Eva Stauffer's CAS Blog @eastcas2016-stauf18085 - Tumblr Blog

Crossfit

Crossfit was always an activity that I had wished to take part in but never really got around to it. This year, due to the fact that I did not participate in any seasonal sports during the first season, I wanted to make sure that I kept my fitness up. I decided to join crossfit in order to experience a different type of workout to my normal workouts. Having people around while doing the workouts and having partners was really helpful in staying motivated because the energy in the room made us not want to give up or slow down.

I think the biggest challenge for me was the partner I was usually with. She was generally very fit and helped me push through the workouts. Although I say she was a challenge, I mean it in a good way as we were able to support each other and push through together.

Over the course of the 1st season I saw my fitness go up a lot and was able to enjoy looking back at how ‘badly’ I was doing in the first few sessions compared to what I was achieving in the last ones

#crossfit

Culturama - North India

Although our school has already been organising this activity for the last 3 years, I had never thought of joining it due to my lack in dancing experience. However as this is my last year, I really wanted to join in order to take part in this amazing experience. I don’t think I could be happier with my decision. Through this 2 month journey I became friends with people from different grades and was in contact with people I never frequent on an everyday basis. This activity was always a pleasure for me to join as the group of people I was with was the best I could have asked for.

Another aspect of this activity which I am very proud of is that I have never taken dance classes whatsoever and I don’t have any background in dancing. However, through practicing every week for hours, I was able to learn a dance I never thought would be possible. I am very proud of how I have managed to be part of a culture that I knew very little of.

I now wish I would’ve joined this dance the first year it started because it was worth the time consuming practices and I made a lot of new connections :)

#ni

Student Voice Term 3

Recently, as the Grade 12 graduated, I was asked to organise and collaboratively work in order to put in place something called the Leaver’s Days talk. This consisted of 3 people in student voice (including me) to ask teachers and Grade 12 students whether or not they wanted to go talk to a class/receive a student in their class. We then had to match up these student to a certain class and make sure everyone’s schedule fit together.

I thought this required quite a bit of collaborative work as we had to get together and make sure that the 3 of us didn’t match someone up with a teacher who already had a student. We then had to email every teacher and student. After all the emails were sent, I received several emails asking me if the student could change the class with someone else, or if they could be alone and not in a pair etc.

I really liked organising this small event and it was nice to see that it all ran smoothly during that day and that both the teachers and the speakers enjoyed each other’s presence.

#sv

Adopt a Grandparent

As the end of the school year is approaching, in groups, we were assigned a date of service where we would have to plan and organise a session of service. We were asked to make something easy for our grandparents to follow with and to have fun with.

My group and I had trouble finding what we wanted to do, but as we thought more about it, I had an idea of playing bingo with the grandparents and have small prizes we could hand out to people who were winning. This required a decent amount of planning and organisation because we had to get the bingo ball and make the tables of numbers for our grandparents to play with.

We are currently looking forward to have the activity put in place. (We will be doing this on the 19th of May) and hopefully everything will go smoothly.

#aag

Mercy Centre GC

This term of GC has probably the biggest roller coster I have ever been on. There were times where I didn’t even want to continue because I felt as if I was always the one doing everything, but there are time like now (3 days way from the Water Festival) where I’m so proud everything we did for the event to happen.

Although I know I can’t do anything about the whole service department, I am very annoyed and all the trouble it takes for a GC to organise a small event where the students are going to be held back for 1h after school. I think that their procedure for applying for an event is a complete mess and that they should make sure it’s clear for us GCs.

Student Voice Term 2

If I’m going to be completely honest, I did not want to participate in the 2nd term of Student Voice this year. I thought that nothing was getting done and that we didn’t really matter because we never really get anything done. However, I am glad I stayed because we have concrete projects such as the gym passes and the leaver’s day, which are ideas that have been put forward, and are actually getting realised today.

I think one of the main challenges of this activity is the fact that it is only every 2 weeks, and that sometimes we would need more time in order to really get things done.

#sv

Kahaani Dance Show

This dance show was an exceptional opportunity for me to not only discover all the different types of Indian Dances but also to open my eyes about just how difficult some of the dances are and how much time dancers spend for a single performance.

I think of the main challenge for me was the learn the dance. I have never personally danced, and having no bases in dance I found it quite difficult. However, I attended every rehearsals and managed to learn the dance and actually really enjoy dancing to it.

Looking forward to next year and hopefully another dance show! :)

#kahaani

Adopt a Grandparent

Personally, I find that adopt a grandparent can be very energy draining, especially at the end of the day. At the beginning, however, I found that making conversation with my grandma was very difficult. We didn’t have much to talk about and we kind of just ended up talking about the weather. Every time we had an activity, she would not want to join or even go out of her room. Although this still hasn’t changed, I have managed to connect with my grandma a lot more than I thought I would.

For Chinese New year we made a lantern that she has hanging above her bed in her room. The week after we made it, we decided to make another one for her sister as she said “It’s the bright aspect of this room, and everyone is jealous about it”. I think this activity helped us bond a little more than we previously did. Since then, every time I go see her, she tells me that she loves it so much and that it reminds her of me. :)

The past few weeks we have made cupcakes together and I have given her presents from Susan. I am very glad that although her and have a very big age difference making the connection harder, we get along rather well. That is something that I was concerned about the first few times I saw her, however, it is not a problem anymore.

One thing that really makes me smile and actually want to visit her every week is the fact that she remembers when I don’t come. She doesn’t remember many things, but she can definitely tell when I’m on holidays and I haven’t visited her that Tuesday. I find that the most rewarding part of the service that I am doing because I don’t want to skip a single day of it, knowing that she’ll remember I did not come.

One of the challenges I am currently facing, and that I might face soon, is the fact that my grandmother has cancer and that she is currently feeling very down and has trouble going from one place to another.

Here’s us eating the cupcakes we made.

The presents!

#aag

Creativity

Kahaani Dance Show

Culturama North India

#creativity

Student Voice Term 1

I have already been apart of this activity when I was in Grade 9. I really like the idea of it and I think it's an activity that is underestimated. I also think that most people don't know what we really do and what we can do if they ask us to. I do wish that people opened up more about their wishes and wants about the school in order for us to prove to them what we really can do.

I am looking forward to getting both the gym pass and the sweater ideas forward.

#sv

Pre-Season Touch Rugby

This activity was a good activity to get back in shape and remind myself about a few things that I had forgotten about rules and short plays.

I do not think I really improved during this activity because it was hard doing challenging drills due to the fact that there were a lot of new people who had never played touch yet.

I did still enjoy training with the new people because we got to show them how to do things which was quite fun but rather frustrating at times.

#pretouch

Adopt A Grandparent

Adopt a grandparent is a very interesting and energy draining activity. I have learnt quite a lot from the past few times that I have visited them lodge. Although I was quite scared at first of going there because I thought it was going to be a lot more challenging than it is, I now really enjoy going and I always look forward to it. Over the past few weeks, we have been going around visiting different wards and we've been talking and interacting with the residents.

When we visited the day care, which is where both residents and visitors stay during the day to work, I was very surprised at how the patients don't want us to help them. Although Susan had already told us that they we're not going to want our help. I was still shocked when I went around asking if they needed help and got rather straight forward answers such as: "no you won't be able to do it properly."

I have recently made a new friend called Albert. I was really happy when he was able to remember my name because he seemed to have trouble remembering the other student's names.

In a few weeks, we will be assigned our own grandparent. I really want to have a grandparent which is able to hold a proper conversation and with who I will be able to have a nice time.

Overall, my experience with the patient is very good and I really hope it stays the same. I have also learnt a lot about Alzheimer's and I have even be able to let my parents and brothers know about it. (They thought, like most people, that it was only an elder's disease and were surprised when I told them that the youngest resident was 34 years old.)

#aag

Mercy Centre Thailand Trip

Early October, we had the amazing opportunity to visit the Mercy Centre Shelter in Bangkok, Thailand. This was our chance to get in proper contact with the staff and to build a concrete relationship with the children and with the organisers at Mercy Centre.

The trip went for 3 full days and we were able to visit the shelter twice, during the weekend.

Throughout the trip, I learnt a lot about Mercy Centre and I really wish I could've stayed for a bit longer. This is not only to be able to build a stronger bond with the kids there, but also because I wish we could've seen the kids on a school day, and maybe even teach them a bit of English.

As an international student, I have always heard of people giving donations and sending clothes or supplies to a country in need, but I never got the possibility to do it myself and eventually unpack the goods for the kids. I think that the whole process from picking what we were going to send, to actually giving it to them was a memorable experience. It was incredible to see the kids looking at the clothes lined up, and all the toys that were there for them. I know that people say it often, but it really made me reflect on the fact that, as a third culture teenager, I have always had the possibility to have everything I wanted, or everything my parents let me have.

One of my first impressions about Mercy Centre was that they seemed rather ungrateful about what we were doing. Considering they have previously had big sponsors from companies like Coca-Cola, it seemed like our donations and sponsorship didn't mean much to them. I was a bit disappointed at first because we had put quite a bit of effort in putting this trip together and that for them to start unpacking our donations to them without asking really shocked me.

Coming from an educated family, I have learnt to never take too much food when I have dinner or lunch at someones, in order to no waste it incase I didn't like it. I thought that the two days we ate lunch at Mercy Centre, some of the other students from our school were being quite inconsiderate about the food that the lunch ladies had made for us. I thought that the fact that they took so much, to only leave it on the table because they didn't like it. I was a bit frustrated by this and also by the fact that sometimes I had to clean up people's plate because they didn't want to dirty their hand with the soap.

On our first day at Mercy Centre, we had a small session where we were open to ask any questions about the shelters and how Mercy Centre worked. I was very shocked and surprised about how cheap it was to sponsor a child for an annual education. After finding out about this, I was very intrigued to find out that they would rather us sponsor more than one child for a first year annual school fee rather than sponsoring one child throughout their whole education because that meant that we were putting all of our chances on one child.

Overall, I was very happy to have gone on this trip because I have learnt a lot about Mercy Centre, about where the money we gave them went and how they prioritised donations.

Next time, this trip comes, I think that for donations we need to start planning a bit ahead of time and we need to send as much as we can.

#mercycentre

Mercy Centre Exec Team

This year, I joined Mercy Centre as the head publicity. I had previously joined Mercy Centre GC but only as a unimportant role. In order to make meetings for the whole GC more successful we have improved on our organisation and our leadership skills.

I think that this year, being from the Exec team and having to organise meetings and meet up with the Exec team before meetings I have realised how hard and how time demanding planning a meeting or events can be. As this is my first year being in an Exec team, it has really shown me how hard it can be to set up meetings and make sure everything runs smoothly. I have also learnt to appreciate assemblies and meetings ran by other people, which are much more important in term of message and size because it really takes a lot of effort and commitment to do so.

I really hope that not only we can continue to run the Mercy Centre GC as smoothly as it is going now, but also that later on when I graduate, that someone will be as dedicated to the matter and to the problem as much as the current Exec team is in order to keep it running successfully.

I would also be interested in making contact with the other Mercy Centre GC from the Dover Campus so that we can organise bigger and better events. :)

#mercycentre

Leadership

Student Voice Term 1, 2 and 3

#leadership

Action

Pre-Season Touch Rugby

Touch Rugby Season 2

Crossfit

#action

Service

Adopt a Grandparent (Tuesday)

Mercy Centre (Global Concern)

#service

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