Category: Anshu Bhingradia

French, a totally new language which we were exposed to just 7 months before we planned and initiated this activity. Everyone loves food, especially if it is a French cuisine. While we were studying French, we had this one chapter regarding food! Suddenly, it struck our mind, we thought of initiating an activity which we will use to explore French cuisines.

For the first stage, we had created presentations of French cuisines and during which festivals or occasions is the cuisine consumed. It didn’t go very well because we had to make presentations in French and as we were rookie, we made many grammatical and language errors in the presentation. Further, a month later, we initiated our final stage which was a French Assembly where we prepared French food. However there were a lot of concerns such as:

1: We were only 6 students in French

2: Because of certain restrictions in school food policy

3: It was our first time in cooking French cuisine which is rather different than of Indian Cuisine.

We just had a few days to decide our recipes and find alternatives for each and every ingredient which was restricted in school policy. For example, for making French Toast (I had to cook French Toasts) I had to find alternatives for Eggs because school policy doesn’t allow us to bring or use eggs in food (only in school), as our state also restricts alcoholic drinks me and my classmates had to find alternative for alcoholic substances as well!

During the activity, I realised that I can perform the tasks assigned to me but I cannot lead a team as a whole so I decided to turn one of my Hindi classmate as co-leader and instructed her to assign us tasks which we had to do and ensure it is done in time. My team and I were a mere of 4 members, we had to ensure that every member gives his or her best effort. Overall, the team work was good and we were the first to complete preparation of our French Cuisine!

We managed to find solutions for all the 3 issues. for the first concern, we decided to prepare French cuisine with our class friends who were studying Hindi instead of French. This step had both negatives and positives, positive was that we (French students) were able to helpers in preparing French cuisine, negative happened to be controlling so many students. After Hindi students joined us, We 6 people were accompanied by 33 more members which is a total of 39 students. For the second concern, as I earlier stated we searched for different alternatives which were permitted in school. For the 3rd concern, we tried our best to Prepare a “consumable” and “non toxic” and “non poisonous” French buffet! But our judgements and our choices indeed violated one of goal to some extent which was “not to waste consumables/resources”, We tried our best to waste minimal resources!

Overall, it was a great experience for me, I learned that time management is necessary while cooking, leadership is one of the important element required to become a chef and without team work, nothing is possible.

We went on a trip to Vansda where we had to plant trees. This was our first CAS trip. Jaanki vann was a governmental project, the project was to build a botanical garden and we got the opportunity to work with workers by planting trees. We were a total of 30 students, we were split into 2 groups (15 members in each). Both the groups were assigned different areas where they had to plant trees. In each group further they were assigned different jobs like carrying plants to the location where they had to be planted, digging spaces for the plants, burying the plants, etc. My job was to carry plants to the location where they had to be planted. At first, I was very excited and thought it would be an easy task to carry plants and will be able to complete the task in a handful of minutes, but it was not easy and nor could be done in a handful of minutes. My team then came up with a strategy. Our strategy was:3 to 4 people will bring the all the plants which were to be planted by us. 4 to 5 people started digging and the other people started planting the trees.Then those 3 or 4 people(who carried the plants) will work with others in burying the plants. By this, we didn’t only save the time but also learnt how to work collaboratively. If we would have brought the plants turn by turn (according to the needs) then that would have become hectic and unmanageable because we wouldn’t be doing the activity by planning. The workers there were really friendly, they didn’t even get angry if we mistakenly stepped on a plant or when we disturbed piles of dirt. We had to take decisions carefully because, in some of our decisions, 1 mistake could disturb/ruin the whole work which we did. We often dug holes to collect dirt for burying plants and that resulted in unevenly scaled land, so if we would have dug the holes properly for the plants (to bury them), we could have saved a lot of time and it wouldn’t have resulted in excess amount of unwanted dirt or unevenly scaled land. The social service which we did was connected to a issue of Global significance because all of us use a lot of tree-based resources (which includes newspapers, books, notebooks, textbooks, journals, paper bags(which are not made of recycled paper), wooden crafts, etc.) and that results in a lot of trees being cut down, this social service helped me by not only understand the importance of trees but also helped me by knowing about different types of plants and trees, where they grow, if they grow any fruits or not and much more knowledge. 

It was one of the best treks I have ever done. I have done a lot of treks and participated in many adventurous activities in the past but this trip was totally different. I participated in new activities such as Skiing, Tube ride, etc.

The main aim to visit Naggar was not to enjoy with Friends and click photos, my main aim was to explore the rich culture and background of Naggar. We went to various different places such as Nicholas Roerich art gallery where we explored paintings done by none other than Nicholas Roerich, We even explored his whole house, his room, his house’s interiors and much more.

Before the trip, I had made some promises to myself which were:

1: I will not pollute the beauty of such a historically rich place.

2: I will not violate any of the rules and religious beliefs of the people living nearby.

I indeed had some issues while buying things and carrying them because in my home town, we get plastic bags along with the products bought but in North India’s Himachal Pradesh, the government has kept a ban on giving plastic bags to carry things which indeed troubled a bit to me because I was not used to it but eventually I got used to it. Since then I had promised myself not to carry any plastic bag, it eventually ends up choking sea animals or domestic animals such as Cows, Buffaloes, etc.

I faced quite some issues:

My jacket was not in a good condition so I had to wear wind cheater throughout the trip which really tensed me because wind cheater is not as insulating as a jacket is, I was freezing through half of the trip until I got to know that rooms will be having heaters and luckily I had enough cash to buy myself a new Jacket from a nearby store in Naggar.

Because we were going during the time when temperature are the lowest, I had to make sure that I carry good gloves so that my hands don’t get numb and had to make sure that my shoes were water repellent so that my feet remain protected from the snow and cold flooring all the time.

Overall, the trip was another fun yet knowledgeable trek experience for me, visiting temples, markets and art galleries fulfilled 3 main aspects off my “perfect trek criteria” and the most amazing thing was THE AWESOME YET ALLURING VIEW FROM THE HOTEL. I love photography, in fact I want to make it my career so it was a great experience for me to visit such an awesome place and click photos for my Portfolio.

 

We went for a French competition at ISA (International School of Aamby), Aamby Valley. It was a great experience for me. My job was to create the presentation for our Francophone country which was Belgium. The presentation mainly had to include the famous cuisines and cuisines which originate from Belgium. By making the presentation I improved my vocabulary because we had recently completed the chapter of food, by making the presentation I learnt new grammer, conjugation, vocabulary and sentence structure by writing and reading in French. It was approximately 7 months since we were learning French so I didn’t know how to frame long sentences in French and that was a drawback for us. We had to engage ourselves in the French language because it was a tought subject and it was our first year of French so we had to update ourselves so that we don’t commit any critical mistakes in the Fest which would bring our whole French team down. We were running short on time for the presentation because we were given our country just 1 week before the competition so we had to come up with ideas immediately and execute them as early as possible. At first we had thought that we will decorate our stall as a Belgium Embassy but we couldn’t do that due to lack of resources and at the end we thought of making the stall look as a Restaurant where a quiz will happen, the menu was designed as a sort of question card, after each question announced anyone sitting on the table has to raise his/her hand and answer the question. For designing the stall as a restaurant we wasted a lot of resources, those resources could have been saved if we would have had a concrete idea to decorate the stall. We had a total of 2 to 3 hours to decorate the stall so doing it batchwise was practically impossible so we split ourselves into 4 teams, 1st team was handling the Arts section (Create posters, color flag, etc.), 2nd team was arranging the tables and stall according to a restaurant, 3rd team was decorating the walls of the classroom and 4th team was designing the food menus and searching for music played in Belgian restaurants. By this we learnt how to save time, increase leadership skills and work colloboratively to enhance the outcome which was/can be achieved. After the completition of this Fest, I learnt that my skills are in executing plans which are changed at last moment. From my experience I learnt that one must keep engaging in the French language to improve their language skills, communicating skills and analysing skills.

 

My coach of Skating had been encouraging me and trained me to improve my stamina and strength in Skating. The competition required me to have a lot of strength and stamina for the long race (1 km), Short race (500 m), Time trial (300 m) and Road race (4 km to 5 km). I was slow compared to the average time required for a Time Trial race and short race. I had 3 months to the competition and in the 3 months, I had to prepare a lot. I started preparation by increasing my time for jogging, increased counts of lower body exercises and started doing squats which helped me in maintaining my position while skating. I started my preparation in June as the competition was in September. In  First 2 months it was difficult for me because I wasn’t used to doing much lower body exercises and because of difficulties I had soreness in my Inner thighs and hamstring muscles.

I attended morning Skating camps for extra training and due to that I faced two challenges:

1- Disturbed routine, because my school timing was at 9 in the morning but because of morning camps I had to come to school at 7:30 AM.

2- Muscular pain/soreness, because I had to train myself a lot in less time.

I had to continue my training a till the end of the competition because Skating requires a lot of training and I would have faced a lot of issues in competition if I had left in between because my training would have been disturbed so it would have affected my strength and routine (Skating routine of camps).

I won at the District level and then had to compete players from other cities(Of Gujarat) in State level competition. The state level competition was held in Baroda (Vadodara). State level was just 1 month at the district level and I had first term exams just 3 days after the State level competition. I faced some challenges which are:
1- Disturbed study routine: I had my exams just 3 days after the state level competition.

2- Disturbed routine of training, I couldn’t train myself a lot because it rained a lot in between due to which skating rinks got wet and eventually led to the disturbed routine for skating.

I couldn’t race in State level competition because the races of Junior (U-11 and U-14) started at 3 PM and went on till 9:30 PM and after Juniors race it was turn of Middle aged (U-16) which started at 10 PM and got finished at 12:30 AM and after that no races were done because the rink had to be closed as it was late night. The race for Seniors (U-19) was postponed to 31st October and I couldn’t attend the competition of 31st because I had exams

 

 

 

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I am really fond of trekking. After days of studying, I thought of going for a weekend trek because trekking helps me in reducing the stress of studies. I went to a trek on one of the highest peaks of Maharashtra. It was a night trek to the top of a mountain range called Sahyidris, the mountain which we climbed was called Salher Fort. The treks which I had done before were approximately of 5 to 6 km a day, I had trekked through Jungles and Icy hills but this trek was difficult because the mountain was once a fort, it was too steep to climb straight so we had to take different route which was by going around the mountain to reach the top. I had to climb without taking  I had some difficulties while climbing because once we reached the midway to the mountain, there were vertical stairs which we had to climb and they were too steep and slippery. We stayed in caves overnight. We carried potatoes, Maggi packets, water and Sweet potatoes with us as our meal. We were split into 2 teams, 1 team carried the items for our meals and the other team collected broken tree branches and sticks which we used for a bonfire and cooking our meals. As the mountain was a historically rich place so we had to make sure that we don’t pollute it by throwing things around the cave and temple. I and some of my friends split from the team and made sure that other trekkers didn’t pollute the mountain, we collected the garbage in a garbage bag and then threw the garbage in a garbage container located 3 or 4 km far from the mountain.