SAISA Basketball

Finally the tournament we were all looking forward to arrived. We were all very excited and couldn't wait to start playing our first game. our goal was to show who we were and frighten our opponent. this was probably the hardest goal to achieve since we were playing AES first (who ended up coming first) and we knew they were going to be a tough team to beat but we were ready for it.

when we arrived we went to this mall where we would eat lunch and mess around until it was time to meet our hosts since we arrived at 8am and our hosts would come pick us up at 3:30pm. at the mall we played in this arcade where every time we would beat a record it would give us a lot of tickets that we could use to win a prise. the mall was filled with less fortunate kids and so we decided to give all the tickets to this group of kids who would enjoy the stuffed toy a lot more than us. we also saw a small group of poor children trying to buy an ice cream but barely had enough money for one so we just gave them the money to buy each one an ice cream.

on the second day there was the opening ceremony where they introduced all the teams. we then had our first game. we were the opening game and we had to play AES the toughest team. we needed to work collaboratively as a team as much as possible. moving the ball around and working together and collaboratively like we practiced through out basketball season.

the tournament did not go as planned. we lost the first game with AES and our goal after that was to go to the finals. though we won 4 games and lost 2 we lost the crucial games that put us down to 5th place. we were not sad at all with that position because we were announced second in the win - loss ratio after AES who won all 6 games.

as a team we developed a lot of skill together in these few days. we were always there for each other and we were ready for anything even though not being familiar with our surroundings. we all bonded with each other and with other teams. this a great experience and our loss did not affect us much.

Playing Amal

For the second time we played the same time Amal. this school beat us in the past 30-74 which was very embarrassing but we didn't have a lot of practice as a team and David and I were missing. our goal for this second time around with our improved skill was to increase our score against them, played better as a unified team and hopefully beat them. the match was intense and it really made us push to the peak of our ability. though we missed a lot of shots we still managed to reach our goal to score 46 points and closing the gap from 44 points to 30 which is great seeing how they also had the time to practice. These games have allowed us to improve our team skills and also our individual skill. pushing us harder to achieve greater. hopefully all this practice will allow us to exceed in SAISA and hopefully WIN!

Alzheimer's sale

for my CAS i had to sell pens for 100rp and cards for 400rp outside of the auditorium on the day of the seussical. this was to raise money for my CAS so that any plans for the future would be made possible. we made quite a bit of money from the parents that came to watch their kids at the seussical. it was a very smart decision to sell there as there was a art exhibition happening before the show so parents came in early giving them plenty of time to pas by our desk and help the Alzheimer's foundation. Saba helped out with the selling and we made very good salesmen, people got attracted by our amazing advertising skills and we made a very successful sale that night.

British School Tournament

Nothing improves a team better than playing other teams that are completely unknown. The Geckos joined the british school basketball tournament where we had to play three games and win 2 out of the three in order to succeed to the next round (quarter finals) We first played Lyceum Nugegoda which we knew were the best team we would ever play. we didn't think much about how good they are but decided that we would give it our best. being our first game obviously our goal was to win but we were not prepare as a team so we lost. it was a terrible loss and we deserved it as we didn't play as a team but just became a fast break game. we talked it over and went to win our second game after a bit of practice. we started playing as a team and won by 20. the third game went very well, we played as a team and set our goals straight, we were all determined to win. unfortunately we lost by 4 points. we gave up half way through because we got tired and so they caught up. we played well though so there is nothing to complain. as a team we are all improving and making more shots and playing better as a unit. my goal as captain of the team is to lead the Geckos to a victory in SAISA

SAISA Basketball

we had a whole week of basketball and it was very tough. we ran a lot and worked on fundamentals because there were people in the team that have never played basketball before. it was nice to go back and practice the things you take for granted.

we made the first cut to the team last Friday where we chose 12 out of the 16 trying out. there will be another cut where we choose the travelling team of 10. I was chose captain and so i had a meeting with the coach to decide who to chose for the team. this was very tough because i felt like i was in no position to choose. I suggested some ideas and the team was chosen.

practice is getting tougher and skills are improving. we are playing more games and working on more detail rather than only fundamentals. i hope to further develop my basketball skills and my goal is to bring the team together to come first in the SAISA tournament.

Alzheimer's Foundation

The people that have founded the Alzheimer's project came in to give us an understanding of what we were dealing with. we all gained a deeper understanding of the dementia.

i learned how to prevent it and what are the first signs of the dementia. i realized that my grandfather has the early signs. the dementia comes in three different stages. my grandpa seems to be in early stage one.

they taught us how we can help and they gave us a deeper insight on the project and where all the money is going to.

Basketball

My goal for this year is to make the SAISA basketball team. i keep playing on Saturdays with other students and people from other teams and my skill are improving hopefully to later on use them on the SAISA team.

SAISA practice/try outs will Begin next week and will go for 4 times a week until the 2nd December to then travel on the 3rd to Chennai. There are about 15 people trying out so far so 5 will have to get cut out.

the only thing that is keeping me from making the team is the decision of my parents which will be based by how my grades are doing so far. hopefully they will be good enough to let me travel

Alzheimers foundation

The first day of my CAS (Alzheimer's)we were handed the raffle tickets to distribute, we were given about 3 booklets of 10 tickets each. I was able to sell only one booklet because people were always making excuses not to buy them.

we were briefed of the projects that we would do over the term that we attend this CAS. The Alzheimer's walk was last weekend but unfortunately I was not able to attend dew to theatre arts practice. We didn't have any other meetings but we have planned another one on Thursday.

Making a Band

Adrien, Young-jun, Camille and I came together to form a band. this is a temporary band for a UN day performance and for the Christmas assembly to set the school off to a good holiday! Adrien is the guitarist, young-jun is the bassist, Camille is the singer and im the drummer and hopefully together we are able to rock our brains out.

for UN day we will perform only one song but this song will be sung by many different people in many different languages. the song is wavin' flag by K'naan which is a song about flags and representing your country so people will represent by singing a small verse in their own language. Adrien, Young-jun and I will be responsible for the instrumentals of the song.

for the Christmas assembly We have come up with 4 different songs. the reason why we chose such a far date to perform is because being in grade 12 is very hard to find time to practice so to make it more flexible we are picking our rehearsals date at random when ever we have a free day after school. the songs we are planning to play are: the great escape by Boys like Girls, Scar tissue by Red Hot Chili peppers, Sitting waiting wishing by Jack Johnson and a Rock version of umbrella by Rhianna. the list of songs might change if we find that either its too hard or not suitable for the singer.

my goal for this is to be able to memorize all the songs on the drums and play them clear so that it doesn't only sound like noise to the audience. i will try my pest to push my skill and learn 4 songs in contemporary.

My new Community Service - Alzheimers Foundation

Since my planned CAS which was the tie dying and then selling the shirts to raise money for a foreign issue will start in November i decided to join something else in the mean time.

I decided to join Alzheimer's Foundation service. In this service we will raise money to support the founding of a hospital that is being built. This seems like A good service to join because it is manageable for this year and still very helpful.

The first project we are doing is a walk down galle road with banners and other things for this project so that we raise money. my duty as a member of this service is to help sell raffle tickets for the raffle that will take place in the walk. I will be helped my a friend of mine and hopefully we will be able to sell a lot and get many people involved.

my goal for this service is to have a successful part in the service and to make my presence is valuable and helpful.

My Goals for this year

This year i want to try something different than what I did the past year. though my action i think will be the same with the basketball and wakeboarding but i would like to help a foreign promblem.

my goal for this year is to imporve my basketball skills so that our SAISA team will be able to come first! I will joint the after school basketball activity and the Saturday practices. I am thinking of joining the SAISA basketball team but it will all depend on how my grades go. My goal for wakeboardin is to land a backflip! which will be very hard because the wake of the boat (which is what you use to jump) is very small so it is hard to elevate enough to get a full rotation.

my favorite thing to do is dance! and this year Bryce and I will start a small dance crew and anyone is free to join, this will not be dancing lessons like i did last year but it will be a dance crew and while we devise a dance routine i will teach the people who joined the moves so they improve and at the end we all perform!

Saba Rewald is starting a community service programme that include raising money for a well in a village in ethiopia. the money will be raised with the selling of shirts that we tie dye. i hope to achieve the goal of raising enough money to build the well!!

Summary of Grade 11

Last year i have accomplished and took part in lots of different activities. from a good time to a hard time it all seemed to pay up at the end. the year was filled with not only community work but it was pretty action filled as well.

for my action I was involved in different sports not only for SAISA but Saturdays after school and completely outside of school on Sundays. I joined SAISA basketball which was a brand new experience. The mixture of pure stress and adrenaline made it very hard to concentrate on the plays and pull my mind together for the game, the crowd cheering was what i remember the most. Talk about SAISA I also joined Track and Field which was the most action filled days of the whole of last year. this allowed me to achieve my goal of finally make the SAISA track and field team. in grade 10 I wanted to make it in the team but wasn't able to. this was the last year that i was able to join since in grade 12 the work load is too much to even think about SAISA track and field. I wasn't only involved in school activities when it came to sports. I joined basketball after every Saturday with Mr. Gresham as a coach to improve our skills for next year's SAISA!!!!

Why on my April break I got a permit to teach how to wakeboard. I came back to Sri Lanka and and took my friends out wakeboarding. I taught David Gresham how to wakebaord and now he is almost better than me! Wakeboarding is a very difficult sport and requires a lot of physical strength and coordination. I will continue teacheing people how to wakeboard and achieve my goal to land a backflip!

i have helped in other Community service programs like the DAWG sterilization programme and teaching kids how to play football even though I myself didn't even know how to kick a ball. My main community and service programme was the Palate and cleft lip project where we helped people with a palate disorder. we have though of a lot of fund raisers. the last one which is still not devised fully is the one in process right now which is the movie making. we will make a movie that will be a parody of other movies all mixed together and only the people that are part of the community and service programme will take part so we will keep switching roles.

I feel like i have achieved a Lot this year! undertaking tough projects like organization of the SAISA girls basketball and the sum o other simple things here and there.

DAWG

Long ago when the DAWG sterilization program ran i volunteered to be part of it. Paul (the leader of the program) told me to go at a certain time. luckily for me it was right after the whole sterilization process was done so i didn't have to see any of it happening. i had to fan a dog for a while so it would have an easier time recovering from the drowsiness of the operation. one dog had a real problem getting up and it was bleeding a lot so they had to take it back to fix her up. i didn't stay long but i still felt like i contributed. i have to give it to the people that remained there for the rest whole day it was a terrible heat.

MOVIE MAKING!!!!

For the palate disorder CAS that I am in. after school today we got together to think of another very effective way to raise money. After a lot of thinking and brainstorming of ideas we all concluded and agreed to the idea that we should make a movie where every one in the CAS would be an actor. The thing is that this movie is not like any ordinary one. We are taking 6 different movies and making one long movie interlocking all six of the movies. This will be a parody of the movies as I would play rose when it comes to titanic. We hope that people will enjoy it and that we can raise money off this idea. I’m really looking forward to doing it and I think we will all have so much fun in the making

Palate party

The palate party night did not seem to go as planned. We were expecting a lot more people to come to it. Don’t get me wrong a lot of people did come but not as many as predicted. A bunch of tickets were sold and we got quite a bit of money, this money really is helpful to reaching the goal of the 150,000rp we need to operate all the children. The people that went to the party had a lot of fun. Everyone enjoyed themselves and had a great time and that was what we were aiming for.

SAISA TRACK AND FEILD

I was much exited to be travelling especially with all my friends. I never been to Dhaka and I didn’t know what to expect. I never did a track meet either so I didn’t know how good the other people were. The trip there and back were fun, we stopped in the Bangkok airport for a while were I ate burger king. In the track meet when we first arrived we had to wait before we got picked up. In the mean time there were people practicing on the field from another school. They looked very good. But they didn’t intimidate me because they were not in my event. The first night I couldn’t sleep I had trouble because I was too exited for what was to come. The first event was the 1500m and it was my event. This occurred before the opening ceremony. This is when I tore my abdominal muscle and so I couldn’t run anymore. That was it for my Track me I thought until the high jump. This was before I knew I tore my muscle and so I went for it anyway. I came 8th out of 16. I was hoping to do better but I am sort of satisfied with my result. The others were very good and there was so much competition. Then the 4x400m came along and I had to race in it. we came 5th overall and I was very proud but it was not the smartest thing to do as after the race I couldn’t even stand because of the pain. The second day I had to rest I didn’t do anything. I was getting ready for my discus throw on my 3rd day. This was the longest SAISA event because there were more schools. Even though one school only brought 5 athletes. I had to run the 3000m but I decided to avoid that and rest my muscle for the discus throw. It was a very good idea because the timing for the 3000m was too good for me to place but I managed to place in the discus throw. Everyone around me was very tall and big. I was surprised I made it to the top 6. It was sad leaving such a fun even but it was time to go home. I would love to do it again it was a wonderful experience.

April Break Activity:

This April break I went to Bali. Although it was my holiday I still took time for some activity. In Bali there is a place where I really like to surf in. this place is called the blue beach resort and a family friend owns it. This friend is a phenomenal teacher and so he holds classes for surfing, wakeboarding and every other water sport. I love water sports and so while I was surfing around one day he asked me, since there were not a lot of people working there but there were too many tourist, if I could be a teacher for a day to teach this woman how to wakeboard. Wakeboarding being my all time favorite sport I took the opportunity. This woman was in her 30s and never did it before. I went through the fundamentals on the beach with her and then we were off in the water. After 2 hours of very exhausting and hard work she managed to get up and move around. I was very happy by mine and her accomplishment that day.

SAISA PRACTICE:

I stay every Tuesday, and Friday after school and I come every Wednesday morning and Saturdays to school to practice for SAISA track and field. Joining SAISA track and field was a really risk taking move as I have never done it before and didn’t know what to expect. I also didn’t know if my abilities were good enough for making the team. The first practice was not so hard. We went around in a circle to changing each stations, each station had a different thing we had to work on like balancing or strength. As days went by the training got harder and a bunch of people quit. Some couldn’t resist the heat and the amount of work we had to go through. After I tried all the selection of activities available for me I found out which ones I was good at. I love the high jump it is my favorite out of all. Every practice I see that I am improving and hopefully ill improve enough to place on the track meet. As the days go by we start to specify in activities instead of only running and sometimes jumping. Time trials occurred twice this time during practice. The first one didn’t matter and that was totally lucky for me because I had crucible the same day. The second time trails was to see who would make the team so if I missed that then there was no chance for me. i managed to go and I got all my times down. Luckily after a long practice I managed to get good enough to make the team. Now that the team is chosen we divided into small groups so that we can specify and get better in our field for example since I am a distance runner I would not waste my time practicing on how to sprint. We are now pin pointing our mistakes so that we can make that tiny improvement before we go to April break and then to Dhaka.

Crucible:

Crucible is a play that I volunteered to do. It has nothing to do with the curriculum or any of my theatre arts classes but I did it because I love acting. I really like being in stage and so I wanted to get a role in this play. Unfortunately I could only get a small role because I had another play at the same time so in order to memorize my lines I had to take two small roles to make it easier for me. The whole process was really fun. Even if sometimes it crossed with the SAISA track practices I still had a blast during the production. It was a very fun cast to work with and we all worked really hard to get it done in a very small schedule. The play didn’t go so well because some didn’t remember their lines but we all laughed about it in the end.

Recycling:

As a geography class we are concentrating in recycling. So one day we took the minibus and headed towards a recycling station with a lot of cardboard. This was the first time I saw a reward for recycling. I think that people should realize what you can get from recycling things. We recycled 10kg of cardboard resulting to 70rp while copper would’ve been 450rp per kg! we then when to KFC to reward ourselves for the good job we did that day.

Joined a new CAS: Palate and cleft lip

In this CAS we have to raise money for the kids with cleft lip and palate disorder. This is a very bad disorder as it retains kids from eating, smiling and other very fun things that kids should not miss out on. It is a disorder and we are trying to get rid of it. I raised awareness in the school by giving a presentation in front of the school in assembly. I explained what it is and that we are trying to raise money. Also in the mean time we were organizing a party that would be the money maker for this CAS. We advertised that in assembly as well.

SAISA GIRLS BASKETBALL

This year we hosted the SAISA girls basketball tournament. 8 teams from 8 different laces came with 10 athletes each team and two coaches. I took part in this event as the Manager of the crew that helped organized this huge even. It was very hard to organize such a big event. In the opening ceremony I lit the lamp. This was very exiting as I never done that before. I was also the MC in introducing the whole tournament. Through out the tournament I made sure that everyone in the crew was doing their work. If one was slaking off then a section will be delayed for example if the person in charge of the scores didn’t do his/her work then the scores on the net will not be updated in time. Everything had to be up to date. The pictures were a big problem as people had to stay out there taking constant pictures and downloading them in between games while other were in charge of editing them. The picture people complained because they had to stay out there the whole day. We worked from 7am to 6:30pm. I ran around but at the end we got everything done and organized.

WEEK WITHOUT WALLS

week without wall is a week we took off class to go do community service work. for the work we went to Hambantota to paint 2 schools. we split into 2 groups and went to the different schools. they were both roughly the same size.

the trip there was very boring and long. many people were sleeping and after 3 hours in the bus no one had anything to talk about anymore and after 5 hours the music you were listening to became repetitive and very annoying. i tried to sleep but when you already slept for 6 hours you cant anymore and the only thing left is to look out of the window. during the trip we stopped in many places. the most exiting place we stopped was the safari. we had to climb down our bus and into these open top cars that took us around the park. best part we saw a lot of animals like elephants and i scared ms.Fernando with a little prank. after the very tiring bus ride we finally reached our hotel. we all went to bed very early for the very busy coming day.

the first day we left for the schools. we had organised some games to play with the children. the children were very shy with us and many cried. after a lot of unsuccessful games we started painting the inside of the buliding. i started with the biggest wall in the inside. the wall streched to about 4 meters high. it took a lot fo time and i had help from Anishka and Kashish. then i had to stand on a table and with a roler to paint the top of the wall. it was very tiring but i got it done. while people were taking a rest we fooled around with the paint and we got all dirty. then we were back to work. we didnt work very fast but we got the inside done.

the second day. i didnt have any clothes. i tryed wearing the same thing and i smelled like a dead rat.

STARTING TO BREAKDANCE

Hussain and I started a new breakdance elective. in this elective we teach little kids like kids in grade 6 and 7 to breakdance. breakdancing is a very complicated thing and it can injure those who dont know how to do it. me and hussain have a lot of responsibility in out hands. the first thing we did was go over the rules of breakdancing and the class and how people had to listen to me and hussain carefulyl and never fool around because as soon as some one fools in the class "it will be the day that some one will break their neck" (me). the children are cooperating very well and following exactly what we are telling them.

the first few lessons were just to learn the moves and how to move with the rhythm. now though came the complicated stuff. our goal is to be able to perform before graduation. make a whole 4 minute dance incorporating every move they have learned. this brings a lot of stress on mine and hussains back because we have to think on what steps go where keeping on tempo. at the start of the choreographing people were quiet and just followed but today (17/3/2010) the kids were more open minded. we can see that the dance was getting into them. they suggested moves that they could incorporate in the dance. some of them were too childish and very out of rhythm but some were very good. they will slowly improve as the dancing progresses.

the progress is going well. every one is cooperating and we are very on track. in fact we are done with the 4 minute dance all we need is to refine it. i think my goal will be achieved