FIN: Ryan's Well

On Friday, March 25, Jayna, Tracey, Eric and I hosted a Bake Sale for WELL-ness. All the funds from the bake sale would go towards the Ryan's well foundation. This would provide for latrines and wells in communities in Africa that lack these crucial water sources.

We delegated various treats to bring in. I brought in brownies, while Jayna brought in her famous homemade cookies and donuts, Tracey made the ever popular "puppy chow" and various other sugary goods, and finally, Eric contributed 3.5 dozen muffins.

Ultimately, after selling baked goods during the 15 minute break and after school, our bake sale was a success. We made about $380, all of which will be going to Ryan's Well foundation.

From the bake sale, I had to almost take charge yet simultaneously work collaboratively. In this, I had to develop new skills in leadership, learning how to delegate various tasks and to communicate with group members. Similarly, having done similar community service before (especially, give my work with Relay for Life), I felt that I show commitment to helping those in need in my activities.

Similarly, there is a large ethical implication of donating money to make wells and latrines in Africa. Through providing necessary utilities to people in need, our group is striving to increase the Greatest Happiness Principle (GHP), increasing the most good for the most people. We are helping through funds, to provide people with their basic needs: clean water. Thus, through the providing of clean water to communities in Africa, we're helping one community at a time, increasing the general world happiness.

Finally, this issue of providing clean water is absolutely an issue of global importance. Many places, including that of Africa, lack access to clean water. They often resort to drinking dirty water, increasing the spread of malaria and other water-borne diseases. Thus, through supporting Ryan's Well, we are not only trying to create an increased access to water sources, but also increasing our school's awareness of the problem. Hopefully, more people, inspired by our bake sale will act on their own in a similar manner.

Ryan's Well

Last week, Jayna had approached me with the idea of having another bake sale. Last year, we had worked together to successfully hold a bake sale to raise funds for Relay for Life.

Thus, after ok-ing our plans with Mrs. Keeler and Mrs. Langely, we planned on having our bake sale on Friday, March 25th. We're holding this bake sale in order to give money to the Ryan's Well Foundation to build wells and latrines in Africa. Tracy Fu, Lucy Zhang, Jayna Sames and I will work together and we hope to sell goods such as doughnuts, muffins, cookies, puppy chow, etc.

The reason that Jayna approached me with the bake sale in the first place was because of her experience in her club, Outdoor Adventure Club. Jayna told me that she had studied the global water shortage, ownership, and the affects of pollutants on the water in the polar caps. The shortage of clean, fresh water in Africa is an issue of Global Importance, and thus, we aimed to support Ryan's Well Foundation , which aids impoverished communities.

Furthermore, nearly one billion people, many from 3rd world countries such as Uganda, lack access to safe water. Over 2.5 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. This crisis leads to millions of preventable deaths everyday that contribute to the stagnation of communities. Thus, this problem exists as an ethical implication: the equal rights of humans to access basic human needs.

Here is the Foundation's website.

http://www.ryanswell.ca/home.aspx

Gold and Silver Keys

Two weeks ago, the Regional awards for Scholastics, a nationally recognized art competition, were announced. Surprisingly, I found out that I had won a Gold key for my poetry entry "But Not Really, Clair de Lune" had won gold key, the highest award. SImilarly, my other poetry entry "Dear Jack, Half-Truths, Chalk Dust, Railroads, Phosphorylation" won Silver key. Also, another bit of exciting news is that my poetry entry "But Not Really, Clair de Lune" is going to New York to be judged at the national competition.

I had entered Scholastics last year on a whim, but hadn't won anything. To have my poetry recognized regionally (the region that I had entered consisted of 16 states) made me realize my own strength in poetry. Before, I must admit, I lacked confidence in my poetry. But having received regional (and perhaps national?) recognition has increased my own awareness about my growth as a amateur poet and artist. I am a bit more confident with my poetry, and I'm glad that I committed to my club Spectrum, which really helped hone my poetry skills. With Spectrum, I can experiment with various techniques in my poetry (for instance, right now, I'm going through a phase where I only capitalize important words in my poems).

In case you're curious, here are the poems that I entered in Scholastics.

Clair de Lune

I'll tell you of the Debussy

Moon, reified in the soft specter
of light falling from stars.

But not Really

My first friend (but not really)

in kindergarten
had blonde hair and a bright smile,
and our world was made up of
glitter crayons and colored paper.
But,
Because I had dark hair, almond eyes,
and broken English learned from watching TV,
I never was invited… never invited.
I told my mother, sobbing,
“I wish I was blonde, why am I not blonde?”

My first slow dance (but not really)
was with a boy with a charming smile,
And short brown hair.
I had known him for a week and five days,
And we danced on the stage
With a sluggish heart-beat of music.
And when I laid my head on his chest,
His arms around my waist,
I thought,
“This isn’t right…
This isn’t love at all”
And I ran.

My first crush (but not really),
Who had dark hair and a shy smile,
Told me, pencil whispering on paper,
That I was pretty,
and I smiled,
because being blonde didn’t matter anymore,
and life was more than colored paper and crayons,
and I was happy.

Passing on the torch

I participate in the school's literary magazine, Spectrum.

I started off as merely a club member in Spectrum my sophomore year, writing poetry that made it into the newspaper spectrum page and the yearly magazine. Yet, junior year, I came to Stephanie Blotner (the Editor in Chief of Spectrum then) with the idea of incorporating artwork with the monthly newspaper and literary magazine. From this idea, the position of Design Editor was created. As Design Editor, I would design and create artwork for the page spread in "The Day Times" and also the literary magazine. It was the perfect blend of my strengths in english and the visual arts.

The magazine that I worked on last year earned 1st place in American Scholastic Press Association, a proud achievement as I had spent many long hours designing the cover of the magazine and placing pictures within the magazine.



However, as a senior, I cannot stay and be the Design Editor forever. I've chosen Puja Nair, a current sophomore to be the next Design Editor. Next year, as a junior, she will take on the responsibilities that I have carried the past two years. Because Puja lacks the necessary skills (such as working in photoshop and InDesign, both crucial programs as a Design Editor), for the next issue, I will have Puja work with me on the newspread, teaching and preparing her for her role next year.

Logan Elementary

December 16th, a group of our IB students ventured over to Logan Elementary. This school-sponsored annual trip is meant to be a chance for students to help underprivileged students through a few hours of fun. Last year, our IB group had gone to Logan, making foam cup Snowmen with 4th and 5th graders. Our persistance in visiting Logan will hopefully continue in later years after we've graduated.

However, this year we got younger students (1st and 2nd grade) and remembering the many difficulties involved with foam-cup snowmen, we decided to make a simpler project: popsicle stick snowflakes. Each student got a choice of pink, green, or purple popsicle sticks, which they could then decorate with sequins and glitter to their heart's desire.

As we helped the elementary students decorate their popsicle-stick snowflakes with glitter and sequins, we talked to them, asking them what gift they’d like from Santa this year or what their favorite class was. The experience was both fulfilling and fun. We all laughed when Xavier chased me down and “stickered” me, placing stickers all over my back and forehead. I, of course, responded by stickering him right back.

At Logan Elementary, the IB students in the group that studied Spanish tried to communicate with the second grade children, all fluently speaking rapid Spanish, their first language. As we stumbled around forming words, they giggled at our attempts, correcting our grammar and vocabulary.This experience taught us one of our possible areas of growth. Although we could communicate our rough ideas with the students, our Spanish was severely lacking. The most successful of our group, though, were those that weren't afraid to stumble on the grammar and instead, put themselves out there and took a risk. Although the students laughed, the experience led to a greater understanding of my area for growth. I can't be so scared of messing up all the time, especially in areas that need growth. I need to work hard at it, risking a few errors here or there.

Ultimately, my experience at Logan Elementary was fulfilling. We not only brightened the kids’ day with popsicle sticks and glitter, but I also realized that despite the languages that we spoke, we all want to simply laugh and have fun sometimes.

Handprint Butterflies and Paper-Weave Fishes

Yesterday, Camille and I traveled with the Mann family to Mom's Place, a care facility for homeless mother and children in Detroit. We brought alone 60 informative books ranging from topics of marine life to insects. As my previous blog had noted, we had planned on doing two different paper crafts with them after we read them a story:

1) Making paper-weave fish

2) Making handprint butterflies.

I had no idea what to expect, as we had talked to Mrs. Mann previously. She had told us that the number of children varied widely, as much as 5 to 20 children could show up, depending on the week. We didn't even know the range of ages of children, and I hoped that the children would quietly sit there and do their crafts.

After arriving at Mom's Place, we set up our crafts while other volunteered fetched the children from the residential building nearby. Once the children were there, we gathered them into a circle and gave them a choice between a bug story and a fish story. With popular consensus, we ended up reading "Swimmy," a childrens book about a black fish, to them. We started noticing that the children were getting restless, so we had to quickly move onto crafts.

At first, the crafts went great. The children were enthralled with the colored paper and our example projects that we showed them. We split them up into two tables, one table taking the fish project (with Camille), another taking the butterfly project (with me).

The children loved to color and design their own butterfly wings and eagerly began tracing out their handprint, with a little help from me in tracing their opposite hand and cutting out their handprint.

As time wore on, however, the children gradually began to lose interest, and squirmed in their seats; they needed to run around and wanted to play dress-up instead. We realized that our fish paper weaving project was too difficult for the age group and that we needed something more simple, rather than the complex directions that had children scratching their heads. The butterfly project, on the other hand, was perfect, with just enough fun and skill mixed together to captivate the children. Ultimately, we managed to help the restless children finish their projects and then let them play.

After their project and play time, the children were allowed to play outside. The older volunteers acted both as playmates and referees, drawing the line between play and bullying. Camille and I soon found ourselves pushing squealing children down the slide and twirling children around. We helped children fill up buckets of rocks to make "sand-castles" and reprimanding children for stealing other child's action figures. Inside, we played pretend with them, pretending to buy pizza and $60 bananas.

When we left at 12:30, we were tuckered out. Yet, as we walked the children back to the residential building, the true impact of our actions became clear. As we entered the building, I noticed the living conditions of each child: in a room roughly the size of our high school gym, there were beds littered here and there, each bed occupied with a mother and child. The children eagerly showed their mother what they made, true happiness showing in their faces, proud of their own work.

Just as I had mentioned with my actions at Logan Elementary, my small actions of donating some small crafts and a few hours of my time on a Saturday led to the betterment (in a small way) of a child's life, a few hours away from the poverty that was so evident in the residential building. Not only as I able to engage in the global issue of poverty in a local manner through helping local children in Detroit, but I had fun doing so. I laughed at some of the silly antics of the children, as they played pretend and dressed in princess dresses. Ethically, I was able to impart some good through my actions, increasing the happiness of the children in those few meager hours.

Overall, it was a fulfilling experience. I humbled by the poverty that the children lived in, and my humility will only drive me to continue on with my project, to do similar things in other areas, or perhaps, to visit Mom's Place again.

Under the Sea

Today, I met with Camille Squires and we discussed our plans for our project, in which we donate books to women and children at a homeless shelter. Camille had talked to Brittany Mann and got some information about the shelter along with some advice for our project.

I brought some sample books along to our meeting at a local Starbucks and we decided that we were going to give these books to the children and perhaps read a little with them, as the book was a bit more text-heavy than expected. Thus, after a reading time, we'd do some related crafts with them.

After much mulling, we decided to incorporate a "marine" and "insect" theme to correspond with our books and do paper weaving with marine animal shapes and also do a paper handprint butterfly. For our first one, we would have shapes such as fish, dolphins, whales, and octopuses cut out with little slits for paper weaving. The paper weaving bit would look something like this:

In a similar manner, children could also choose to make a handprint butterfly in which they would trace our their handprint four times and use those to make the wings of a butterfly.

We decided, after much thought, to work on our idea this weekend and try it out next saturday.
Not only is it important to recognize the global importance of helping others less unfortunate, but also to realize that my small actions through giving children a book and couple of hours of fun crafting could brighten a child's day.

Cross Country

Last weekend, Women's Cross Country went to Regionals, where we hoped to qualify to states as a team. Mrs. Winter had told us that we had a good chance to qualify, and we traveled to Linden HS with hopeful hearts.

When we got there, it was freezing, and the girls went over the course, making sure to notice any stumps or ditches in the ground. Afterwards, the girls went to cheer on the boys team, who ended up doing amazing and qualifying for states as a team. When the time for the race came, everyone was nervous, but everyone ran strong, with many running Personal Records and Season Records. We ended up doing well, with Monica, our fastest girl, qualifying for States.

For my part, it turned out that this course wasn't very manager-friendly, with the 1M and 2M placed far apart. I couldn't go to both the 1M and 2M and expect to get all the times. To solve this problem, I worked together with Maithri, a girl on the team, and she got the 1M times while I got the 2M and finish times. Later we would meet up and compile all the split times for the girls onto one sheet. Together, we managed to write down all the times for every split, an impressive feat considering the course. Only through such collaboration could this happen.

With regionals and States (this weekend) over, my last HS cross country season is coming to a close and I look back on the goals that I had set in the beginning of the season. Although I did not manage to run in more than 4 races or under 25 minutes, I feel that I had successfully achieved my last goal: to remain positive. During hard practices, I'd keep smiling and cheering other girls on, giving them encouragement.

XC. What a season <3

Turning over a New Leaf

Recently, I've mulled over my previous idea of "Food for Thought," in which we would raise money through a bake sale to buy books to donate to a school that needed such educational books. However, I decided that such actions were too impersonal for my tastes. I wanted something more hands-on, I wanted to be able to physically see the impact that my work had on a school.

Thus, with help from Mrs. Sandoval, I decided that my project would now be focused on something new entirely, while still maintaining the same basic idea of donating books. However, I felt that with my experience in both China and Costa in saving endangered animals, combined with Camille's own work in GYLI, we could impart some of our own knowledge whilst still providing the educational benefit of donating the books to a needy school. Thus, I decided that our actions could have a much more personalized and beneficial impact if, when we donated the books, we also gave a speech on our experiences in maintaining the environment.

I think I'll push forward with this idea, and I'll contact some schools about it.

Old Skool Classic.

This Saturday marked the first meet that I ran this season of Cross Country. But it also marked the last Old Skool Classic race that I will run my high school years.

As I mentioned before, I had been injured with stress fractures in both my shins my freshman, sophomore, and junior year. This year, I trained extra carefully with the girls on the team to make sure that I didn't get injured, and I successfully ran this last meet.

Going into the meet, I had hoped to run with Keya, Anika and Nata, some of the senior girls on the team. I had also wished to beat my time of 28:56 that I got last year when I ran the Old Skool Classic.

I ran through a river, jumped over hay bales, and finished the 3.1 (5k) mile race. All in 27:18 minutes. Faster than last year's run.

Yet, I failed to keep up with the other Senior girls that ran the race, as they had practiced much more and ran much more miles than I had this season.

This race was a mixture of excitement and disappointment. But moreover, it was a show of my perseverance and commitment to the XC team.

Cross Country

XC pre-season practice officially began on August 16th, marking the beginning of Cross Country. We've been meeting every week day from 9:00 to 11:00am, doing practices at school. I've mostly ran with my teammates, doing the same distance runs but modified slightly to allow me to smoothly transition into running again after a long shin injury.

Tomorrow, we have a Troy Athens invite at Firefighter's Park. I really want to run tomorrow, so hopefully coach will give me the go-ahead to run. However, I mostly expect to be playing my role of Manager tomorrow and getting the time-splits of the runners.

I'd like to set some goals that I'd like to accomplish my(last) season of Cross Country.

1. Run in at least more than 4 races.

2. Run under 25 minutes.

3. Keep a positive attitude about hard practices/races

Lora Turtles, Night Walks, and Red Flashlights.

Yesterday, I got back from Costa Rica. Back from the hot days and rainy afternoons. Back from the graveyard shift night walks.

Overall, the trip with the teen summer program Rustic Pathways was amazing. Although I was slightly apprehensive because of the small group number, the trip was still a blast.

We first arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica where we boarded a bus and took a 5-hour long bus ride to Playa Camaronal. Our group would stay there for five days, where we'd do labor (such as shoveling sand to extend the hatchery, cleaning the trash off the beach, and moving driftwood to clear the way for the turtles). Also, because most of the work was at night, it usually left the day-time free, when our group would visit an art museum and carve our own stamps or go zip-lining. At night, we'd have night walks, where a group of three would be accompanied by a guide and we'd patrol the beach for turtle tracks, following them to a nest or even a nesting turtle. Turtle sighting at Camaronal were rare, although my group saw a Lora Turtle (or a Ridley Sea Turtle) lay about 115 eggs. Our group would dig up the eggs and place them in a outdoor hatchery. Similarly, our collaboration extended to other labor activities such as ridding the beach of driftwood. While one person couldn't lift a huge log, many people could together, and our group worked together to clear a section of the beach of everything from logs to sticks.

After all the work that we did in Camaronal, we took a 2-hour bus ride to Samara, where we stayed for a couple days to relax and have fun. The other kids in my group, Linden, Patrick and Emery, went surfing while I relaxed with Meredith (the counselor).

We then headed back to work at Playa Ostional, where the refuge was more research-oriented than the refuge at Playa Camaronal. At Ostional, we did night walks, but when we came across a turtle, we only tagged the turtles and took various measurements. I personally couldn't understand why the eggs were left to the mercy of egg-thieves (which were common in Costa Rica as turtle eggs were considered a delicacy to Costa Ricans) and stray dogs. In my opinion, to help preserve the turtle species, every egg should be, to the best of a refuge's abilities, protected and nurtured. Not sold to Costa Ricans for food in bags, as the refuge at Ostional did in times of a mass-nesting, or left to fend for themselves. Although I didn't quite agree with the actions of the refuge, I was determined the help the turtles in any way possible and I realized that due to the massive numbers of turtles arriving at Playa Ostional, saving every egg was nearly impossible. Instead, the information garnered from our observation of the turtles along with the money generated from tourism to see the turtles would indirectly positively affect the turtles- helping in an indirect manner, but helping nonetheless.