A trip down memory lane

After extended, theory of knowledge, and works in translation essays, who has fingers left to type a CAS reflection?  And thus, an idea I stole from Jessica:  reflection à la video.  Although I did start to lose my voice towards the end, so perhaps that's karmic retribution for my attempt to save my fingers from further hardship.

I may have been shirking my blogging duties, but I think this video does a pretty good job summing up this past summer/autumn/winter and my CAS experience over that time.  In case I said it a bit quickly, the url for my Junior Achievement website is crhsja.wix.com/dechameleon.  If you decide to check it out, you'll get to see the adorable logo I mentioned.  Tempting, no?

Raising the roof

Our shed project for Camp Kier is really coming along.  We've had a half-dozen or so build sessions since I've last written, and the shed itself is nearly finished.  The walls are up, the siding is being put in place, and on Thursday, Kathleen, Liam, and I were tackling the roof.  I'm not someone who is afraid of heights per se, but working on that roof sure was an experience.  There were beams in place; our task was to put on the sheets of wood that would make the roof look like an actual roof, and that task consisted of sitting on top of a half-built, nauseatingly steeply-inclined roof while building the rest.  And not always sitting; to get to the low points of the roof, we had to lie down on our stomachs to hammer in those nails.  It was really exciting, to be honest; while sawing wood and measuring lengths had been a necessary part of a project that we were doing for a good cause, working on that roof felt like an experience in itself.  Once the wood sheets on one side of the roof were in, we stapled on a black, tarp-like sheet, and then we attached plastic corners on either side of the roof to which the siding would connect to create that water-tight effect people look for in a shed.  This process involved me shimmying across the beams of the unfinished half of the roof; on this side there were no wooden sheets at all, just the skeleton of rafters.  I haven't brought my camera since the first day, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures to spice up this wall of text, but hopefully I'll be able to snap a few next session or the session after to display our finished product.  We started shingling the roof last day; all that's left is to finish those and the siding, and our little shed will be complete!

It takes an IB class to build a shed

A little while back, a kids' camp was vandalized:  fires started in the woods; their shed smashed to pieces; ATV tracks left everywhere, that sort of thing.  Our IB coordinator approached our class with this news, and a group of us decided to participate in building a new shed for the camp.  I'm not a carpenter by any stretch of the imagination - the most I've ever done is build a paper towel dispenser in ninth grade industrial arts class - so it is a pretty neat learning experience.  Our first session saw me, Jessica, Mallory, Sawini, Patrick, Cassy, and Dylan building the foundation and floor of the shed, with the help of Mr. Pierlot and our school's industrial arts teacher, of course.  Sawini and I were in charge of cutting all the beams with a power saw, which was pretty neat, and I also had the opportunity to operate a nail gun and swing a hammer.  I also helped put on the sheets of wood that were to be the floor; they were quite a bit heavier than you'd anticipate.  Additionally, I got to use this cool chalk device:  when you pull the string taut and snap it, a perfectly straight chalk line appears on the flooring.  I also chronicled the experience with my camera (although since I was behind the lens I don't feature in any of the photographs), so here's some snapshots of day one of shed building: