Working at the Azeri State Hospital.

Over the summer as a service part of my CAS I decided to work at the hospital.  At first it was very hard for me to volunteer for that job as in Azerbaijan not a lot of students have a permission to attend hospitals,  help nurses and take care of the patients. However after a long trials I got my permission and worked at the hospital for two weeks. 

Apart from looking after patients ( bringing them food,  sitting with them and helping nurses to make them stand up and go outside for  walk) I also had an opportunity to witness such medical procedures as blood tests and intravenous infusion.  

I was working long hours at the hospital, listening to the patients, helping a girl who had perforated ulcer to walk after the surgery.   I undertook new challenges by working with nurses and listening to discussions in the consulting room. And was trying to work collaboratively with others.  While being at the hospital I saw the importance of a team work and planning and enjoyed helping people. 

Swimming.

Now that I have written all of my exams I have more time for swimming.  Last week I only went once but now I will go to swimming twice a week.  Since the last time I have improved and worked on the three techniques of swimming,  which I learned this semester.  Those were:   front crawl, backstroke and breaststroking.  This month I also learned another swimming technique,  which is called "Doggy paddle".  I found this technique to be easier than others and I leo really enjoyed it because it is fun to learn and quite easy.
However one other swimming technique,  which I find to be quite hard is "butterfly".  I have been trying to learn it for the past two weeks but unfortunately it didn't work out because I am doing something wrong and also that technique requires muscles of a person to be strong.
This month I also had an opportunity to teach my small brother how to backstroke. He knows almost all of the swimming techniques except butterfly but he finds backstroking pretty challenging.  I enjoyed teaching my brother and undertook new challenges also by teaching my small nephew who is two years old. It was a lot of responsibility because it was a bit hard to keep my small nephew and teach him how to swim but I think if we practice more then in three weeks time he will be able to swim.  
My goal for swimming  for the Christmas Holidays is to:

• Teach my brother how to backstroke. 
• Learn the butterfly swimming technique.
• Teach swimming to my small nephew. 

Horseback riding.

Every weekend I go with my family to a countryside.  We go to a village called "Morozovka".  There we have an opportunity to rest and I also enjoy going there because they have a lot of horses and I can also practice my horse back riding skills.
In Morozovka they have a quite big stable with 8 horses.
Every weak I go there I practice my skills and also volunteer to clean horses,  bring them food and water.
I am hoping that in 2 or three weeks I will be able to go to the countryside again and precise more.
And improve my skills.

Parents Evening

At the parents Evening,  which was at the start of the year I helped to set up the chairs and was making coffee for the teachers. Afterwards I was also showing to parents where are the rooms and the teachers. There was one parent who couldn't speak English,  so I was translating teachers opinion on his daughter.  We went to all of the etchers room and I think that i developed new skills because before I only translated Russian text to English however now I found it to be more harder to audition.
I found it first to be challenging however I also enjoyed helping parents.

Swimming 2

As the activity pat of my CAS I chose to do swimming every week.   So far I have improved my front crawl and backstroke techniques and breathing correctly while swimming.
I also learned how to do breaststroking.
I found it to be rather harder that the other two techniques because I was familiar with them before.
However from the other point of view it was one of the most easiest one in terms of breathing because in breaststroking you can keep the head out of the water almost all of the time.
For the next couple of weeks I am going to practice and improve these three techniques more and I am also planning to learn some other swimming techniques.

Sewing.

As my creativity part of CAS I decided to do sewing.  This is my second time to so it and I really enjoy it.  I feel that I improved from the first time as now I can sew faster and more accurate.  The picture which I am supposed to get at the end of the sewing are flowers.  My aim is to sew without looking at the picture and improvise.  I hope after two weeks I will be able to finish two flowers and if I finish everything on time I will donate it to the orphanage.

Going to an orphanage.

I am planning to go to the orphanage while the holidays in october.
Gils from school will help me with the activities,  each of us has to come with a plan of what activities we are going to do. Because the nearest holiday is Halloween I decided that it will be nice to first teach russian children more about the Holiday itself and then play different types of games.
My plan is that first if possible we will do the power point presentation with pictures and videos.
After a small introduction we will play Halloween games.
1)First we will make a pumpkin from the colorful papers,  which we will bring and play a pumpkin game.
2)The second game will be "the cat game" children will have to pin the tail on the hand made cat,  which we will do together with children,  with closed eyes.
a child who wins will get a candy,  however at the end everyone will get a candy and a price.
3) By next week I will come with more ideas and start to buy candies and presents.
We will also try to watch a movie with children.  this depends on if they have a television and how big is it.
We will try our best to make a real Halloween party for children.

Swimming

Swimming is one of the sports which I really enjoy.
Since the start of the year I went swimming once every week.  While swimming I mostly use the front crawl.  I've been doing the font crawl and backstroke since the childhood however I found out that I didn't breath correctly while doing the front crawl.
These two weeks I was practicing on my breathing during the front crawl.  I saw that it is not as easy as it seemed when you follow the rules. Usually I kept my head out of the water because that way I could see and breath better.  Although it was harder to turn your head every time because of the water and the wave and breathing in the triangle between the upper arm,  lower arm and the water line.  I found it to be challenging and learned that breathing in a correct way is one of the important aspects in swimming.
I can only front crawl and backstroke.  For the next two weeks I will try to learn more techniques of swimming.  The first one which I want to practice is breaststroking.

My CAS plan.

This semester I am planning to do the following :
Service:
Teaching Russian to Miss Gray.
Going to an orphanage and spending some time with children ( watching movies,  playing different games with them and also teaching some english words/ reading books)
Activity:
Swimming.
Creativity:
Continue to do sewing.
Cooking national food for the International day at the BIS.

Horseback riding.

Horse back riding.  (teaching) (service)

Since I was a child I loved horses and horse back riding.  Every month with my family we used to go to the countryside where we stayed for a week

When I went to Switzerland I chose as my activity the horseback riding.  I went to horseback riding every week and then I understood that horse back riding is not as easy as it seems.  You have to know how to communicate to your horse and make him understand you.  They are special rules that you have to follow. 

When I went to Azerbaijan over the summer break my family decided to go to that same place where we used to go when I was small.  We stayed there for a week and I decided to teach to countryside children how to ride on a horse as I was taught in Switzerland.  They first thought that they don't need any help as they already know everything because in a small countryside town like Ismayilli,  they are no cars and everyone knows how to horseback ride.  However small kids understood that they are special rules in horseback riding,  which you have to follow.  And I can say that I have thought them something,  which they liked and will probably pass their knowledge to their friends.

Photography.

Over the summer I decided to do photography.  Summer in Azerbaijan is beautiful,  I had an opportunity to take a picture of a sea, flowers and also happy people who were enjoying their brake.  

after taking pictures I tried to make them original by changing their colours a bit and I thought that all of the pictures,  which I will take will be very bright and have a bit of yellow tone on them. 

Playing Tennis

Tennis is one of the sports, which I really like.  My favourite tennis player is Maria Sharapova  I follow tennis however I never really knew how to play it properly.  This summer was a good opportunity for me to make up for tennis.   One of my closest friends is really good at tennis and I asked her to teach me.  We were playing tennis every week.  

I was familiar with the rules more or less however I didn't now that the server had to keep one foot on the ground at all times.  It was weary to hit the  tennis ball however it was a bit hard for me to hit the ball back and I had a lot of misses.  At the end my friend said that my tennis playing skills have improved. 

Face painting.

It was a schools fair in the BIS school 4,  which is located near to our school.  IB students could go and do different kinds of activities in that school.  And we came up with different ideas for kids from that school. Mr O'Connor told us to divide in different groups of 3 or 2 students and each of us had to have different activities.

I was in a group with Aina and Yein. We decided to do the face painting as it is very interesting,  exciting and children love it.  I think by doing that activity we showed perseverance and commitment in our actions and also worked collaboratively with each other.  We were so interested in it that we even forgot to have a lunch and we did not have a break as there was a very big line of children awaiting for their face to be painted in different kinds of colors.  

I painted faces of about 7 students and each time I tried to come up with a new picture and a pattern.  

These are the pictures of children and their face paints: