Candela Pedrero

Candela Pedrero Zazo 〻 CAS: Creativity (Orange), Activity (Blue), Service (Green).

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Project: Yearbook! Last entry!

We finished it! Our efforts finally paid off and we were able to finish our promotion’s yearbook. We spent around 50h, if not more, between planning and doing this project as we have been preparing it since September. The most difficult parts were that we had to wait for our class to send us the quotes and organise the content of the actual yearbook. Another challenging aspect of this project was that we had to plan the days where we would take the individual and grupal pictures of our classes, but thanks to Bruno, who helped us take the photos in late February, we managed to finish everything successfully. We had planned to take the photos in the Assembly Hall, however, there was a class practising a drama play and so we couldn’t take them there. In spite of this, we found a free room with a white wall and pretty decent lighting and so we settled there for the individual photos, efficiently solving the problem that came up that day.

A couple of tedious things were to organise the sections, adjusting and justifying the designs while trying to keep it visually appealing and not oversaturated. Although creating the podiums was enjoyable, ordering them and taking care of the font sizes was more complicated. I admit that at the beginning all of us thought that this project would be less complicated and that we would finish the yearbook a lot earlier, but as the people say: good things take time. A couple of things I really valued were that Mireya chose the palette—having in mind our opinions—since finding the palettes is usually one of the steps I find the hardest when I have a design in mind, and that we all cooperated working on the definite version balance the format and visual aspects of the yearbook.

One of the most satisfying aspects of the project was being part of the team that created the yearbook from 0 and watching everything evolve into a creative and memorable album. A couple of things I really enjoyed were designing the podiums with the ‘most likely’ and ‘who’s the most…’ section as we read the answers to the polls María and Rocío created by our peers, who mostly agreed on who was the most funny among other things (of course, some sections are for the sake of fun and they haven't raised any offensive reaction!), and taking the pictures with Bruno and the girls, since everyone had a different pose and it was refreshing to see our peer’s faces smiling without a mask, smiling. For obvious reasons, we only removed their masks for the photos. We also took grupal pictures. We debated whether to take them at the entrance of the school or at the bleachers, but we settled on the former since there was better lighting and there would be less COVID-related concerns.

Personally I believe that I was able to really improve my designing skills on Canva, since it isn’t the platform I usually use, and that I really contributed to the group by taking the lead on certain times in order to keep the rest of us going and working on my free periods on it, although we all were proactive and consistent with the yearbook. The last step is to share the yearbook with our promotion. Working in a group was a great and also challenging experience, and even though we sometimes encountered certain difficulties, we made it work and are sure that our IB classes will love the yearbook as much as we do!

[Week of the 31/03/2021] [Project from September to March]

Sorry about the low quality of the screenshots!

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Infographics on health, gender equality, etc.

Having almost finished my CAS program I decided to try a long term activity that would involve the three strands of CAS: creativity, activity, service to finish with something memorable. Then the idea came to mind: why not mix design—a thing it’s clear I love and where I have developed skills through the past years also thanks to CAS—, with current events like International Women’s Day (08/03/2022) and health?

In the infographic on gender equality I highlighted the subsisting differences in relation to aspects where women are at a disadvantage due to their gender in relation to salaries, employment, education and violence. Some of the facts are both surprising and enraging. Personally, I feel that it is crucial to acknowledge gender disparity present nowadays in order to make things right since many people think that we have reached gender equality in more developed countries when the facts expose that there’s still a long way to go.

The reason why this activity counts as Activity too is because I performed the physical exercises described in one of the infographics. I also repeated some of the yoga routines I’ve done before in order to remember the time it takes to warm up and perform the routines and then searched for the benefits of certain poses. Moreover, lately I have been encountering certain personal problems and I admit that trying meditation and exercise have helped me to find better ways to cope with my emotions and anxiety. This is another reason why I also think that sharing these infographics is important since they reflect both on physical and mental health along with current issues on equality in relation to gender.

I also wanted to share some of my thoughts on the current situation with the war between Ukraine and Russia. It is almost unbelievable that scenarios like these can be a reality nowadays. It breaks my heart to listen to the news everyday discovering that the situation is being aggravated and that so many innocent people: women, children and men, are suffering, dying and being forced to flee their country because of the lack of humanity of a few. I have written an email through Amnesty International and have donated pieces of clothing, food and blankets that will be sent in order to reach the Ukrainian population as I feel that every action matters. I can only hope that Russia ends up being held accountable for its actions, that this conflict ends with the least possible losses and that someday peace will be the reality and not just an hypothetical scenario to pray for.

[Week of the 13/03/2022] [Through the last couple of weeks]

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A last update on my walking progress

One challenge I set myself when I started my CAS programme was to walk at least 2 walks a week. Not only did I manage to take those 2 walks, but over the last 18 months I have walked almost every day between 8,000 and 10,000 steps, between 5 km and 7 km. I have discovered that walking is one of the most relaxing and enjoyable activities for me. I have also earned several "medals" from the health app that tracks my steps. Last March and September, I took 3,000,000 and 5,000,000,000 steps, and I have also managed to walk 7km 21 days in a row.

Being consistent has been the most difficult part of the challenge as there were days when I barely had time or couldn't find the motivation to go for a walk, however, in the end I always ended up using my free time to clear my head and relax by walking outdoors. In terms of hours, I will have walked around 252h, which surprises me the most! Even so, I know it will have been that amount of hours because in general I have been walking from 40min to 1h on average every day. Despite the challenging bits of this long term goal, being able to accomplish this goal and trying to walk every day is more than I expected myself to be able to achieve and this has made me feel quite fulfilled with myself.

In addition, these daily walks are useful to reflect on the things that are happening in my life or to chat with friends when I am accompanied by them, which is also healthy since the former is important for me or anyone to be in a healthy state of mind. I am really happy about having been able to accomplish this long-term goal through the last 16 months and I believe that this habit I have developed because of CAS has become a part of my everyday life.

[Week of the 06/02/2022] [Long term goal]

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Project: Yearbook! 1st entry

Last September my peers María Casás, Rocío Plana and Mireya Rojas started planning a yearbook. In our school we don’t have one, so we thought it would be nice to create one for our IB peers. Through the first weeks we brainstormed, we decided which design we would like to do and what to include in it. We came up with some really good ideas and María and Rocío created a couple of surveys for one of the sections where we will put who’s the likeliest to end up being a president, a Nobel winner, etc. The sections are the following: the cover, an index, the pictures and quotes from our peers of the E and F class, the polls I previously described, funny student memes and a couple of pages with other CAS projects from our peers.

The project is still ongoing, but Mireya and I are already working on the design in the platform Canva, and we both think it will end up turning out great! When we return from Christmas holidays we will take the pictures of our peers and finish it. Right now, the yearbook has around 22 pages.

[Week of the 26/12/2021] [Project from September 2021, ongoing!]

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Red Cross Christmas Campaign: Collection of toys!

Today, December 12, Vega and I along with our peer Ana Sofía from school participated in the Red Cross Christmas Campaign where we collected toys. We spent 4h standing in the three different places where we could inform and collect the toys from the Carrefour customers. I was particularly excited about this activity since I find service activities very enriching and I feel sympathetic to this campaign as I believe that it’s only fair that every kid can enjoy Christmas and have toys to play with as having fun and playing plays a crucial role in everybody's childhood and the personal development of children, and so I wanted to engage with it.

I found out that customers were more receptive as the hours went by and that families with children stopped to listen to the information we were transmitting than people who were alone and only went there to pick a couple of things. In addition, elder people were more sympathetic with the campaign and were eager to bring toys to our posts.

Vega and I changed places with the other volunteers around every hour but we spent most of the time informing customers both outside and inside the supermarket. I particularly liked being able to see how the carts and boxes were filling themselves as time passed by. We filled up to 2 big square-shaped boxes and two other carts! The square-shaped boxes were bigger than the carts, and thus I would expect that we filled around 6 carts. At the end of our shift (14h) our legs were sore from having been standing but despite that, this has probably been one of the most enriching and enjoyable experiences of the service activities I have done the past year.

[Week of the 12/12/2021]

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Mug Cakes

This is the first entry I am dedicating to cooking, not because I don't know how to but because I cook so much that it doesn’t usually represent much of a challenge. However, I usually get recommended videos of recipes on my social media and I wanted to try baking mug cakes. Even though some recipes take less time than others, I have always associated cooking with time. You have to spend a lot of time preparing, cooking and improving certain dishes and this of course includes cakes, so making mug cakes sounded fun since they’re baked on microwaves between two and ten minutes.

I ended up cooking three different mug cakes, a cocoa one, a yogourt one and finally a nutella one. Even though the first and the last one were similar, the cocoa recipe didn’t include yeast and I believe that’s why this was the least spongy cake. I had a problem with the proportions and it almost overflowed due to the mug’s capacity in the yogurt mug cake. In the end, the three of them were fine but I personally think the last one I baked was the most delicious one.

Although I enjoyed cooking these mug cakes, I only spent around 40 minutes with the three of them which isn’t a lot of time, and I still would rather bake a cake in the oven because they usually turn very spongy and tastier!

[Week of the 12/12/2021]

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Solidary Run 2021

Last Tuesday I participated in the Solidary Run organised by our school. The aim of this race was to raise money for our school in Gambia since they intend to extend it by creating a new room, introducing chicken once a week for the little kids and hiring more specialised staff.

I didn’t win, but my intention couldn’t have been further from winning, I just wanted to run along my peers from senior year for a cause I believe in. We are lucky to have the resources and the access to education whereas these kids in Gambia don’t, so if running a couple of kilometres in our school is going to help them to improve their future opportunities there is no way I would not participate. To be honest, my legs were sore the next day as I hadn’t been running recently. Even though I probably wouldn’t run a race for the sake of running, the aim of these events is principally solidary, and so I don’t regret participating!

My bib was number 0861! I will edit this post when we get the news of how much we raised.

Edit: we raised over 2000€.

[Week of the 05/12/2021]

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HIIT workout

After being sick for a whole week I felt the need to do some exercise and work on my stamina, as I had stopped going on my daily walks due to my poor condition. The next week I took it easy and walked less days than I frequently do, but I progressively felt that I was building my stamina again. Then, I decided to try a HIIT routine I found on © darebee.com. I liked that there were III levels of difficulty indicated on the workout because I knew that I probably couldn’t do 7 sets of this workout in the first try. The first week I performed a level I workout, but the next week I decided to give it a second try and performed a level II HIIT routine. I must admit that I got sore and that I got quite tired in the first routine. This shows that I was still not in shape after being ill and less active than usual. I enjoyed trying this activity because I hadn’t done these kinds of routines for a long time.

[Week of the 28/11/2021]

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Wooden toys for disabled children

Last Sunday I invited my peers Hans, Álvaro Cameo, Juan and Vega to join me in an activity I had signed up for weeks before that consisted of building and customising wooden toys for children with cognitive disabilities. I received three boxes filled with the material that was needed to create them and found out that there were several QR codes that led to the instructions.

The main task was to paint and decorate the games. We had three sets of the colours white, black, yellow, green, red and blue, and the games we had to customise were the Snakes and Ladders, a Tic-Tac-Toe of dots and crosses and another one of Pac-Man’s and ghosts, and the memory game. I helped Vega finish her Snakes and Ladders game and customised the memory game by myself. In some of the cases I decided to mix colours to get orange, pink and light blue among other ones, which made the result more appealing.

Working together was part of the charm of the activity, but I also thought that decorating and assembling these toys was enriching as I knew that these would end up going to children with cognitive disabilities, whose necessities are sometimes overlooked due to their disabilities even though every kid should be able to have games and entertainment adapted to their needs.

[Week of the 21/11/2021]

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Bird feeders and houses

Ever since I built animal shelters last year I wanted to repeat the activity, so when the opportunity came up, I decided to sign up for this distance volunteering that consisted of building bird feeders/houses, since small bird species need all the nourishment they can get, especially in cold weathers. It was tricky, as some of the wooden pieces were uneven and the instructions had been lost in the mail, but my friends and I were able to make the houses in the end!

Along with Vega, Álvaro, Juan, Hans and me, we built 5 bird feeders / houses. We had to get creative as we didn’t have the instructions, but I believe we did a great job with the building. For the construction of these houses we had to sand, glue and assemble all the pieces we had. I was glad that we had more of a pair of hands available because the glue took a long to dry and with the help of the rest of my peers the process of holding the sustainers that connected the roof and the floor. The most challenging thing was to figure out how the pieces matched and had to be assembled. As expected, my fingers got sticky due to the silicone glue and I almost nailed a splinter a couple of times. Despite this, I really enjoyed spending time with this activity knowing that our assembling would be destined to the preservation of nature.

[Week of the 21/11/2021]

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PROJECT: @/porunamodaconsciente & podcast

Along with my friend Vega we have started this project of aware and sustainable fashion. I joined her at the account @porunamodaconsciente on Instagram, where we create posts, polls and stories to inform people of healthy consumer habits. We regularly talked to each other to plan the things we would do with the account and prepare the polls and the information we would update. I was glad to work with her because she knows a great deal about fashion and we make a good team. We have been managing the account for a couple of months now (the first posts are dated 3 July 2021, but I started to collaborate with Vega a month later) and I believe I have learned a lot about the issues of fast fashion and massive production the textile industry and us as consumers are facing nowadays. Moreover, the collaboration has made the account more interactive, as we started sharing polls and challenges after I joined the project.

In addition, Vega and I have collaborated with María Vega and Blanca Centenera in their project as guests of their Podcast about Gen Z in their entry focused on fashion. We met with them at CAS hours and discussed which topics we wanted to touch and recorded a first take in order to hear the length of the entry which was around 12 minutes. We agreed that we wanted the podcast to be informative but also natural and dynamic, and so instead of creating a dialogue to follow we listed a series of bullet points to follow in the discussion, adding of course other information and opinions on fast fashion.

I believe that both this account and the podcast will be useful to raise awareness about issues of global significance which we can relate to. As this is my first collaborative project, I will update another entry in the future in order to inform how it is going or how we will finish it.

[Project from the start of August - ongoing] [First entry of the project week of the 31/10/2021]

Edited 22/11/2021: The podcast can be found in Buzzsprout. This project has lasted over a trimester and Vega and I decided to close the project the day 20/11/2021. However, this doesn’t mean that we will stop posting, but the frequency of these posts will be less from now on!

[Project from the start of August - 20/11/2021]

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Mental Health month: Mind and body balance

This year I’m trying to give a different approach to my Activity activities. This strand of the CAS program is related to the Health and wellbeing of the people, but it isn’t a surprise that many of us focus on physical activity and forget the role of mental health for ourselves. World Mental Health Day is in October, and so I decided to try to enter a routine of Mind and Body Balance through the month. Before starting this activity I researched the concepts of “mind-body balance” and saw this website, which has interesting proposals to achieve mental and physical stability: https://chopra.com/articles/7-tips-for-mind-body-balance . There were 7 main goals which included getting restful sleep, releasing emotional toxins, meditating and exercising a bit each day. I believe these were the most important ones to achieve this mind-body connection.

Through this month I ran a couple of days, engaged in my daily walks and repeated some of the yoga routines I posted in my portfolio before, therefore achieving this goal of the 7 for balance cultivation. Getting restful sleep and eating meals with the 6 tastes and fruits/vegetables wasn’t very difficult since I generally sleep 8h or more on a daily basis and we already have a healthy balanced diet at home. It was meditating and releasing emotional toxins which was complicated. The website suggested questions to ask yourself in order to meditate and release these toxins. It is true that I feel more relaxed nowadays and that embracing the emotions you are feeling makes you feel better, at ease, however, nobody can be 100% sure whether they have succeeded or not, which is why the achievement of these goals is subjective.

Nevertheless, it was a nice activity to try. This year is going to be more stressful than others as it is our senior year, and so taking care of ourselves, physically and emotionally is crucial. Mental health is as important as physical health and achieving a balance between them can be challenging, but is rewarding to at least try.

[Week of the 31/10/2021 - through all October 2021]

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Seashell painting

Last week I decided to try to paint a couple of seashells, as I had seen a video of who did that. As a kid I always collected seashells on the beach and tried to search for the biggest ones, and so I have a couple of jars full of seashells over the years. I picked 3 of the bigger ones and drew things related to nature on them. In the first one I drew three pines and a yellow-green background in a light stroke and the other two consist of two colorful flower patterns.

Even though I only painted three seashells I almost spent half an hour doing so. I enjoyed drawing in the seashells, however, I admit it was challenging to paint on such a small surface. I thought it would be as easy as in the video but it wasn’t. In addition, the surface of the shell wasn’t as soft as I expected because I had to put more paint in order for the drawing to be seen. I am aware that it doesn’t look as refined or beautiful as other paintings I have made, but it was entertaining to relax and paint.

[Week of the 24/10/2021]

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Breast cancer campaign

Along with my peers I collaborated with the breast cancer campaign of this year. I was particularly engaged with this service activity because of my close experience with this disease.

My mum had it when I was young. I want to share a couple of things before getting to the activity: breast cancer is tough, not only for those who experience it but also for the people they love the most. When I was young, I didn’t understand why my mum was sick, but I always tried to cheer her up when she appeared from her radio/chemo sessions. When I grew up, I understood how strong she had been and grew proud of what she had overcome. I always find myself worried when she has an appointment with the oncologist. However, she was lucky enough to fight it and recover whereas many other women haven’t recovered from it. This is the main reason why participating in this activity felt so personal.

Us, the second year IB students were in charge of decorating the urns and used pink and white cardboard along with other decorating which we painted. Furthermore, we created the pink ribbons/bracelets, cutting the laces and adding the bracelet beds to tie them the day of the sale. These wristbands are things that we ought to sell in order to raise money for the Spanish Cancer Association. We raised money over three days: October 19, 20 and 21 and I believe we raised over 400€for at least the first 2 days. It was a very rewarding experience since I worked with other people that were engaged with the activity and it is a cause that I really think is crucial to acknowledge.

[Week of the 17/10/2021]

Edited: we raised 2140€!

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Ice skating

A couple of years ago I had a really bad experience related to this sport. It was the first time I had gone ice skating and I didn’t have any real expectations and the activity itself wasn’t bad, but I was injured and had to endure pain for several months after that, which is why I was afraid to try ice skating ever again.

However, Juan convinced me to go with our sisters and so we went to the ice rink and spent around an hour there. Thanks to my friend I didn’t fall; he helped me to move without losing my balance and the moves that I had to do in order to go from one place to another. Although there is no point in denying how tense I was, it was reassuring having him and my sister, who started skating this year, near me because they knew what they were doing and I felt supported. At the beginning I mostly held onto the sides of the rink and my friend, but then I started to go by myself, obviously not as fast as Juan or her sister or even my sister, but it was a start.

Just like with the routes I did through the Pyrenees, this activity has helped me to try to overcome a fear, I would say with more success than my vertigo last time. As I have said, I was slow and clumsy, but I even enjoyed the most of it. I don’t know if I would try ice skating again, but at least this time I didn’t leave the rink with a terrible impression.

[Week of the 17/10/2021]

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... & covers for the rest of my short stories!

I believe that a second entry is necessary to share my thoughts on the book covers I made after and before writing my short stories. This is the third entry with an activity related to graphic design, nevertheless, I think that each one meant a challenge to some extent. As I pointed out in my last entry, I have written a total of 15 short stories and these are the covers I made! In a previous entry I thoroughly described how I made the first three covers but in this entry I'm going to talk about my thoughts and expectations too.

I already had done 4 of these, the first three and the cover that I created for the story “Locks and Keys” and I remembered that I had enjoyed creating “The Witch & The Vampire”´s cover a lot so I decided to continue with another of Sage's and Fang's “adventures”, story number 4, 6, 9 and 15. I had a clear idea in my mind: these covers had to be easy to relate with the first one in terms of style, letters and concepts, and so I created a couple of sketches pre-designing them. The palettes were probably the trickiest part in all of the above because I didn't know if it would be best to use complementary or the triad colours and so I tried a couple of palettes before the chosen ones. In all of them I drew symbols that were related to the short stories: a cowboy hat, snowmans, wolf claws, fairy wings and aster flowers.

I had expected that the process would take me longer than it actually took just like with the first one. This got me thinking and I realised a couple of things: having the idea already in mind was very helpful and practice makes perfect—as in, editing often makes the process easier and improves skills like knowing which colours/fonts will look best. Another thing I didn't expect was ending up liking the result as much as in the first story, but I did. I can't pick up a favourite because the covers from “The Ghost & The Snowman” and “The Werewolf & The Curse” are tied with the first one.

As I had chosen an illustrated based process with the four covers above, I decided to go for image based covers, which highlight the background and titles. Creating these covers was simpler as it usually happens with this kind of covers, however, I admit that I always spend more time searching for suitable photos, images that tell what I want to express to some extent, than with the rest of the process. I used Unsplash images, which have common creative licence and decorative and typography fonts that make the covers look elegant.

For the following ones I chose an ice cream cart and an airport, elements closely related to the plots of the stories. The process wasn't complicated, but I struggled figuring out how I wanted this book cover to look because I had not edited with pictures for a long time. In “Imagine” I manipulated the photo creating a mirror effect with the war planes which are related to the story itself. Of course I had to smoothen certain areas of the photographs, but it wasn't very difficult; the monochromatic theme was helpful in this case, because working in shades of grey is easier than editing with shades of any other colour. Although I like the result of these covers, I admit that my favourites are the ones I drew, which can be influenced by the fact that I loved writing these stories the most.

[Week of the 10/10/2021]

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A needed update on my short stories...

CAS: Short Stories - Google Drive

I absolutely loved having picked up this challenge. Not only writing stories monthly has helped me to deal with writer's block but also it has helped me to improve writing with shorter length plots, creating likeable characters with the aid of a proper development and to keep things simpler. Since I wrote a total of 15 short stories and I already talked about the first ones, in this entry I will talk about the remaining 12 stories, although I admit that during this summer I wrote many of the last stories.

To begin with, I connected so much with the characters of my first short story that I felt that they had left things to say. It is a difficult sensation to describe but new characters such as Yaxkin and Gwen started to pop up in my mind. I thus wrote three more stories about Sage and their friends along with a crossover with my 9th short story, about a girl and her Godfather's Fairy mob (crazy, right?). I'm not going to talk about the plot of these stories but of the actual experience.

Without any doubts I have favourites and that would be Oct 2020 and Jan, Feb, Jun and Dec 2021 stories set in the “universe” where witches and vampires exist along with Nombs, a.k.a. humans. I also enjoyed writing “Locks and Keys” because I set it in the past, around the Victorian era, and so I included brushes of steampunk, a subgenre that I love. Moreover, I feel that the short story “Imagine” was charged emotionally speaking, but that can also be due to the use of Lennon’s lyrics.

The last comment I’ll be making of the stories themselves is that “5 Contrapuntos” (counterpoints) consists of a device used in literature that consists of a crossover of stories throughout space, conexiones between characters and time. I enjoyed writing these 5 short stories a lot because even though they were shorter, the “moving” dynamic was enough for me to keep writing. They are also lowkey romance subplots in many of the stories, but that is open to interpretation since the point of the different plots revolve around adventure, slice of life and friendship.

I also used prompts from @writing-prompt-s, which has very creative proposals, some of which I had wanted to write for a long time such as the Fairy mob idea. 3/15 are prompt based stories, and 6/15 in Spanish. This means that I was able to practice my English writing skills in the remaining stories, which was both encouraging but also a bit frustrating when I wasn’t sure if the expressions I was using were grammatically correct.

However, the challenge made the experience more exciting and so I don’t regret having tried switching languages from one story to another. It is difficult to express in few words (or this entry for that matter) how much I cherished this long term goal but I feel that this has been one of the most enriching experiences so here is the index of the stories and the characters of my stories:

[Week of the 10/10/2021 — Long term goal during all the CAS program]