Malta's soup

On December 20 I volunteered in Malta order's action "Maltiečių sriuba" where soup was given to people and they could donate some money for the order of Malta. The order of Malta gives social help to old people who are lonely can hardly take care of themselves. I have just recently joined the order of Malta and it was the first activity I participated in.

During the "Maltiečių sriuba" action me and other volunteers were inviting people to come and have some soup or just to donate, I also pored soup and helped with other practical things. I was volunteering two hours in total: from 14 to 16. 

It was interesting to volunteer but it was really difficult to invite strangers as some people didn't even pay any attention to us, so it was a challenge for me. Another difficulty was standing two hours outside and I was frozen afterwards. :)

Decorations for the Pie Day and Cookies

It is about the same Pie Day, again. I just wanted to tell about two more activities I was involved with.

Me and two more girls from my class were responsible for the cupcake wall- one part of decorations at the feast. So, we had to do the preparation- the longest part of the work during the weekend. We had ideas brainstormed and the concept chosen. Then, we had different cupcakes printed and cut out. This required a lot of creativity, imagination and diligence. Then we had the clouds done and other materials bought. On Monday, a few hours before the beginning of the pie day, we started the work in the main school hall: I had to climb stepladder to stick the background to the wall and that was kind of scary! It took us about 2 hours to completed our "Cupcake installation". During the feast, everybody was taking pictures in front of that wall and they all just loved it!

Another thing that I was doing for the Pie Day was cooking delicious cookies with black chocolate. Well, this took me less time to do in compare with the cupcake wall but it was also not easy. This was my first time cooking those cookies so I was a little worried, but they turned out to be wonderful! Everyone loved them and bought fast.

I think these tasks were really interesting to do and, when accomplished, I can say that we did a great job!

P.S.-4 CAS hours. Supervisor Laura Petkutė

Here you can see the photos of preparation, the result of our attempts and me selling cookies in a pie market.

IB choir

Today, I want to share with you a great activity that was organised by IB students at my school. Me and my friend Živilė started this initiative: we thought of an idea of IB choir that could sing in different school events and feasts. 

So, we started engaging all our classmates to join the choir. And the coir was formed! In total, there were approximately 20 students singing in this chorus. Subsequently, we started practicing: we were preparing for the Pie day- a great feast in our school. We were meeting two times a week 3 weeks long, and that was it! We learned two nice songs: "Tasty Pies Are Coming to School" ("Santa Claus is Coming to Town" cover :D) and "Sihja hamba" (an African song). The African song was sung because of the meaning of the pie day: all the money that was collected while selling cakes and cookies was donated to an orphanage in Rwanda, Africa. 

This event took place at our school, Vilnius Lyceum, on 13-12-16 during the breaks. This was like a Christmas charity fair and the IB choir was a nice background for the feast!

This activity cost a lot of time and effort since it was difficult to manage so many people to meet at the same time at the same place, making decisions together was also not easy. This was a real challenge for me which also helped me to  practice group work, cooperation and to develop my musical skills.

P.S.- 10 CAS hours. CAS supervisor- teacher Ričardas Jankauskas

Here you can see some nice moments captured from the rehearsals and the Pie Day. :)

Volunteering in a charity fair

Last weekend, I had an unusual service activity. Me and my friend were volunteering in a Christmas charity fair in the Presidency yard. In this fair, many philanthropic organisations were taking part, they were selling postcards, pies, Christmas decorations etc.  Everyone could donate their money to those organisations. We were volunteering in a organisation called "Algojimas", which works with disabled children. They organize seminars for the parents, camps and extra atctivities  for the children.

The atmosphere at the fair was really nice and friendly, there were many people, live music was played.

This experience was really nice and interesting and made me think about the meaning of Christmas.

P.S. 1.5 CAS hour

Here you can read some more about the fair:
 http://www.15min.lt/gallery/show/prezidenturos-kieme-vyksta-kaledine-muge-46942

Decorations for Christmas!

Hello!

Yesterday, me and some of my classmates decorated classroom of our master teacher's. A day before, I took a lot of materials from my home because we didn't have any concept on how we were going to embellish that classroom. We all met after all lessons and started generating ideas. It was difficult to come up with just one idea that we all agreed on. We chose Christmas forest theme as doors of our classroom had already been decorated with a deer silhouette on it. 

So, we got to work: we had to cut out many silhouettes of cute rabbits, also a deer and a Christmas tree.  We tried to do something original and interesting, so we put the Christmas tree upside down! This is almost avant-garde! Also, we made some other small decorations in the classroom.

This activity was really amusing and interesting to do because it required creativity and group work. I believe that result is just great!

P.S.- 2 CAS hours. CAS supervisor- Laura Petkutė

You can see the photos underneath:

ECO initiative

Last week we finished our "ECO- project" so I am going to share with you about the whole process of it. Me and my classmates Ieva and Živilė decided to make a little change in our school Lyceum so that we could contribute to solving  global wasting problem. It is known that schools are one of the top paper consuming places because paper is needed for everything here: books, tests, exercise books, projects etc. That is why it is so important to encourage school community to be socially responsible and recycle.

Therefore we build recycling bins in all three floors of Lyceum and spread some advertisements around school. Now people throw their papers to our bins and paper is not so wasted. This project required group work and creativity and it was fun to do it also!

Here you can see some photos of the project process and results  :) 

P.S.- 4 CAS hours

Writing my first published article

Hello!
Big news here: my article about a trip around Italy was published in two web pages: "Delfi" and "Jaunimo gidas". I contacted the editors of those pages and they agreed to post my article so I am really happy. This was not an easy task for me to write an appropriate article... It took a lot of time to systematize everything and to put everything in a logical order. You can see both links of my article below:
CAS hours: 5

http://pilietis.delfi.lt/naujienos/klajojimai-po-italija-stipri-italiska-kava-ir-kalnuotos-pakrantes.d?id=63401734

http://jaunimogidas.lt/klajojimai-po-campania-ir-puglia-regionus-italijoje/

DANCE marathon in Lyceum

Finally, we completed it! Alright, everything from the beginning. The Dance Marathon is an important event in my school- Vilnius Lyceum. This is like a dancing festival, where teams have to be formed. Every team has to prepare a dance.

Here you see some members of our 11 classmate team!

Since I love dancing, I thought of creating an IB1 dance group for the Dance Marathon. In the end of September, I asked all the classmates if somebody wanted to join the team and at first there were about 15 people who willed to dance. However, after some meetings and rehearsals the crew number decreased...

However, there were 11 people left. We had many ideas and suggestions for the dance style, moves, music etc. but we had to agree on one concept. 

After about four meets, we finally had chosen our music and started building the dance. There were three people that were designing dance moves and I was one of them. Believe me, it is extremely difficult. Another difficulty was organizing meetings since our group was big... We had rehearsals one or two times a week, from October until the November 15th, when the marathon took part.

So, the Dance Marathon took place in Lyceum on the 15th of November, you can see we had been practicing for more than a month! (well, there were 2 week holidays during that period) During the event, we showed our dance, then groups were mixed and had to make a new dance to the new music within 15 minutes! That was crazy! After that dance was performed, there were battles taking part. All these experiences were quite scary because the whole school was watching. However, it was a big challenge that I overcame and also it was a lot of fun!

P.S.- I would estimate this activity for about 10 CAS hours.

Here are some photos, later I will post the dance video. 

Trying LIMUN

Last Friday, on November 8, I participated in LIMUN. 

This is an acronym for Lithuanian International Model United Nations. Here students try to solve international problems, conflicts and other issues. During this conference, which lasted three days long, students debated, investigated problems and wrote resolutions. 

Well, I joined LIMUN spontaneously. My classmate, who was going there invited me to go too. All the participants had prepared for the debates and discussions, since every participant represented one country and its interests.  I hadn't prepared anything, so it was a little confusing for me at first, I didn't understand the system. My country was Germany... But after an hour, I joined the discussions and participated fully as well. Everything was being held in English. I took part in LIMUN not all the time long- just from hour 14 to 19. 

To sum up, this activity was a real challenge for me because of political backgrounds, serious discussions and specific vocabularies used in the conference. I think I gained some experience and met many interesting people from other countries during the conference, so this was really worth it!

Next time, I am planning to take part in LIMUN full time!

P.S.- I would estimate this activity for 5 CAS hours.

I am not very prominent in these photos- I am the blonde girl in blue sweater... I didn't find other photos with me in facebook. :)

Taking part in BeePart

On October 19th, the international light festival 'Beepositive' took part.  The day before the festival, me and my friend Ieva came to BeePart to volunteer. There we met a couple of Swiss artists who were making an installation called 'Sun Shower'. This installation was created for Lithuanians who miss sun in autumn and want to get tan. If you want to try this installation, you will have to lay on the table and pedal. While you pedal, UV rays are emitted and you can pedal until you get tan. :D

So, we came to BeePart and asked what we could help. They told us that they need ladder to be made. And we said we can make it! Believe me, this took a lot of effort, since we hadn't done this before and had almost no skills. This was a challenge, but, finally, we fixed the ladder and the artists were happy for our help. In the photos you will see the moments of our work, the installation and photos with the Swiss artists.

P.S.- I would estimate this activity for 2 CAS hours.