I did pilates at least once a week with my mom and my instructor Ana during the first activity season. Because of a lot of tests I had to take in and out of school, I was extremely nervous and always found myself slouching, which I wanted to fix. Pilates seemingly sounds like a stretching exercise, but I realized it requires way more strength than I expected. At times, especially when we were doing core exercises, I struggled to follow the moves and wanted to give up. However, I knew that the struggle I have will help me strengthen my body so I tried my best to do what I can. I think this positivity I had towards Pilates helped me improve the movements as well as my posture bit by bit as time went by. I am excited to continue working out.
String ensemble 2019-2020 season 4 final reflection
During lockdown, we recorded ourselves playing our own part&instrument but could not rehearse together and
our concert that was supposed to be in esplanade hall was cancelled. But I tried to practice the cello regularly, especially focusing on improving basic skills which I did not have time for when I had to spend a lot of time going to school and coming back home before the lockdown. Even though everything has changed and was uncertain, I think I found ways to make most out of the given situation and I think it is the most important lesson I learned during the lockdown that I need to accept the situation and plan how to deal with the changes. Also, by doing the string ensemble, I learned how to play my own instrument while also hearing other sounds. This was initially hard for me as I play a lot of solo songs or pieces by myself, but I think I got used to hearing other’s sound through this experience.
Yoga with Tampines MINDS seaon 3 interim reflection
Obviously, when we came back from our Chinese New Year holiday, Covid-19 situation got worse and we could not invite our partners to school anymore. This was a big change which I did not like at all. But since we all understood that health is more important than anything, I think we should find ways to keep in touch with our service partners. for the first few weeks in season 3, we had a huge conference where all the services talked about ways to continue service during covid crisis. And we also had discussions within our service on how to support our partners. I think we were not as motivated at that time as we knew that yoga activity won’t be able to be held online and that means we need to find something else to do through video calls which did not seemed so plausible. But we still worked together to come up with ideas like sending letters to them with pretty decorations which I think was a very sweet idea. I again realised the importance of adapting ourselves to the given situation which I think we could do as a group. I hope covid cases will decrease for us to continue our yoga sessions.
Dance showcase end of season 2(final) reflection
Until the Chinese New Year holiday, we mainly focused on learning the dances that we are going to perform. All of us had to learn the choreography of the song “friends like me” and we divided into two groups where my group learned the jazz-style choreo and the other group learned contemporary dance. As we did not have enough time, we had to learn the dance pretty quickly and had to recall all the moves we learned before the following week during the rehearsal. I sadly forgot most of the moves we learned before CNY after I came back from the holiday, which made me worry a lot. I did not want to be a burden to my group, so I practiced really hard at home. Also, people in my dances helped me a lot and as we practiced as a group, I could memorise the dance quite well. Something challenging was that we were missing few people including one of our leaders that could not come to school due to corona virus. We had to learn formation but it was quite hard to learn it with few people missing as we also had to consider their positions. However, dance leaders uploaded diagram showing our formation on group chat and we could easily figure out formations. We started putting a lot of extra efforts and time 2 weeks before the dance showcase. We practiced during the weekends and after school. Sometimes, as group members were free at different dates and they were all busy so it was hard to come up with the slot where everyone was free. I also had to study for the tests and hoped we could practice after my test to be honest but I could actually managed to do as much work as I would have done if I did not have weekend rehearsals and through this experience, I learned that managing my time is really hard and that doing it well could enable me to do activities I like which will give me positive energy that will keep me motivated and bring some happiness into my life:)
Yoga with Tampines MINDS end of season2 reflection
Most of our service partners that visit us to do yoga are people with intellectual disabilities. I initially thought that doing yog could be hard for some of our clients butI now know that our service is important to clients because it not only provides with them a mental and physical benefit but the partnership and interaction with us which guide them on how to interact with others and easily integrate into society. This service also give them an opportunity to go against the stigmas and stereotypes associated with intellectual disabilities. Majority of people treat people with intellectual disabilities differently without even noticing. This makes those with intellectual disabilities isolate themselves from social groups/ society. It is important for them to realise that there is an opportunity for them to take roles in our society and to learn how to behave when interacting with people. By taking roles as a instructor that teaches yoga to our partner, we could learn how to communicate with people with intellectual disabilities and sometimes had difficulties understanding their words and gesture. Especially my partner did not even try to listen to me at first and she kept saying she wanted to go to the restroom. I did not know what to do and it was hard to communicate with her. After manny trials and errors of my attempt to communicate, I realised that every single partners has different level of yoga skills and communication skills that I shouldn’t treat all of them the same as help/support they need are all different. It was also an important learning for me as when I first started the service, I had some worries such as “what if I cannot understand what our partner is saying in the middle of the yoga sessions?” However, I learnt how to persuade them to stay and as I tried my best to do so, they started accepting my request.
Culturama Italy interim reflection
We started practicing the dance at the start of September. We practiced every Wednesday during lunch and had many last minute extra rehearsals during weekends and after school. Overall, there wasn’t any difficulty for me as a dancer to learn the choreography since dance leaders were always prepared to teach us the dance and led the rehearsal. However, it was sometimes hard to work efficiently as a whole group when some people were absent or were not focusing. Our dance was highly collaborative:It was couple dance and we had circles and bridge to form in the middle of the dance within few seconds. Thus, we decided to dedicate more time during weekends to fix particular bits of our dance that we were not so satisfied with. During rehearsal, I shared many ideas such as what kinds of makeup to wear and how to make a bridge formation more quickly. I always arrived earliest in the rehearsals and helped others with dances. I think I showed contribution and effort and can’t wait to perform!