This may not have been the most memorable term , but during this term I have taken the most out of the activities that I took part in. I gave my full efforts in all of them.

Creativity:

In terms of creativity I have dealt with an IB music performance. Although I do not take Music as an IB subject I take much joy in the understanding of the mechanics of a piece, therefore I have taken up several courses on different lessons in my earlier years. A friend of mine which is currently taking the IB music programme needed a bass player in one of his song’s , thus I willingly joined the group of musicians.  The song I had to play was called “ Solitary Shell” by Dream Theater (A progressive metal band); this was definitely not a hard song to play on bass but definitely one of the longest songs that I have learnt to play. Memorising the different parts of the song was strenuous and time consuming, it took weeks to master with the band as a whole. There were two performances that I had to play in. The first , did not go as well as most of us thought it would have but there was a fair amount of people that turned up to watch the performance. The second performance took place a few weeks after the first. This second performance was much more stunning for the crowd and generally went much better than the first.  Playing in a band has moulded the exterior of my personality to become much more caring and cautious.

I took part in many more exciting activities this term which fell into the categories of mainly Creativity and Service. Both of the activities obtained for the CAS hours were all taken from a service project on an island called Koh Phi Phi in Thailand.

Creativity:

For the creative side of the service project ,we had to prepare a presentation for the whole of Regent’s school to show how much it means to the locals of Koh Phi Phi, our help is. I took part in putting the presentation together.

Service:

The main aim of the project was to help build the foundation of the service center for the locals of the island (Sea gypsies). This was a life altering experience as it not only helped all the people on the island but it also taught me a lot. There were other schools from different parts of Asia involved in this project; there was an all girls school, an Indian school and a Malaysian International school that came to help out with the building. I learnt about different cultures in meeting these different people and as for the building I found out the methods used to build foundations of a building and scaffoldings. The days that I spent on this island was a life altering experience that I will truly never forget.

During this term I started to realise the amount of workload and the high expectations of IB therefore I didn’t take part in any activities related to service.

Creativity:

The main focus for this term’s creativity hours were performances. I performed at two school events: International Day and the Spring Concert. This allowed me to develop my stage presence.

Action:
I was only beginning to get a lot of work at this time therefore I was getting used to the workload of IB at this point so there weren’t any significant or special activities that I took part in this term.

Overall this was not a very productive term in terms of CAS.

As being the first term of the IB course , I was still familiarizing myself with IB. The CAS aspect of IB, was still a question to me. I was unsure about categorizing my activities and the general process of completing forms. I took part in many activities in this term including weekly tennis training, swim training and many more. The following are the activities that I participated in for each of the categories of CAS:

Creativity:

For this term I spent a total of 14 hours on creativity ,one of the most memorable activities was a magazine called “Cocked for rock”  that my friend and me made. It was a non profit magazine and it focused on the extreme genres of metal music and the bands that don’t get enough attention. This was not only extremely fun, it allowed me to run wild, creatively with my computer art skills and writing. I wrote a couple of the articles in the magazine and did the layout and cover for the magazine. The magazine was very successful and we got a lot of positive feedback from our readers. It was nice to know that other people would enjoy what we had to say as my friend and I both take music very seriously in our lives.

Action:

As for action, this term was fun filled and full of new experiences. Most f the activities took place at a resort in a national park called Khao Yai. In the national park I participated in white water rafting and trekking. The whole experience of the trekking was the most memorable; it was an 8 hour trek to the area which we had to camp out. We brought our sleeping bags and tents with us to the site. When we arrived at the camp site, the sky was filled with little pellets of rain drops hurdling downwards to the ground, this was when we realised that my tent wasn’t water proof. In the rain, for the first time, i truly understood the difficulty of lighting a fire for food (something I never thought about before this trip). So it was a wet and sleepless night , which made worse in the morning when we had to walk all the way back to a certain point where we could raft back.

Overall it was a very memorable experience.

Service:

I was at a charity event called “Jester’s fair”, at this event I sold raffle tickets, and helped out in different ways to raise charity for an orphanage. It felt good to help all the children at the orphanage.

So overall during this term I got to familiarise myself with the expectations of CAS.

In the christmas concert I will be playing bass for one of the songs "All I want for christmas" which is originally performed by Mariah Carey. I believe that our playing was very successful because we made people stand up and clap when we played. Although we played well for the audience I knew that I could have improved my stage presence.

Overall this term I havent done too many activities but I have a plan of the exciting activities that I will take on next half term. The activities that I have participated in this term are:

-Tok Trip

-continue tennis 

The activities that I will be taking part in next term will include:

-rotary club 

-christmas concert

-continuing tennis lessons

Generally in tennis  I have focused on improving my game playing aspects. I have been playing a couple of complete games with my coach , although i still cannot beat my coach I feel that it wont be long before that happens.

I recently went on a trip to Koh Chang for Theory of Knowledge and during this trip we did many other exciting things. One of the moments most worth remembering was the trip to the Waterfall. We had difficulty in crossing the river because it was the rainy seasona , therefore the rivers were flowing extremely fast. In order to get past the river , there was a string in which we had to hang onto to cross. We then noticed that we couldn't cross with the help of some people pushing the string forwards because the water was flowing past much too fast. I took part in helping people cross the river which made me feel good because I was not only able to cross the river but I was also able to help others cross. The arrival at the waterfall was not as great as I would have expected it to be. We couldn't jump off the rocks into the river because the the water was flowing so fast that it would carry us away if we tried jumping.

It was also great because I got to meet a lot of the year 12s and I think that the tension between the yr12s and yr13s loosened up a bit. I learnt a lot during this trip, especially the lessons that the three teachers gave us. They got me thinking about things I would have never thought about before.