Friday Football - Second try.

Today is Friday and as always Mr. Coach along with Mr. English and Mr. Brigstock were running the football club. Even though I have not been attending the club for three weeks in a row due to transport issues today I have decided to give it a second shot. 

It was absolutely great, I have enjoyed every minute of it! Firstly, I was incredibly pleased with my progress - I have scored twice into opponents (!) goal and made several assists to my team mates. Secondly, we had three teams this time (unlike two the previous time) and this gave me an opportunity to have water breaks that we craved for last time. Thirdly, despite the fact that I was in a completely different team to last time's, my team mates were nothing but supportive throughout all of the games that we have played (even that one team mate of mine whose occasional anger management issues really worried me). 

As I said, today was awesome, I will definitely attend the club next week as I feel like this activity can potentially really boost my overall stamina. 

Unfortunately, I was foolish enough to forget to take any pictures to post so you will just have to take my word on this one. 

By attending today's football club, I have: 

- increased awareness of my strengths and weaknesses, as well as my progress

- undertaken challenges

- worked collaboratively with others

- shown perseverance and commitment to football

- developed new skills 

Tennis: Progress + Video

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts for Action aspect of my CAS I play tennis at a local court. I am confident that I have improved big time since September: my hits are gradually becoming stronger and more accurate, my serves have ameliorated as well. My coach is very pleased with my progress, says that I have missed my chance to become the next Kurnikova or something. He is really prone to flattery. 

Last week I decided to record myself engaging with playing tennis. Consequently I am attaching a short video clip to this entry. 

I believe that by maintaining my active activity and making a video out of it I have targeted the following CAS outcomes: 

• increasing awareness of strengths and areas for growth
• undertaking new challenges 
• developing skills 
• being active and creative at the same time! 

Another cooking session at school.

On monday I have attended and helped organize third cooking club session held on lunchtime at chemistry lab.


This week we cooked japanese sushi rolls. It wasn't my first time cooking them and I roughly knew all the steps that were taught to us by my classmate and friend Alyona.
As I've mentioned in the introductory sentence, I have also helped organize Monday's session by bringing in a lot of ingredients and setting up everything for the club. I also took pictures of club participants so that they could use them in their CAS blogs.

If for some reason you have missed Monday's cooking club but still want to try making sushi rolls like the ones I made, this is what you have to do:

- Lay a 10x15 piece of roasted seaweed on the bamboo sushi-roll mat.
- Place a hand full of pre-cooked sushi rice - tips here on how to prepare perfect rice: http://www.ingorohloff.de/sushi.html
- On top of rice place any ingredients that you want but in reasonable amount and all cut in thin strips (my favorite combination was crabs meet, cucumber and philadelphia cheese)
- After this bring the end of your sushi roll mat on top of all ingredients and keep on rolling pressing onto ingredients inside until you form a proper roll.
- Cut your roll with sharp knife.



I really enjoyed making these sushi rolls since I absolutely love Japanese cuisine and my rolls ended up tasting much better then what we are served in the canteen. Plus, we had lot of fun helping each other out during the process of cooking.



In addition to that I have also: 
- increased awareness of my strengths and weaknesses
- worked collaboratively with others
- shown perseverance and commitment to cooking
- developed new skills 

Henna Tattooing.

Last weekend my yoga teacher finally came back from India and she got me 5 tubes of henna paste as souvenir. I always noticed how girls from India tend to choose henna tattooing as their International Day activity and I thought that if they can do it then so do I. 

Achieving a beautiful temporary tattoo is a relatively easy task. 

You first need to get a tube of henna paste of good quality and carefully draw a creative image. After this you have to let it dry, spray it all over with hair spray and leave it over night for the brightest color. In the morning scratch the pieces of dry henna off and apply any oil ( I use Johnson's baby oil:) ) Et voilà! 

My creative design. Still wet. 

During this activity I have:

- developed new skills

- increased awareness of my strengths 

- undertaken new challenges 

Eco-Friendly Me.

A couple of days ago I went to my mother's workplace - a large office center in the North of Moscow. I was having lunch at the office canteen when I noticed the cleaning lady washing the coffee machine. I asked her if she could give me used coffee grounds instead of tossing them away in the bin. She did. 

I have heard plenty of ways to reuse coffee grounds and always thought it was an awesome way of contributing towards making our world a cleaner place to be. I was very excited about getting these used coffee grounds and was surprised at how easily accessible they are! 

If you follow this link: http://thegoodhuman.com/2010/06/08/16-ways-to-reuse-old-coffee-grounds/ you'll find 16 ways of reusing old coffee grounds.

This is what I did with mine: 

- used them as skin exfoliant 

- massaged them into my hair for beautiful shine (which frankly to my huge disappointment wasn't achieved)

- made post-washing-up hand deodorant

- used as a fertilizer for my window sill plants

- mixed with water to make "the paint" which I used for my "Live Green" poster

I believe that reusing old coffee grounds is a great way of making your life just a little bit greener. That is why I intend to start collecting them from the coffee machine that I have at home (not sure how that is going to work out since I get my coffee from those Nespresso capsules) and attempting other ways of recycling them. 

As for CAS Objectives, I think I: 

- undertook new challenges

- engaged with issues of global importance

- considered the ethical implication of my actions 

- was communicative, caring and open minded.

 

Mission Possible!

Last week we were introduced to a new challenge - a mission statement contest. Apparently IB board are concerned about the mission statements of international schools, BIS is no exception. Hence, our IB coordinator, Mr. Parker, has asked us to come up with a new mission statement for out school, something that would express the purpose of our school and emphasize it’s international community. 

As a very strong contributor to school’s community, I have accepted the challenge with no hesitation. This is what I have come up with:

"BISM 3 and it's community of competent staff warmly welcomes all international students aged 11-18 and aims to guide them towards becoming ambitious, balanced and knowledgeable individuals demanded by top universities all around the world." 

I believe that by participating in “Mission Possible” competition, I have:

• undertaken new challenges
• developed new skills
• considered ethical implications of my actions
• proved to be an inquirer and a risk-taker

Helping out with Wall Display.

Today I have contributed to the service part of my CAS by fixing up a wall display in one of the English rooms. It took me only around 20 minutes on lunch time and I was pleased to hear words of thankfulness in return for my work.

I believe that by doing this I: 
- concidered ethical implications of my actions
- was caring and proactive 

Sponge Nail Art.

Last saturday I have experimented with nail art again. This time I have chosen to do a sponge manicure design - something that I have heard a lot about but never actually dared to try out. 

The colors that I have chosen were pink and purple -  I thought the contrast of the two would look very attractive. 

Below you can see a picstich of photos that I took in the process. I am not particularly pleased with the result as I think that I went a little bit overboard with "sponging" and that turned my nails purple rather than pink gradually turning into purple. Something to consider next time. 

During that creative activity I:

- increased awareness of strengths and weaknesses

- undertook new challenges

- shown perseverance and commitment to nail art

- developed new skills 

Yoga Home Video.

I have recently realized that despite the fact that I said I was going to do yoga as part of my CAS I haven't been providing any proof of myself maintaining this activity. Therefore I have made a short video (relatively short - some might find 8 minutes too long and boring) of myself practicing yoga.

In this video I have shown several asanas, outlined health benefits of each one and gave top 5 before-training advises. 

Hope you'll find it useful! 

P.S: once again, I apologize for the tech issues towards the end of the vid. 

CAS OUTCOMES:

- all three of CAS aspects targeted 

- increasing awareness of strengths and areas for growth

- undertaking new challenges

- planning and initiating activities

- showing perseverance and commitment to yoga

- considering ethical implications of my actions 

- developing new skills

Cookery Sleepover with Alyona and sis.

My sister (http://polinasemochkinacasblog.blogspot.ru/) and I have spent last night at Alyona's house (http://alyonasukhovabism.blogspot.ru/) and one of the many fun things that we did was cooking eclairs (or oversized profiteroles). 

First step was to make the pastry out of basic ingredients including flour, eggs, boiled water, butter, salt and sugar. After this we filled a plain-nozzle piping syringe with dough and piped out 5-7 cm lengths of pastry onto a cooking tray. It took it around 30-40 mins in a pre-heated oven to fully bake.

When we have achieved the golden color of our pastry, we once again used the same piping syringe but with a smaller diameter nozzle to fill the eclairs with vanilla custard. 

We could have just stopped there and served eclairs the way they were but Alyona has suggested another creative idea: to decorate them with colorful icing. Despite the fact that a lot of people who had an opportunity to try our "masterpiece" so to speak commented on the toxicity of the color, I personally thought that it was a great idea as it masked the holes from piping the filling and gave our eclairs an overall finished look. 

After spending the night at the kitchen we brought eclairs to school and decided to ask people around to degustate them and tell us what they thought. I have recorded some of the feedback that we got and Polina made a video out of the footage. I am of course attaching it to this post as proof. 

I genuinely enjoyed cooking eclairs and I believe that this activity was an excellent example of collaborate work. 

In addition to that I have: 

- increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth

- planned and initiated activities 

- shown perseverance and commitment to my activities 

- developed new skills

- been a reflective and caring communicator

DIY Decor.

Just like the majority of female population in the world, I wear make up. I'm not much of a make up guru however to apply my products I use special brushes. I don't tend to go overboard with it but since I do my make up pretty much every morning I like to keep my brushes in close accessibility. Therefore I have decided to decorate a random box that I have found in my apartment and use it for storing brushes. 

For this creative activity I haven't used a lot of materials:

- a box

- some weird looking dried-glass type of thing in colors green and magenta

- golden christmas beads 

- super glue

- a pair of scissors 

 I am very pleased with the result as the newly decorated box fits well into the overall decor of my room and it is a very practical storage item for me. 

I enjoyed every step of the process as it enabled me to express my creativity as well as:

- to undertake new challenges 

- to work collaboratively with others (my 5 year old brother helped me to separate the beads from the cord)

- to show perseverance and commitment to hand-made crafting 

- to develop new skills

Friday Football Club.

Quite recently I decided to start attending the football club held at our school after lessons on Friday. I believe that this would be a very good contribution to action part of my CAS.

I quite enjoyed the club despite the fact I was the only girl and probably the weakest player of all. I tried hard to get the ball from my opponents and dribble it, always forgetting about the "3 touches" rule. I also found it very difficult to run back and forth across the pitch for over half an hour and often felt like falling on the floor. Although I got several positive comments from our english and ICT teachers so I suppose I wasn't too bad but there is definitely room for improvement.

I believe that today I have annoyed quite a number of players by hitting them in places they don't want to be hit and by missing the ball a lot of times BUT I have:

- increased awareness of my strengths and areas for growth
- undertaken new challenges
- worked collaboratively with my team mates
- developed new skills
- proven to be a risk taker and an inquirer, balanced and communicative.