Brithday project two

On 25th February, it was Sooa's birthday. Since we had a week holiday, me and Haruka planed her birthday party.

Plan: 02 22 2013 from 12 o'clock in front of the studio/metro

• Me making a bracelet for her as a secret present.
• Haruka booking the photo studio 
• Both buying the one piece for her.
• announcing to the people who Sooa is especially close to.

So on Thursday, which is a day before the event, we went to the mall close to kievskaya, and bought a dress that sooa is wearing in the picture. It took about two hours to decide the one piece for her. She requested us the bright, simple and not too sexy one, and I think we could find a good one.

What went well:

• Sooa was so happy about it
• We all enjoyed photo session.
• The lights and stuffs were quite good as professional.
• we bought some snacks and water before it begins and it was a great idea since there weren't any food with us except them.

Even better if

• I could bring a professional camera. since we thought that there was a camera rental service, no one brought a good camera...
• we had more clothes and stuffs decorates the room.
• we could choose more convenient place to go

Even though there were some troubles, we had so much fun though taking photos and pretending as a model. Thanks to haruka who booked and found the place and to everyone who came in!
I was happy that I could provide that kind of service for someone precious and I was glad to see people's enjoying face including me! I hope it made our relationship even closer than before.

Photography

This week, I worked as a photographer and took many photos. There are about 15 photographies, I'm going to show you only some of them which I like the most. Since it's snowing so hard recently, I mostly took MOSCOW WINTER, so.. yes. Hope you enjoy!(left picture is the original and right is edited)

• So this is the first one. Basically, it's just a tree, but it looks retro in left picture. I also put some tilt-shift effect, so that the tree is emphasized. We can see many windows in the back ground though, since they are all square and there are both horizontal and vertical lines, we can only focus on the main object which is tree and which mostly have horizontal lines. The point I think I failed is, there are some objects that there is no need to be taken such as some tree branches and light. I also think that I should have put tilt-shift effect on another green object on the left side 

 

• Here is another one of the same Moscow winter, but with the dark image. At the same time I feel it's so beautiful, I wish I could back to summer holidays with shiny sun and white cloud. Plus it sometimes make me feel like it will never end so I sometimes feel Moscow winter as a dark image, so here it is.

• Another picture of the beauty of Russia. It was taken by me in the school though, I was devised the angle. If you take it from the same height as your eye sight it will look like just a Russian tree with snow but with this angle, I think it can express how strong it stands. I also like the point I made it white and black so that background apartment with typical Russian apartment's color will be less visible. By putting effect of the tilt-shift, the audience's attention straight goes to the tree.

 

• So it's gothe last picture you see today. This is in the morning,about 8:30 before nk that this picture is so beautiful as that I don't really need to edit. But at least I tried to make it more beautiful. I made sure the main object is the two trees so that the light in the back ground looks like a small house with light way too cute. But actually I feel like I should have focused on different main.　I just prefer the style that there is only one main object.

So I think I showed all my favorite pictures and I hope you do like it all :) In this session, I think I've met some learning outcomes such as;

• Increase awareness of my strengths and areas for growth

　by taking lots of photos in Moscow

• Developed new skill

 by looking for the filters and effects that suit the original photo

Birthday project!

　Today, it was my precious friend's birthday. I prepare some stuffs for her with Momoko.　The some stuffs are mini-surprise-party at Momoko's house, original cake and a message card. I mostly worked for the message card and making the cake she designed. It was actually first time for me to try something like pic-collage and it was so fun to make! First of all we chose some pictures and decorated them, then asked Japanese friends to write for her. My favorite picture is the one playing volleyball. That was the other way around at the first time. I flipped to left since it fits more in the card! I was amazed that it doesn't look like I flipped and look even better than before! I also like the point I put lines around every photos and letters. By doing that, they look more 3D and stylistic...I think.

So here is a cake we made. The base is gateau au chocolat(chocolate cake) and above that there are cookie house and plate with massages. Since we wanted to celebrate friends who have just passed their entry exam so we put three messages. The cookie house is just like what I made in previous session, but I changed recipe for cookie so that it was more delicious but easier to break. It took us about 2 hours (or more!) to stick their parts up though, it looks like pretty in this photo. And it tasted good as well! The base cake was delicious too. We gave some to our parents and friends and everyone who are close to us and they all said it was so good. So I believe what they said! For me, it was first time to write a message on cookies as well. My hand vibrated hard and it took a long time to write only two or three words. For the point we couldn't write perfect, we used a small stick to edit them. I souldn't forget how we suffered sticking them together. Since the cookie house is kind of heavy, we first made the cake freezing and sticked them with cream. It was quite nice idea to stick them with cream because it matches to the  gateau au chocolat really much! As we expected, the collaboration of them was amazingly tasty.

When we asked to our birthday girl to open the cake( it was covered by silver bowl so that no one couldn't check what's inside) she looked confused and when she finally opened it she screamed and thanked us so much. We were so happy that she didn't even notice that it was her birthday party and we do hope best wishes for her.

I believe I met several outcomes for CAS project. One is definitely, collaborating work with others and planned activity, me and Momoko spend so much time together to think and plan about it. One is developing new skill, I never made original cake and a message card. I think it was so creative for both of making and it also collaborates with my CAS which is cooking and photography. By the way the five photo( out of eight) we chose were taken by me.   

Next time, I hope I can involve more people and have a bigger event so that I can think more, prepare more which help me to grow more! Thanks for reading :)

EIKEN finished!

So last week, my student had the English examination for Japanese called "Eiken". Although the grade she challenged was the first one, I think it was a bit challenging for her since basically it's for twelve/thirteen kids. Here is a website for that in case you are interested.
http://stepeiken.org/


On Tuesday,I have marked her results and with my marking, she got about a half of them. In writing, she correctly marked according to what I taught in the lessons, but in listening, I see her confusedness. her result is just about 50 percent, so I am really not sure whether she can get a diploma or not.

From now on, she is trying to get the next grade which is the forth one, and which is more difficult. I can't manage to teach her until the next exam though, I will do my best with next two months or less than that. In my plan, I am going to focus on listening, writing, grammar and vocabulary. ... Sounds like everything. well, I think her problem is on reading, since Eiken only focuses on reading and listening. However language is not only reading and listening. So I think at the first step, if she can read and write words, she can produce and understand speech/text. I'll be trying to put some conversations in English only because in my experience I found it so difficult to speak only in English though it's so normal to communicate with other people.As the first lesson after the examination, in first 30 minutes, I give a book about American family who has just moved to japan to her and read it out with me. The reason I put this exercise is  there are many useful words that she doesn't know.  After that we did exercise of forth grade, some examples and explained.

I do really hope that my tutor time will somehow help her in the future. Thanks for reading :)!