Piano

I am now about 3/4 done with the piano book that I have been using. I have been able to master over 20 pieces, and my teacher and I are very happy with the progress that I have made. I feel that I am a much more technical piano player now, as I have learned new scales and techniques that I did not know before. I also enjoy the piano more and more the better I become at playing it, and it makes me sad that in about one and a half years, I might not have the opportunity to play, as I will be in university!

I find it difficult to squeeze in practice time these past few months, as the IB work load becomes heavier. I have managed to practice at least 2 hours per week, though, and although this is not an ideal amount of time, it is the best I can currently do! As long as I continue to improve, I am happy with the amount of time that I have to play.

I hope to be able to perform next year, as this will give me exposure, and hopefully help me to overcome my fear of performing in front of an audience. I believe that it would be an enjoyable experience, and so I really hope that I will manage to do it!

Operation Smile

About two months ago, an Operation Smile club began at our school, something that I am extremely excited and happy about. The Operation Smile is an organization that raises money to pay for the surgeries of children with cleft palates, and doctors volunteer to operate on these kids. Each surgery costs around 240 dollars, and our newly formed club at ISK aims to raise money for at least one of these surgeries this year. I was inspired when I heard about the work that this organization does to help these kids who are often rejected from their societies, and seeing as I want to be a doctor in the future, I immediately signed up to be a member of the ISK club. However, I did not just want to be a regular member, because I had some ideas that I believed could raise a lot of money for this organization, and I wanted to carry them out. Therefore, I ran for president, and was voted into this position. I was ecstatic about this, and immediately began to plan various fundraisers, the biggest of which will take place on Saturday the 14th of April.

For the past month, I, along with the other members of the Operation Smile club, have been organizing a concert in which the Composers' Club at ISK will perform, and adults who work for Operation Smile Mission in Kenya will talk about the organization. All the profits will go towards paying for the surgeries of the children. The planning for this concert has taken a great deal of effort from many of us, and those of us in particular who want this to be a success have put in 100% of our time and effort. We have had to arrange the venue, order all of the necessary decorations, prepare food and drinks, design tickets and posters, publicize the event around Nairobi, and sell tickets! The members of the Composers' Club have also been meticulously preparing their performances, as they want the event to be as successful as possible. So far, the planning is going very well, and we are getting a lot of interest. The upcoming week will be very stressful, but we hope that we will create a great night next Saturday!

Prom Committee: Organizing the Actual Event

The past three months have been quite stressful for members of the prom committee. Seeing as we needed to raise 10,000 dollars to host prom, there were various fundraisers that required planning, but the problem was that we did not have a lot of time to plan these fundraisers. What ended up happening was that a few of us volunteered to sell drinks and food at almost all of the school functions. Although these were not huge fundraisers, we ended up meeting our goal!
During the past week, we have promoted prom in the most creative ways possible, including throwing over 100 balloons around the school campus, on which was written "Walk Into Wonderland: Prom 2012". I have found that student's are very excited about the upcoming event, and our ways of promoting it have made many eager to come. The prom will be on Friday the 13th of April, and we hope that all of the work that we have put into it will pay off!

M.U.N Conference

From the 13th to the 17th of February, the East African M.U.N conference was held at the United Nations offices here in Kenya. I was representing the Ukraine as a member of the Human Rights committee. In this 5 day conference, I had the opportunity to meet students from schools around East Africa, and we were able to have some very strong debates on various current human rights issues, ranging from chid trafficking to the legalization of drugs.
I enjoyed this conference a lot more than the one I participated in last year. This is because I found the resolutions that we debated to be of a much higher quality, and it was clear that the students who wrote them had taken a great deal of time to research their topic thoroughly. I also had the opportunity to contribute much more than last year, and I believe that I raised some interesting issues that the other participants had a good time discussing and debating. I usually take some time to get over the fear of talking in front of large audiences and sharing my ideas, but I found that the more I did this at the conference, the more comfortable it became, and the more I enjoyed it!
Although I had a lot of fun during this one week and learned a lot from people who were my own age, this is unfortunately the last year that I will be participating in the EA M.U.N. Throughout the six years that I have been a part of this program, I have made friends who have the same interests as me, and have had 5 full weeks of quality debate about various world issues. This has been an experience that I will never forget!