very happy, since we spent the day on activities, learning about CAS through actions, instead of never ending lectures. I learned that even kite-making could actually be turned into activities that could help other children and people in general. Anyone can take any experience from their life and turn it to a service to help others.
In just one day I have undertaken some new challenges and definitely developed a new skill - kite-buiding, something I have never done. I believe I did show commitment in the activities, however I might need to learn to work a bit more collaboratively. I hope to go on to plan my own activities and execute them fairly soon.