CAS blog of L. G.

It has been a while since the last time I participated in any kind of Olympiad and to be honest, I kind of missed the feeling of competition during and satisfaction after the contests. Luckily, today I got an opportunity to feel the atmosphere of upcoming Česlovo Kudabos Geography Competition held at Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences.  Initially, I had an imagination that this will be a small competition for a few hundred people from my town. However, only later at the University I found out that as much as a thousand people are going to attend it. This really shocked me and brought to the reality of how much work has to be done. Luckily, there were a lot more volunteers than the three of us (the usual - Kamilė, Ignė and I) as I imagined it would be. At first, we had to wait for instructions for a good half an hour or even more and I found it extremely boring to just observe confused teachers trying to figure out what task must be completed. Nevertheless, the time ...

A photo from other practice that I didn't attend The long-waited prom is coming and this means that we, graduate students, have to not only think about the clothes to wear but also learn to dance waltz,  most probably the most classic of all dances, which is sort of a compulsory dance with one of the parents (girls with dads and boys with mothers). I was never confident about my dancing skill even though I attended recreational dances (only for half a year actually...) at fifth grade. Luckily, a few of my classmates, who have much more experience in dancing than I do, organized special classes to learn to dance waltz. I couldn't participate in the first classes as I was away at the time but as soon as I got back I jumped straight into the classes whenever I could. In all, I attended only two classes before the mock exams started which is not that much but I still got to practice my skills. I was nervous that I didn't have a partner before going but it was fine in the ...

I've already lost a count of which time I participated at the "Food bank" but I definitely didn't feel like a newbie anymore. This time I decided not be a leader of the shift and get back to the tasks of an ordinary volunteer. It came out that the 'manager' of my shift was my sister, which made it much more challenging to volunteer. I felt the need to help her at times to distribute the tasks or simply take initiative at completing certain work because one of the volunteers didn't show up and we certainly felt the lack of hands. Surprisingly, this time there were no additional problems with people visiting a supermarket because usually there's always several of those who are not content with the project or anything related to it. Consequently, three hours were pretty smooth and calm but still a little boring. I don't remember when was then last time I volunteered at Friday because I usually chose Saturdays to have more energy and motivation. Howe...

Long days at school require proper lunch to fuel the brain and the body for the most efficiency at classes. My sister and I are vegetarians and this restricts our choices of lunch in the school canteen. The only options are usually some kind of soup or rice with veggies. This kind of food isn't nor nutritious neither delicious, thus we like to take meals from home. We are used to taking meals prepared by our mom but this usually means that after school you have to eat the same meal or make something on your own, which is not an option for us with all the school work. Taking all of this into account I figured to try out making quick meal for the two of us to take to school. Each day of the previous week I made something to eat for the next day and my sister was the one evaluating the taste and the meal itself. As we take meals in special food thermoses it was impossible to take proper photos and to be honest, I always forgot to do that. The only time I remembered in the morning was...

After a great experience at the guided yoga class  three months ago, I wanted to try out yoga at home once again. Finally, this month I found some time to dedicate for finishing a 10-day yoga beginner tour of the app called "Daily yoga". It consisted of 10 videos (around 20-minute long each) with not only visual representation of the movements but with a voiceover as well, which was very convenient as usually I did unfamiliar poses and needed a little extra help with understanding which leg/arm goes where. Also, the voice with a relaxing sound background helped to clear my mind and breath correctly. Even though I enjoyed most of my practices, which I did after school, I definitely noticed the lack of muscle strength and stretching abilities (14 days of stretching last month didn't make a noticeable difference). Thus, I often couldn't do certain poses properly which surprisingly only made me more motivated to try harder the next day. Of course, 10 days is not enou...

Already in the primary school children are introduced to the art of origami. As much as I remember from my own childhood, it's usually a boat and a hat the most two common figures to fold. They are already pretty easy to make for a child so I decided to try something more challenging in this sphere. I chose to practice a few animals: a frog,  a dinosaur and a shark. Initially, I anticipated to make many more figures but after spending more than half an hour folding these three I understood that the process is not as quick and smooth as I thought it would be.  I started with a from - the easiest one, as I naively thought before attempting it. At first It was pretty straightforward with simple folds in half or across the piece of paper. However, after three or four folds it became much more complicated, especially as my printing paper that I used became extremely thick and it was hard to make any fold with it at this point. It appeared that the figure of the frog is very smal...

Having to spend most of my time by the desk I can really feel the lack of exercise in my daily life. Now, when the exams are so close I feel deprived of physical activities even more. However, it’s not an excuse to choose the elevator instead of the stairs or take a bus instead of walking. This month was supposed to be dedicated  to walking 10000 steps a day, but it appeared to be much more difficult than I expected. I assumed that I usually was walking most of that amount but I was surprised to acknowledge that I barely could get to half of that. Therefore, it was much more of a challenge to walk 10000 steps than I initially anticipated. First of all, I found it hard to keep up with the fixed number of steps. I always managed to get 5000 steps but to double that I had to make a significant effort. Sometimes it even required a few (or more) circles around my neighborhood before coming home form school. Before this moth I believed that I enjoy walking but it wasn’t that fun after...