Cooking Halwa (Indian Sweet)

Halwa that I made

This month, me cooking aim was to learn to make the popular Indian sweet dish, Wheat Halwa. This sweet is made mainly from wheat, sugar and clarified butter.  I learnt to make this sweet from my mom who has been making this since she was young. She first explained the origination of this dish briefly and then started instructing me on the ingredients that I need. I started following the instruction and realized how hard it is to put together all the ingredients. This gave a me a new experience where I'm improving my cooking skills. I also understood the importance of patience while cooking food. I worked collaboratively with my mom, she made sure she did not put any ingredient by herself, in the other hand she made me do all of it so that I learn more effectively.

The dish was served to my family. They liked the taste of it, even though it was not as good as my mother, it was a good try for the first time. I'm now happy that I learnt to make one of the most popular dishes from the Indian cuisine. I will make sure that I continue to learn and make more. :)

Singing for the first time! :)

Kuval and I before the performance

Singing has always been something I wanted to do but it was also something that I was not really good at. But, this Diwali (an important festival in India), I wanted to try singing with my friend Kuval. The function was held by the Indian Embassy in the Taj in Colombo. We were given the chance to sing. (I couldn’t get a picture of us singing though, I have a video but it is not much clear to see). We sang a Hindi  song and tried our best to impress the audience. I realized that I had this other strength in me which I was not aware of before. This challenge was something I voluntarily took and now I was able to prove that I could do it.   I was happy and satisfied that I could do something that I thought that I cannot achieve. Also, I had to wear a saree for this performance, this made me involve myself more with my Indian community and our culture.  I wanted to develop this skill but right now I won’t have time to do that. However, I plan to do this in future. 

Raising toys for RCCI

 END OF YEAR GIFT FOR RCCI KIDS

At the end of the last year we decided to end the school year for the RCCI kids satisfactorily by trying to getting gifts in the form of toys, play boards, soft toys, and cartoon figures, sports equipments like balls, bats and skipping ropes. This was quite challenging as this was going to be my first fund raising activity. So we decided to make an announcement in the primary assembly and asked the kids to donate their old toys for the unprivileged. We even sent letter home so that it reaches the parent. This activity also made the OSC community aware of the global issues faced in this world, so they actively responded.It turned out to be that the primary has been really generous to the kids. We had just kept one box in the primary office for the kids to donate. But we got to know that the box is already over flowing in two days. There were a number of ethical implications with this because we had to make sure all the parents who came to donate their belongings were treated with respect, if anything goes wrong, they might be disappointed. So we took this challenge by making sure we thank everyone for their donation. This made us really happy and we collected a lot of toys in the one week notice. We even got lot of brand new toys for them. I realised that this strength in our CAS team can make us capable of achieving more. 

Toys we gathered for the kids

We later separated the good ones as in the ones that don’t scare these kids. We separated the Dinosaurs toys, scary animal figures and army figures. These toys often scared the RCCI kids. So we decided to give them rather simple board games, soft toys and the ones they would like. We gifted them on the last CAS day and we even gave a box of toys for the center. We still have some stored. We plan to give more this year.

Cooking aims for September

For September, I decided to learn with the basics of Indian food. This might include making "Pongal" which is a meal eaten usually for breakfast with a sauce (preferably a coconut one). This has been my all time favorite dish and is best when served hot. Learning to make this from my mother will be a good idea as she is really good in making this. This will also make be independent as I would not have to ask her to make it every time for me. I can prepare it with  more of the kind of taste I like (which has less spiciness). A picture of is shown to show how it looks like.

CAS presentation for the OSC kids

All the CAS leaders after the presentation

There was another awareness program about CAS this year. This was specially held to inform the primary kids who just joined MYP. We thought that it is necessary for them to know what different CAS activities do. This will help them choose the CAS they want to participate in, in the following semester. This activity will increase awareness to the OSC community and also at the same time make me work collaboratively with my CAS members in planning the activity.  Our CAS is involved with such an important global issue that it is necessary to update the people about what we do. This activity made me proud that I’m involved in this CAS and I was satisfied with the number of people who wanted to join this CAS. 

            

        Goals for grade 12

             This will be my final year in IB and I want to make sure that I work efficiently in all my CAS activities that I will be participating in. This is year I will be continuing with yoga for action. I'm done with the course, so I will practice it at home as it is both good for my health and also relieves from mental pressure. This time I plan to practice all day unlike the last year where I practiced only during the weekends.

 For my creativity I plan to do something new, I always wanted to learn to cook but never got enough time for it. So I thought for this CAS year I should learn to cook. I will aim to learn a new dish every 3 weeks. This will give me enough time to learn the dish at the start and later practice to make it myself. There is not any particular genre of food that I want to learn. But I have to make sure I find vegetarian dishes as I'm a vegetarian :). I will learn to make most of the dishes from my mother. I will post pictures of the dishes I have as this will show what my dishes looks like.

For my service, I will continue my leadership in RCCI and the post of a director in Key Club. Last year we have done fund raising and also toy collection from the school and the primary school. This has been of a great help to the centre. I will aim to continue doing the same this year and also try to do more for them.

CAS Evalutaion for Grade 11

REFLECTION

It's been almost one year since i started my CAS program and started learning different skills in life. I have learnt a lot doing CAS, I realised that I had more talent than before. As mentioned earlier, for my CAS I was part of the school community and service RCCI, went for Yoga classes as part of my action and learnt to make Indian clothing for my creativity.

I have mostly achieved all of my goals I had set to achieve this year. I learnt Yoga’s beginner level. Yoga makes me feel more fresh mentally and physically, I will make sure I will also practice Yoga in my future too so that I don’t forget what I learnt. I almost attended al the Yoga classes in the ICC (Indian Cultural Center). I will try making full use of what I learnt. I started to learn to make Indian clothes but couldn’t make a salwar kameez by the end of this year, so I plan to achieve it during the next year. The best thing I was proud of  bring part of this year was leading RCCI. Our CAS worked hard this year, we fund raised in Food And Fun Fair and also asked for toy donation in the Primary assembly. We were able to collect enough funds and toys for them that we even gifted some to the children of the centre.

For the next year, I plan to continue practice Yoga, learn and complete my goal in making Indian cloths and try painting the RCCI center so that they can have a better environment to stay in. I hope I can achieve these goals with as much efficiency I had out in this year. This year has taught me so many new things which I wouldn’t have been able to achieve if there was no CAS. I’m happy to be doing these works and services and I’m waiting for the next year.
End of Grade eleven

Visit to RCCI centre

We visited RCCCI centre this Thursday. We went there to experience their way of school life. We played with them in their park and did a lot of action related activities because this is very important for their health. We planned this activity before so that we can be prepared with the activities we will be doing with them. It was very important to show commitment with this activity, all the members in my CAS were focused and were enthusiastic through the time we spent with them.

Playing with RCCI kids

Playing with them also got me engaged in physical activities, which made me develop new skills. Over the time, I’m getting more comfortable with these kids, they can recognize me now. This gave me a satisfaction that I was successful in undertaking this challenge of interacting with them.      

Key club

 KEY CLUB JOINS OSC !

 Key club is the oldest and the largest service program for high school students. they are all led by student leaders. Key Club tries to offer a range of services to its members: leadership development, study-abroad opportunities, vocational guidance, college scholarships, a subscription to the KEY CLUB magazine, service-learning, personal enrichment and many other programs. Key club mainly focuses on children and service more, it promoted all the global issue in the world and supported them. So, RCCI wan an important CAS they were interested in. For the first time in Sri Lanka, Key Club joined with OSC to help us with the CAS programs. Joining this CAS can be very challenging as it requires us to work collaboratively with other and show a lot of perseverance. It will help us in fund raising and all other programs to improve our CAS. We have different student leaders for this club in OSC. The Key Club members voted for the different leaders and were given our positions and responsibility in the induction ceremony.

President- Damien Martin

Key Club members of OSC

Vice President- Harini Liyanage

Treasurer - Terunaga Tamura
Chief Editor - Heesoo Kim

Secretary- Annie Gillstedt 
Directors:Aparna Iyer, Maheshi Dharmasiri, Sandushi Pathirage, Keisha Gani, Avindhya   Koralagamage.

Week Without Walls in Hambantota!! :D

WWW :)
Children at the school: Picture credits Camie Raguin

Grade 11 had their trip to Hambantota. This was our final WWW, so we wanted to make sure we have lots of fun during this trip. This time, our trip mainly focused on service unlike the last year WWW where we had camping. We stayed in the Peacock Beach Hotel. We divided our grade into two sections, the Sha group and the She group. I was in the sha group, we worked in the school which was one hour away from the hotel. We already planned our activities. This was planned in the WWW committee meetings before the trip. We were in different groups so that we can all work on what we are good at. We had a group for maintenance, mural , playing with children group and so on. I was in the mural group. This was when I could show my creativity by painting. This activity requires a lot perseverance and collaboration. I worked with Harini, Charity and Toni in one of those walls of the school. I later painted the plain sides of the wall. We even interacted with the children, talked to them, played with them and watched them dance and have fun. It was a really good experience. It is good to see how the school looked  prettier and neat after all the week of hard work we had put in. The children were also really happy with our visit. It was really nice to see their happiness when they saw the newly painted school. At the last day of our service, we performed for the children. We also learned a Sinhalese poem which they knew so that they can enjoy it. They also performed for us. I felt happy that I could help these people in some way. We saw the Hambantota port and we went on a safari to Yala National Park. It was great fun. The port was really good and the safari was also fun. We saw lots of birds and animals. We were divided in to our science groups. I went in with my Physics group. The trip went really well. This is probably my last school trip, so I made sure I enjoy a lot and have fun!! I will miss WWW trips !! :)

Spreading awareness about our CAS to OSC parents

Different CAS leaders were responsible of putting up a display board about their respective CAS. This was done to increase awareness about different CAS activities taking place in OSC. The leaders were in charge of explaining what their CAS is about. This activity made me work collaboratively with other member in RCCI, we all planned this activity and worked on how this board will be.

Explaining about RCCI during the activity

This activity was quite challenging as parents asked various questions about our CAS and we had to make sure that we had thorough knowledge on RCCI. We also had a power point presentation showing pictures of the kids from RCCI so that they can visualize what it means to be a part of this CAS. We were helped by Alice, former RCCI leader, who gave us prior knowledge about RCCI and helped us with the presentation. I think we did a good job with this presentation, this was my first minor achievement in this CAS activity. 

RCCI Leader :)

The supervisor of RCCI, Ms.Nyriz chose me and Uthpala as the next RCCI leaders. Last year it was Alice who was the leader of the CAS. This year she chose two leaders as we can help each other during all the RCCI sessions. Alice and the teacher explained us all the responsibilities we have as the leader. Later, we even elected the Treasurer (Nadeera) and the secretary (Kuval Dutta) of the RCCI. I feel that our CAS is more organised now, we all divided the works among ourselves. This time we wanted to concentrate more on fund raising compared to the last year. S we decided to raise money in all possible events. We also planned goals to achieve. We wanted to build a new center for RCCI. These were our initial plans for the RCCI.