Looney Uni

This is a short time lapse of me going for a unicycle ride around Lunenburg, unfortunately the motion made the pictures blurry, but you can get the general idea.

Cirque de Mertens

Most of the action component of my CAS hours will be working on what I call my "circus skills". These include juggling, unicycling, and stilt walking. I'm constantly practicing and trying to learn new tricks, occasionally involving two of these activities at the same time. The great thing about an activity like juggling is that there are always improvements that can be made and new things to learn. Once you can juggle three balls, you can start learning tricks, clubs, or add a fourth ball.

 

ACCIB

For these past months I have been working with a group of fellow IB students from Park View planning the annual Atlantic Coast Conference celebrating the IB (ACCIB).  This conference was an opportunity for students from across Atlantic Canada in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 to meet with other students and discuss the IB program.
This will probably be the biggest time commitment of all my CAS activities. Our first meeting was before the end of grade 10, and our grand finale was this past weekend. All the planning and scurrying around ended with over 300 students arriving at Park View for two days of fun and excitement. And learning. Some of that too.
My role, together with Simon, was to sell the conference to students. We spoke in front of grade 10 and 11 classes at Park View, gave presentations to grade 9 students at Bayview, Hebbville, Bluenose Academy, and Chester, and spent a day in Halifax talking to grade 10 students at some of the HRM IB schools. Without a doubt this was the job that allowed us to have the most fun, but was also important because we were counting on drawing more HRM students this year.
The amount of work the group of organizers put into the event was definitely worth it, for us it was great to see those many months of planning come together. Hopefully the people attending found it just as worthwhile.

Amnesty @ U2

This event is from a couple months ago now, when U2 was playing a concert at Magnetic Hill, NB. Only a few days before the concert I got a message from the Regional Amnesty International Coordinator asking if I would be interested in volunteering at the concert. So my father, brother, and I made the long drive to New Brunswick in order to be there. And it rained and rained and rained. And rained. And it turns out collecting signatures on paper petitions is very difficult in the rain, but we slaved on through the day in the many hours leading up to the concert. With 80 000 fans on the grounds there was certainly no shortage of people to talk to. The night wound up with us standing five metres away from Bono in the most spectacular show I'm likely ever going to see.

I've been involved with Amnesty for a number of year's now, since biking across Canada as a fundraiser. All three of my years at Park View I have held small Write for Rights events at the school, asking people to sign letters and postcards to be mailed around the world in support of Amnesty's work. Amnesty is a very youth friendly organization, they make it easy to become involved, and this is why I have done so and will continue to do so. There's a lot of news out there that media outlets don't cover, a lot that they don't cover and should. By being involved with Amnesty I add my voice to the voices of millions of other people to speak for what we believe is right.

The Beginning of CAS

This is it, the first post on my blog recording my CAS activities for these final two years of high school.  CAS is one of the requirements for getting your IB Diploma when you graduate.  This involves approximately 150 hours of creative, active, or service activities.

• "Creativity: arts, and other experiences that involves creative thinking.
• Action: physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle, complementing academic work elsewhere in the Diploma Program
• Service: an unpaid and voluntary exchange that has a learning benefit for the student."