30 march 2012 (Swimming)

Today will be my last meeting for this swimming activity since I have to focus on my final exam. Today the school is once again having an early dismissed due to a heavy traffic jam in Jakarta. However, I still continue swimming alone having the permission from Pak Lili. The same as before, I swim for 50 lapses and try to swim as fast as possible. In the end, I'm able to swim 50 lapses for 42 minutes. Even though there is only a small difference with my last record, however I feel that this is an achievement that I have gained from these past meetings. I have spent so much time and energy for this activity and I can really feel the outcome our of this activity. I feel that this activity as a stress reliever rather than a burden because I truly enjoy swimming and it is one of my favorite sport. I wish that I can continue swimming after my final exam.

29 March 2012 (Swimming)

Today, I continue on swimming for 50 lapses without any pauses. After several times doing this, I realize that I can swim faster and I feel less tired. I feel that this is a huge improvement having to realize that when I first start this activity, it was very hard to even swim for 40 lapses. I feel that swimming have made myself healthier in a fun way. Tomorrow will be my last meeting for swimming and I have to stop this activity for a while and concentrate on my final exam.

27 March 2012 (Swimming)

Today, the school was dismissed early due to heavy traffic jam in Jakarta. However, I continue to swim with my friends. Today, I did 50 lapses and again, I try to swim faster so that I can finish faster than 50 minutes (my last record). It was hard and it is a new challenge for me but I succeeded. I finish 50 lapses in 45 minutes. I will try to maintain this record and even do better next week.

22 March 2012 (Swimming)

Today I swim for 50 lapses. However, I swim without any pauses and set a time limit. I calculated the time spent for me to swim 50 lapses and in the end, the result is about 50 minutes. So averagely, I swim for 1 minute per lap. I still think that it is very slow and this is a new challenge for me. I want to improve the speed rather than learning new swimming moves.

20 March 2012 (Swimming)

After the big storm and everything, today is a pretty sunny day. I'm glad that the weather is getting better because with the weather we are having right now, it is very hard to swim for more than 40 lapses. So today. I swim for another 50 lapses. I felt more tired compared to the previous weeks and this is because my body is not used to long swimming sessions yet. Because I have to finish my swimming activity before April, I need to catch up and instead of swimming twice a week, I will swim three times next week.

6 March 2012 (Swimming)

I can not swim this week because of a personal reason and next week will be the exam week. I will continue this activity on 20 March 2012.

March 1, 2012 (Swimming)

After the big storm last Tuesday, I feel anxious since the weather today is pretty cloudy and breezy but I start swimming anyway, hoping that it would not start to rain. After I reach 40 lapses, it starts to rain heavily and the teacher who supervise us told us to stop swimming. We stopped swimming since we are afraid that accidents could happen. And so, I did not reach 60 lapses today but will try harder next week.

28 Feb, 2012 (swimming)

Today we have a terrible thunder storm. It is impossible to swim in this condition thus I will continue my swimming activity on Thursday.

26 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

Today, I reflected on what I have learned with my teacher for these 12 meetings. He seems satisfied that I have remembered all of the skills he have taught me and he hopes that I will continue on learning on how to cook properly in the future.

25 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

For my last dish, I was taught a pretty complicated meal. It was pan fried chicken. I did not learn on how to clean the chicken as my skill is not sufficient but I was taught on how to season it. It was complicated since it requires so many stages to be able to cook this meal. Frying one whole chicken is a lot easier by using a two sided pan and it also reduces oil jumping around everywhere. It tastes really nice and I hope I can make it by myself next time.

23 Feb, 2012 (Swimming)

Today, I will try another 60 lapses since I still think that 60 lapses is a challenge for me especially I try to swim within a time constraint. I succeeded but I feel really tired afterwards. I know my limit and I will still do 60 lapses for the next meeting. I have really realize that swimming is a very good and fun way to do sports. I have never been really into swimming before but because I'm doing this activity for several weeks now, I realize that this activity is very fun and useful. It is really fun to swim with friends yet at the same time enhance our skills.

21 Feb, 2012 (Swimming)

Today, my goal is to swim without pauses for 2 hours. I reach 40 lapses in no time and I realize that my breath is not as hard as before which means, my lungs have gotten better from swimming. I realize that swimming have made myself healthier. Then, after several minutes, I have reached 60 lapses! It is a huge improvement for me and I'm so proud of myself. I have to admit that swimming without pauses is really hard but I feel a high sense of achievement. I hope that for the next meeting, I will be able to do better.

19 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

Today, my teacher and I went to the market to choose fruits. He told me on how to pick good fruits and then when we went home, we make some fuit juices mixed with honey since honey is a lot healthier compared to sugar. I made apple and melon juice.

18 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

To actually apply my knowledge on how to handle shrimp, I’m going to make another shrimp dish. The dish is is shrimp with fermented soybean. It was hard and took so much time on peeling the shrimp one by one but other than that, the dish is pretty simple and I’m confident that I can make it. The most important thing in this dish is to control the fire level so that the shrimp is not under or overcooked.

16 Feb, 2012 (Swimming)

To cover Tuesday's failure in reaching 50 lapses, I will succeed in reaching 50 lapses this time. I'm so determined and I have high confidence that I will be able to reach that goal. As I swim, I didn't realize that I have reached 50 lapses. Since I try to swim without any pauses, I reach 50 lapses in no time. I have realized that my swimming skill is getting better and I feel less fatigue compared to the first time I started this activity. Today, I undertake a new challenge and have succeeded in accomplishing it.

14 Feb, 2012 (Swimming)

To enhance my skill, I will try swimming 50 lapses today. I believe that I can do it since last time when I did 40 lapses, it feels 'easy'. I want to try new challenges but when I reach 40 lapses, it starts to rain badly. It was impossible for us to swim so we wait for several minutes and it doesn't get better. So my friends and I decided to stop swimming and will try it next week. This is the problem in swimming outdoor. The weather here at Sentul is not predictable and I usually swim after school when it gets breezy and will usually rain in the evening. But it was nice since at least I have reached 40 lapses today. I will try again on Thursday to be able to swim 50 lapses.

12 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

According to the plan, I’m going to make onde today. My whole family helped and it was so fun. The challenge in making this dish is when I have to insert grounded peanuts inside the onde balls. Sometimes, the ball breaks and I have to redo everything. In making this dish, we also need patience as it took a long time to create the onde balls one by one. Another thing to point out is, my teacher said that it is will be better to put jelly powder mixed with flour so that the onde is more chewy and ‘clean’. We had so much fun making it and afterwards, all of us enjoy it together.

11 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

Today, my teacher and I spent several hours in buying the ingredients for tomorrow’s dish. We are planning to cook ‘onde’ and buy the flour, peanuts, red sugar and other ingredients for the dish. This disn will takes time as we will personally make the onde balls one by one. My family will help me tomorrow.

9 Feb, 2012 (Swimming)

Today is my second meeting for this swimming activity. After experiencing body ache last time, I feel like I should try harder than my friends. I realize that my skills are not that good but I will try my best to achieve a specific goal in this activity: to be able to swim faster and will gradually increase the lapses each week. Because I am short in time, I have to do this activity twice a week starting from next week. Today, I did another 40 lapses. I still feel very tired but I realize that it wasn't as bad as last time. My body does not ache as bad as last week and I think this is a huge improvement. This means that my body have adjusted to this activity and I will start increasing the number of lapses next week.

5 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

Today, I’m going to learn a new skill on how to prepare shrimp. My teacher is planning to cook steamed shrimp. It was pretty simple but it requires a lot of work to clean the shrimp and there are tricks as to how steam the shrimp so that it doesn’t loses its fresh-ness. Today’s meeting wasn’t as challenging as the previous weeks but I still believe that today’s skill is very useful in the future.

4 Feb 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

To apply my cutting lesson last week, today’s menu would be tempe with garlic. This is a very simple and an Indonesian dish. It also has a very strong garlic taste to it and requires many cutting to do. Since I’ve learned on how to slice garlic into several pieces last time, it didn’t took me long to finish the dish.

Feb 2, 2012 (Swimming)

Today will be my first swimming activity and it has been forever since the last time I swam. I realize that my swimming skill have decreased as i feel very hard to even reach 40 lapses. I have body ache and a cramp at first. My friends did really well and I feel that I need to improve my swimming skill so that I can swim faster and get healthier. From this meeting, I have realize my areas for growth and I have undertaken new challenges. I have also shown perseverance as it was really hard to reach 40 lapses but I continue until I succeeded. I realize that swimming would make myself healthier and for me to be able to commit to my activity.

Swimming

My new CAS activity: Swimming
Here are the learning outcomes that I'm going to achieve:
Increased awareness of my strengths and areas for growth: Swimming activity will increase my awareness of my skill to swim. These pass few years, I have never fully realize on what style of swimming that I’m good at and now, I’m willing to learn new styles and have a healthier body.

Undertaken new challenges: swimming is a new challenge for me. Even though I can swim, but I haven’t got the opportunity to learn other styles of swimming. To learn these new styles, it is a challenge for me.

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities: This activity will show my perseverance by: in swimming practices, we will swim continuously and without commitment and perseverance people would probably quit because of boredom. I will continuously challenge myself and show perseverance in this activity.

Developed new skills: I will develop new skills by learning different styles of swimming. These years, I know only 2 styles but I’m eager to learn more.

29 Jan 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

Today, I’m going to practice on how to use knife correctly. My teacher did a demonstration on how to slice onions to small pieces and this is a new challenge for me. It was very hard and it took me several tries to do it right. It is still not perfect but my teacher suggested to keep on practicing even when he’s not there. After that, we also did some knife skills on fruits such as apples. This is also very hard to do since I’m not used in using knife yet. I still need to practice several times before doing it right.

28 January 2012 (Cooking Lesson)

Today, my teacher and I planned to make fried fish. I’m going to learn how to prepare fish from raw and this is a new challenge for me. It was very hard to prepare the fish and even after that, I have to season the fish with salts and some seasonings. Furthermore, when I fried the fish, the oil starts to jump everywhere and it was hard to flip the fish because of this. Because of this, the fish is overcooked. Next time, I need to be concious of the fire level so that the food won’t be overcooked.

22 Jan 2012 (Cooking lesson)

Today, my teacher want me to cook another simple dish: simple sauteed vegetable with garlic. Preparing the vegetable wasn't hard but cutting the garlic into small pieces took me several time to be able to do it. My teacher first demonstrate it and it looks so easy and fast to do but when I try it, I was scared to use the knife. So he teach me on how to use the knife correctly and safely. This takes most of my time to practice but in actually cooking the dish wasn't hard at all.

21 January 2012 (Cooking lesson)

Today is my first meeting for the cooking lesson activity. I'm really interested in cooking but have never learn it properly before and this is my opportunity to be able to cook correctly and safely. First of all, I study the utensils that I'm going to use for the next 12 meetings. First, I'm introduced to the knife, spatula, frying pan and other basic ingredients for cooking. First of all, I start to cut tofu to a medium sized squares (around 5cm x 5 cm) then start frying them. It was scary since the oil is starting to jump everywhere. It was also hard to flip the tofu since it is so soft.Other than tofu, I also cook some fried eggs since tofu seems so plain. When I tried it out, it was very nice. The tofu is not too salty and the fried egg is also very good. But I realize that the food is too oily thus next time I need to consider how many oil I'm going to use before cooking.

Cooking Lesson

I'm going to start me new CAS activity and it is COOKING LESSON!
Here are the learning outcomes that I'm going to achieve after finishing 12 meetings for this activity

Increase my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth: I learn cooking in Design and Technology class before and have never done any recently. I realize that this might be my weakness but it increases my sensitivity that this is one of the skills that I would love to learn. It will definitely increase my awareness as an individual because as I learn, I will learn new skills and will find my strengths in this area.

Undertaken new challenges: This activity is definitely a challenge for me because as I’ve said, taking cooking lesson is a first time for me and I have never cook anything complicated before.

Showing perseverance and commitment: I will show this learning outcome by attending the class regularly and ask questions about things that I don’t understand. Practicing at home will also be one of the ways to show my commitment to this activity.

Develop new skills: I will definitely develop new skills. With lots of practices, I would learn how to chop, bake, and wash different things. I will learn how to cook properly and safely.

December 1, 2011 (teaching)

Today, two of my friends came along and they are Vanny and Winie. They are the new teachers replacing Kristie and I for the next 12 meetings. Vanny decided to teach grade 3 and 4 replacing me while Winie will teach grade 5, replacing Kristie. Today, the grade 3 and 4 study math specifically on units conversion. I realize there is this one kid who seems to struggle and so, Vanny and I decided that starting next week, he will have a separate exercise so that he could practice multiplication and division first before learning about the other topics. It had been an unforgettable experience for me as I learn for the first time how to teach people. I realize that teaching is not an easy thing to do because as a teacher, I need to plan a strategy so that the knowledge could be delivered effectively. Because I have taught primary year students, it was hard to cooperate with them because most of the times, they refuse to be serious and prefer to play rather than study. This is why, I have to create a program that could teach them as well as delivering it in a fun way. I have learned that what I taught them will help them in later life and I realize this is a very important job.

Swimming activity (Sport)

As I'm done with my teaching activity, I will continue on by doing swimming activity. This activity will be my CAS in sport section. Because it's near the Christmas holiday, I will start this activity on Thursday January 19, 2012. The learning outcomes that I will gain from this activity are: recognizing my areas of strengths and growth, developing new skills, showing perseverance and commitment and undertake new challenges.

November 24, 2011 (teaching)

Today should have been my last meeting but suddenly, my friends, Vanny and Winie, could not join today so I have to still come to Tajur next week to guide them. Vanny and Winie are the new teachers replacing Kristie and I next week. So today, I'm continuing to teach them English by helping them on their homework. Then, learn some new vocabularies about furniture. They seem to have lots of fun studying English compared to math but I realize that they study well if it is followed by games.

November 17, 2011 (teaching)

Today is my second last day on teaching the kids. Today, I'm teaching them English. Many students did not come because it was raining so bad and there was none of the grade 5 students that come here. So, my friend, Kristie, have nothing to do today (as she is in charge of grade 5). In the end, she joined my class and we had a lot of fun teaching English to the grade 3 and 4 students. One students brought a pocket book that consists of English and Mandarin We had a little game before going home and they were very excited on continuing the game next week.