1:1 basketball with Mr.Gray

It is about a year that I have been playing basketball, but actually I really rarely did 1:1 match. Indeed, It is right to say I have avoided it. My dribling skill is not really good (I can't dribble without looking at the ball), so it was really hard to score against a person defending me away from scoring. Today, during others were having a short break in badminton club, I played 1:1 basketball match with Mr.Gray. It was 10 points match and I got first 3 points, which made me proud of myself. However, after that, Mr.Gray showed his real ability and as I was getting exhausted, Mr.Gray won. He got 10 points while I got 7. Though I lost, I got some ideas what I need to practise and improve. I need to increase my stemina by a regular exercises not only outside, but also at home. Also, I should get used to dribbling without looking at the ball, so I can possibly develop some skills such as cross over and spin move which are really useful to break through.

Realising how awful I play badminton!

It was the third time that I joined the badminton club. Indeed, I thought that I was not a very bad player on average, but I wasn't. Mr.Gray and the ICT teacher also joined it and they reall made me realize how much I have to improve to be a good player like them. Frequently, I failed to give a low serve and that led big loss of scores, since the ICT teacher was really good at smahshing and knew what to do well in different positions. I feel that the first thing I should reform is serve and controlling power. Mine was often out of the court, which gave the opponents scores, and high serve of mine led the loss of my team. (Felt really sorry for Mr.Gray, who was my team member). However, still I had several nice matches as usual.
 

Making a robot with blocks

I made some stuffs with blocks with young boys. I am not good at making things as my creativity is lack of, but the one I made yesterday was quite fine. Actually, I want to add some more and make more, but those boys used all the blocks to make their robots stronger. Of course, mine was killed by theirs in 10 seconds. It seems a bit childish to make a robot with blocks and post it up on the blog, but I think it also needs creativity to do this

The first picture is a robot with wings, a tail and strong hands.
The last picture is if I overturn a robot, it becomes another form of a robot with four legs.
Awesome! 

The day with 6 kids

Hello

Yesterday my mom's friends were invited to my home. 3 came with 2 kids for each. I and my sister were responsible for taking care of those 6 kids. Fortunately, I knew those kids since I have often seen them in the church. I really love little kids very much and I was glad to see and be given an opportunity to play with them. Firstly, I didn't know what to do with these young kids, but it was not as difficult as I thought. They liked just playing with someone. I played mini football with young boys which made me exhausted and drew some pictures with girls. 5 kids were from 5 years old to 7 years old, but one was only 11 months. He was super cute. Actually, when I saw him in the church, he was crawling, wasn't able to walk and now he can toddle around without relying on something. It's still awkward and he often fell down, but I was somehow proud of him walking without any help. After about 3 hours, I was extremely exhausted and let kids do what they wanted.

Abandoned teddy; He threw away almost everything
at my home after playing with it 

I was a bit upset about mothers chatting. On the other hand, I was actually thanks to my parents and respect them how they could raise me. It was a hard experience to be responsible for 6 juvenile kids and I was a bit annoyed by them who continuously asked me to play with, but still they are cute and it was the day to make me feel many things about my parents!

-  There are numbers of pictures, but I realized I only took pictures of this 11 months baby after they went back.

Performing the guitar in the band for the first time (Talent show)!!!

 On international day, we have a talent show at the last 2 periods which was about 2 hours. I can say this is an opportunity to show what you are good at to people at school. I have never joined in it, but since I became y12, I joined in an amateur band that my friends already made. Indeed the band needed a guitar player since the one who played the second guitar left school. Although I was not really good at playing the guitar, band members accepted me as a member. By the way the name of band is High five, because there are five members in the band :)
 Indeed I could play the guitar little bit, but not really good at it. Therefore I thought joining in the band could help me to improve my guitar skills and collaborate with others to perform a song. The song we planned to perform on talent show is 'Travel to myself' which is a well known Korean band music. We practiced the song every Friday . It was challenging for me to harmonize with other instruments and I often lost tempos. The song itself was not that demanding, but there were some short difficult part that I needed to keep practicing. Although, I often found , it was a really good experience to play instruments with my friends and I practiced a lot not to spoil the performance because of me. On the real stage, I did not make big mistakes, but I was too nervous. Since it was the first time I kept shaking hands and just looked at the guitar while playing. But the performance was quite successful I can say. Our band is now planning to practice more songs and to perform them later on. We have not decided exactly which one, but I am really looking forward to doing it. I think if I get used to performing on the public, I will get less nervous.  

Teaching on International Day

(Making a board for Yoot Nori)

  In my school we have a special school day called International Day. On this day, students from different countries share their traditional food, introduce their cultures (wearing their traditional clothes, showing traditional activities). Usually seniors and teachers organised the day. However, this year seniors (y12 and 13) were solely responsible for this day. Y12 were told to teach their traditional stuffs and y13 were setting up and doing decorations for the day. A Korean group that I was involved in planned to teach Yutnorri, a Korean monopoly

 I am not a good English speaker,so I have never taught something in English.
This was an opportunity for me to take a new challenge, but I was so nervous to do it. A bit of excitement which might come from the fact teaching traditional games in my country was behind overwhelming nervousness.
 Since I am not a good English speaker, I wasn't able to explain the sophisticated rules about the game properly. So before the day, at least I had to do sth, I helped to draw a board and make item cards for the game. However, on the day the activity was quite fine, better than I was worried about. We divided each year groups into two and Na Kyung and I took one of the teams. After Johnny explained the general rules to the all, we helped another group and led them to play the game properly and explained them again to assure if they understood the rules properly. It was unpleasant that at least one of people in each group even didn't play it, but some of them really seemed to enjoy it, which was really glad to see.

Feedback from each year group.
Some of them were really satisfied with our activity
(even some said it was the best activity on the day)
 and
it made me really fulfilled

Teaching our traditional games was awesome experience and  my first teaching (even that was about my country's traditional games) brought me indescribable achievement. I have never taught anything traditional to others, but when I did it via this opportunity, it was really achievable. If we had prepared the explanation of the rules more clearly, it would have been much more enjoyable to them and us.

Ethical issue

On international day, it is a tradition that every nation brings different traditional food and shares it. The most famous Korean food that most foreigners really love is Samgak Kimbob.(Triangles) and I decided to bring triangles. Indeed we usually put meat(pork) for triangles, but we decided to put tuna, because there are some nations, for example Jewish and Islamic nations 

School life!

Last week, we were told to make a video on any theme we want. This was for people who didn't have specific idea for their creativity  and I thought it would really help, since I was one of them. Actually we made a plan to make a music video of Gangnam style like flash mob and made a general plan for each scene. On monday, we individually learnt how to dance Gang nam style and already asked some students at school to join us, but we realized it was impossible to teach them how to dance, take and edit the video professionally within remained 2 days.

We thought about an easy general topic we could take and edit within 2 days and it was school life! We moved around and took any random thing at school and especially focused on our band playing. Since I personally had no experience on editing videos, it was a new challenge for me. In the video there is no professional editing, but we tried to put the scenes which matched with the music. I think it worked quite well!

To evaluate the video ,if we are given another opportunity like this for next time, we really need to make a plausible and realistic plan so we won't change it just before dead line. Also I will try to do some more skillful editions as I have already done one. However, compared to time we spent, it was a satisfied movie :)

First day joining badminton club

It is a quite long time that I haven't played badminton. I  used to play badminton at school in Korea, but I thought I can't in Russia since summer is too short.

 However, I noticed that there was a badminton club after school on Tuesday and last week I joined in it. Though I didn't play so well and we often lost, but it was really fun. I realize that individual ability is  important, but also cooperation with the team mate is important. We often tried to hit a shuttlecock at the same time and it led lose of the team. I found that my weakness is controlling power. I just hit the shuttlecock as powerful as I can and they were mostly out. Since I decide to join it regularly, I hope I and my team will get better.