Two weeks 13.4-27.4

Plan meeting at café Majurska 19.4  20.5 hours of service, 17 h of Plan
- Planning events of the upcoming year

Plan art exhibition and money collection 25.4 

An exhibition was put up to present the artworks of various Plan volunteers and people from the local art school. The artworks were all portraits of women and children that Plan had helped in the past. Although I hadn’t participated in the making of these artworks, I felt proud about them; we hung them onto the walls of our town theatre where all by passers could see them. They were all really beautiful, colorful and surely represented Plan perfectly, and attracted the attention of people towards our organization. Hopefully we will get more volunteers as a result of this exhibition. In a fun way, our group of volunteers got to engage globally important issues and raise awareness of problems such as Kamalari-enslavement of women in Nepal and children in bad conditions.

After the initiation ceremony of the exhibition we moved to shopping centre Galleria to raise money for Plan. Me and my friend Suvi walked around the area and gave candy to passers by in the name of Plan, and Lappeenranta’s Plan representative Christina Nenonen erected a Plan stand on the hallway of the shopping centre. Since we have been walking around the town and raising money for many times now, it is starting to feel natural to me. It is becoming easier and easier to just walk up to some stranger and talk for a minute about Plan or just about their day. My skill of confronting other people and being social have improved notably, and I believe this skill is of essence also in my IB-studies.

Next two weeks 16.3-30.3

Japan. End of course! 15 hours of creativity

During this course I learned a lot of Japanese culture. For example: the most interesting aspects for me were the Japanese manners and traditions, and I learned to understand other cultures better. It was challenging to to learn even simple words of the language and I believe I did my best.The course was by no means compulsory, and although sometimes my motivation to go to the lessons (as they were always the last lessons of the day) was minimal, I always went there because I wanted to show commitment.

Next two weeks 2.3-16.3

Japan 

Plan   

- Girl Rising –movie
- Poem and improvisation workshop

Next two weeks 16.2-2.3

Japan 16.2
- Writing with the traditional Japanese method

I have definitely developed some new skills and I’ve realized that my learning has happened unusually fast! Today we got to practice writing some words in Japanese. We got to use the traditional method of writing; ink and a brush. The brush was surprisingly hard to handle, and the letters didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, but despite this I learned how to write my name.

On the next lesson we got to write our names and words that we wanted to learn to write. I chose to write the word ‘demon’ because it’s closely related to my favorite TV-show Supernatural, and Kizuku was a bit amused of my choice. I had improved from the last time, and I think it went pretty well at the end of the day. Kizuku praised my technique even though I felt that I was still a bit clumsy with the brush, at least compared to the Japanese who have been practicing all their lives.

Japan 19.2
- Making origamis

Today Kizuku brought us official origami papers in all colors of the rainbow, and we got to try out some of the easiest origamis. First we all folded cranes (the birds) with the demonstration of the teacher. It was hard to fold the paper so that all the sides were even, but I started to get the idea. We also got to make origami bats, but they didn't turn out so well for me.