Final Essay

CAS has been a rewarding experience for me over the last two years. Learning to focus not only on academics but also on rounding myself through creativity, action and service has molded me into the person who I am today.

Going out for – and then being cast as – the lead role in the school musical in 11^th grade helped me discover my love for theatre, an interest which I then continued to pursue over the two years and which I know I will continue on doing after high school. Drama has helped me develop a strong sense of self-confidence as well as the strict and concentrated work ethic which is required to learn a large part, traits which I think are extremely important in all aspects of life. 

CAS also allowed to me combine different types of activities and through Artsco, the art/service club which I headed in 12^th grade, I was able to combine my love for the arts with an opportunity to serve my community. This experience really taught me how I can find something that is meaningful, rewarding and caters to my own interests, which is extremely important in discovering what it is that I will be passionate about for the rest of my life.

As the captain of the swim team and the head of Artsco at school, I have been able to build up leadership skills. Artsco, a club that has a large focus on community service, has taught me responsibility, as I have to contact and organize our service opportunities, including painting murals in the Kibera slum and working with community art programs around Nairobi. Serving as captain of the swim team not only makes me responsible for our numerous elementary and middle school members, but also designates me as the liaison between the younger swimmers and the coach. I must function not only as the captain of the swim team but also as a member of the team, which requires skills in leadership, communication, and cooperation with others. Sports like Tennis and Swimming are also extremely important in my life, as I believe that through them I found a way to not only stay fit in high school but also continue an active life style for the rest of my life.

Participating in service events like the two week trip to the Amazon and Lunahuana in Peru as well as being a member of Habitat for Humanity in 11^th grade has taught me an immense respect for people who can live with almost nothing and still be happy and enthusiastic about their situations. The people in the Mai Mahu displaced people camp lost everything during the post election violence in 2007 and yet they are using that as a new beginning and forming a new community in their new home. It really amazed me how people can overcome any obstacle and still be smiling and enjoying themselves, as everyone was always very helpful and kind to us during our Habitat builds.

What made the Amazon trip so rewarding was that we were working with the man and I could really see how much it meant to him that were helping him out. He was always laughing and joking around with us (even though he only spoke Spanish we got by, which was extremely rewarding in itself) and it really just seemed like I was making a difference in his life, which felt great.

On the Lunahuana trip our main focus was working at a local elementary school. I was really scared coming on the trip as a non Spanish speaker that I wouldn't be able to have any impact on the kids but they were so eager to learn and so happy that I was there that it didn't even matter and we managed to communicate. I have to say that this was the most incredible experience of this entire trip, I could really feel that these kids loved what I was doing with them and even only being able to teach them the colors and the parts of the body in English was beyond amazing. They never made me feel like I wasn't getting through to them despite the language barrier. The way in which people can learn to communicate and work together despite cultural difference really strongly impacted me and I think inspired me greatly in choice to pursue International Relations at a college level.

Overall CAS has definitely shaped me into a more understanding and well rounded person, and I think that it has strongly impacted the decisions I will make and the lifestyle I will live over the course of my life. I have learnt that I am a strong leader, that I can find something meaningful and rewarding, which I love doing and that I can overcome any obstacle.

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Final Reflection - Tennis

My objectives for joining the German School Club Tennis team were to try a new sport which I had never really played on a team and only ever truly experienced in a few P.E. lessons. I also think that Tennis is a sport that is really fun, keeps you fit and you can play for the rest of your life, so i was hoping to create a hobby for myself which would help to keep active for much longer than just my Senior Year. I absolutely love Tennis and I am SO happy i was able to discover a sport that i am so happy passionate about. Saturday Tennis has become one of the best parts of my week and I am always very upset when i have to miss a practice for any reason! The relationships I've built with my teammates have also been great as they come from several different schools around Nairobi and it therefore allowed me to broaden my social horizons, meeting new people and learning from them when I would never have otherwise had the opportunity to do so. I've also actually become quite good at Tennis, something which I never would have expected to happen on my first day of practice. We played a few singles and doubles tournaments and I was actually able to win the most recent singles and doubles championship! Tennis is also great because there is singles and doubles so you get to play individually and with a teammate! Overcoming my fear of being bad, and also overcoming some terrible technique mistakes were my biggest obstacles, but i definitely managed to improve my skills tremendously! Again, persistence and the importance of working hard at something in order to get good are what I have taken away from Tennis and i hope to play it for the rest of my life!

Final Reflection - Artsco

 Artsco, an arts club which started when I was a Sophomore, and which I have been a part of since I was a Junior, did almost
nothing for the first two years of its existence. This year, as President, I vowed to change that because this club could be so
much more, and our school really needed to improve its apprecation of the arts. Through blood, sweat and tears and with the
help of two of my friends who I appointed co-chairs, Artsco has now organized service opportunites with programs in the
Kibera slum, where we paint murals in support of positive change in the community. We also organize for students to submit
mural designs which they can then paint onto the walls surrounding our school's construction site. Finally, we organized an inter-school talent show. I am really proud of making this club a significant part of our school's community and it
makes me happy to see an increased interest in the arts at our school, something that I hope continues for years to come.

I think we worked really well as a team in order to create a greater sense of appreciation for the arts in our community and we were really able to bring art more the foreground in ISK's community. The importance of strong leadership and the power it can have to unite and bring people together to actually accomplish something really important is the most important lesson I learnt from Artsco and something that i will be able to carry on into later life.

Final Reflection - Swim Team

My objectives in Swim Team this year were to continue on and improve on a sport that I've been participating in since I was 9. I wanted to not only improve my times but to keep up my overall fitness and to stay in shape doing something that hopefully I will be able to do for the rest of my life. I also wanted to uphold my duties as captain and make sure our team was cohesive and unified. I think that overall ISK did very well this year in swimming and I was a proud member of the team. I feel that even though it is an individual sport we were able to support each other and learn from each other in order to improve as a team, never leaving anyone behind or struggling to be a part of the group. We ended up doing very well as a team too, winning many medals and trophies. I feel that I definitely was able to achieve my objectives of both improving as a swimmer and keeping my fitness level up and good. Even though i had to commit a lot of my time to Macbeth, i was still able to make it to several early morning practices and several swim meets, which made me really proud and happy as swimming is something I love to do and will continue to do for hopefully many years. During the second semester i also had to give over more time to studying for my exams, but I still managed to come to at least one meet and a few practices. These obstacles to commitment were the biggest obstacles i faced, and i'm happy i was able to overcome them and remain an active member of the team. Swim team has taught me about persistence and team work even when these seem difficult to accomplish. It makes me proud when I win a race, but it makes me even prouder to know that I'm contributing to my team's success. It is really satisfying to know that hard work pays off. Both of these lessons have defined me as a person, I know that I can get even more satisfaction from something if not only I, but my larger community benefits as well, and I know that I can do anything if I really try.

SODAS Opening - Artsco

Karl, the head of the SODAS foundation for which we had been painting murals in August, September and October invited Ms. Mackay our supervisor and Anais and myself, the two heads of Artsco, to the opening of the foundation and it was really nice to see something that our club had worked towards building up finally come into existence! It was a big ceremony with lots of musicians, and speakers who talked about the importance of drug and alcohol prevention, sex education and rehabilitation for the youth of Kibera. Everyone seemed really please with Artsco's involvement in the community and we got several compliments on how our murals were able to raise awareness about the project in the community. Art is a great medium through which can impact society and have them better understand the problems of their community. Our first mural about positive and negative role models shows the youth what they do and don't want to do with their life and rewards of living a life free from drugs, alcohol and unprotected sex. In order to help SODAS with the launch of their project we also decided to donate 50,000 Shillings which we had raised through the PTO Picnic, Bake sales, the Talent Show and the International Day! They seemed extremely pleased and I really hope Artsco can continue to work with SODAS in the future.

Working at International Day

For the International Day at school Artsco decided we wanted to do a fun game which would create art through community involvement. We filled balloons with different colors of paint and stabled them to a wooden board. We then gave each player 3 darts with which they would attempt to pop the balloons, winning  different prizes based on which color paint was in the balloon. It was really fun to see all the children get so excited to see the paint spray out on the board and create a really cool piece of abstract art. They were all shouting and yelling at which color  was going to come out the balloon next and it really went along with Artsco's philosophy to promote art in the community by getting them excited and involved in something creative and artistic. We are going to donate any profits we made from the game to the SODAS foundation where we were painting murals earlier in the year.

Final Post Show Reflection - Macbeth

My life feels so empty now, this play took up so much of my time and even though it was stressful I really do miss it. The reaction to the performance have all been really good with people saying they were amazed at what we were able to accomplish because of how difficult the text is but also because of how well it all worked. I've gotten praise for really hitting home the emotions and emotional transition from the beginning to the end, which I'm really proud of. I did, however, get several people telling me they honestly understood very little of the plot even though they enjoyed it! It's weird because to me the text seems so obvious now that i know this so well. I understand every word and its somehow weird to think that the audience doesn't. It does make sense though looking back at my own experience when i saw Macbeth in Stratford Upon Avon, where it was, even though i knew the play, sometimes difficult to to follow, so the reaction was expected. The fighting, I think, was definitely what brought this play to life and I'm so happy we added it unlike the play in Stratford. That first fight really set the stage for the audience to know this wasn't going to be just kids reciting lines from Shakespeare but an actual interesting performance.

My objectives for this activity for this activity were to overcome my fear of thinking i would not be able to perform a Shakespeare play for a high school audience and not have them writhing in their seats with boredom, and also to accomplish this feat! I was also hoping to learn about how a cast and crew can come together, moving past the actor as a singular unit, to create a dynamic and unified performance. I think overall we managed to put on an entertaining show and we definitely did the absolute best we could performing a play with extremely difficult English language to an audience where many members did not speak English as their first language. I also feel that all members of the cast and crew were able to work together to create a synergy which allowed to us impact the audience fully at all times. I also had so much fun with my cast and crew and the relationships i built with them made the entire experience worth it on their own. So in the respect I did feel that I reached my objectives and i'm happy with our final performances. There was the obvious difficulty of people not being able to understand the plot, and due to the language barrier, never being able to understand the lines no matter how well i presented them. I think that by putting on a definite spectacle we were able to keep the audience engaged visually and auditarily even if they didn't understand the exact lines that were being said. The elaborate fighting and costuming also allowed the audience to see characters advance and fall, which is the main plot of Macbeth. I learnt that anything is possible, and i remember myself sitting in the read through for this play thinking I could never learn all those lines, so accomplishing just that was truly amazing for me. The work ethic and discipline i learned from staying after school until 9:30 sometimes and still keeping up with my studying is extremely important for the rest of my life as it taught me time management and persistence even in the face of things looking impossible. I've definitely learned to value my free time, and not to waste it when I could be doing something productive.

Macbeth Reflection - Opening Night

I really think that this is a fantastic show. I was really nervous for tonight because I couldn't believe it in my mind that we had actually succeeded in doing a Shakespeare play and doing it well! The audience were not so large but they were incredible. They seemed totally invested and the "Ooos" i got when i first came out with blood on really got me excited and ready to do that scene. They also seemed genuinely scared when I came up to them with my bloody hands, no laughs! I do think it was mostly adults though, as i saw few students in the audience. Tomorrow will definitely be a totally different experience. I feel generally the first half of the play has gotten much better since that was what i was struggling with in rehearsals and I really got a connection to the audience during my speeches. Tech also ran smoothly which was awesome since it made the play feel like a complete unit. I don't think i ever messed up lines too much either which to me feels amazing as I still can't believe i was able to learn this whole play. I really know this play and this character and i'm proud of myself!

The Talent Show

The Talent Show went really really well! It seemed like everyone really enjoyed themselves and even though it ran for about 3 hours with all judging and a 10 minute intermission no one seemed bored. It was really nice to see everyone so excited about the arts and it really makes me feel like artsco is doing its job! When everyone got on stage to dance at the end it really showed how the school can come together and I really hope that this will also increase people's attendance at other school music concerts for the rest of the year. After the show we started thinking and maybe next semester we'll organize a talent show for teachers and parents because that would be really fun and we know there is a lot of talent there!

Macbeth

I feel like this play is coming up SO FAST, less than a month! I'm quite confident though and i think it's going to be a good show. It's really really challenging to make Shakespeare approachable and not unimaginably boring especially for a mostly teenage audience, but using lots of audience interaction and building in really strong characterization will, I hope, help the audience to feel more involved in something they might not understand fully. I'm also really excited about the costumes and sets and how they're coming together. The lines is my other issue, I'm confident with them up until the end of Act 2, so I still have a lot of work and it's so daunting but i won't give up! I know i can do it! But honestly, the 20th of November, when this is over couldn't come any sooner, it's been fun but very stressful and I can't wait to be reminiscing and looking back on this as a very positive experience :)

Tennis

I've been practicing with the German School Tennis Team every Saturday and I am so happy with the amount of improvement that I've made. While it was hard for me to even get the ball over the net and into the court at the beginning of the year, I now feel much more confident and have even won a few matches. The coach as really helped me improve on my swing, I never realized that i was just doing wrong! It took sometime to adjust to a new grip because the movement felt a little awkward at first, but I'm really getting into the feel of it now and I must say i really love Tennis. The coach is trying to organize for us to start playing matches against other schools soon so I'm excited about that, as long as we don't have to face ISK!

Organizing the Inter School Talent Show

This year it is Artsco's responsibility to organize the annual ISK Inter school talent show. This has been a really stressful job, especially since we had so many people come to the 3 auditions we held. It was really hard because in order to keep the show around 2 hours we had to cut a lot of good people, and it was even harder when they were my friends, but i think this has taught me a lot about taking charge and standing firm by your decisions even when your friends beg you to reconsider after you had to cut them. We narrowed it down to 20 acts, which is already quite a lot but I think we're going to have an excellent show! We're having a dress rehearsal on Wednesday the 26th and on Thursday we will meet up as a group to do decorations before the actual show is on Friday the 28th. I'm really happy with how much Artsco has been able to accomplish over the year and after this I'm hoping to organize another service opportunity before the December break.

Swim Galla

I had my first swimming Galla of the year on the 15th and 16th of October, NASA's AAA Galla. Despite feeling really sick on Saturday i still went in to swim the 200 IM (Individual Medley) and actually ended winning it despite feeling terrible so i felt really good about that! I did feel horrible afterwards though, was dizzy and almost threw up. Sunday i felt much better and came in to swim the 100 IM, 50 Breast and 50 Free and ended up winning the 100 IM and placing third in the 50 Breast. Again, good results :). Due to Macbeth taking up so much of my schedule, I haven't been at nearly as many Gallas this year as last, but it was exciting to compete again and I'm hoping to be able to participate in more after Nov. 19th when Macbeth goes up. Until then, its just lots of practice!

Working at the PTO

The artsco booth at the PTO picnic was face-painting, tie-dye and hair braiding. While I didn't do braiding, as I'm really not very good at it, i was doing face-painting, helping the kids out with tie-dye as well as supervising for the entire 3 hours. The tie-dye was really fun, we had looked up some designs beforehand and it was really cool how most of the shirts turned out. Costumers would buy a white t-shirt, we would then help them tie it up into a cool design with ruber bands and let them color it. All of our costumers seemed really pleased with the outcome! Face-painting was much more stressful, as it takes pretty long to give a child a full face make over, turning them into a tiger, a pirate or a butterfly, and the lines were always really long. However, it was also really fun, especially since all of the kids were happy with their new selves and happy despite how long it sometimes took! We made about 12,000 shillings from this event, which we will use for our service projects, buying paints and supplies so it was very successful.

Mural Painting in Kibera

We had quite a good turnout for the trip to Kibera and i think it all worked out really well. The design for the mural was based on the idea of good/bad aspirations, so we had people who were drunks, addicts, criminals, etc. in black and white with red Xs over their eyes and people who were doctors, athletes and students in colour and happy. It was really really fun and it was nice to see the reactions of the SODAS foundations members, as it really seemed like we were helping them and giving them exactly what they wanted. They helped us translate slogans about drugs/alcohol and sexual health into kiswahili and so overall the mural just looked really good. We're planning on going back to paint the inside walls Wednesday as well collaborate with them even more in the future!


On our second trip to Kibera to paint murals we designed a four panel mural which would show the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly as we thought it was a nice symbol for the youth that would be trying to recover from drug/alcohol dependency in the SODAS program. It was really fun to see how well the members responded to the message and they also liked how we were able to make their dreary white/gray walls beautiful and welcoming to the community. Art is meant to bring a message of unity and to teach through symbolizing so i think we really managed to accomplish this in our mural painting!

Artsco

So this year I am head of artsco, the arts club at ISK and since the supervisor, Ms. Mackay, and I have decided to greatly increase what this club does in terms of service and activeness in the school, it has been really stressful so far, but fun! We have about 25 members, more than i expected, so the challenge will be to keep them all motivated and actually participating. Our main goal this year at ISK is to increase the attendance at arts events. We hope to do this primarily through greatly increased publicity, so each member needs to be active in their support of artsco events as well as attendance! Our other goal is to have 4 service opportunities a year. Our first one, a mural painting with the SODAS (Save our Daughters and Sons) foundation is happening next Saturday, which is excellent! Organizing this has however been somewhat chaotic as it is very close and we still need to organize buses/permission forms, etc. But it'll work out! The foundation members seem very excited to have us come and i'm hoping to have every member participate in this opportunity. I will post again after our trip. hopefully it will have gone well!

A New Year of Swim Team

I went to two swim practices on Wednesday and Friday mornings last week and wow they were so tough. I didn't realize just how unaccustomed i had come to these strenuous work outs over the summer. My legs were killing me after Wednesday, i've never had sore muscles like that, and Friday was bad too, but better. I can feel myself returning to my weekly fitness routine and its relieving and welcome as i do love swimming and it makes me feel bad to feel out of shape. I'm not sure yet when our first Galla will be, and i'm not sure if i'm looking forward to it, racing is always nerve-wracking, but since this is my Senior year, i'm hoping i do well! I'm going to practice again on Wednesday, and hopefully i'll be able to get back into my Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 3 times a week routine again.

First Macbeth Practice

So today was our first day of practice for Macbeth. It was only a read-through and we only got about half way into act 2 as Mrs. Hargreaves, the director, had to do a lot of explaining, but its already seeming really overwhelming. I have SO many lines and even though the production isn't until around November 22nd i'm already nervous. I've never had a part this demanding before, but I don't want to make it seem like i'm not totally excited about it either. I love theatre and this is exactly what i want to spend my time doing, it just seems a little daunting knowing that i still have so far to go. The cast is also super cool and i really feel like we're going to bond well over the course of these practices (we really better because on the schedule it says some of our practices will run all the way till 8 pm during the last stretch in November!)

Joining the German School Tennis Team

I haven't really played Tennis since I was in 5th Grade (and i mean playing Tennis, not just hitting a ball around for 5 minutes during the summer when i'm bored) but i have decided that since i do think it's a lot of fun, i want to join the German School Tennis team which meets every Saturday starting on the 27th of August. I decided to join the German School Team because being Macbeth in the school production takes up most of my time after school, so joining the ISK Tennis team is impossible, but i do still want to pursue it. In order to prepare for this team i've so far had 2 lessons over the last 2 saturdays with a Tennis teacher in order to brush up on the rules and to see if i could even still really play. It was super fun, although frustrating as i am, honestly, not very good. I struggled to hit the ball into the court most of the time, but i do hope to improve as the year goes on. I'll post again after my first session on Saturday!

Peru Trip with Rustic Pathways: Amazon and Lunahuana

Over the summer I went on a 16 day trip to Peru with the Service Learning Program Rustic Pathways. The trip was split into two parts, 8 days in the Amazon Rainforest and 8 days in the mountains of Lunahuana. I can honestly say it was one of the funnest, most rewarding and all around best trips I've ever been on.

The first week we stayed in a jungle camp and were a group of 12 kids from different places around the world with one kid from England, one from Puerto Rico, one from the Dominican Republic and the rest from all over the United States. The group was really fun and the friendships I formed could validate the trip all on their own but there was so many more rewarding things that we did. We spent the first half of every day, from around 9 to 1, working with a man that the community had elected to help. He was building a new house for himself and we were there to help him tear down his old house, clear the surrounding area of bamboo and bushes with machetes and make a big sign to put on the river to landmark his home.

In the picture you can see the old house in the background and the new house that he was building in the foreground. Even though tearing down a house may not seem all that productive or difficult, it was actually really hard work because we had pull apart every piece of wood and not not break it in order for it to be used again on the new house. Except for the completely rotten wood, which broke almost immediately when touched. The machete-ing was also difficult but what made the whole process so rewarding was that we were working with the man and I could really see how much it meant to him that were helping him out. He was always laughing and joking around with us (even though he only spoke spanish we got by, which was extremely rewarding in itself) and it really just seemed like I was making a   difference in his life which felt great. Carving the sign was a mission as well, but it really was the best feeling in the world to be standing in front of it finished at the end of the trip.

While the community service aspect of week one was fun, the Amazon trip was also so much about a cultural, learning and adventure experience. We had only Peruvian food which was delicious, they eat this really amazing potato-like vegetable called yucca which we ate fried with almost every meal and all sorts of meat dishes. We took 2 walks through the rainforest where we learnt about different animals and plants, bust most excitingly we did a lot of adventure activities like a river rafting race (that took about 2 hours) on rafts we had built out of large logs and piranha fishing. We had down time everyday where we could go swimming or play football on the beach too. It was all around just a super fun experience because of the amazing people, the great service opportunity and the fun adventure.

Before we went back to Lima from the Amazon we spent one more day in the town of Puerto Maldonado and worked one day at an animal shelter where we put the netting on animal cages and helped make the food for the animals.

Going to Lunahuana, in the coastal mountains of Peru, was like entering a completely different world. We were now in this valley which had vegetation only along the river running through it, while the landscape of the mountains was a total desert. On the Lunahuana trip our main focus was working at a local elementary school. In the mornings we were with the kids for about 3 hours, playing with them and attempting to teach them. I'm saying this honestly because it was sometimes so difficult to get them to concentrate, but we did manage most of the time. I was really scared coming on the trip as a non spanish speaker that i wouldn't be able to have any impact on the kids but they were so eager to learn and so happy that i was there that it didn't even matter and we managed to communicate. I have to say that this was the most incredible experience of this entire trip, i could really feel that these kids loved what i was doing with them and even only being able to teach them the colors and the parts of the body in english was beyond amazing. They never made me feel like I wasn't getting through to them despite the language barrier.

During the afternoons we painted and cleaned out a room that the school wanted to turn into a multipurpose building. The room was a total mess and I really wish I had some before and after pictures because I feel it was really incredible what we could accomplish in only the 6 days that we were working there. We painted the entire room (i'd say about 15x5 meters) white, painted the windows (with this horrible black paint that wouldn't wash out of anything, even your skin) and sanded the furniture which would be put in the room. It was so rewarding because we could see how much we had accomplished while there.

Again Lunahuana wasn't all about service though! We had one day, Sunday Funday, where we white water rafted for 2 hours down the river, something I had never done before which was incredibly fun and exciting and then went on the longest zip line in South America (possibly the world, i don't remember exactly) in the evening was so exhilarating and amazing. The place we were flying over was like a moon landscape for parts of the zip-lines. We also visited some pre-incan ruins in the town of Lunahuana which was exciting and fun.

So, to wrap up this account, I have to reiterate that this trip truly was an incredible experience both due to its community service aspect and its just all around fun activities. I would love to travel with Rustic Pathways again, and maybe go somewhere else new in the world!