Sunday Church Basketball

Those who play basketball with me on Sunday have been playing with OSC SAISA basketball team on Saturday as well. I really wanted to play, but I had other things to do for last few months such as MUN and I couldn't play.
This Saturday (27th of March, 2010) I could have played with them finally ! I was a bit tired from Track practice in the morning, but excited about playing basketball after a while.
Unfortuneately, not so many came to play this week, especially, only three of my Korean friends came to play. As so, we couldn't really play much this time, only an hour we played. I hope we can play longer and better match next time.

AND SUNDAY, I again played basketball with the Koreans. We decided to make our own uniform next week.
By the way, this week, around 16-17 people came to play and so we splitted ourselves into three groups of 5-6 and played matches like a tournament. We played about 8-10 matches total. But while I was playing, I crashed with the other player and his knee hit on my left leg thigh. I tripped over and I injured my leg really badly. I can barely walk right now...
In fact, I'm worried about the Track now and I don't think I will get well by the end of this week. I hope I will, but I will have to stretch it out really well..... I wish I will be better soon.

SAISA Track and Field

This week(22nd - 28th of March, 2010), we could start working on our major events since the team was announced on Monday by email; for those who made the team got an email from the coach, Mr.Buczowski, and I made the team. (I have achieved half of my initial goal here.)
So I have worked on the long jump, sprint and discuss which are my events like last year. We did one trial 4 by 100m relays as well.
This week, I moslty worked on the long jump. For some reasons, I couldn't get my strides right all the time; everytime I took a take-off, it was with my right foot where it has to be my left. And also, becasue of that, I can't jump further than 5.2 meters. It's, of course, better than my last year's distance, but I once jumped 5.6m in the practice. I will keep working on it to get 5.6m back.
I injured my thigh and left foot ankle and so I didn't really push myself working hard on sprint much this week. But still, to find out how we are doing now, I did one trial 4 by 100m relay with Bryce, David and Ali. We ran it in around 55 seconds which was pretty bad; we have to work on the transition where we hand over the baton, then we can shave off at least 2-3 seconds easily.
I don't want any injuries. Since we don't have school on Monday, I will try to stretch out well and try to get 100% well so that I can practice harder to get better !

Math Tutoring

So we had a class today after school (22nd of March, 2010). He told me that he has a test coming up on Friday. He seemed to have no problem with the chapter he is learning these days. However, he always makes some silly mistakes so I told him where he makes mistakes and corrected him. He got a 4 for the intermid report card; I believe he can do better than that. and so, he promised me to get at least 5 on the coming up test. I believe in him, he can do that :)

SAISA Track Practice

So last week, we mostly worked on the long jump, mid-distance, sprint, shot-put and discus where three of them were my events. And on Saturday(20th of March, 2010) we had the second Time Trial; in fact, I missed the first one due to MUN, so technically, this was my first and last time trial.

So, on Saturday time trial, we did 200m dash, long jump, shot put and 800m. I think I did pretty well on my trial. I sprinted the 200m in 27.56 seconds and I was pretty satisfied with it. It was really exhausting though; it took me so long to recover from the sprint(it might be because I didn't have breakfast, but still I could barely catch up my breath after half an hour.)
Next one we did was long jump. Last year, I missed the first place by little( I was first until the two others from other school jumped further in their LAST jump). So I'm aiming to win the long jump this year. In the time trial, I jumped 5.1 meters far. It wasn't so satisfying, in fact. My season best was 5.6 meters during the practice. I WANT TO believe that it was because of the injury on my thigh and ankle that I couldn't do as much as I could do last time; I will work on it harder next time and hopefully get better.
Then, we did the shot put; again, this year I'm aiming to win this event. Last year, I came in third and those who came before me all graduated last year since they were the seniors. So I aim to win this year. On the trial, I threw 8.9 meters; again, not so satisfying. I'm aiming to win the event and I threw 9.5 meters last year on the actual competition, so 8.9 meters was good, but was not so satisfying. I will work on it again much harder to get better.
Mid-distance is again proved it's not my cup of tea, not something I can do. I did really bad on the mid-distance. Because of my ankle injury, it was much harder and I still tried my best. But, distance is like a wall I can't go over.

I will..... just work on my events. :)

Prison Babies

Last Tursday(18th of March, 2010), we invited the babies to our campus after we visited them last week. We have planned to have them wear the animation character costumes and watch the Tom & Jerry with them this week. They seemed to like the costumes a lot as well as the Tom & Jerry episodes. We were a bit worried that it has a lot of violence in it, but they liked it a lot. (I wish it's not causing any problems in the prison such as they imitate either Tom or Jerry). We took a lot of pictures of them in the costume and we had fun, indeed.
I hope we can do something more interesting which will interest and amuse them next week!

Math Tutoring (Canceled)

Alex didn't show up today; he later wrote me on wall on Facebook saying he forgot about it.
We'll have class next week.

Sunday Church Basketball (canceled)

I HAVE THREE BIG TESTS COMING UP NEXT WEEK FROM MONDAY AND GEOGRAPHY PRESENTATION ON WEDNESDAY. So I decided not to go play basketball this week. It's been a while I haven't played basketball again due to MUN.
But still, the Interhouse Basketball starts from tomorrow, Monday(15th of March, 2010) and I'm in fact really excited about it. The match will be done at lunch and my chemistry test will be after lunch, so I had to stay home and study today.

Bass Guitar(canceled)

I haven't been able to take my bass guitar class for a while due to MUN and Track practice. But I practiced on my own. Since my father works for the embassy, my parents invites the Korean embassy people to my house on coming Tuesday and my father wants to play guitar and sing a song like a short performance to amuse them. So we chose a song, Wonderful Tonight, and practiced it together; my father on acoustic guitar, my brother on drum and I'm on my bass guitar. It was ok, but we have to work on several things like transition. Looking forward to performance.

Prison Babies

We visited the Prison this week! (11th of March, 2010)
Ms.Lilani's friend from other country donated some money and we could buy the mattress for the children. So we could have donated them to the prison this week. For the first time, we got the permission to take the camera with us and we could take the pictures. We took as many pictures as possible trying to use the full of the opportunity which comes very rarely in life.
It was really good to see them and in fact they looked more comfortable in the prison; the little children didn't cry at all unlike when we have them in our campus. We thought we should visit more often, maybe every two weeks like we planned earlier, since the babies stay more calm in the prison. I hope we can do more fun activities next week having them in our campus!

SAISA Track Practice

So this week, I had shown up for all practices.

Tuesday (9th of March, 2010)
We (C3, 15 and over) worked on our sprinting today; first 60m acceleration, 80m, 100m and 120m. This year, a new guy came in 10th grade and he is pretty fast. It is really good to have him in the team since because of him, 15 over boys have to compete. Competition actually makes me run and makes me feel like I run faster. In fact, I have a feeling that I am doing pretty well compared to last year. I hope we all can improve more and more.

Wednesday (10th of March, 2010)
We did the time trial for 1500m; since I am not a distance runner, I just jogged around the field. Then, to show the spirit as a tracker, I sprinted the last lap with my full speed. It took me 6 minutes and 58seconds which was bad compared to others, but I was satisfied with that since I can only sprint :S

Friday (12th of March, 2010)
We worked on high jump and shot put. AGAIN, I am not a high jumper; I wanted to work on the long jump, but as a whole team, Mr.B didn't let me do long jump alone. So I had to do some high jump and I tried, but I pulled my muscle at the end. IT WAS REALLY FRUSTRATING, but I still tried. It was ok. BUT I'm now REALLY REALLY sure I should do the long jump :)
Next, we all worked on Shot put. Due to MUN, I missed all the Friday and Saturday practices before and as so I missed the shot put practice. So, technically, this was my first shot put practice. It was refreshing; I haven't done it since last SAISA and it took me a while to get my feeling back. I threw almost 9-10 meters which was good for the first trial. I hope I can work on it more later.

Saturday (13th of March, 2010)
We had three different sessions on Saturday. Because of the Food and Fun fair, we couldn't do any running, but jumps and throws. C3 where I belong to worked on the long jump first. Since this is one of my events and I came in third last year, I tried to do my best. I jumped 4.90 meters which is the season best so far, but I couldn't be so satisfied. As so I tried to do better and while doing so, I injured my back and thigh. It's still hurting.
Next session was discuss. Again, this is one of my events and the only thing I can win this year. So I tried to throw as furthest I could, but due to the injury I had on my back during long jump, I couldn't do as much as I expected. I threw 25m-ish, but again that wasn't so satisfying. I will work on it more.
The last session was high jump; this isn't my event and I was injured, so I didn't really work on it much. I took only two-three jumps total. I had to take rest for my back injury.
It was fine practice overall, but I have to work on some things like techniques more next time.

Math Tutoring

On Monday(8th of March, 2010), Alex and I had a class again. He told me that he has done inclass math investigation the other day and managed to finish it in class.
So he started a new chapter, solving the simple equation by simplifying. However, he seemed to be doing fine, but still struggling with the basic concept. He often made a silly mistake while he was adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying. Sometimes, he doesn't know what to do even if he has already got the answer. So I went through the questions with him trying to make him understand better. Hope we can work on it more next time.

MUN

From 5th through 7th of March, 2010, we had a COMUN conference. Around 500 MUN delegates of delegations came for this conference from Pakistan(LAS and KAS), India and other 33 local international schools.

So the first day, with the topic of the role of agriculture in sustainable development, we had a debate. This was my first year and I was not so sure what I had to do. But, I tried to be a risk taker which I learned in the previous year during MYP, and put myself in the speaker's list.
I was representing Zimbabwe and I had to talk about the situation in Zimbabwe related to the topic. Zimbabwe is, in fact, struggling with the financial difficulties as it struggles with the unsustainable fiscal deficit, an overvalued official exchange rate, hyperinflation with the inflation rate of 11.2 million % and bare store shelves. Besides, the involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1998 through 2002 made it harder as it drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. As 66% of the labor force is occupied in agriculture, it provides employment and livelihood to 70% of the population. This was what I had to point out and asked for increase in investment in agriculture. I regard myself as not a good public speaker, but I felt proud that I actually took the risk and spoke up in front of other 120 delegates. After that, while we were coming up with the resolution, I tried my best to participate and add something would benefit my country; it was pretty hard to stand and speak up only for my country since pretty many other countries were co-submitting.

On the second day, we continued the first topic where we were supposed to finish it on the first day but we failed due to the time constraint. So we had about one to two hour long debate and vote for the resolution. The resolution I was cosubmitting was accepted by the Second Comittee.
So We moved on to the next topic, the economic and social hardship during the rehabilitation of the victims of human trafficking. It was really hard for me to speak up for my country's problem since the government of Zimbabwe has not reported how well they are reducing the number of people who are trafficked even though it's a very serious problem in Zimbabwe. So with a limited research, I couldn't participate so much that day.

On the last day, the conference was in the Water's Edge. We were meant to be voting for the resolution, but nothing else. However, as the chairs wanted everyone to get involved, they came up with the 'emergency' topic. The president of the General Assembly handed out this news article saying that Taiwanese attacked the Chinese marine and they are about to start the war. We had to come up with our countries' stance and debate about it. It was in an abrupt, but fun.
Once we were done, we continued voting on the resolutions we came up for the last two days. All the resolution I was co-submitting was accepted by the General Assembly.
We had the last closing ceremony and the best delegate awards and finally everything was over.


A few months of preparing to be the MUN delegate and three days of conference mean a lot to me. This was my first MUN; I set my goal to participate a lot and contribute making a resloution so that it'd benefit my country and I think I have achieved most parts of my goal since I did participate, not much, but still did some and spoke out for my country while writing up the resolutions. It was fun and meaningful. I wish I could do it next year if I have some times for it( but I think it'll be a bit busy next year so I don't think I can't join next year... but who knows?)

SAISA Track Practice

I have decided to record what I did in the practice once week. So last week, after the first practice, we had another on Wednesday in the morning and did the plyo. We are supposed to have a practice on Friday and Saturday, however, Friday was the national holiday that we couldn't have one and on Saturday, I had MUN practice debate that I couldn't practice.

So yesterday(2nd of February, 2010), I could have come for the practice after school. I've been not training for last four days since the first practice that it seemed to be really tiring for me to do the practice. Since I'm in the C3 I did the running session and stairs; I was supposed to do the pool one as well, but we couldn't due to the lack of the time. I ran couple of laps first; sprinting in the straight lane and run in 60% of capacity in the curved lane. Then, in a group of six, we ran the whole lap together, first in 70 seconds, 60, 50, 40 and 30 at last. It was really tiring; since I haven't stretched out properly before I ran, I could barely walk at last bit; my back was hurting.
After the session, we moved on to the stair session. We first walked up and down a few time, hopped up and down and ran up and down the stairs. It was hard, but good practice. I better keep me fit better.

and today(3rd of February, 2010) we had a morning session. C3, we did the weights with David's father, Mr. Gresham. It was hard, but fun :D

Math Tutoring

Since we have Track practice on Tuesday, Alex and I changed the time to Monday.
So we had a class today after school and went over his test on Trigonometry. He got a 4; he did well on his test but seemed that he didn't really know how to apply it to other question since he only missed 5-6 level questions. I explained them to him, but I don't think he fully understood.
I helped him with his math investigation as well. He was asking everything, but since I couldn't do everything for him I just gave a hint or a clue to the questions so that he can do them himself.