Learning to shoot the bow is hard

I am glad that my classmates are so active and they are one of the reasons why I am active too. My classmate Delija has proposed that we join her in a bow shooting practice and learn to do it ourselves. I had wanted to do some sport’s activity for a while, thus I accepted her proposal and joined other classmates in this great introductory to archery.

                We went to the archery club Delija is going to, where we met her coaches and other students that are having practice at the same time. One of the coaches has explained to us all the basics of the right way to shoot the bow and gave us the equipment and we started our practice. For me it was really hard at the start and there was one compromise that made even harder. Since it’s indoors club (well of course it is, it is winter right now), the ceiling height is low and when you look at the track to the shooting target, as closer you get to the target, the height decreases. Since, I am a quite tall person and the tallest from my group I had the longest bow that was chosen to match my height (somehow the bows length is proportional to the person’s height and arm length). We were beginners and everyone went really close near the target, something like 5-6 meters near, so that they could actually hit something. It wasn’t the case for me since my height and the length of the bow meant that it was too narrow for me to shoot from that place, since I couldn’t extend my arm fully without hitting the ceiling. For that reason, I was shooting twice as far as others from the line that people who do this sport professionally shoot from. You could even imagine that my shoots were so off the target. However, after a few tries I tried to really focus and progressed a little. I learned that my accuracy could be off most of the times but if I really try, then I would actually hit the target. When I actually hit the center that one time, I couldn’t believe myself, but it was only for once. Too bad for me, but I liked the challenge. It really made me try my best and that’s why I learned something new and even developed some accuracy.

                This activity was great and everyone should try this. When you shoot the bow you feel really great and it just look badass. I will somehow try to organize a second practice and I hope that I will succeed.

Trying new activities: mind games!!!

                At the end of the last week, my friend offered me to participate in a competition called “Auksinis Protas” and I was quite interested about it. It can be translated as “Golden mind” and I thought that it will be like a competition between teams who answers tricky organizers questions. I quickly answered “Yes!” to my friend since CAS thought me to try anything new and exciting, and I am glad that I made the decision to participate in this activity.

                The whole competition was really fun and quite new for me. There were 5 rounds and on each round there were different tasks for every team. On the starting 2 rounds we were answering questions about a set theme in every round. Those questions were really tricky and I was amazed that other could answer them. I tried my best and focused, however I was able to answer only a few of the questions on my own. Next, on the third round there was a lighting round. There were 20 questions with 4 anwser showed and we needed to choose the right one. This round was easier for me, but still the fast pace was quite challenging, since you had 30 sec to write an answer and half of those 30 sec you actually read the question, thus I tried me best to keep up with time. The fourth round was a music one. There were 10 questions and they all relate to some song or track played and you need either to know the answer through your knowledge or find some clues in the song that would help you to answer. These questions were so interesting and creative. It’s amazing to think that somebody created them, since they were like a piece of art and also because of the originality they were the hardest ones. The final round was as same as the 2 first ones and it was really the most intense one, since at the end, when you still can do something for your score, you try your hardest to answer correctly.

                We finished 14^th between 25 teams, and I would say that a great achievement. I trained a lot of my skills in this competition such as critical thinking, creativity and for sure time management. Also, I learned to see questions from quite different perspective, always finding for something hidden, that would help me to answer the question. Overall, this experience was perfect for me.

                I will certainly try to compete again, since this is not a one time event and actually it’s a league. I hope my friends would invite my again and that I will experience it again.

Photo of my team:

Doing something beneficial to the society and deceased people

                Our IB classes and other school students collaborated and did something great. We saw a problem that in autumn, when the leaf fall down, most of the public spaces aren’t cleaned, especially the graveyard in Antakalnis. Hence, we decided to contact them and agree on our participation in the clean-up of the graveyard. It was done on a Saturday morning and during the day we managed to gather most of the leaves in the graveyard and it really made it look cleaner and more appropriate to the dead people graveyards.

                I saw a great importance in this event, since we need to take care of these kinds of public place. The environment of graveyards should be as clean as possible to ensure that we give our respects to the deceased people and I would say it was my main aim. During the whole activity I worked as actively as possible and with the good teamwork of our group we managed to do the hard work.  The whole process was not that challenging physically, but one thing was hard to do. The area of graveyards had also many leaves on them and the problem is that it’s not ethical to step on them, thus I had implemented hard work in order to clean them without doing that. We done a few things to make it possible and I am glad that we had succeeded to do that.

                This activity really benefitted the Antakalnis graveyard because not only it was more appealing to the visiting relatives of deceased people, but also, as I said, we showed our respect to them and in doing that we showed that it’s an important thing to go. I hope that I will have this kind of an event in the future or even organize one, since it’s one of the things that helps to make our society and surroundings better and it was a great experience to have. The feeling of doing something beneficial is no of the best in the world.

Here my group is working hard in order to clean the graveyard:

 Here is me happily cleaning the graveyard:

My third “Maisto bankas” event

                It’s strange for me to realize, that I had participated in the third food gathering event, which aim is to gather food for those in need. I have this feeling because I was able to commit for this great activity and I really start liking it. My third event of the “Maisto Bankas” had passed similarly as those before. I have stayed for a day in a big supermarket and promoted passing by shopers to donate for our organization. One thing that I have found different this time is that I was able to help newcomers to contribute more effectively in this event. I explained them how to pursue people to donate, how to number and track the donated items and also I told them about my previous experiences

                My goal for this activity was as same as before. I wanted to spend my time differently, help others, have fun and meet other people. My presumptions were met and I am happy that I hadn’t missed this event. The whole experience from the start to the finish, when I was exhausted, yet delighted, was great and again I had challenged myself to be as active as possible, since the problem this event tries to solve is one of the biggest in my country. Many families have a hard time to meet their needs because the minimal wage is not enough to fully satisfy the needs of a new family and even if they get a few packets of food through this organization, they would gain great help in their lives. Poverty is horrible and I am glad that there are organization like “Maisto Bankas”, who actually care for the well-being of disadvantageous people. After giving out the message about this problem in this event, I feel that I had done something to end this problem and that my and many other people contribution to this problem is a one step to finally ending it.

                I will continue to volunteer the upcoming year and even next years, if I will be able to. In next events I would like to make an even bigger impact and become a supervisor of a team.

Here is the photo of my team:

Debating

                Debating was always interesting to me. I always thought about as the best activity to strengthen your speaking and critical thinking skills. Hence, when I saw an invitation in the social media to attend debating club classes, I was really tempted. For that reason, a few weeks ago I participated in an introductory class of this club and now I am a member of this club, and already I had 2 classes of in this club.

                Every lesson is really interesting to me. Although, we started from the basics such as the format of debate and how should you structure your speech, I grasped quite a few valuable insights about effectively showing your opinion. Already, I see progress in my thinking, since now I see everything through debater’s mindset.

                Next week I will if my progress is good since I will have my first debate. Even now, knowing that it will be only the next week, I feel that it will be hard and quite challenging. I will need to speak up to 6 min, since it’s the appropriate time for a speech in the format we debate in. 6 minutes are a lot when you think about it, but my teachers say that it’s nothing and they would speak twice as much if they could. Well, I will see for myself if they are right and definitely I will find out my strength in debating.

                I founded debating so interesting that I even tempted a few of my friends to go to classes with me and I hope even one of them will agree, since debating is such a great activity to do. It was actually almost compulsory in ancient times and was written by many of philosophers as a key of individuals’ mental growth. I understand them now.

Here is a photo from the oppening event:

Induction ceremony of the first years

                We have a great tradition in our school (I hope it’s the same in the rest of the world) to induce our newcomers in our schools society. It’s done by an annual event in which we make the first years to do various tasks in order for them to show if they are viable enough to be a part of our school. I was a participant of this event last year when I entered IB program and I am glad that finally this year I can be the one who does the induction. It was the number one thing that I was waiting for this year and the whole event was really wonderful and lived to my expectations.

                The event had two main parts: the morning part and the evening part. In the morning, we told everyone to go to Vingio Park – a huge park in Vilnius, and here we commanded them to walk around the whole park and do various tasks like dance something funny when rave music is played. In the evening part we had a big celebration in the school and we treated first years also the same. They needed to pass a tunnel in order to enter the event and before the start they were placed in our made cages of fence. The whole atmosphere was really intense and there were many mini shows by us, last years, also the first years needed to do an act themselves and at the end we acknowledged them as a part of our society and we poured water on them. The whole experience was amazing not only for me but also for the first years. I remember having a lot of emotion on my ceremony and this event really helps to make up friendships when you just enter a new school and also built up teamwork skills since they needed a lot of it in their task and preparation of their act.

                I was the one who guided IB students in the morning part and the evening part. I was like their commander and showed my knowledge as senior. I am glad that I have done this event and I have made quite a good relationship with IB 1 class, even though they are first years. I hope they will have as same of fun as me in organizing next year’s event and I hope that this tradition will carry out for generations.

This is our organizing team after the succesful event:

This the IB 1 that I commanded (unfortunately I wasn't in the photo since they were doing some sort of task I don't remember):

Swimming!!!

                During my middle school I have been quite a passionate swimmer and had many practices every week, also participated in a few competitions. However, for some reasons that I have forgotten I discontinued my swimming practices and I have been missing them for years. For that reason, I decided to continue practicing one of my favorite sports, thus it meant that I need to start practicing again. I went to my local extra-curriculum activities center named LVJC and registered for swimming practice and then it began.

                It has been over a month when I started to take swimming practices. I have them 2 times a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they start on 6:45 am. Yes, I am not kidding. For the past month, I wake up on 5:30 am on practice days and quickly go to the pool. It was quite challenging to do that for the first two weeks because every morning is like hell. It was always hard for me to get up early and it makes it even harder to swim in the mornings. However, it had great effect on my overall felling during the day because early practices are the perfect energy booster. Also, my schedule is much more controlled now, since I needed to change quite a few things during my school days in order to be full of energy in the mornings and get enough of sleep. It really helped me to see the flaws that I had done previously, like watching various series until 11 pm or not focusing on learning enough. I fell that I had quite developed during that month and also I feel that even my grades are better now.

                I will certainly continue this activity. How long I don’t know because I have a problem with transportation this early in the morning and in winter it will be extra hard to go to the center on my own, but I hope that I will overcome my problems and don’t stop practicing as I did before.

“Vilnius marathon”, how did the day of the marathon went for a volunteer and a participant?

                There’s a great sport event in Vilnius, called “Vilnius marathon”, which is organized annually and takes place in Vilnius old town. I had known it for a few years and wanted to either participate or volunteer, yet I hadn’t done that somehow. However, this year something changed, maybe it was CAS, and I filled the volunteering form and also registered as a participant. I am glad that I had done that, since the whole experience was something unique. I started my day at 7 am at the central camp of the volunteers and found my coordinator. After the coordinator explained everything to the team, we headed to our posts to work. I was in the start/finish point, thus basically I was responsible that the start/finish line and done many mini jobs that I was asked too. I interacted not only with my team, but also the organizers, medical team and photographers. I had many challenges during my time there, since my post was one of the most unpredictable/ action packed. There were many people passing out because of dehydration, there were issues before every start and at one point I was the photographer, taking photos of people finishing the marathon.

                 After this hard first half of the day, my challenge awaited me. I registered to run the 4.2 km race. My goal was to finish the race as fast as possible, since I often jog during my free time and I was preparing a little during the last month. Unfortunately for me,  I hadn’t thought that the volunteering would take most of my energy. Nevertheless, I focused before the race and tried to regain as much of my energy as I can. This experience really helped me to build my willpower in moments of despair and gladly my race was a success and I finished even faster than I predicted.

                This running event was a really great experience for me and I will definitely participate in next year’s marathon.  This event is wonderful since it promotes quite effectively healthy life-style because seeing thousands of people of different age group participate in it, makes you see an impact. Many celebrities promoted this event, and there were many ads around the city. Even the mayor of the city participated in it. Also, I noticed a pattern among my friends that this event had made them much more physically active since they started to prepare for it. I would like to believe that this was the same for many others in Vilnius and I think events like these make an impact. For the next year’s marathon, maybe I will try to push my limits to the next level and run the full marathon – 42 km. One thing for sure, that I will train more this time and try to become better every day.

There is a photo of me after finishing the race:

This is the photo in my spot at start/finsih start just after the marathon had started:

Here you can see how did other volunteers at the registration camp worked:

Watching a movie named "Ethnic kitchen'' and discussing about it

Immigration, in my opinion, is really challenging thing to overcome for many people and I see a really big problem,when other people has a  bad prejudice for other nationality people. So, I was really happy, when my classmate offered our class to watch a movie about immigrants in Lithuania.

From the start I was really determined to analyse everything about the movie and luckily it was a really interesting one. It told about a few life stories of immigrants, that lives in Lithuania. Afterwards, we had a discussion about the movei and immigration. It started slopy, but after a few minutes we were comfortable enough to talk about these problems.

The whole experience was really great and watching the movie I learned a few new things myself. I really liked the discussion and hearing other people opinions about this global problem was really interesting. The whole activity was really benefitial to me, since I learned a few things, had a great time with my friends, and discussed about this world problem, which I think will help me in my future conversations or other things. Watching films with great people is wonderul!

By Gediminas Pažėra

IB 2 exams

Finally, IB 2 exams stated. Of course, it's "a wonderful" time for last year students, but even worse, the exams were placed in our school and everyone else had lessons, so at the breaks it was really noisy in the halls. To ensure, that IB 2 students had the best time to write their exams, our teachers proposed, that we, IB 1, would monitor the halls and make sure, that everyone was as queit as possible.
At first, I looked very sceptical of this idea, but realised, that I will have the same conditions and this help of us maybe help others to have the best grades.
There was a timetable, when we needed to guard the halls, and everyone of IB 1 took a part of it. I feel better after doing a few shifts myself and knowing that I help the IB 2 students, made this experience a lot more better.
This activity maybe didn't had a big value for me, but surely it had for others.

By Gediminas Pažėra

My first running event

I always was an active person, however recently I had a big injury, so almost the whole time since summer of 2014 I couldn't do any sports seriously. Recently I started to feel better and decided that I need a new stimulus that would help me to be active again. It was the desicion to run in a running event. Actually, I never had runned before in this kind of event and I really wanted to try it. I was really lucky that my friend offered me to run in 10 km running event, that was organized by a group called "Miško trasa", translated it sounds like "forest track".
The whole event was wonderful and at the same time really challenging. I saw this challenge easy at the start, it seemed that I had all the willpower to suceed, but when I started to run I realised, that it was actually much more hard. When I runned the first 2-3 km of the track, I started feeling really exhausting and it became worse and worse with every meter. It was like a fight with myself. Nevertheless, I didn't stopped and I knew what my goals were, so I runned and runned, even if it was really frustrating. Finally, I finished, not only the race, but my goals. Of course, I wasn't the leading runner, but knowing my condition, I was really happy that I even finished.
Even though, the activity was really hard I liked it very much, because I found new strenghts within myself and the feeling when you accomplish something is wonderful. Maybe it seems that a one running event couldn't change many things, but I feel a bit changed and can surely say that this experience was really benefitial to me. I learned (maybe not learn, but remembered) how to overcome my weaknesses and move to my goals and now I know how hard it is to run 10 km. After this experience I know I will train more hard and streghten my injury ( forgot to mention, I injured my right knee) and I hope, that later I will be able to run even 21 km.

By Gediminas Pažėra

Another volunteering experience

This is follow up activity prior to my first volunteering activity, again it was for organization called "maisto bankas". I already knew what I want to do and what I will experience, but again everything exceeded my expectations. This event was for gathering food for poor and I really like the idea behind it.
Everything about this activity is wonderful. I worked together with great people to achieve a goal. Doing it I helped a one big global issue - hunger.
These kind of activities means a lot for me, since I am generous person and seeing somebody suffer to extent, that they can;t afford food, makes me uneasy and doing it I grew as a person more and everything was wonderful.
This activity, like the one before, had was of a great value and importance to me. I worked with determined people again, overcome the difficulty of the food gathering, helped to end a global issue, and learned a few things myself, that will help me to develop as a person more in the future. Volunteering rocks!!

By Gediminas Pažėra

Hundred days left celebration for the whole school

This event is similar to the one I had a few months before, but this event scale is much more bigger. Actually, I really waited for this event and wanted to participate in it, because When I was in 9h, 10th grade I always saw this beutiful event in the school and I wanted to be a part of it. This year I had a chance and I am really happy about it, it was a wonderful experience.
I done a lot of things in this event. I was the decoration maker, painter, decorator, and etc. But the most important thing, that I had done,I organized my own activity. It was chemistry experiment lab and I planned for this activity for months. Basically, I purposed the idea of it, when we were brainstorming activities for the event, and they accepted it, so I founded people who would help me and I done it.
After I event, I can say that everything, the preperations, actual event were wonderful and life changing. I now understand many things. I never thought that making an event of this scale is that hard and that to organize something yourself could be this new and at the times strange. However, I overcomed every problem I faced and succeded to be a part of the event. Of course, I was more easy when I worked with my friend and new met students.
I will always remember this event as a really great experience that taught me alot. Know I know how to deal with many different problems, how to work with other, how to organize something, and now I know a few areas how I can grow. For example, my painting skills are not the best. Ok, I'm joking, but still everything about this activity was perfect and I hope I will have a similar event again.

By Gediminas Pažėra

 





 

Hundred days left celebration for IB 2

There is an annual event that we have in our school, that is called "Šimtadienis", this can we translated to something like Hundred days left celebration. Actually, we have 2 of these celebrations in our school, one for IB, because their exams starts earlier that our national curriculum students's exams, and one for our whole school I always knewed about this event, but I wasn't really hyped when we needed to organize it. I expect a bad experience and wasted time, but overall it was fun and I didn't expect it to be a wonderful experience.
For this event there weren't many prepatations, the whole work was for brainstorming ideas, so my role was to help others with succeding the ideas. Whole prepatations and event was really cool, since I had a chance to communicat and work together with my classmates. It could be said that this event brought us more together than before and know I see this event as great celebration for the last year students.
The main values from this activity for me were doing something fun and good for our friends from IB 2, mastering "the art" of working with my friends, and realization that I need to think more about these kind of events and start actually to help with the creative aspects of it.

By Gediminas Pažėra

a similar event for us, and that it will be as good as our was.

Really cool, interesting and challenging project.

My IB classmate suggested in our Facebook group his idea of a new project. Basically, we, a group of students, will go to a kindergarten and just read them fairy tales. Seems easy, however it is more challenging that I though it would be. Of course, without any questions and investigations I signed in and our organizer found 2 kindergartens who would accept us and we started our project. Up until now we are doing weekly fairy tail telling. Actually, one of the hardest part was to do it weekly. I am kind of a lazy person and do to something consistently and same every week is not for me and I saw that this was actually my biggest weakness. However, i didn't loose myself in the moment and with a hard effort i done it consistently. I showed perseverance and commitment. It was hard at first, but gradually it became easier. I was kind of impressed that I could do it. I found also that it helped me to how commitment with other tasks and I realized that it is really important if you want to succeed somewhere. With this new insight I done a lot since then towards my personal skills and goals. Also, doing this project I developed some new skills. The most important one is communicating with children. It was a shock and appeal for me to go there for the first time, because it is hard to deal with a whole room of kids. However, I still showed perseverance and step by step learned to attract their attention, listen to them and etc. This activity also helped me to increase me fluently when telling or reading something, in this case fairy tales. It was always a problem of mine and I didn't have any practice to deal with up until now. So now I'm more confident with speaking to a larger group of people. Talking with kids actually does a lot of good things for you, however it's harder when speaking with children, because no kindergarten would let us in if we didn't were ethical. This means, we needed not to use any curse words or say anything that would result in 'infection' of a child brain. It was hard for everybody, but we were in groups of 2 people, so if someone almost stepped out of the line, the other one could catch him and save him, so we didn't have a problem with it. Actually, working together with a partner is really interesting and you get to know your mate and broaden your connection with him. At first, it was hard to collectively tell a story and to do it in an interesting way, but after some time it was done almost perfectly. Nevertheless, it was an interesting project to take a part in. Also, it showed me my artistic, because you won't 'sell' the story if you won't do it creatively and with your heart.