Marius Čegys -
During 6-11 of July TAFISA international games happened in Siauliai. Basically, it was delegations from countries showing off their national sports. Suprisingly, Lithuania also has a national sport – Ritinis. Anyway, they require a huge number of volunteers, so they basically took anyone who was willing to help. This type of major sports event, requiring volunteers, happens almost every year. I chose to be a guide for foreign delegations and later on I understood what a great choice it was. If you, dear reader, ever participate in such a event, always ask to work with foreigners or journalists. Those volunteers travel, get to know interesting people, have fun, while other mostly do chores. I and my classmate were assigned to Dutch delegation of 15 people which were representing canal jumping (Fierljeppen). We were lucky to get that particular delegation because they were very laid-back and active. If we stopped at any place for more than 5 min., they immediately started climbing on anything that was possible to climb on. Their chill attitude helped us a lot, because where-and-when-to‘s changed every half an hour due to terrible work of the organisers. When Dutch heard that our expenses were not paid by TAFISA, they immediately decided to pay for everything we ate or drank. During the day we took them around the city to eat, to Kursenai to show their sport and to Arena to do the paperwork. When the official part was done (~8-9PM), they always wanted to party and see the more-fun-part-of-Siauliai, so we came back later and later every night (first night we came back at 1AM, last night... well, we didn‘t exactly came back). Next morning we had to be back up at 8‘o clock to take them to breakfast. Even though it was quite exhausting, we were very happy during that time and Dutch were very pleased with our work. Those were 5 days that will stay in my memory forever (or until I get Alzheimer‘s). We got to know a lot about Dutch culture and we saw their reactions to Lithuanian culture. We became more responsible and confident, due to lots of daily decisions, that had to be made quickly. We met interesting people and new experience. We laughed, talked and done incredibly crazy things. We got 30 CAS hours and a boost to our Personal Statements. I guess I know what you‘ll be doing next summer.
Origami against cancer, 2012 February 4
Greta Kaluinaitė -
There is an old Japanese tradition, that a person that folds a 1000 paper cranes will be granted a wish, such as long life or recovery from illness. This legend of senbazuru was once again brought to life by “Nedelsk!” – a Lithuanian nonprofit organization, dedicated to raising breast cancer awareness. They organized a competition called “A school of thousand cranes”, in which schools from all over the country had to make a lot of origami paper cranes. On February 4th, world Cancer day, the students had to deliver the cranes to their District Hospital’s Oncology department. The school which had made the most cranes would receive a prize – “Thousand cranes school” name and one thousand candies. Our school enthusiastically participated, but for us it was not about winning.
Making paper cranes brought us all together and made a casual school day special. Students from different grades were all folding paper cranes. Those who knew the art of origami helped and taught others. Everyone, even our teachers were busy making little pink cranes. We had a fun and meaningful afternoon.
I believe that this project brought a whole new understanding of hope to us. Although we did not meet the cancer patients directly, we showed our empathy and respect in a different way. By showing compassion we made a positive difference in our community. The only problem we encountered was the shortage of pink paper. The activity was so indulging, that we used all of the sent paper in two short periods.
We all had a lot of fun participating and I believe that we will do it again next year.
An afternoon spent actively, 2012 February 1
Morta Naujokaitė, Simona Penkauskaitė -
Since October is a health strengthening month in Lithuania, there are many projects and activities related to this. In one of them some of IB1 students actively took part. It was the competition “The Healthiest Person in Siauliai 2011“, which was organized all around the city. This is an annual competition, whose main idea is to find the healthiest people in Siauliai and encourage all the community to be physically active. In our school it took place on 18th October. Eight girls from our class participated in this project and checked their physical abilities in different exercises. For example, we had to show our balance skills standing on one foot and trying to hold as long as possible. Also we had to do knee-bends, press-up, push-up and other exercises, to check our stamina and flexibility. We were given short time – 60 seconds, and had to repeat the exercises as many times as we can. Actually, this all was not about the winning, we participated in order to check our abilities and know ourselves better. We found out our weaknesses and now know what we should improve. Even though these exercises checked the physical state of a person, it also shows his mental abilities. For example, those who failed in balancing, probably have difficulties with concentration. The participation in this project helped us to develop our physical skills as well as know better ourselves as personalities. Furthermore, not only did we experience a lot during the competition, but we felt the consequences for a couple of days after it. We were not used to such amount of physical activity before, so the muscles of our legs got a kind of „shock“which continued for some time. Extremely difficult for us was to sit down and stand up, go upstairs and even walk faster. In fact, even such experience was great, because all participants had to go through this. So we shared our pain together and managed to make fun of it. As few months have already passed by this competition still stays in our memories as a active, fun way of knowing ourselves better, facing our difficulties and strengths.
Teatime
Teatime is a biweekly event which gathers the IB community of Didzdvaris gymnasium. Each of the meetings has its own purpose and the topic of discussion. Although current IB students are the ones who attend the meetings, teachers, people of administration and future IB students are willing to join the discussions. Teatime allows the students to reflect on the events in the past (such as volunteering and taking part in exchange projects) and to generate new ideas for the future (such as organizing IB meets or starting alumni organization).
Both of the IB classes in Didzdvaris took part in a flashmob event in commemoration of World AIDS Day. Students of Didzdvaris Gymnasium went outside the school building and began whistling and making other noises in order to draw people’s attention to the problem of AIDS. This was the part of what people in schools, universities and other institutions were doing all around Lithuania at that particular moment.
International Day for Tolerance, 2011 November 16
The community of Didzdvaris organized a couple of events for the International Day for Tolerance. Each of the classes in the school elected their most tolerant classmates and the most tolerant teachers were awarded as well. The day was marked by the awards ceremony and by the opening of the “Alley of tolerance”, which included many small paper ships, all of which had phrases about what tolerance means for the students on them. The events once again reminded for the IB students and the whole community of the school what it means to be tolerant and open-minded.
Food Bank, 2011 November 18
It is becoming a tradition for IB students to take part in the events associated with the organization “Food bank” (,,Maisto bankas”). This November IB1 students participated in an initiative to collect food and donate it to the Youth Day Centre in Siauliai. Students were located in a big shopping centre in which they introduced customers to the initiative and explained them how to donate. Terrific amount of rice, pasta, oatmeals, sugar, etc. has been collected in a period of only six hours. The event has ended with all of the participants feeling happy and positively charged for such events in the future.
Marius Čegys -
On the 2nd of October an event „Save the chestnuts“ took place in an avenue next to Didzdvaris gymnasium. Almost all of IB1 went to this voluntary event. Purpose of this event was to clean this avenue to make it look even more beautiful. We have been working for 2 hours and picked up most of the leaves in Chestnut avenue. We felt great about ourselves, not only because we used our time wisely and worked in collaboration with other people in order to clean our environment. We also had a lot of fun. This job did not took long because during it we laughed, talked and took a lot of funny pictures. This was a great example of how any event can be fun, the only thing that matters – to be with the right people.
Nevertheless, we did a pretty good job and organizers were very grateful for our participation. They even mentioned us in an interview for an article. Before you asked - yes, somebody wrote about us in an actual article for a newspaper. Yes, we do feel like superstars! Anyway, I truly believe that this event showed us what CAS is all about – helping others, class bonding and having a great time while doing it.
Save the Chestnuts, 2011 October 2
Students of both of the IB classes were invited to participate in the event called “Save the chestnuts”. The initiative was intended to make the Kastonu aleja (a pathway next to the school) look more attractive. Around 40 students from the whole Didzdvaris IB community gathered at the place on a sunny Sunday morning to rake the leaves and sweep the pathway. After three hours of work the whole place was looking much more aesthetic. Dozens of plastic bags of raked leaves were taken away. Almost every student of IB1 came to do the work making it the first time for the class to meet in an informal non-school environment.
Freedom for a Bicycle, 2011 September 17
It has become a tradition that Didzdvaris IB students participate in an event “Freedom for a bicycle”. The event has been initiated to demonstrate that people in Siauliai are still willing to ride bicycles. Thus, around 900 participants gathered to show their attachment to a bicycle and so proved that Siauliai can still be called the capital of bicycles of Lithuania. This was also one of the first events where the students of IB1 class gathered to do social activities – it showed that new students are willing to take part in such events and did a great start of two years of CAS.
About the blog.
Hi everybody,
we are newly gathered IB1 class in Didzdvaris gymnasium, Siauliai, Lithuania. Yes, IB1, which means, that the most of us are motivated, amibitious, dedicated to studying and developing our characters and knowledge. That is one thing. Another thing is that as part of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IB DP) we are all obliged to do CAS.
Before going on, I will briefly clarify some points with which you might be unfamiliar with.
What is IB DP?
IB DP is an international programme designed to educate students in many different countries. It is not only about state-of-the-art academic programme. It is also about critical thinking, balance, risk-taking and 7 more qualities that each IB student needs to have. Unlike students in Lithuanian national educational programme, IB students most often take 7 classes: 3 HLs (higher level), 3 SLs (standard level) and life-changing Theory of Knowledge (ToK) course. Unlike students in Lithuanian national educational programme, IB students are most often taught in English and the vast majority prepares to matriculate at foreign colleges at universities. Unlike students in Lithuanian national educational programme, IB students are in a way proud to be students the way they are (am I right?). Besides all theses things, we are also required to do CAS.
More about IB: on IB website and DG IB website.
What is CAS?
Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) is one of the core components if the IB programme. Each IB students is required to do 150 hours of CAS in two years. It is one of the requirements for those who are pretending to the IB diploma. For those not familiar with the IB, it might remind some kind of community service or social work.
More about CAS: on IB website.
The reason why we have started this blog is that CAS involves lots of different activities. They range from organizing basketball tournament to tutoring younger students. Some of these activities may be interesting for the outsiders - those who are interested in either community service or IB DP or Didzdvaris gymnasium. This is why we are here.
I hope you will enjoy this blog.
Paulius, IB1
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