#eoca

Our project “Amboró Analogue Forestry” has been shortlisted for an award of €30,000 in the “Forests” category of this year’s awards. 

Please vote for us at: http://www.outdoorconservation.eu/project-voting-category.cfm?catid=1

You can help us secure €30,000 for our work in Amboró National Park - vote for our project Amboró Analogue Forestry in this year’s EOCA awards:

Sorta bad quality, super bad handwriting.

EOCA study guide for my APUSH buddies! Feel free to print, share, whatever.

The European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA) awards grants to projects in 3 categories each year.  Vote for your favorite project in the categories of Nature, Outdoor and Alpine.  Projects vary from habitat conservation animals such as tigers and red pandas marine litter cleanup in Europe.  

Reflection

In conclusion this activity has now come to an end and i will now evaluate my participation and this CAS activity in general.

Personal Role

This CAS activity was a activity to perform in the evening of creative arts performance. As i had experienced last year the thrill of performing on stage, i had asked a fellow friend and a instrument player, Bandi to partake in this activity with me. 

For this activity i played one of the two main roles in terms of guitar playing. Bandi and i had split the activity and the main roles of the guitars into two parts, both of us sharing everything equally, from the main riff to the rhythm chords to the solo. 

Because of that the pressure of half the guitar parts in the song was up to me. I did possess previous experience in playing the guitar, as i had been playing for 3-4 years beforehand, but this was the first time that i was playing on stage in front of a audience. 

I however play the guitar in a highly controversial way, without a pick and that limited my ability to play certain parts of the song. I believe that there is where Bandi came useful and took the parts i played badly. While i played parts that i could play well, making up for each others weaknesses and fully utilising our strengths. 

The guitars were very important as they were the guiding rhythm and beat for the singer, in our case Altan. However during the final performance i may have messed up, but it still sounded good.

Overview of the project

This activity is a performance, by me Bandi and Altan. We are performing a song in the Evening of creative arts, a annual school event at ISU. The song is called Hotel California by the Eagles. We are playing the metal version, as the solo sounds better than other versions and we are mixing it up. We took the intro to Hotel California from the Hell freezes over version that the Eagles performed. This intro was long and impressive and the metal version came after that intro.

Initially, Bandi and i had argued about the choice of the song. After extensive considering and arguing and questionnaires served around some classes, we had finally decided to play hotel california. 

This activity was actually i think in my opinion, one of the harder ones. It required a lot of commitment, as we were no good with only a little bit of practice. We almost practiced 15 - 20 times together as a group but individually i practiced almost 4 times a week. 

I wanted it to be good however in the end the pressure got to me and i had performed poorly. There was also another main problem with members, as initially we thought we would make a real band with a live bassist and drummer. However all of those parts ended up turning into a backing track while only me and bandi played live.

Conclusions

One day before the actual event. Bandi and I thought it would be a good idea to have a final group practice. We called Altan and had practiced for an hour after school in the music room. However as we had finished up and was putting away our instruments, i had asked bandi to bring my guitar out with him if he could. He agreed and as he was doing so, HE DROPPED MY GIBSON! (A gibson is a brand that is very expensive and famous) This blunder had broken of a tuning peg of the head thus making one string completely useless.

However i was lucky as there was another group that was performing after us and i asked if i could use their electric guitar which they agreed to. I played my part on a completely different guitar on my first live experience. Thus i believe that affected my ability in playing the song, thus resulting in a somewhat questionable performance.

Another thing to note is that before performing, me and bandi had spent like 5 minutes rearranging the wires, a long time for people waiting. Which Ms.Sarah, our supervisor showed her disappointment in by telling us that was one of our blunders.

Learning outcome conditions

Increase our awareness of our own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and Initiated activities

Worked and collaborated with others

Showed perseverance

Engaged with issue of global importance

Considered ethical implications

Developed new skills

For this activity, i believe that i achieved more learning outcome conditions than i should have, saying that this was in my opinion a very good CAS activity. 

I achieved all of the learning outcomes with the exception of two, which i believe is obvious. I did not engage this activity with issues of global importance and i did not consider ethical implications. Just performing a song does not engage one with global importance, well our performance for at least did not. 

We also did not take into consideration the possibility of how this song could have affected the audience. It may have offended some as this song talks about addictions, California and hotels. For people that despise hotels and California exist.