Movember

"Movember (a portmanteau word from moustache and "November") is an annual, month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness of men's health issues, such as prostate cancer and other male cancers; and associated charities. The Movember Foundation runs the Movember charity event, housed at Movember.com. The goal of Movember is to 'change the face of men's health.'" 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movember

I found out about this through my brother in law. He heard that we need to do CAS for school, and as he is one of the people helping organise Movember Estonia, then he said that he would see if there is anything that we could help with.

So, I spent two hours in Solaris handing out flyers to people. The flyers had some facts about prostate cancer in general, statistics and how to get tested. I thought that they looked really cool. Our target group was men and women over the age of 30. It was quite hard to guess the age of people, so we just ended up giving them out to everyone. We were also supposed to stop the people and talk to them, rather than just give them the flyer as they passed us. This was really hard to do, for two reasons. Firstly, because everyone seemed to be in a hurry and they didn't really want to stop to chat. Secondly, because I didn't know exactly what to say to them to catch their attention.

There was one old man that left me speechless when I gave him a flyer. I gave it to him and he asked me what it was about, so I told him that we are fighting cancer. Then he sighed and told me that he has had 8 cancer operations. I just didn't know what to say..

We were given a t-shirt to wear, which we got to keep! I also took home one of the flyers as a memory.

Oh! We were also supposed to direct people to the photo booth, where they could take pictures with moustaches. There was this group of boys (about my age) who I was trying to convince to take a picture, and then I said that I could take the picture with them, and that convinced them. The pictures are supposed to be posted onto the Movember Facebook page, so I can't wait to see how it came out!

Belly dance routine!

I'm writing about Monday's belly dance class, because I haven't had a chance to write about it yet.
After we did our warm up, we spent the whole class practising our routine. I think that it was probably one of the slowest classes we've had. It's probably cause I was quite tired and dreading going home, because I knew I had a lot to study. We pretty much just practiced the dance, over and over again. The teacher taught us some new moves and then we practiced those. She says that we are improving and learning the dance faster than she had expected. That's good news!

Belly roll..

Argh!! I'm still having trouble with the belly roll..but I guess I just need to keep practising. Yesterday, I quickly looked for some videos on Youtube to help me learn the technique for the belly roll. There were some really useful ones, but I didn't have enough time to actually practice.
Today's belly dance class was really fun though! Our teacher is very motivating, and she keeps telling us how good we are and how we are doing really well. She also says that it's ok if you can't do certain moves, because everyone learns belly dance at their own rate. I also like her, because she makes a lot of jokes.
We practiced our routine again, which was really fun. I really like the routine and all the moves and I can't wait until I've practiced enough so that I know it by heart. 

ECNADYLLEB

Incase you don't get my incredibly creative title, it's just "bellydance" backwards. Amazing, right?
Monday's belly dance started out very very actively. We spent our warm up, or the first part of it, doing knee-highs and kick-buts. We did it for the whole first song, so about three and a half minutes. It was really fun and brought a smile to my face, it also got my blood pumping and it made me warm (it's pretty cold at the belly dance place).
We spent the rest of the lesson practising our routine. I really enjoyed it, even though at some points I was pretty sure that I was dancing a completely different dance than the rest of the class. I find some of the movements hard to do.. or I find it hard to go from one move to the other. I guess it's all about practice!
Oh! I also have a lot of trouble with the bellyroll, so I need to find some time to practice that. We do it quite a few times in our routine, so it's quite important that I learn how to do it!

Back to serving soup!

I finally found time to go to the soup kitchen again this Sunday. I'm really happy I decided to go, because today the place wasn't crowded with volunteers so everyone actually had something to do.
I was in the kitchen again today, serving soup. However, this time I had to do it all alone (because there weren't that many people). It was a lot easier than I expected and I think I did a pretty good job. At first I was a bit nervous and slow, because I was worried that people had to wait too long, but I got the hang of it very quickly and then I actually enjoyed it very much.
There was a bit of chaos in the soup kitchen today, because quite a few of the homeless people were misbehaving and being disrespectful. We have this rule that the customers aren't actually allowed to come up to the window themselves to ask for soup, they have to be served by the volunteers. Today, some of the customers ignored this rule, and the person who was in charge got a little annoyed.
My cousin also came with me today! She is doing some research for university, and so she asked me if she could tag along sometime when I go to the soup kitchen. She is researching third culture kids, and I told her that coming to the soup kitchen might be a good opportunity to meet some. Sadly, there weren't that many people today, but I hope she had fun.
I remember when I first joined Serve the City, I was convinced that I wanted to become a black-shirt and I would work super hard to achieve that. Now that I think about it, I have no idea how I could ever find any time what so ever to deal with Serve the City black-shirt stuff alongside all my homework and what not… Anyways I'll have to rethink that goal. I think that for now, I'm happy being just a volunteer! 

Bellydance Wednesday!

Yesterday's belly dance class was really really fun! Our warm up was really energetic and we had to move a lot. I liked it cause we did it fast and I didn't have to think about all the movements that I was making - they just came to me naturally. I really enjoy having an energetic warm up because then I'm energised for the rest of the class.
We mainly practiced the routine the whole class. At first it was hard to remember the movements that we had practiced on Monday, but with every time that we went over them I felt that I was getting better and better. The new parts that we learned were really confusing at first, but as we practiced more, I started to get the hang of it.
I really enjoy belly dance and now that we are learning choreography, I think I can really see if and how I am improving. 

Dance Routine, continued

Today was a good belly dance lesson. I asked a lot of questions, and I felt like the teacher's answers really helped me improve my skills. I wasn't the only one asking questions, and other people's questions also helped me a lot. For example there's this one move that I thought I was doing really well, but then when someone asked about it, it turned out that I was doing it completely wrong. I was a bit upset, but still glad that I got to improve and now I know how to do it right.
The teacher was in a good mood today, which also made the lesson more fun! We did our warm up, and practiced different movements and then went on to practice the routine. We didn't get much further along in the song, but we practiced the beginning a lot more. I really like the routine and the song! 

Belly Dance: Routine

Belly dance on Wednesday was super fun again! There is still a lot of people, and everyone is at a different level, but it doesn't really seem to be bothering the teacher.
So, we did our warm up and went over some old movements that we've already practiced before. Then the teacher taught us some new movements, but I can't remember what they were called. It wasn't anything incredibly difficult, but like most movements, it's gonna take a lot of practice to get it down. I am actually very happy though, because I can feel that I'm motivated to practice and I want to get better. I also feel like my self-confidence (when dancing) has increased.

Anyways, the best part of the lesson was the last part..or the second half (I can never keep track of time during belly dance). So we started learning a routine, which was the coolest thing ever!! I really really love the song that we dance to. We only learned like the first 30 seconds of the dance, and kept repeating the steps over and over, but it was super fun. I can't wait to learn the rest of the dance!!
Here's the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D49RH6pWmM0

BELLY DANCE!!

Today's belly dance class was super fun! The teacher was super active, even at the beginning when we were doing our warm up. We had to do "knee-highs" and… the other thing - I don't know what it's called - when you kick your but with your heels. I actually really liked the fact that it was an active class, because I was moving around a lot and I actually got a bit tired. It was a nice refreshment after the long school day.
Now we have some new people in our class, so the teacher has to go over some basic moves that we learned at the very beginning. I actually don't mind, because it's also helping me get better. However, there's a lot of people in the room, so that is a bit annoying sometimes. At least today I could see myself in the mirror. 

Soup Kitchen, Belly Dance & Halloween

Ok, so I've been slacking a bit… I've forgotten to write about three things that I did for CAS. I decided that I would just include them all in this one post and in the future I'll try to avoid this.

So firstly, I went to the soup kitchen on October 27th, which is only like a week ago. This time there were a lot of new faces, and fewer old ones. It was nice to meet new people and I had a new partner in the kitchen this time. The person that I usually serve soup with wasn't here again, and one of the other girls who is usually outside of the kitchen bringing soup to the tables said that she wanted to try serving soup. I was happy that she wanted to join me, because otherwise I would have had to be alone. She was really good at serving the soup (it's not really that hard, but sometimes it takes a while to get the hang of it) and I had fun talking to her.
This time at the soup kitchen the soup arrived half an hour later, so we had to open half an hour later. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing cause it was the end of the month, which means that the soup kitchen is always more crowded.
Oh! I also remembered that when I got to the soup kitchen there was already a line of people outside, and the first person in the line opened the door for me. I thought it was really sweet of him.

Secondly, I went to belly dance on Wednesday. We had A LOT of new people, so the teacher told them to stand in the front, which means that all the older people were in the back. The room was so full that there wasn't really enough room in front of the mirror, so half of the time I couldn't even see myself. It was a little bit annoying, but I still had fun. We were doing mostly technical work again, so it was just practising different moves. I really like belly dance and I'm glad to see that I am making some improvements. Something that is really encouraging is that our teacher tells us quite often that we should never compare ourselves to other people in our belly dance class, because everyone learns belly dance at a very different pace and some moves are easier for some people than others.

Lastly, this Thursday was Halloween. Even though Halloween is an American celebration, the student council in our school organised a little Halloween celebration this year. Being a part of student council, I helped organise the event. Me and this other girl organised the celebrations for the high school, which just meant that we asked people to dress up in costumes and we also made a photo booth and put up decorations in school.


However, I also helped with the little kids' Halloween celebrations. I made a presentation for them about the history of Halloween (which was actually also very interesting for me). Then we also played the mummy game, which meant that the kids had to wrap their friend with toilet paper so that they looked like a mummy. After that the kids also had to learn a dance to the Ghostbusters' song. I didn't teach them the dance, our CAS coordinator did, but I also danced with the kids. The kids were super cute in their costumes and I had a lot of fun helping with the event!