SQUASH 4

I played an hour of squash today with Angel and Nathan. Nathan taught me a lot about serving and tactics which was very helpful. A  bit of squash was a nice way to end the day but I felt super drained on the way home.

What I thought about today was the sheer persistence athletes have when they are particularly passionate about the sport they're playing; and it made me think that it's probably because they enjoy it. Of course there could be other factors, but I'd like to think it's not just because they can or have to when they fight for 1st place or to be a world champion.

If I find what I like and am passionate about in life then I guess it's a life worth living.

And also to try new things out. I've never played squash before and probably would have never tried it if I didn't require CAS hours. But thankfully because of that reason, I have found a sport that I do enjoy playing and learn new things and widen my knowledge from the people I play with.

TUTORING ISABELLA

Isabella is 5 years old and is a pupil at Ysgol Mair primary school, which was actually the primary school that I also went to when I was little. The tasks that I did with her were homework given to her from school, school competition and small activities that I came up with that I thought would help her. Isabella's homework mainly consisted of spellings and reading a short stories out of a book that had levels. With the spellings we went through them by saying them out loud, maybe giving an example of the word in a sentence, covering it up and asking her to write the word down. When it came to the reading, I let her do all the reading that she could, only helping her out with the longer words and guiding on how to pronounce certain words. Working with Isabella for a number of weeks allowed me to see her progress. The books she was given became a level higher and it became she became quicker at the spellings. It was great to see her excel and we also made a strong bond. She became accustomed to seeing me every week and I was sad to say that I wasn't going to help her anymore when my exams were looming and I had to focus my time on my work. With the competition, she had to design a logo showing peace. We discussed many ideas and what peace meant and it turns out all her hard work payed off because she won! The small activities that I made up were simply improvising with what I had at the time. For example, we were working on the dining table and there were a bowl of fruit. I got her to name them and tell me the colour and from there I added other fruits into our game that weren't in the bowl but she didn't name them because I had to tell her! All in all it was a great experience and I enjoyed it very much. It taught me how to interact with children, how they need extra attention and patience. While Isabella was learning from me, I too was learning from her.  

 

SQUASH/RACKETBALL 3

Today I played with Angel again and Katrin. We played squash first but in the second hour we swapped to racket ball because a teacher came in to check on us and he told us that racket ball would be an easier game to start with so we gave it a try.

Yet again the ball was lost. I think now when we play there is a fear about who's going to hit the ball to hard that it doesn't come back down.

Me and Katrin had rallies too! And to make it a more interesting as well as educational, we counted our scores in different languages. We tried counting in spanish, french and welsh. For next time Angel came up with the idea of teaching Katrin how to count in our native language 'tagalog'.

While on breaks I had quite the conversation with Katrin. It was one of those 'tokkie' moments. I found out that Katrin also had the same interest as me about dreams and then the conversation turn to religion and nationalities. It was nice to talk to someone who liked the same things as you. You get to exchange ideas and share opinions and to it's good to get a different perspective too.

Here is a very long video of us playing.

SQUASH 2

Today I played squashed with my friends Angel and Alex. We only played for thirty minutes because of time tables not correlating. Alex taught us how to hit the ball properly. From backhand to forehand which helped a lot. I will be more prepared for tomorrow!
The ball was yet again lost however it was not me this time. Hope Linda won't mind.
All this exercise should be making me healthier. It will help with breathing and with toning of muscles. I was right about my arm aching. Even though it does I'll still play tomorrow; I actually enjoy playing squash.
There was an improvement with the rally. Alex and I managed to hit it eleven times in a row! For tomorrow I will set a target of 12, not too high just to be on the safe side.

SQUASH 1

First time playing!

Today was my first time playing squash at the college and to be honest it wasn't as easy as how they made it look in the movies. But to be less of a pessimist, I was playing with my awesome friend Angel :D
We had a good laugh at each other when we missed the ball and to make it even more difficult, the ball hardly bounced. And just to put it out there, we had no idea how to play squash properly! So what we did instead was just to have a rally, the highest consecutive hits was... 5. Nonetheless it was good exercise and i know for sure my right arm will be aching tomorrow.
I think I might go on the internet and learn how to play the game properly, which is what I should have done before playing today. I guess what I've learnt is to do background research before doing something new so that you're not completely clueless. 
Advice to self, don't hit the ball to hard or the ball might not come back down = 50p out from pocket.

NETBALL TRYOUTS

Before I started I thought that we were going to play a normal netball game, we did none of the sort. We were doing basic training like running in a straight line and running from end of the court to the other. It really made me realise how unfit I was because I was tired only after doing a dew runs and my legs began to feel like jelly! This is probably due to absolutely no exercise during the summer holidays. The only highlight of the tryout was playing with my friend Angel. When we had to work as a pair but didn't quite understood the coach at first; we were just laughing at each other because we just looked silly clueless. It was one of those moment where you find everything hilarious that you could wet yourself. I'm not sure if I would go again considering the experience but also going around Britain for matches would mean loosing a lot of lesson time. I just wanted to play netball like in my P.E lessons back in high school. I feel like I would just be in people's way in a real game. However it was a good insight into netball but just wasn't for me. I will find other ways to exercise for CAS and for me.

Who owns the FISH? Einstein's Logic Question CREATIVITY

In our groups, we had to figure out who out of the five people owned the fish. They were all of different nationalities, all had a pet, favourite type of cigar to smoke, favourite drink and all lived in a separate house but their houses where together. You had to make a table or download one to save time and use the clues given to find out who the owner of the fish is. 
I thought this quiz was extremely mentally straining but at the same time it was very intriguing. It was one of those things that if you didn't find out the answer it would drive you insane! It was a fun exercise but I was rather reserved in my group and tended to just agree now and then and occasionally give my own opinion and answers; so I will try to be more outgoing but in my defense it was only the second day of college!
First hour done, 149 to go \m/

If you haven't already tried it I would definitely give it a go. Here's a link of where you can find it:

http://www.mathsisfun.com/logicpuzzle.html

MURDER MYSTERY

This was another activity we did for our second induction day. Everyone was given a slip of paper that they weren't allowed to show anyone. The purpose of the task was to communicate what information we had to figure out who the murderer was. There was a dead man in an alley way and two cases for his death was that he was being blackmailed or because he had an affair. It was interesting to see how to to find an answer. Some people went up and actually acted out the part and in the end we came up with an answer. We got some things wrong but got figured out the murderer in the end.

During this activity I was more reserved. I stayed quiet and spoke very briefly. I could make it a target to be a bit more outgoing.