Quote of the Day: “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”- Bruce Wayne (Batman)
Evening:
Last night, we had Intro to Food for Thought. The Food for Thought committee ran this introduction, and split us up into 15 groups of 3. Each group had to make a poster and a 2 minute presentation on whatever topic they gave us, surrounding problems that humans face, and can stop/help. My group – Portia, Keegan and me – did ours on poverty overall. We searched up the definition, how it happens, as well as different facts and statistics that we could find. One of the facts that truly shocked me was when I found out that the richest 65 people in the world have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people, and that the wealthiest 20% in Australia own 70 times more assets as the poorest 20%. It is really unfortunate the sizable gap between rich and poor, and it really upsets me to see this happening to people and children just like me, or even younger.
Today:
For morning class, we had NAPLAN! (I am actually happy about it today since it is our last test EVER – even though it is just replaced by SACs and more VCE testing, but keeping with the POSITIVITY! 😆
We had the 2 maths tests (yay!), the calculator and non-calculator. To be honest, I don’t think I went to well with the calculator test, mainly because I find using a calculator slows me down at times – and also I had a bad calculator that wasn’t responding at times, and wasn’t a scientific. Some of the questions I look back at now and know I got them wrong, but I felt so much more confident in the non-calculator aspect, that I don’t truly mind. I am happy I got to do the tests in comfortable clothing, unlike the peers from my home school that had to do it in their uniform 😝.
For afternoon class, we had another Food for Thought lesson. However, this was different to the intro. It was a more hands-on experience. Our school was divided into 3 groups – the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Only 4 people were rich (they belonged to USA), about 7 were middle class - 2 of them were waiters (from Australia) and of course, the rest were poor (the groups were a variety of different countries like Cambodia, India, Timor and Afghanistan). They set up the classroom with only 2 tables – for the rich and middle class – and set up paper for the ‘poor’ people to eat on. The floor was significantly dirty, but the paper protected any germs transferring onto the food, so it was all fine. We got given tasks we needed to do before we could eat, and depending on which group you were, some were harder than others. The poor weren’t allowed to wear shoes - which I actually liked because as my parents know, I prefer walking barefoot - and we had to complete our tasks barefoot too. The tasks weren’t very hard for our group (the second Cambodia team), so we got them done quickly, and manage to wash our hands and get our drinking water from the ‘well’ (a bucket of clean water in the north courtyard) and in the classroom before most groups. When everyone returned, we watched a few videos about poverty and how the majority of the world live, and then we got our lunch. For the ‘poor’ students, we had very small rations of slightly undercooked white rice, with crushed up bay leaves and another herb that I could identify, but not too sure what its name was. Some students went and ‘begged’ the richer students for food, and they obliged, until the teachers told them they weren’t allowed to do that since they were in different countries.
To recap – this lesson was basically the teachers getting us to do chores like clean out classrooms and clean cars in the name of learning (just kidding, but that did basically happen). In all seriousness, the Food for Thought class gave us a real insight into what the majority of the world lives like, and help us appreciate all that we have, and have had, like proper shelter, food, and clean water.
Thankful Thursday:
Three things I am thankful for are:
Evening:
Last night, we had Intro to Food for Thought. The Food for Thought committee ran this introduction, and split us up into 15 groups of 3. Each group had to make a poster and a 2 minute presentation on whatever topic they gave us, surrounding problems that humans face, and can stop/help. My group – Portia, Keegan and me – did ours on poverty overall. We searched up the definition, how it happens, as well as different facts and statistics that we could find. One of the facts that truly shocked me was when I found out that the richest 65 people in the world have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people, and that the wealthiest 20% in Australia own 70 times more assets as the poorest 20%. It is really unfortunate the sizable gap between rich and poor, and it really upsets me to see this happening to people and children just like me, or even younger.
Today:
For morning class, we had NAPLAN! (I am actually happy about it today since it is our last test EVER – even though it is just replaced by SACs and more VCE testing, but keeping with the POSITIVITY! 😆
We had the 2 maths tests (yay!), the calculator and non-calculator. To be honest, I don’t think I went to well with the calculator test, mainly because I find using a calculator slows me down at times – and also I had a bad calculator that wasn’t responding at times, and wasn’t a scientific. Some of the questions I look back at now and know I got them wrong, but I felt so much more confident in the non-calculator aspect, that I don’t truly mind. I am happy I got to do the tests in comfortable clothing, unlike the peers from my home school that had to do it in their uniform 😝.
For afternoon class, we had another Food for Thought lesson. However, this was different to the intro. It was a more hands-on experience. Our school was divided into 3 groups – the rich, the middle class, and the poor. Only 4 people were rich (they belonged to USA), about 7 were middle class - 2 of them were waiters (from Australia) and of course, the rest were poor (the groups were a variety of different countries like Cambodia, India, Timor and Afghanistan). They set up the classroom with only 2 tables – for the rich and middle class – and set up paper for the ‘poor’ people to eat on. The floor was significantly dirty, but the paper protected any germs transferring onto the food, so it was all fine. We got given tasks we needed to do before we could eat, and depending on which group you were, some were harder than others. The poor weren’t allowed to wear shoes - which I actually liked because as my parents know, I prefer walking barefoot - and we had to complete our tasks barefoot too. The tasks weren’t very hard for our group (the second Cambodia team), so we got them done quickly, and manage to wash our hands and get our drinking water from the ‘well’ (a bucket of clean water in the north courtyard) and in the classroom before most groups. When everyone returned, we watched a few videos about poverty and how the majority of the world live, and then we got our lunch. For the ‘poor’ students, we had very small rations of slightly undercooked white rice, with crushed up bay leaves and another herb that I could identify, but not too sure what its name was. Some students went and ‘begged’ the richer students for food, and they obliged, until the teachers told them they weren’t allowed to do that since they were in different countries.
To recap – this lesson was basically the teachers getting us to do chores like clean out classrooms and clean cars in the name of learning (just kidding, but that did basically happen). In all seriousness, the Food for Thought class gave us a real insight into what the majority of the world lives like, and help us appreciate all that we have, and have had, like proper shelter, food, and clean water.
Thankful Thursday:
Three things I am thankful for are:
- The opportunity I have to be able to use so many of the resources I have at hand, like textbooks, computers, and many other things.
- Being able to live in a community like this, to meet new friends, and learn different skills that will help me define myself, and become a better leader.
- Having an amazing roommate that is supportive and very friendly, and also helps me organise myself a bit more (I need help in that because I am fairly disorganised).
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