Each year, just after Boxing Day, my family and I head off into the snowy Alpes in France for our favourite holiday: SKIING. The combination of constantly moving throughout the day and beautiful sights from the top of the slopes, makes skiing one of the best holidays ever!

Having not been skiing since last year, I could feel that I was uneasy skiing for the first day or so. I'd forgotten how tiresome it can be when you do not have enough speed and momentum to push yourself all the way to the ski lift at the end of the slope and have to 'walk' towards it. With each day, I could tell that all my lessons as a child had paid off and I was able to ski without focusing merely on technique, but enjoy it more.

For the last few months of CAS, there are some activities that I've decided to take a break from and others that I am continuing until the very end. This post outlines the activities that I've decided to continue doing:

CREATIVITY:

• Photography. Although Cailin and I have decided to take a break from the photography blog, I am definitely not going to stop taking and sharing pictures.
• Developing my art portfolio. Recently, I've spent more and more time working on updating my sketchbooks and work on large scale pieces
• Video editing. Recently, I have finished making two new video compilations using iMovie. One of these was my CAS Favourite Memories video and the other was a 'vlog' from when I went to a concert with a group of friends. 

ACTIVITY:

• Running. As mentioned in a previous post, I have been going running regularly on the weekends rather than attending running club.
• Yoga. This is another activity that I have been doing regularly at home.

SERVICE:

• Cystic Fibrosis Project. Our CF CAS Project is nearing to a close and we are in the process of planning our last activity. 

I had been taking piano lessons for around 6 months after a long break, but then stopped when the summer holidays began. I have now started taking them again to improve my piano skills.  My main goals are:

• to learn to read sheet music
• to improve my piano techniques

21st February 2016
We have now started to play the first variation of the piece, which I like a lot more than the one I was playing last week

28th February 2016

6th March 2016

13th March 2016

8th April 2016
I've been on holidays for two weeks followed by wisdom teeth extraction, but I still managed to fit in almost daily piano practises. I was definitely a little rusty, but it was not as hard as I expected to get back into practicing.

17th April 2016

25th August 2016
Since my last piano update, not much has changed. I've still been practicing every day (almost) and I've learned a lot of new pieces. Many of them are for practicing my technique. With school coming around sooner than I expected and my upcoming university entrance exams within the next few months, I've decided to stop going to piano lessons. This is also due to the fact that, while I'm in the boarding house, I find it very difficult to find time and place to practice piano. The music rooms are often taken during the times that I am free, so I was never as prepared for lessons as I would like to be. This means that I wasn't progressing as much as I would like and with even less time this year, I decided to focus on my other actives for 'Creativity'.



Learning Outcomes:
LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
Through continuous lessons and learning new pieces, I am consistently developing as a pianist and learning new skills. 

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
With learning each new piece there are challenges that have to be undertaken. Although it becomes easier over time, the initial stages are always a challenge.

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
It takes commitment to use my free lessons during school hours to continue practicing piano and improving. Although I've decided not to do this activity for the rest of this school year, it has been an ongoing activity for the past few years.

• We spent the last two lessons of the day setting up
• Printed way way more pictures for our new and updated photography display
• We made a photography quiz for people to guess which pictures were taken by which of us (Cailin and I) 
• We chose 5 pictures each and gave everyone a piece of paper to guess which ones are mine and Cailin's
• Anyone who got more than 8/10 right was given a lollipop
• We presented our CAS project again, but this time was made so much more special by the fact that Antonia came to watch and speak about it 
• This time around there were many more displays of what people have been doing, including: 
• Cooking blogs, Poetry, Creative writing, Artwork etc.
• Cailin and I spoke about our photography trip to Budapest that we went on over summer

Now, every Wednesday I go up to the library during the second half of my break (10:45) and read with the Year 3 children until 11:30. It makes my life so much easier not to have to stay after school anymore and I really enjoy reading with them - much more than I did last year. In comparison, I am much more actively helping the lower school pupils this year, rather than just being there if they needed help with their homework.

So far I've been reading with them for 4 weeks and each week I get to talk and help new children. I was so shocked that each of them reads completely differently. Even though it was to be expected, I didn't think about how big the difference would be until I actually experienced it. At the start of CAS, I thought that service would be a drag that I had to 'force' myself to do each week. At times, it was... But with this activity, I am excited to spend time with the children and help them.

LO1: I developed and grew my 'teaching' skills and identifying how best to help them

LO2: The challenges that I experienced involved changing how I interacted with children depending on their strengths.

LO4: I have participating and undertaking this activity regularly for over a year now.

LO5: Although usually the CAS activities that I undertake for this learning outcome involve working collaboratively with other students in my year group, this time I have to work together with teachers and young pupils. The teacher and I each perform different roles within the club and by working together, everything runs smoothly.

LO7: As I discussed in a previous post, one must make ethical choices about how to best 'handle' the children that do not want to participate. Luckily, this year there have not been many of these pupils.

Although we had been talking about this event for months and months before the summer holidays and some of us had been training for it (not as much as we would have liked), it didn't feel real until we were all sat down in the car together - dressed in our running gear - and drove down to Bonn. Once we arrived there, I was surprised by the amount of people that had gathered there - it turned out that there were actually over 11,000 people running with us all for various companies/charities! After meeting up with the group who were supporting Cystic Fibrosis and after we got our shirts/drinks/badges, we joined the huge group getting ready to start the run.

The run was due to start at around 18:00, but as we were in the middle of the crowd, it took us about half an hour to reach the starting point. In total, the run was around 6km in length following a path of twists and turns, with a lake on one side at all times. We had people cheering us on from the sidelines, including musicians playing various genres of music every 500m or 1km. Every time I slowed down a little, either the music or other Cystic Fibrosis runners would cheer me (and others) on to keep running. It gave us all in the group so much pride and joy to be running for such a cause, among so many others running in support of their various causes.

At the finish line, we all met with Antonia, the lovely girl who Ellie and Anna had interviewed not too long ago, and her mother. Both Antonia and her mother were amazing people and thanked us each individually for taking part in such an amazing event. The talk with them both reminded me (and all of us) why we were doing this project in the first place and encouraged us to organise more events to raise money. We got to take a few pictures with Antonia before we all had to rush off home and lay down for a well earned rest.



LO1: With preparing for the run, there were many opportunities to identify areas for development of my running style and stamina. We worked together to prepare for the race and motivated each other to take the time

LO2: As I've been going to running club fairly regularly and also going running on the weekends whenever I can, the new challenges that were undertaken did not involve the running process itself, but rather the way in which we were running. It was very difficult to run in such a huge group of people, where I had to make sure to avoid running into them. Another difficulty was the consistent pace of running. My running style is much more based on running fast for a short time and then taking a short break.

LO3: As a group, we took the initiative to plan this CAS experience as soon as we found out that it was possible. As it was around 30km away from our school, we had to arrange transport for the way there and back, as well as how we meet each other when we got there.

LO4: This event, which was part of our ongoing CAS project, demonstrates our commitment and perseverance. We have been consistently working towards this project since September/October 2015.

LO5: This project on the whole, as well as the run that we did, demonstrates the benefits of working collaboratively. If we were a group of just one or two people, our efforts would not have the same impacts that our group of 7 has. We have managed to raise a lot more money and awareness towards the cause than we ever thought possible.

LO6: Our CAS project demonstrates engagement with issues of global significance through the fact that Cystic Fibrosis is an issue that affects people worldwide. During this run, we saw people from all over the world taking part, even within the Cystic Fibrosis group. It was amazing to see the connections that people can have simply though supporting such an amazing cause.

LO7: Finally, the project demonstrates that the ethics of choices and actions have been thoroughly considered throughout the planning and carrying out of the Cystic Fibrosis was project.

With the summer now officially over and school back in full swing, I think it's about time to review on how I've kept up with CAS over the holidays, especially as I spent 3 weeks away in Mauritius and Hungary. This meant that my activities had to be applicable on a global scale and easy to do with limited supplies.

Creativity

• Photography.  As both Cailin and I were running out of quality photographs to post on our photography blog, we decided to plan a trip to a European city to improve our lineup of posts. After much discussing, we decided on Budapest, which is only 1.5 hours away by plane. Even though we only spent two days (and three nights) in the beautiful city, we managed to take over 1,200 photos between us. Sadly, I couldn't take my DSLR camera with me because we wanted to keep the trip cheap and therefore, we travelled with only hand luggage. Fortunately, I was able to take my camera with me to Mauritius, which also meant that I managed to take many pictures.
• Drawing.  This was definitely more sporadic than photography and I would only open up my sketchbook when I 'was in the mood for it'. Somehow, over the holidays I managed to fill up nearly the whole sketchbook. I finally started to do some more experimenting with different media, such as fineliners.
• Video editing. From the two trips I went on, I took short video clips of exciting moments/events and then later compiled them into a few minute video. To this, I added music into the background. All of this was done using iMovie, although I'd be able to do much more with the Final Cut Pro software, but it is far too expensive to splurge on it for videos that are made only for myself as 'memories' rather than for sharing. 

Activity

• Hikes. Admittedly, I do not enjoy hikes in themselves very much, but it is undoubtably the best way to explore new places whether that be a city or forest. 
• Tennis. I played tennis regularly when I was much younger, but haven't picked up the sport since, so it was very exciting to see that the accommodation where we were staying throughout the course of our holidays had it's own tennis court and gym for us to use. This meant that we played tennis almost every night and went to the gym every morning. My tennis skills are definitely completely gone, but I'm hoping that with more practice in the future, I can regain my cooridation (or at least some of it).
• Swimming. Aside from the tennis courts, we also had a huge swimming pool available for us to use and with it being my favourite sport, I couldn't resist swimming a few laps every morning. 
• Running. With the charity run coming up quickly and large gaps in the time since I last went running, I decided that summer would be a good time to get back on track. Unfortunately, it became harder to fit it into my schedule with the travelling I was doing and I didn't manage to go running as much as I wanted to initially. I am not feeling prepared for the run, but I'm hoping to still practice some more closer to the date.
• Cycling. 

Service

• Planning for more Cystic Fibrosis projects. At the beginning of september, we will be running in a race in support of Cystic Fibrosis. Over summer, we spent time planning the details of the run, as well as many other future projects we are looking forward to doing. 

This video is compiled from my summer holidays in Mauritius and allowed me to create memories in a creative and fun way.

I absolutely loved the process of making the video and I plan on continuing making these videos during my future holidays/trips. I find that having a video, with clips from our time away and music that has a significance/memory in relation to the trip. For example, the song in this video is a remix of 'Budapest' by George Ezra.

About a week ago, during the last week of our summer holidays, my photography-partner-in-crime and I were in the incredible city of Budapest for a few days. It was never something that I imagined happening when we started our blog thinking that just a few people would see it. As Cailin put it perfectly on her blog, the conversation that led to the trip went a little like this:


That's where it all began. After scouring the Internet for cheap flights and accommodation, I remembered that I had a friend living in Budapest who would most likely let us stay with him (luckily we could!). In total the whole trip including flights and accommodation came to just 66EUR. Yes, I have no idea how that happened either. We flew out in the evening of the Wednesday and made our way to my friend, Pisti/Istvan/Steav's, apartment in the centre of the city, just a few blocks away from the river. 

As we decided to make the trip as inexpensive as possible, we were travelling with only hand luggage and while my camera was my priority, I couldn't replace clothes in my small bag with it and sadly, I had to leave DSLR at home. But, this didn't stop me from taking pictures on my small point and shoot camera. It isn't quite the same, but there wasn't much I could do. 

Overall, even though the trip was quite short, it was honestly one of the best times of my life. Cailin is an amazing travel buddy. As we are both photographers, we were not always stopping to take pictures and making everyone else wait for us or WORSE: not being able to take pictures because no-one wants to wait for us. The photographs we came back with (and made our family and friends watch while we explained excitedly about everything we did) were absolutely incredible. Here are just a few of the photographs that reflect our time in the beautiful city of Budapest. 

These are some pages that I've recently either completed or come back to to touch a few things up in one of my sketchbooks.

I enjoyed experimenting with different background colours as this piece was one of the only ones I've ever done on black paper.

This page consists of two leaves I drew a while ago, but only just found and decided to stick into my sketchbook.

I started this one back in December when it was right for the season, but I only just finished the background

A drawing of Cara Delevingne

The top half of her outfit was very difficult to draw, but I think it turned out okay.

I started to get more creative with my sketchbook at this point. This is a photograph of mine, which I cut out and stuck in and now I am planning to draw it using my Prismacolor pencils on the opposite page.

This piece is different to most of my other ones as I used a finaliser pen and then experimented using a paintbrush with just water on it to smudge the lines and create shadows to add some depth the the drawing.