Maths Club

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve joined the Maths club every Wednesday afternoon. It is only for the Year 13 higher level students. Although it is compulsory for the all year 13 maths higher level students, we enjoy the club, we ask questions which we don’t understand and we also learn our options topic. I showed perseverance and commitment of attending the club every week, I worked collaboratively with others, also increased awareness of areas for growth.

International Day

                 One of the most major festivals we have in our school is ‘international day’. International Day is a day when the students and parents from all over the world join and have fun together. We share the culture of our own countries, foods and we wear our national costumes. Also students perform their talents at the end of the day. Year 12&13 had to come up with some activities for year 7 to 11 and our team (Yoon-Joo, Soo-Min and me) decided to play a Korean well known game “al gga gi”.

           “al gga gi” is a game using stones. With stones and certain area marked, we don’t need anything else. Basically there are two different colours of stones (usually black and white or own special marks on them). Firstly players set their stones in front of them. When they are ready, they attack each other but one at the time. By only using the finger, player can bounce one of their stones once. And the game goes on till the last stone survives on the field and if stones fallout from the field, then it’s out.

           It was and is still a common game in Korea back in days because what we really need is few stones and a small area to play with it. So it doesn’t cost, and men and women of all age enjoyed playing. I thought all the students who came to play our game enjoyed our game and work collaboratively with others and plan and initiate activity.

          

Weather Club

           Our school has been running a ‘weather club’. By taking part in weather club, I developed skills of how to read the measures and engaged with issues of global importance of global warming, and increased awareness of strengths and areas of it. From last year’s reading, we have found that the average temperature was higher than the previous year and far less snow and rain. Also the range of the highest and the lowest temperature was narrower than the previous years. This year, I will keep participate in the weather club and as the IB student, I will pay more careful attention towards it.

Kim chi Making

          

‘Kim chi’ is a traditional fermented dish in Korea. ‘Kim chi’ is pickled cabbage, radish, cucumber, etc, with salt and seasoned spices of ginger, pepper, garlic. Then they are fermented in low temperature. Fermenting ‘Kim chi’ isn’t only the way of storing for a long time, but also creates several organic acids, so it becomes good fermented food. Kim chi is a source of various minerals and vitamins. And because there weren’t much fresh vegetables available in winter in the past, our ancestor found a way of storing them. So we make ‘Kim chi’ in autumn, ferment them throughout the winter and eat them. By making ‘Kim chi’ for my family this winter, I undertake new challenge to see the process of it making and not only watching but actually participated in the process. From the beginning of the process, it was hard to find the ingredients to make Kim-chi in Moscow. Fortunately, there were basic ingredients which we need to make the sauce, but some of additional ingredients were unable to find even in Korean supermarket. Because those we were missing were additional ingredients, it wasn’t really big problem to miss them out. That was the first problem we faced. Next one was the length of time required to pickle the vegetables before we put sauces on them. We pickle the vegetables; before saucing with only salts and with the sauces. The first pickling is much more important because if we pickle them for too long, the vegetables will become too soft and it will be hard for us to pickle later on. So it was hard to manage the time but we managed it somehow. The last problem we come across was the ratio of the sauces. This one, I followed my mother’s recipe; pepper, salt, sugar, ginger, garlic, etc, and while we were making the sauces, we pickled the vegetable to save time.

Also I develop new skill of making them. I realised how many ingredients I need, to make a box of "Kim-chi"; ginger, pepper, garlic, cabbage, radish, cucumber, other spices to make the sauce. I also realised that before we start to put sauces on the cabbage, radish, cucumber, etc, we need to pickle them and put the sauces on and then pickle them again. It takes about a week to a month to be fermented and after that, we can eat it just the way it is or we can make lots of other dishes from it. 

Sports Day

On 15th of September, our school had a bit of fun day: “Sports day”. In sports day students are divided into groups of four, regardless of year groups and played 5 different games: football, basketball, volleyball, dodge ball and the relay. The whole school, even teachers, are divided into groups of four: Pushkin, Chekhov, Gogol and Tolstoy who are the famous writers in Russia. Students are encouraged to wear house colour and participate in their house with pride.

Although it was September, it was cold. However, as we started to move and exercise, we became warmer and we enjoyed the games more. I tried to work collaboratively with others, as the member of the team and participated in the dodge ball. Because my team was combination of year 12&13 and I was the only year 12 girl in that team, so there were bit of mis-communication going on between me other girls from year 13.However, we manaed it and won the game. After the day finished, I was exhausted but was proud of myself working with others and participated in the games for my team. Through this activity, I also made some new friends.

A reflection linking TOK to CAS - A visit to the children hospital

I never liked children. However there was one time when I actually enjoyed myself being with children. And that experience changed my mind. I had a chance to visit to the children’s hospital and do some volunteer work. It was quite a big challenge for me to set up my mind to go to children’s hospital and help because I didn’t like being with children.

My family volunteered to clean the windows in the hospital. Since we are in Russia and we couldn’t barely speak Russian at all, that was the only job we could do for them. There were some other people playing (talking) to the children. Because I was in hospital, all the children were injured. And when I was cleaning a window of a girl, even though we didn’t say a word, she gave me a smile which I was surprised. I still don’t know the exact reason why I was surprised but probably because I had not nice ideas about children which she broke the frame of it.

Knowledge is like biased ideas in our head and once an idea is stored in our head, it’s hard to change or get rid of the idea whether it’s right or wrong. However through CAS activities, through experiences, it changed and I appreciate the purpose of CAS and my new ways of interpretation with CAS and TOK.

“Working house of woman”

During the summer vacation, I planned to visit orphanage in Seoul, however I changed my plan and visited ‘working house of woman’.

‘Working house of woman’ is an organization supported by “YCMA”, offering and training a job for women who want to, are looking for a job. I helped cleaning the empty desks and get organized files. I saw the place where the training was taken and I also saw the counseling place. Lots of women, high school graduate students, university students, mothers, even working women came and seek for new, suitable job for them. Working in there for one day taught me lots of things; I knew there are such more jobs available then what I knew, lots of women came and seek for jobs, and there are lots of jobs available for women.

I’ve undertaken new challenge of working in an organization for a day with people whom I don’t know, and worked collaboratively with others. There were 2 more volunteers who visited the “Working house of woman”; they were two females, much older than me. We first toured the group and introduced to the organization. Then we sorted out the letters (from who want to visit the organization to get some advice, from the organization which wants new workers to be introduced to them, etc) into different departments. There are several departments of HR, training, marketing, etc. Then we had lunch with the people who came for training and the trainers. After lunch, we cleaned the seminar hall for the training which will be held in there in afternoon. Also we set the hall, putting the papers, documents in place, placed some drinks and snacks, etc. One of us made the print hand-out, other two placed them in each seat. It was really worthy experience to be there with other volunteers, not only for the volunteering but also the knowledge we gain from the organization was really precious.