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: