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!