The service I’ve joined is called Circus Skills with Muhammadiyah, which is an activity where we work with students from the Muhammadiyah school and teach them how to use the circus equipment that we have. Not only is it a fun way for us to work with local students and build relationships, it also allows us to share our school’s facilities and equipment with underprivileged kids.
Currently, we haven’t started working with the kids yet, we are spending time to develop our own circus skills in preparation for the teaching aspect of the service, which will come later. I decided to practice juggling, a skill I’ve always wanted to learn but never really tried. As someone who considers themselves lacking in hand-eye co-ordination, juggling seems to be an unlikely skill for me to master, and I really struggled the first time I tried. However, this week marks the 3rd week of doing this service, and I can gladly say that there has been substantial improvement! In the 3 sessions, I’ve gone from hopelessly tossing a ball from one hand to the other, to confidently juggling 3 balls for short amounts of time. I’m by no means an expert, and there is room for a lot of improvement, but the fact that I can successfully juggle 3 balls defies the theory of “swimmers don’t have hand-eye co-ordination,” which up until now, I had enforced.
Other than the challenge of juggling, I have also tried to use the aerial equipment, including the trapeze, silk, and hoop. I struggled the most with the silk, as it requires immense amounts of upper body and core strength to do the tricks, let alone look graceful while performing them… I admire and applaud the gymnastics girls who so easily perform on the aerial equipment.
This service is probably the most interesting service I’ve done at UWC, not only because it’s engaging for both parties, but also because it’s a challenge for myself to perfect the skills. Usually, in local services, there aren’t any new skills to learn for me, rather, it’s an interaction with whichever organization the service is affiliated with, however in this particular service, both myself and the organization learn and improve, which, to me, makes it much more exciting and interesting.
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