Sunday Church Basketball (canceled)

I was supposed to go play basketball today, but after I came back from the church, I just fell asleep. By the time I woke up, it was too late to go play. I will play next week.

MUN Practice Debate

Before the actual conference, we had a final practice debate from 9 AM through 5PM. (There were two more practice debates before, but I couldn't attend).
Since I am in the second committee, our debate topic was the question of the reform of the International Monetary Fund. I did the research on the wrong topic that I couldn't participate in the debate so much, but it was good experience and practice to learn the debating skills before the actual conference.

WWW presentation

After coming back from Week Without Walls, Mr.De Silva who was the leader teacher of our group assigned me to make a short presentation to show at the Wednesday Assembly. I collected all the pictures from my fellow classmates, Grace, Devansh, and Malindie, to make a short video clip.

Finally, I made the 4 minutes-long short video clip and showed it to the students on Wednesday, 24th of February 2010. I uploaded it to youtube.com.

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1p-mhI34ZY

Sunday Church Basketball

We played last Sunday(21st of Februrary, 2010) as well, from 3:30 through 6:30!
It's been a while I haven't played for two weeks and this was refreshing; in fact, I felt really light and could play pretty well. It was indeed fun. It was really good for me to keep me fit before I start the SAISA track practice.

SAISA Track Practice(Math Tutoring canceled)

We had the first Track Practice afterschool on Tuesday, 23rd of Februrary, 2010. Around 60 people are trying out this year. We did the circuit training. As both Alex and I are trying out, we couldn't have a class today. We will have to change the time soon. ANYWAY, the practice was fun.
Ali, David, Karl and I did one trial sprint, it was OK. We hace a very good relay team this year for sure. I'm looking forward to next training and the actual competition.

Bass Guitar (Canceled)

Since my father left to Korea last week for conference he had to attend, I couldn't go to class this week again. I practiced what I learned last time by myself at home though.
My father is coming back tomorrow and I hope I can have a class next week.

Prison Babies !

We had a babies in our school today after so long. We had a presidential election and WWW that we couldn't meet each other. As so, it was really good to see them again.

However, as it's been really long we haven't seen each other, many of them seemed to be scared of either us or the strange environment coming out from the prison, maybe, they don't really recognize us. The elders do remember us, but the younger ones cried the whole session looking for their mom.

Math Tutoring (Canceled)

I forgot about the class today that I didn't go. I feel guilty for Alex. I hope he has forgotten about it :(

Sunday Church Basketball (canceled)

I was too tired from WWW that I couldn't go play basketball yesterday.
I hope I can play next week!

Week Without Walls (Creativity & Service)

From Monday to Friday(8th - 12th of Feb. 2010), our grade went on the WWW trip to Hambantota. We were to help the two local schools which were badly damaged by the tsunami occurred in Sri Lanka a few years ago. Our initial goal was to paint their school and organize a concert for them to amuse their parents and enjoy the time with the children there. We divided ourselves into two groups and each helped one school each.
I was in the Second group, so called 'the Huna.' (I'm not sure about the spell, but it means Geckos in Singhala)

8th of February
We gathered up at the back gate near gym at 7:30 AM and left school to Hambanttota. We stopped by the (...) hotel to have lunch where it was around 12 o'clock. Then, we headed straight to the Elephant Safari in Hambanttota. As so, by the time we arrived at the Peacock Beach Hotel where we have stayed for last 5 days, it was 6:00 PM. It was, indeed, a long and tiring journey.
However, we needed to plan for the next day; we discussed about what to do, how to do, and who's doing what.
By the end of the planning session, we decided to spend some time with the children there playing Duck Duck Goose then start painting. Also, we talked about the concert we would have on Thursday with the children. We decided to do puppet together and two dancing; one was by Kashish Sharma, Ashish Sampath, and Saba Rewald dancing Bollywood dance and the other was breakdance and beatbox by Filippo Stoppni and me.

9th of February
As we got there, students welcomed us very warmly with Sri Lankan greeting and flowers in their hands. They introduced themselves and we did the same. Then, as we planned, we played Duck Duck Goose with them. They seemed to be scared a bit or shy that they wasn't so supportive. Still, it was good to play with them to open their minds.
After the game, we started painting. Grace Smith, Ashish Sampath, Rajindh Fernando and I were in charge of painting the equipments on the playground. We had to use the turpentine based paints to paint the equipments. We all first started painting seesaw, then we distributed works. Grace and Ms. Craig finished the seesaw while Ashish, Rajindh and I started the swings. We had a limited number of colors that we had to decide what color to use first.
Ashish, Rajindh and I decided to blend blue and yellow to make green and we painted the polls of the swing with one side blue to yellow and the other side yellow to blue giving gradation effect. It actually looked really cool, not just because it was my idea ;)
Then, we all painted the slide. While I was painting it, I had some paints on my hair and went to clean it off with the turpentine. I first used a little, it seemed to be working. Then I was worried about there might be some left on my head that I used the soap.

It was the beginning of the misery of the day.

Soap and Turpentine were mixed up and must have chemically reacted. It made out bubbles again and again. Water didn't work that I had to pour turpentine on my hair. It burned my head so badly. It was horrible.
After lunch, Alice and I started painting the background on the wall for the mural. After that, I helped the others to finish painting the equipments and the wall.

That night, we had about two hours to evaluate what we have done that day and practice for the performance. It was the first day of working that I felt like it went really fast and haven't done it much; I didn't really know how it went that day.

10th of February
We played Duck Duck Goose again and TRIED to play musical chair, but didn't work out so well.
So we continued painting. As it was the second day, everything went very well without a problem. While the others were painting the floor inside the school, Alice, Rajindh and I worked on the mural with the design that Alice came up with. Then, we finished most of it pretty early that Rajindh and I worked on the second mural which was not planned to be done. We thought it might look good with many hand prints with different colors as a background and a black tree over it. I suggested to do it in a gradation again, so it goes dark green to light green to white to reddish white and to dark red at the end. He liked my idea as well, so we did it. It looked amazingly cool; again it's not because I did it, but really it was really good as it wasn't the part of the plan.
After that, we drew over it and put several more coats on it so that its color looked much clear and thick. While we were painting over it, the others were painting the floor outside.
I also fixed the swing that they made themselves with the bicycle wheels, not the one we painted the day before; I found it broken the day before but I had neither nail nor hammer and couldn't fix it.
It started raining in an abrupt that the others couldn't finish painting the floor outside. We left the school at 2:30 PM.

As we got back to hotel, we again had the evaluation session. I felt that we've done more works than the day before as we got used to it and I thought we, now, have done something.
Time flew and it was Wednesday when I realized and Thursday was the performing day. Filippo and I first thought of doing the dance together that we did before in 10th grade PE class with Grace, but we forgot most of it and playing the music there was the problem so we changed the plan. Instead, Filippo would dance alone to my beatbox. That sounds reasonable to me as well that we practiced what song we would do.

11th of February
As always, we started the day with playing with the children. Then, afterward we finished what we were doing the day before: painting the outside floor, the door and cleaning the windows.
Then, we all started cleaning the school for the concert and decorated it with the balloons. I made flower with the balloons and hung them on the wall with Grace.

Performance

At 2:30 PM, we started performing. It went really really well! The children opened the the concert with the traditional dance. They seemed to have been practicing for long. Kashish, Ashish and Saba danced to a Bolleywood song, but then the speaker suddenly didn't work so the music wasn't so loud. Still, it was amazingly done for that they only practiced for one day. I want to say our performance was also not bad. I made no mistake, neither did Filippo, except we didn't really go till the last bit unlike what we planned.
It was over after we worked for three days. It was a short period of time, but these three days were the most unforgettable days in my life.

We had the evaluation session that night as usual. Mr. De Silva gave us a thought of the day like he always did the other days.

Failing to plan is the same as planning to fail.

Yes. Without our all teacher, Mr. De Silva, Mr. Bala, Ms. Fernando, and Ms. Craig, who have planned all for us, we must not be able to succeed like this.

Sunday Church Basketball (canceled)

Well, it was not canceled, but I didn't go play this week. From next Monday till Friday, I'm going on the Week Without Wall trip to Hambanttota, so I needed to stay at home and pack my stuff for the trip.
I'll be helping the local school and the students there and writing my journals on the paper so that I can post it on my blog. (I will do it electronically on the internet using my friend's laptop if I can)

Bass Guitar

Today, I practiced more on chromatic with variation and more rock n' roll and blues. To play a duet with me, my father worked on his blues and rock n' roll scale on his acoustic guitar. I wish we can play soon.

Math Tutoring

Last Tuesday(2nd February, 2010), we had a class after so long.
We went over the test he had the other day where he got a 4 while he promised me to get a 6. It was really close though. He missed all the questions where he was meant to add all the probabilities. He struggled with the part earlier and he must have confused at the test as well. Still, I believe he won't miss that question again since now he understood what he did wrong. We always learn from mistakes ;)

He started a new chapter in his class, Trigonometry. It is, indeed, a hard chapter for the beginners to understand and he seemed to be struggling with this chapter. I tried to explain the basic concept very easily, but I'm not sure it worked. He said he understood, but I doubt that. I know it ain't that easy to understand as I also found it hard at first. Hope we can do more on this next class.