Development on the Theatre Production

March 29th, 2014

Creatvity:

The theatre production is now almost in the final stages of wrapping up this whole play and getting everything prepared (lights, costumes, sounds, props, and stage set) for the final performance. I am now at the point of already knowing all the lines for my character, Juan, but I now have to perfect the movements, emotions, and expressions that come with the words. It is a challenging task to complete but I think I will be able to pull it off and be ready for the first performance on the 9th of April. I now have practice rehearsals three times a week, which are on Tuesdays, Friday, and Saturday mornings. These extended practice sessions are what did help me improve my overall acting of Juan much faster. I have now also gotten to know the rest of the cast much better as I barely knew them at first and we are now all collaborating quite well with each other. I am also showing up on time more often as punctuality was actually an issue I had with previous rehearsals. So this increased number of rehearsals per week have also helped me with my organization skills.        

New Collaborations and Roles

February 28th, 2014

Creativity: 

I have already received my role in the theatre production, 'Yerma', a while back and have started rehearsals. My character is Juan, who's meant to be a mean and abusive husband to his wife Yerma, the main character of the play. So I basically play the as the main villain of the story, which is a role I have not taken on until now. I know that a difficult task in completing this production would be remembering all my lines and performing all the movements with those lines correctly, since I have not had a role as big as the main villain in a play before. One perk that comes with being involved in this production is that it lets me collaborate with new people that I haven't worked with before. When the full cast was revealed, I actually haven't even met or even talked to most of them before so I am looking forward to see how my collaboration skills with new people goes.

Action:

Me on the badminton court

There is currently a tournament going on in badminton to see where all of the players rank. Out of the five matches I played in this week's session, I only lost one of them so I think I'm in a decent position for now. This tournament has made the badminton activity much more interesting since there is now something worth winning matches for. When first starting this activity, I would only have matches against my friends that I already knew, but this tournament has lead me to play against players that I haven't had a match with before. So this is another activity that gave me the opportunity to collaborate with new people.        

Service:

A new activity our Hope for Kids group has started to entertain the cancer patient kids at the hospital sing Sinhalese songs to them while playing instruments. Before we would just play the instruments while someone else would be singing for us, as shown in one of the previous posts, but now we have to learn and sing the songs ourselves. The instrument I play along to the songs now is the tambourine, which is actually a new role for me as before I was playing the drum.    

Week Without Walls (WWW) 2014

February 5th, 2014

Eco lodge's main lounge hut

Eco lodge river

The previous week was when I had my final WWW trip and as I have already explained and stated my goals for the trip in the last post, not all of them were fulfilled but I still definitely did enjoy the journey. Our first stop of the trip was at the 'Back of Beyond' Eco-lodge guest house where we were going to be staying for the first two nights. This rest house really was Eco-friendly as most of its rooms were huts which had floors made out of dry mud and roofs made out of straw. During the trip, we also each had our own WWW journals where we would reflect on each of the days and even jot down the different plant and animal species that we find. Our activities on the first day were searching through the dry forest right outside the Eco lodge for different animal species, having a wash in the Eco lodge river, and finally searching for the rare slender loris animal in a night forest walk.

Ritigala ruins- stone and sand pathway

The second day was when our group got the oppurtunity to discover more about Sri Lanka's ancient culture as we went to the kingdom ruins of Ritigala. We were able to observe how plants have actually intergrated into the ruins as time has passed and so it was more difficult to identify what the numerous sculptures could have been. Our group was able to make fun of the visit to the ruins by creating an activity to only step on stones to move and not on any of the sand. This made the whole stay more entertaining and engaging for the group. 

Buddhist ruins of Medirigiriya

The third day was when we would move to Trincomalee, but first stopped at Medirigiriya to observe a few Buddhist ruins. We met the 'Art on Wheels' WWW at the ruins who were sketching some of the statues that were there. We then took off for Trincomalee and visited a Hindu temple as soon as we got there. I learned some new things about meditation as the temple had signs that would be in Tamil and English. So this did help our whole group to understand this religion better. One quote I remember seeing in a sign was "The heart is a wasteland without meditation". We explored Trinco even further around the villages and some students even purchased souvenirs. Unfortunately we were not able to have our service component in cleaning trash off the streets in the area as we did not have enough time. Our group was also not able to visit Pigeon Island and snorkel in the ocean since we were advised not to go during the rainy monsoon, which did disappoint me a bit. Although I felt better about the trip later on when we were able to stay at the Chaaya Blu resort for the night.

Group photo outside of Hindu temple

Outside of hut in second Eco lodge 

The fourth day was quite an off day for me as I woke up sick from food poisoning and was limited from participating in the activities we had on the day. We went to the beach of the resort and decided to explore it more. As we walked further, we started finding numerous trash items that have been dumped on this beach. There were even different types of dead fish that have been dried up on the shore. Seeing all this trash on the beach was worth taking notice of the environmental damage that exists in Sri Lanka. Our group eventually left the resort and headed to visit another ruin area except I was physically limited from walking around because of the lack of energy I had from my sickness, so I stayed in the bus this time. We then arrived to our second Eco lodge in Pidruangala, where we would stay for the final night. The owners of this Eco lodge were partners with 'Back of Beyond' so this lodge was environmentally friendly as well. In fact, huts we stayed in this time were even closer to the environment than the previous huts since they were actually placed right in the middle of a forest. The last Eco lodge had a more open area to move around, but this one was more closed in with large trees and plants everywhere. Later in the night, the entire went out to gaze at the stars and have a group discussion reflecting on the trip so far and what we have learned. It was a great activity to really bond and have a better understanding of my group.

Statue of sleeping Buddha

We started the final day off by climbing up a huge rock, placed next to Sigiriya rock. I was feeling much better today from my sickness than yesterday so I was able to at least participate in this final physical activity. I recognized the rock we were climbing when we saw a brick statue of the sleeping Buddha that's placed on the way to the top of the rock. That was when I realized I have climbed this rock in my 8th grade WWW trip where we also were learning about Sri Lanka's ancient culture. There was a breath-taking view at the very top of the rock of Sigiriya, as well as the whole forest we were surround in.What's ironic about this trip is that it was called the dry zone WWW, when it was the rainy monsoon so more places were actually wet than dry. Even though there wasn't really a service component involved, I did end up getting to express my ideas and thoughts about the trip in a journal for creativity, and have different climbs through rocks for action. As well as some education about Sri Lanka's ancient history and meditation. It was a fun and memorable trip for my final WWW.

Group photo on top of rock (I'm the one crouching down wearing the blue jacket) 

(WWW) Week Without Walls Goals

January 24th, 2014

From January 27th to 31st, we are going on our week without walls trip to the dry zones. These areas will be Trincomalee and Pigeon Island where our www group would be able to learn about the marine and ecological aspects of the areas. Here is a list of goals that I have going into the trip: 

• Discover more about the Ancient culture and ecological plants of the mountains we climb
• Create a map of the area
• Find out more about my friends' strengths and weaknesses 
• Have an action component in hiking and swimming
• Have a service component in helping to clean trash off the streets of Trincomalee
• Have a creativity component in using journalling and photography as a tool to understand the ancient culture and ecological environment   

DP1 Semester 2 Begins

January 13th, 2014

Last week was the start of semester 2 and a new year. The new CAS action activity I have is badminton. For the time being, we are only having practice matches until the tryouts next month. This will eventually lead to the saisa tournament in April. Unlike football last semester, badminton is more focused on the movement of the arms. It requires speed and agility which really helps me with the movement and flexibility of my body. I had to play football with smaller kids last semester to help them improve their skills, but badminton this semester is much more suitable for me in age range. This does make badminton more challenging and comfortable for me. 

I am still continuing Hope for Kids as my service activity for this semester as well. Our service group eventually had to drop the idea of the 'Amazing Race' event because we did not have enough time to prepare it. Our new plan now is to take the cancer patient kids on a short field trip to the 'Good Market' at the Boardwalk in front of Waters Edge. This trip is to take place on next week's CAS session on thursday. The trip is to basically let the kids have fun, eat, and hang out at the boardwalk.

My new creativity activity for this semester is to hopefully be the theatre production. Although we were not able to start rehearsals yet as most of the other students trying out, were busy practicing for the gecko factor talent show. 

Coming Back from November Break

November 25th, 2013

Action:

This past week was when I came back from the 9-day long November break, so I have not been able to update this CAS blog from a while. I continued with football on wednesdays and did get some of my peers (Max and Laurence) to join in for this week's session.( As seen in the video below) The football game was more physical than the previous games since I did play with more people at my age group this time. 

Service and Creativity:

The day after was Hope for Kids service where everyone got into to groups of 3-4 and discussed about the 'Amazing Race' event we were going to hold. The new idea for this event would be to have it consist of different mini-games instead of just one activity that everyone would focus on, similar to the food and fun fair our school holds. Each group was a specific department for the event. My group was in charge of the logistics for the event. We haven't been able come up with the actual name for event yet, but we did discuss things such as companies that could sponsor since this event would be too big to only be hosted by OSC. We were also talking ways in which we can separate the teams for the various games there would be at the event. One of the ideas I came up with was for the contestants to have different colored wrist bands according to which team they were in.     

Service Meeting with Dr. Samadhi

November 4th, 2013

Last week during service, we at Hope for Kids were lucky enough to have a visit from Dr. Samadhi who runs the care for kids cancer organization. We had a discussion meeting with him where the topic was future events our service group we could hold to raise awareness of the issue. The photo below is a picture of the meeting where we sat around one table and had the group discussion. I am the person wearing the green shirt right upfront, the doctor is the person at the end of the table wearing the tie.

The Group Discussion Meeting

One of the ideas that came up in the discussion was having a group walk at a public area such as the boardwalk in Waters Edge or the road in front of the parliament. The whole group did approve with this idea as it was a great way to involve members of the school community as well as other communities for this cause. The group walk was not the only interesting idea as we also thought about having a type of scavenger hunt race activity. Kind of like in the reality tv show, "The Amazing Race", where a group would get into teams and search for clues to the next destination between different areas. So both of these ideas are still at work as this is the first time we are trying to start a major project at this scale. A possible way we thought of spreading awareness of the event would be to present it to other schools during their assemblies. I am quite excited to be a part of this event so I would like to see how our service group progresses in building the ideas for it in the future meeting sessions.