Sewing.

Fot the creativity part of my CAS I am doing sewing every week at least for an hour.  In my opinion I have a big progress because now the picture of a flower, which I was sewing is already done and my friends and parents really like it. 

Sewing gave me an opportunity to be creative and also to improvise.  Now I can freely sew without even looking at the picture and it is a type of art,  which I never practiced before.

By making a new picture I undertook new opportunities and developed new skills. 

In my opinion I also showed commitment in the activity and now I am more than happy to teach how to sew to my friends and show what patterns and techniques they are. 

I am planning to put this picture in the frame and give it to the cleaning lady at my house.  She is a very nice person,  who loves flowers and I really hope she will like my present. 

Making a video.

In the chemistry class me and my classmates had an opportunity to make a small documentary movie.  Everyone from the class had a role which he/she is going to perform.  I had to edit the movie and be a scientist who is explaining to a journalist and a capitalist the advantages and the disadvantages of lipids.

It took us a lot of time to plan and film the movie since we had to make up the story.  We had a lot of film trials amongst which they were unsuccessful and successful ones.  I had to edit them afterwards.  I undertook new challenges by editing the documentary movie and I also had an opportunity to be creative.  it took me a considerable amount of time to do it and by doing it I also developed new skills which I will definitely use in the future as I really enjoyed editing.
I also showed the short documentary movie to my friends from the russian state school and the university.  They liked it and I also shared my skills with them.

Cooking national food for the international day!!

For the International day I made Qutabs.  Qutabs are the traditional Azeri food.  By making them I developed new skills because before I never made Qutabs.  I found the recipe on the internet and bought all of the products needed for making Qutabs.  I needed meet,  green vegetable and also pumpkin because I wanted to make three different types of qutabs.
The most challenging part of cooking was to make a dough and rolling it.  After the dough was ready I put the cooked ingredients into it and Qutab was  already ready to be cooked.
After it was ready I was looking forward to bring it to school and see if teachers,  parents and classmates like it.  It turned out to be well and I was happy that I had an opportunity to show people in the school one type of my national cuisine.
Most of the people who tried Qutabs asked me about the special ingredients which was put on top of it. I explained about the ingredient called "Sumax",  which is used not only in Azeri cuisine but also in most of the Middle East countries.

Raffle Tickets.

In order to buy presents for children at the orphanage I had to collect money.  Me and Sophia decided to organize a sale of the raffle tickets.  Sophia made a poster and I made a tickets.  Minjin was helping to us to sale the tickets.  We collected about 2 thousand roubles and at the end when everyone bought the ticket the winner got a price.  The price was a full bag of candies and chocolates.  

I worked collaboratively with others and planned and initiated the activity.  

It was also nice to see that the BIS students wanted to help us buy presents for children.

A visit to the russian orphanage.

Over the Christmas break I went to the Russian orphanage.  It took me a long time to plan and after a lot of phone calls to the russian orphanages I found the one to which we went. 

Going to the orphanage "павлин" was a good experience although sometimes it was hard not to be sad at a time being there.

Before going to the children's house "павлин" I had to make a plan of what I am going to do at the orphanage.  I planned and initiated the activity as I made a presentation about the UK. 

Printed pictures of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales in order to tell to children about the traditions and culture of the UK. 

After the presentation about the UK together with children we tried to find similarities and differences between the Russian Christmas and English Christmas.  Each child got a colored printout of how do British people celebrate Christmas.

One of the final activities was to teach them the song "Rudolph the red nosed Rain deer" Me and Minjin first showed a small video of the song and then we all sang it together.  In my opinion the most enjoyable part for children was to colour the picture of a Reindeer and a Santa Claus while I was reading them the story about Rudolph.  It appeared that children never heard of this story,  song and also they didn't know somethings form the UK culture and traditions. I was very happy to  know that children liked the presentation and along with it learned some new things. I undertook new challenges and developed new skills by this activity. In my opinion I also showed perseverance and commitment in my actions because it took me a considerably long time to plan what I am going to say and also see if what I will present will do any use to children.
I was very happy that children were listening with an interest. 

In this activity I saw that it is very important to work with others in a team.  I worked collaboratively with Min Jin.  
After the presentation we went downstairs to the kitchen.   Minjin made a cake for children.  We all had fun because children could have a choice to decorate the cake or not.  They all wanted to try and decorate it.  We ware all very happy to see that they all enjoyed this activity. 

While being at there I also considered ethical implications of my actions.  When we were about to leave we gave presents to children.  They were a 13 children who listened to the presentation.  Begining from the age of seven to the age of twelve.  I decided to buy small cars for each of them and also put candies and chocolates inside.  
I really enjoyed teaching, playing and talking to children.  They were very friendly as well.  When were about to leave with Minjin they sang for us a Russian song. 
It was a memorable day for me and I am looking forward going to "павлин" again.