CAS blog of L. G.

It's my fourth post about Lithuanian language classes with Aušrinė. I can say it was a long and exhausting, but at the same time exciting and useful journey. This month was the most interesting one of all four as Aušrinė prepared a few tasks based on dictation and even a test! I seem to still have a lot of room for further improvement, but as Aušrinė says, 'practice practice practice'! Truly, it's all about keeping practicing as much as possible to get used to writing according to rules without thinking as well as memorizing different exceptions. Based on the dictations my grammar is pretty good, though some random mistakes are still present. I have little trouble with distinguishing which words to write separately and which merged, also not much misunderstanding with commas, dashes and colons. What seems to really confuse me are exceptions as there's only one way to write them correctly which is memorize by heart. I don't really have time for this right kno...

They look good, am I right?  Last year my sister and I baked doughnuts for the school Pie day and this year we decided to try something new that would arise the temptation to taste test our creation equally as those doughnuts. After looking through several recipes I proposed to bake some cinnamon rolls which were meant to be slightly sweet, full of cinnamon and, of course, fluffy inside. Recipe itself seemed pretty basic, especially for such cooking-obsessed person like me. Everything was great until we popped the rolls into the oven. I'm guessing it was too long of a time for the rolls to bake for around half an hour, but they came out super hard and not fluffy at all. I was extremely disappointed because not only they took almost half a day to make (a few hours for dough to rise were required), they actually looked great as well! It was misleading to make the rolls twice smaller in size than the original recipe called for and expect them to require baking for equal time...

Two of my later-made postcards At this time of the year every charity suddenly remembers the existence of orphans and other life-afflicted people, including the elders. Usually those generous organizations gift toys, clothes and other material things. However, in my opinion it's important to display spiritual attention, this way showing the sincerity of actions. That's why I joined someone's idea to make postcards for retirement home and children's home, especially as it's Christmas time and you can wish to have a warm winter, enjoy life and be happy. I do truly believe that such unexpected attention can make a big influence to other's life. Initially, I made two postcards during IB convention's workshop but it seemed too small of a contribution, so I made two more at home. Of course, I could have made even more but considering the effort and time these four postcards required it's the most I could have done. I tried to make them as "profes...

Half a decade or so ago it was very popular among teenagers to celebrate your birthday by inviting all friends to play bowling. Everyone would get super competitive but at the same time would have a lot of fun. For a long time I had a conviction that bowling is an activity for children's birthday parties or a place for men's after-work meetings; however, I completely changed my mind a few days ago. Couple of friends of mine and I decided to mark the beginning of our Christmas holidays by visiting the world of balls and pins. I'll admit, despite some technical difficulties we had A LOT of fun. We split up into two groups of two and three people. Initially, we had an idea to compete between the groups, but as there was an odd number of us, the smaller group played in much quicker pace and we were left to compete only between our own group members. I played with Regina and Migle, both of whom seemed to have a inborn skill of masterfully throwing the bowling ball, so I t...

I'm probably the most winter-hating person I know. For me, winter associates with constantly being cold at school (even in three layers of clothes on), brown slush on the streets, which forces you to always look for the "clean" spot to step on, dark morning-drives to and dark evening-returns from school, which almost makes you fell like some kind of a nocturnal animal, and many other similar melancholic and depressing things. The only aspect of winter that I do truly enjoy is Christmas. It's the most comforting holiday of all and always involves vast amounts of delicious finger-licking foods. But before eating you have to deserve it, I guess? That was not the main reason I decided to participate in a Christmas run, more like the desire to actually move my body. Also, last year I really enjoyed to run in a cold weather, so this year there were no doubts I'm taking the chance, especially considering that the organizers introduced a new "Fun run" speci...

I was rushing after the event & forgot to return the attributes... Only recently I started to truly appreciate the time of upcoming Christmas. Festive music, sparkling lights, decorated Christmas trees and some kind of lifted mood - it all creates a little happiness deep in my heart. However, there's something else that also adds up to the spirit of Christmas - it's the act of sharing with others and International Christmas Charity Bazaar is the perfect opportunity to share with those in need. It was a second time of me volunteering at this event and this time it was a completely different experience. A year ago I was distributing flyers inviting to visit the event but this year I was assigned to invite people to participate in a lottery. It was a major challenge for me to leave my shyness behind and communicate with people confidently, especially as the majority of them were refusing to even listen till the end what I had to say! After half an hour or so I no...

This year is a special one for Vilnius lyceum IB students because exactly twenty years have passed since IB program was founded in our school. It's something we should be proud of and celebrate together with other IB schools. Luckily, there's an annual event called IB convention, first organized by Kaunas Jesuit gymnasium years ago, which was a perfect opportunity to address pride-worthy anniversary. Our coordinators gathered all IB course a month or even more before the event to start an early organization. At first, it was hard to generate concrete ideas, especially as none of us imagined what the event should look like. It was much easier when people started to concentrate on particular aspects, such as food, CAS activities, speakers, overnight stay and, of course, welcoming, which I eventually joined as well. My task was mainly to organize the smooth proceeding of minor tasks such as present-, decoration-, arrow- and poster-making, as well as to find people willing t...

Three months have passed unnoticeably and it doesn’t even seem that Aušrinė and I had a solid amount of meetings. The IB workload sometimes distorted our plans but we did everything that’s in our hands to have the most high quality lessons. The month of November wasn’t as exciting as previous ones because the lessons became somewhat boring. There was no feeling of excitment neither from me nor from Aušrinė. It became as a duty for us and we agreed to skip a few weeks. It was nice to take a break in the middle of the month and I instantly noticed the difference when we had a lesson once again. Aušrinė actually offered to start working more individually thus complete the tasks alone without working in a group. I enjoyed this way of learning but not because it was easier (it actually was much harder), rather because I clearly identified my weak sides of both spelling and syntax and knew what to work on a bit more. Aušrinė as always was super prepared but even random question didn’t get...