Update and upcoming plans

For the past 4 weeks, I hadn’t been working much on my project because it had been raining, therefore I didn’t need to water the mangroves myself. Something I have been thinking about for the past few weeks about my project has been the event we will be hosting next trimester (starting 12th grade for me). When we last met with Ernst, we had a general plan of the event, and I have been considering who will be our target audience or who we want to be part of the event, because that will affect the rest of our plans. Felipe and I have discussed and we believe teenagers around our age might be the best fit considering it would be an overnight event at my family’s hotel and we wouldn’t want to try to figure that out with a bunch of little kids. 

Something else I had worked on regarding activity in the past few weeks has been my surfing, as usual, trying to improve every day. I actually competed in the SunBum Crown in Avellanas a few weekends ago, and it was an amazing experience. The waves were epic that day, and there were enough girls signed up for them to run semifinals, in which I won my semis heat and I was so stoked because it was my first heat win in my surfing career. It motivated me to surf even better during the final because not only did I win my semi, but it was my home break and that always sparks a special feeling and a little bit of pressure to win at home. I was against my friend Coral who has competed for years nationally and internationally, so she has a lot of experience and it was going to be tough. The tide was a little low for my final and the waves weren’t as great anymore, so it was getting a little tricky. I didn’t surf my best, I was stressed, but I did what I could and still ended up with a second place finish! To be honest, it was totally unexpected to finish in second place because I felt so insecure about my surfing skills during that heat, that I was expecting to get a lower position. At the end of the day, I was super stoked to do so well in this competition and I learned a lot and gained experience, which is priceless and motivates me to keep improving and competing more often. 

Another reason why I took a break from my project is because we went on a class trip to Atlanta, Georgia, USA! We had a busy week packed with incredible activities and I am so grateful for the opportunity to experience it all. I learnt a lot during that trip about business and art and overall it was such a cool way to learn about the things we learn in class but applied in the real world. Some of the activities we did were: watched a baseball game, went to the High Museum of Art, toured a private art collection, did a silk screen printing workshop, went to CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, went to Coca Cola, TM Capital investment bank, Okabashi flip flop factory, and finally went to civil rights and coke museum. One of the presentations that stood out to me the most was the sustainability at Coca Cola. I was impressed by the efforts of the company to help the environment and I felt like it connected to my CAS project because they are also trying to give back to the community and the planet. 

This week during CAS class since it doesn’t make sense to start planning the event right now because there is still way too much time left, I decided to help out one of my classmates, Lionel, and his hydroponics CAS project. Although the next step of my project is to email Ernst and update him on the project, it is still slightly on standby which has given me the opportunity to focus on other aspects of my life such as surfing and also helping others. I helped Lionel create a poster for his stand this Saturday during a school dog show event. His project is a hydroponics garden and he is also trying to help the environment, which is why I thought this collaboration would be meaningful. I helped him with the art part of it and actually making the poster. Since he is growing spinach, others gave us the idea to draw Popeye eating spinach so I did that on the bottom right corner. At the top, I drew his logo (which will change once he is completed working with Dylan on the graphic design, but that was it for now) and then underneath I wrote his story of how he began the project and what is means to him and his objectives. 

During break, I have planned to go on a trip to Mexico with my parents for about a week. For the rest of the time, I should be here. I am considering going to Atlanta for one week to carry out my Business HL IA on one of the businesses we visited but either way I should be here the majority of break to have time to work on the project. This is when I plan to take the next steps in the planning process of the event, and talking with my dad on the details for hosting it here, contacting the people I need, and starting to create the marketing in order to get people interested in the event. This is when I will be in contact with Ernst more frequently. Felipe will probably be gone all of vacation traveling but we can contact each other via email or WhatsApp. I feel like I have a solid plan to move forward so I am not stressing out too much about it and I am going to put a lot of effort into the last 3 weeks of school so I can do my best and get as much done so then I can focus on my project during break! 

Learning outcomes: Plan & Initiate, Commitment and Perseverance, Work collaboratively, strengths and areas for growth

Learner profiles: Balanced, Knowledgeable, Reflective, Thinker, Risk-taker