#lo5

We finished it! Our efforts finally paid off and we were able to finish our promotion’s yearbook. We spent around 50h, if not more, between planning and doing this project as we have been preparing it since September. The most difficult parts were that we had to wait for our class to send us the quotes and organise the content of the actual yearbook. Another challenging aspect of this project was that we had to plan the days where we would take the individual and grupal pictures of our classes, but thanks to Bruno, who helped us take the photos in late February, we managed to finish everything successfully. We had planned to take the photos in the Assembly Hall, however, there was a class practising a drama play and so we couldn’t take them there. In spite of this, we found a free room with a white wall and pretty decent lighting and so we settled there for the individual photos, efficiently solving the problem that came up that day.

A couple of tedious things were to organise the sections, adjusting and justifying the designs while trying to keep it visually appealing and not oversaturated. Although creating the podiums was enjoyable, ordering them and taking care of the font sizes was more complicated. I admit that at the beginning all of us thought that this project would be less complicated and that we would finish the yearbook a lot earlier, but as the people say: good things take time. A couple of things I really valued were that Mireya chose the palette—having in mind our opinions—since finding the palettes is usually one of the steps I find the hardest when I have a design in mind, and that we all cooperated working on the definite version balance the format and visual aspects of the yearbook.

One of the most satisfying aspects of the project was being part of the team that created the yearbook from 0 and watching everything evolve into a creative and memorable album. A couple of things I really enjoyed were designing the podiums with the ‘most likely’ and ‘who’s the most…’ section as we read the answers to the polls María and Rocío created by our peers, who mostly agreed on who was the most funny among other things (of course, some sections are for the sake of fun and they haven't raised any offensive reaction!), and taking the pictures with Bruno and the girls, since everyone had a different pose and it was refreshing to see our peer’s faces smiling without a mask, smiling. For obvious reasons, we only removed their masks for the photos. We also took grupal pictures. We debated whether to take them at the entrance of the school or at the bleachers, but we settled on the former since there was better lighting and there would be less COVID-related concerns.

Personally I believe that I was able to really improve my designing skills on Canva, since it isn’t the platform I usually use, and that I really contributed to the group by taking the lead on certain times in order to keep the rest of us going and working on my free periods on it, although we all were proactive and consistent with the yearbook. The last step is to share the yearbook with our promotion. Working in a group was a great and also challenging experience, and even though we sometimes encountered certain difficulties, we made it work and are sure that our IB classes will love the yearbook as much as we do!

[Week of the 31/03/2021] [Project from September to March]

Last September my peers María Casás, Rocío Plana and Mireya Rojas started planning a yearbook. In our school we don’t have one, so we thought it would be nice to create one for our IB peers. Through the first weeks we brainstormed, we decided which design we would like to do and what to include in it. We came up with some really good ideas and María and Rocío created a couple of surveys for one of the sections where we will put who’s the likeliest to end up being a president, a Nobel winner, etc. The sections are the following: the cover, an index, the pictures and quotes from our peers of the E and F class, the polls I previously described, funny student memes and a couple of pages with other CAS projects from our peers.

The project is still ongoing, but Mireya and I are already working on the design in the platform Canva, and we both think it will end up turning out great! When we return from Christmas holidays we will take the pictures of our peers and finish it. Right now, the yearbook has around 22 pages.

Last Sunday I invited my peers Hans, Álvaro Cameo, Juan and Vega to join me in an activity I had signed up for weeks before that consisted of building and customising wooden toys for children with cognitive disabilities. I received three boxes filled with the material that was needed to create them and found out that there were several QR codes that led to the instructions.

The main task was to paint and decorate the games. We had three sets of the colours white, black, yellow, green, red and blue, and the games we had to customise were the Snakes and Ladders, a Tic-Tac-Toe of dots and crosses and another one of Pac-Man’s and ghosts, and the memory game. I helped Vega finish her Snakes and Ladders game and customised the memory game by myself. In some of the cases I decided to mix colours to get orange, pink and light blue among other ones, which made the result more appealing.

Working together was part of the charm of the activity, but I also thought that decorating and assembling these toys was enriching as I knew that these would end up going to children with cognitive disabilities, whose necessities are sometimes overlooked due to their disabilities even though every kid should be able to have games and entertainment adapted to their needs.

Ever since I built animal shelters last year I wanted to repeat the activity, so when the opportunity came up, I decided to sign up for this distance volunteering that consisted of building bird feeders/houses, since small bird species need all the nourishment they can get, especially in cold weathers. It was tricky, as some of the wooden pieces were uneven and the instructions had been lost in the mail, but my friends and I were able to make the houses in the end!

Along with Vega, Álvaro, Juan, Hans and me, we built 5 bird feeders / houses. We had to get creative as we didn’t have the instructions, but I believe we did a great job with the building. For the construction of these houses we had to sand, glue and assemble all the pieces we had. I was glad that we had more of a pair of hands available because the glue took a long to dry and with the help of the rest of my peers the process of holding the sustainers that connected the roof and the floor. The most challenging thing was to figure out how the pieces matched and had to be assembled. As expected, my fingers got sticky due to the silicone glue and I almost nailed a splinter a couple of times. Despite this, I really enjoyed spending time with this activity knowing that our assembling would be destined to the preservation of nature.

Along with my peers I collaborated with the breast cancer campaign of this year. I was particularly engaged with this service activity because of my close experience with this disease.

My mum had it when I was young. I want to share a couple of things before getting to the activity: breast cancer is tough, not only for those who experience it but also for the people they love the most. When I was young, I didn’t understand why my mum was sick, but I always tried to cheer her up when she appeared from her radio/chemo sessions. When I grew up, I understood how strong she had been and grew proud of what she had overcome. I always find myself worried when she has an appointment with the oncologist. However, she was lucky enough to fight it and recover whereas many other women haven’t recovered from it. This is the main reason why participating in this activity felt so personal.

Us, the second year IB students were in charge of decorating the urns and used pink and white cardboard along with other decorating which we painted. Furthermore, we created the pink ribbons/bracelets, cutting the laces and adding the bracelet beds to tie them the day of the sale. These wristbands are things that we ought to sell in order to raise money for the Spanish Cancer Association. We raised money over three days: October 19, 20 and 21 and I believe we raised over 400€for at least the first 2 days. It was a very rewarding experience since I worked with other people that were engaged with the activity and it is a cause that I really think is crucial to acknowledge.

[Week of the 17/10/2021]

The week before the start of the new term, Juan, Vega, Bruno, Mireya and I participated in another Red Cross campaign at the Carrefour of Las Rozas. We were in the second shift September the 5th (Sunday), from 14:00h to 18:00h. The name of the campaign was “Vuelta al cole solidaria”, and its aim was to collect school supplies in order for children from Spain to have the necessary sources to attend school.

As we were there from 2 to 6, I expected that there would be less people than there actually were. From 16 to 17 was the time where the market was emptier, however, that didn't discourage us and we kept talking to Carrefour clients and informing and convincing them to collaborate with us by buying anything in the nearest section of school material. As we were 5, we switched from hour to hour, one hour standing and persuading people to help, and the other one receiving the supplies and filling out the shopping carts with pencils, notebooks, pens, backpacks, rubbers and many other items.

I particularly enjoyed watching the carts filling up, but I also liked interacting with the families that entered the supermarket and told us that they would gladly help us. One of the most satisfying moments of this activity was when Vega, Juan and I switched places with Bruno and Mireya and a woman we had talked to came with a bag with pens and notebooks and told us that she admired what we were doing and told us “Bless you!”. There were also families whose kids came to hand the material to us and, so we gave them some of the balloons that were in the cart. I was very glad to have been able to see them smile and my heart was full as many of the people who helped kept thanking us for what we were doing by collaborating with the campaign. We were able to fill four shopping carts, which made us feel proud of our efforts.

With the supplies collected, many kids whose situation isn't as fortunate will be able to attend school prepared even if their families have had economical difficulties. At the end of our shift, all five of us went back in and bought more supplies like glue, scissors, pens and rulers. I enjoyed this activity a lot because I was able to work and interact with other people, help the local community and help with a matter of global significance such as education, which are the reasons why I would like to repeat this kind of voluntary work again. The lack of school material is one of the aspects that makes children who come from families without resources not have access to long-term education, and because of this I was very happy to help with my participation in the camping persuading people and with my own contribution!

[Week of the 05/09/2021]

A couple of weeks ago I found out that an organisation called Ecoembes along with other foundations were organising a massive waste collection campaign ‘Libera 1m2’ the 12th of June. I decided to sign up and participate in this initiative spreading the message to my peers. At the end I collected waste along with my friend Juan and another friend from my orchestra, Lucía.

We met at 11.30 am and picked up garbage not far from where I live since it’s mostly countryside and spent a couple of hours filling the bags. As a precaution the foundation had sent us the bags and gloves we used. We filled a bag to the top that weighed around 5-8 kg and cleaned more than a metre square since we moved from the first place to the next collecting plastic bricks, cardboard, big pieces of porcelain and glass and even clothes in poor condition. The things that surprised me the most to see in the countryside were rags, which we found plenty of, and an electrical strip. It wasn’t surprising to see cans but I was aware that the pieces of glass that we found from bottles could be a fire hazard since the countryside is dryer and this may lead to a fire.

It was an enjoyable experience, but I was concerned about the amount of garbage that we found, especially with the glass and cans even though the trash bins were relatively close to the houses that surrounded this part of the countryside. I believe that people should become more aware of the problems that littering produces throughout the year but particularly in summer.

Last 18th of April I had a concert in a place called Parque de las Javerianas, which collides with one of the main streets of Las Rozas. I had known that we were playing there for months and our band met every Wednesday from 19.15 h h to 20.45 h. Not many people, especially if they're not musicians, are aware of how much effort is left behind the scenes. I have been in this ensemble since I was in 5th primary and I know that I have developed many oboe skills in the process including sight reading, rhythmic expression and listening to others, because when you are part of an assembly you must adapt to all cimcurstamces.

We played famous themes such as Rodríguez’s Concierto de Aranjuez and Handel’s The Conquering Hero, soundtracks like The Lord of The Rings or Les Misérables, Yorkshire Ballad, Medley Boleros and even pop songs such as Shake It Off by Taylor Swift and ABBA’s Happy New Year (even though it was past April). Our encore was Pavane in Blue, a sheet we had already played some time ago. The most difficult one to play was Les Misérables, since it was a compilation from the musicals and arrangements from songs which are adapted to human voices are more challenging, there were also some quick or more technically challenging, but it ended up sounding very nicely. Here’s a video of Les Misérables and a link to the rest of the videos:

In past years we would print the programmes, however, the pandemic situation made it impossible to do it and so we switched them into digital format. In the previous concert I overheard my band conductor saying that he had had a few problems when he created the programme because he hadn’t known how to do it and even when he finished it he said that he didn’t like it a lot. I understood his frustration and volunteered to help him to do this programme and to teach him how to do it by himself for the next time.

I showed him how to use Canva, which is a platform where you can create a low level of difficulty. We spent more or less 30 minutes after our orchestra practice, which was tiring since I ended up getting home at 22.00 h, but I was glad to be able to help Toni, my band conductor. He brought his computer and I told him where to look up for images, stickers and other kinds of figures and how to add text (titles, subtitles), change the fonts / colours and even pre-made templates on this website. He attempted to create a couple of programmes and did very well, but he still decided to share my PDF file with the programme I had created at the end. However, he thanked me and even if it might sound cliché I felt very proud, because he always has been the one who taught me and my band mates.