Author: bhati88159@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

LO1: Unfortunately, I have been sick for a few of the climbing sessions, so I have not improved as much as I would like in regards to the longer walls. I do feel much more comfortable with the heights, which preplanning routes helped a great deal with. However, I got a lot of opportunities to practice dinoing on boulders, which is something I am now much more confident in. This experience also helped me get more comfortable with the social side of rock climbing since I can now belay confidently I feel more prepared to climb in other groups.

LO2: Speed climbing was a new challenge for me, and while I did not get as much practice as I would have liked, I still found a few ways to improve. Throughout this process, I got much better at selecting and memorizing a route before going for a full attempt on a difficult wall, which made speed climbing much easier since I did not have to look for the next handhold. Getting more confident dinoing and falling as a result of bouldering was also a big help in improving.

LO1:This summer I had the opportunity to go climbing with Yosemite Mountaineering School and learn the fundamentals of outdoor rock climbing. I had been climbing for fun and exercise at a climbing gym nearby for around 6 months and found it to be a really engaging form of exercise. It was also a good way of pushing myself to face my fear of heights. At Yosemite, I learned how to use a belay device and set up anchors. It took some time for me to adjust to being belayed in this system. Previously I had used either auto-belay or top-rope. This system required a lot more trust, and it felt like a lot more could go wrong. This initially slowed me down going up, as I was spending more time thinking about falling than climbing.

LO7: I also got the chance to learn how to use anchors, and I was surprised to find that their environmental impact was a consideration. After time the scratching left by the anchoring parts damages the rock face and leaves previous anchor points unusable. This affected the anchors we used, as they were designed to cause minimal damage and leave the climbing routes usable for future generations.

LO1-The practices for Copenhagen have built on my previous experiences acting. I have had to utilize basic skills for projection and performance, but line memorization for this play has been difficult. There is a lot of back and forth between characters, which makes the lines very difficult to cram alone. However, as we run it through in practice it is easier to focus on learning the tone and delivery of the cues as opposed to having to go off just the last sentence. I also have not acted in a while, however, observing my fellow cast members and engaging with the seemingly strange activities our director does at the beginning of rehearsals has helped me get back into the right mindset.

LO3+LO5: We started this process by identifying the activities we wanted to do as a group and found common connections in scuba diving, kayaking, and hiking. We then made a list of places we could travel to and do these activities (Cebu, Tioman, and Borneo). Here working as a group was a major benefit, as we could divide into smaller groups to investigate each place fully. This allowed us to eliminate Borneo and Cebu quickly, as we could not find service to do in Borneo or Cebu. Since we divided it up, we could be confident that we had investigated each place fully.

LO6: When planning our trip it was important for us to make sure our activities and hotel were environmentally sustainable. Many of our locations rely on the tourism generated by their oceans, which are at greater and greater risk thanks to pollution. In order to help with this, we want to work with the Juara Turtle project in Tioman to help conserve the dwindling turtle population. We understand that it is a difficult issue to contribute to in such a small time frame, but we all have the potential to make a small scale difference, which when added up can lead to something greater.

LO7:On our first day of project week, we went camping. Most of us had never gone before, however; we were able to combine our various half-remembered outdoor skills to assemble the tents and a fire. We also had to be very conscious of our environmental impact during camping. The fire had to be fully extinguished and our trash kept in bags, which we didn’t have. We ended up using our bigger trash as containers, which made it easier to carry back and avoid a negative environmental impact.

LO2:On day three we went Kayaking, another activity I had never done before. It was a new challenge for most of us, but we went straight into it with a sea kayak. It started a little slow, fortunately, I was the only one in a solo kayak so I did not have the initial coordination issues that slowed down my group. I switched to a double kayak on the way back and I was surprised how easy it was to start swerving.

LO6: While Kayaking we saw firsthand the pollution caused by some major hotels a few hours away from our own. This made me consider the environmental impact of unsustainable tourism. I also saw this during our beach clean-up, where we cleaned mostly plastic off the beach near the mangroves. While I felt like we had an impact, it seems like the problem needs a change at the source of waste disposal methods than simply dealing with the symptoms.