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CAS Final Experience Post

If I had to describe my CAS experience in one word, I would say that it was rewarding. At the beginning, when I heard about CAS and all of the responsibilities and routines that come along with it I felt a little bit overwhelmed and I couldn’t imagine myself incorporating all those things into my everyday life. However, as days and years went by, I started to get more familiar and comfortable with it. It turned out that taking care of my blog not only helped me to plan more thoroughly but also kept me motived throughout the IB DP. Thanks, to CAS creativity I’ve learned many interesting things about religious studies and gained multiple perspectives on everyday life matters. Moreover, it allowed me to broaden my cooking/baking skills, making me a experimenter of plant-based kitchen.  CAS Activity, which at the beginning was not my strongest point, at the end became one of my favourite aspects and helped me to change both my mind and body completely, at the same time making me a stronger, more powerful and most importantly healthier person. Lastly, CAS Service, which began in a preschool for kids with special needs and finished by becoming a volunteer at one of the biggest Foundations (Ronald McDonald Foundation). It not only allowed me to meet new, interesting people, make friends all around the country but also teached me that even little things can make a great change and become a huge help, making other people feel better. My experience in the Foundation was a lesson of both empathy and the ability to adapt to challenging situations and many difficult medical cases. I guess that after two, nearly three years of CAS experiences I am glad that my journey has come to an end because I am satisfied with all the courage it took me to care and remember about my blog. Despite the end of my CAS blog journey, I am looking forward to continuing all the endeavours I have taken up this semester.

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CAS PROJECT - 3

The official day of the event, October 12th, 2018. There are many things I learned by co-organizing the Family feud game show room. In the beginning I would have to admit it was quite chaotic, we (the IB1 organizers) were so focused on decorating the room and preparing the questions, that we didn’t really think of who will have what role during this game. For the first round of students (out of three) it was very loud and quite disorganized, but after this we understood that we have to be more organized and structured. The rounds after that were much better and improved, we thought it would be fun to think of a consequence for the losing team, which was that they had to dance the Rasputin dance that we played on the screen. So in general, I believe that our game room was enjoyable for many younger students, we all go to get to know each other better and had a lot of fun doing it. When it comes to the decorations they also were a huge success and looked very good during the whole event, overall I am very pleased with all of our hard work for this CAS project and our pre-IB students. 

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CAS PROJECT - 2

As another part of my fresher’s day CAS project, me along with my group, created a game show room that was based on the popular well known game show, Family feud. The main concept of this game show is that we present a certain task, for example “Name a specific piece of furniture that might be handmade” and your job is to name as many things as possible, quicker than your opposing team. The way in which I participated in our family feud room is by: creating and helping with choosing questions (some were generated from previous family feud games and some were ones we thought of on our own, this also applies to the answers) When it comes to the answers, we went strictly by the family feud rules, meaning that we put up papers on the board and under them was each answer, if a group got an answer correctly we revealed it from under the paper and the group got a point, though each answer had a different point average depending on the difficulty of the answer. On the day of fresher’s day we decorated the room with balloons, had a graphically designed family feud logo, our presentation was put up on the screen and we set up some jeopardy themed music to set the game show mood. The other girls prepared fake checks and candy as rewards for the winners, in my next post I will describe the actual event of the day and my overall reflection.

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CAS PROJECT - 1

As my CAS project this year I chose to take part in the 2018 fresher’s day. The main assumption of fresher’s day is to welcome the pre-IB students to our community and for the IB1 and pre-IB students to get to know eachother since we are learning in two separate buildings for one year. The pre-IB students have the opportunity to ask the older students for advice and tips, as well as recommendations when it comes to subject choices, organization tips, after school activities. In addition,pre-IB presents their official class name to the students and faculty. During the fresher’s day, me and my group are through organizing a game show room for the younger students, which I will explain in the following posts.

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CAS Signatures

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CAS Learning Outcomes

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CAS Service

Due to the coronavirus epidemic, Ronald McDonald foundation had to close down. To be honest, it is a shame for me because I really enjoy helping the foundation and I take a hudge pleasure from participating in the voluntary service. Due to that fact, I’ve decided to help around at home by making colourings for the young patients, which will later be delivered to the hospital. I guess that even if there are resrtrictions, if we want to help we can always find a way how to do it :)

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CAS Creativity

This time with another family we made a vegan salted caramel tart with shortbread base. I guess it was one of the hardest desserts so far in my career since I had troubles with the vegan shortbread as the consistency was not satisfying and also the chocolate from the recepie was to thick to apply it on the creamy caramel (even after refrigerating). In order to resolve the problem we decided to mix the chocolate with the caramel, which in fact deviated from the recepie but the taste stayed the same :) I guess that you can never fully trust new recepies as you can never be sure of the final outcome (lessons learnt)

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CAS Creativity

Last sunday, me and my mum decided to make stuffed courgette (both vegan and vegeterian option). It was my first time making vegan courgette since I am a newbie in the plant based kitchen, hoverer I like to explore in this field :) The filling was made from millet grain, onion, garlic, pepper, seasoning and mushrooms. The hardest part was the graving as it was difficult not to damage the vegetable, however I managed to do that and the rest was quick and easy. The final outcome of this experiment was definetely positive, thus I will make this recepie again :)

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CAS Activity

As always, I decided to go to the gym after a long and tiring day at school and additional activities. It was a great idea, as it allowed me to fresh up my mind and helped me to boost my confidence level :) I see that with every training I am iproving, becoming stronger and I am slowly beating my goals - this is very motivating for me :-)

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CAS Creativity

This time I was baking Tarta de Santiago - which is a very easy but tasty recepie. The cake has a wet and sticky texture and is made from only eggs, almonds and sugar :-) This was my first time making thi recepie but I think that if I had to do it next time I would reduce the amount of sugar because it came out really sweet and also I would wait a little longer with eating it so the whole cake doesn’t break ;)

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CAS Creativity

Finally, something different than baking :-) Today I made a really quick but yummy lunch - parsley pasta pesto :) The only ingredients you need are fresh parsley, garlic, cashew nuts (can be pini, almond), parmezan cheese and a blender. I also like to fry the nuts on a dry pan to add a little more flavour. If you want you can add saltt and pepper however this will depend on your preferences and the amount of garlic you add :)

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CAS Activity

8:26 and I am done with my training. To be completely honest, I am used to going to the gym at the evening so my morning trainings are sometimes hard because I feel weak due to my sleep deprivation however, today was fine. I guess I have more power to get through the day and upcoming events :)

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CAS Service

Today was one of the hardest days I had during my volunteering service at the Rondal McDonald’s foundation. It was a really sad day for me and i made me reflect on both my life and the life’s of all the abandoned children. I visited a boy called Antek who is 5 months old and was abandoned right after birth due to his neurodegerate disease - he is uncapable of moving, he cannot even focus his sight on one point, he is unable to eat and swallow by himself. I spend 1,5h with him but with every minute I felt even more sad. He is a very sweet boy and he doens’t deserve to be in such state, I was very moved by his situations and deep down felt very sorry about his story and the fact of him being alone. The nurses treat him very well because I’ve spoke to many of them and saw the around him. Also, the doctor came that worked with him since the very beggining and said that there is no or very-little improvement and that she doesn’t know what will happen to him next. Would he go back to the foster home? But if he does, how are they going to cope with his abnormalities if there are many more children to look at. Is he ever going to find a family who will love and care for him? These are the questions I constatntly keep asking myself and I am really worried about little Antek ;(

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CAS Creativity

This is my second time making a vegan cake and the second time I was surprised by both the outcome, preperation procedure and of course the taste! Making vegan cakes is definetly the best way to learn many inteesting and surprising facts about baking and food that we see everyday. This time I’ve made a vegan chocolate tarte.

The bottom was made of hazeulnuts, dates, carob and coconut oil - all mixed together and later squished onto the pan.

The “dough” or filling was the most surpising part because it was only made from two ingredients - aquafaba and melted dark chocolate. When I first looked at the recepie and saw the name “aquafaba” I got a little bit scared and nervous and asked mself a question - what is that and where on earth would I buy something like that?! Well, it turned out that aquafaba is nothing exotic and is just a mix water from chickpeas. Firstly, I couldn’t believe that you could mix the water from chickpeas and something will happen but as you can see on the first picture when I started to mix it started turning into a thick foam. After the aquafaba was done, I mixed it with the melted dark chocolate.

At the end I poured the filling onto the bottom of the tarte and left it for 3h in the fridge to cool down. Since there were no raspberries I spirnkled it with pomegranate fruit to give it a little sweet and soury taste.

I reccomend you doing this cake because it is one of the most delicious one’s I have done so far, it is vegan and healthy but the biggest limitation is the waiting time ;)

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CAS Creativity

Contrary to my baking additction I’ve decided to make lamb meatballs for dinner. I used a recepie from Otolenga book and I can with confidence say that these were one of the most juicy and yummy meatballs I ever made!

I guess I can say that this recepie is healthy in terms of the ingredients used as it had pistachos, mashed onion, garlic, coriander, parsley, salt and pepper (however, you like it) and of course fresh lamb meat. You all mix that together.

In addition to the meatballs I made a sauce from greek yoghurt, lemon peel and pinch of salt.

The recepie is easy to make and I personally recommend it for every meat lover to try :-)

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CAS Creativity

This time I am coming with a book review. During my winer time in Poznań I found this great book store which had a lot of reports by Czarne publishing house. I bought many books, however this one particularlu caught my attention. It is a book about war, the life of homosexuals during Warsaw uprising and the holocaust. It’ main character is Hubert who is from a wealthy family and share’s it’s experiences withe the audience about the relialy of a young gay men during war in Poland. It is based on many iteresting facts and statistics. I’ve learned that something like the Polish Women Police existsted, which I’ve never heard of before - there were many raports of this police in the books. The story is not only limited to the homosexuals but also their families, the reality of people’s lifes during such tough period - their daily struggles, deaths of their relatives, threats of being exported to the concentration camps,threat of the Germans and other occupants. Despite the tough subject of the book it is written in a way that makes it more pleasant to read, it is interesting since the very beggining until the end. The book not only allowed me to broaden my subject on the lives of people during the WWII which has always been my interest but also provided me with new knowledge which I’ve never come across. It was also very nice to read since the main character lived on the opposite side of the road as my school so it was easier for me to imagine what he saw and where he went. I strongly reccomend everyone to read this book as it is one of the best ones I have ever come across.