Hujambo, Lyceum!

Hey there!

Five days ago, on 19th of September a great event took place in Vilnius Lyceum - Christening of freshmen ( 9th graders and IB1 students).

 

 

The first thing to do was to think of what the theme of this celebration will be. We came up with an idea of "Africa" quite soon, thus it was a great start. Of course, the part of preparing a plan for the celebration wasn't going that easy. Yet, a couple of enthusiastic 12th graders managed to prepare a plan that seemed appropriate for both teachers and other 12th graders.

 

I decided to be a part of a dancing group which had to prepare an interesting dance that would match the theme of "Africa". One really great dancer, Elena, from the 12th grade decided to initiate this activity and gathered a group of 6 girls and 4 boys. Most of these people hadn't tried much of a dancing before, thus it was clear that we would have to try really hard to prepare a nice dance.  

 

Our group started dancing lessons about a week before the event. At first we were meeting only during long breaks, but later we figured that we had to meet after school too. Elena had a very clear idea of what our dance should look like, so our job was only to learn from her. Since it was mostly a house dance, I should say it wasn't very difficult for me as I have been dancing this style for over 5 years now. Yet, Elena's dancing style is quite unique, so it was really interesting for me to learn from her. The dance she created was special for one main reason - we were going to dance with sand. We had to use sand in different ways while dancing. It was a really amazing idea.

 

 

Most of our rehearsals took place some hours before the event. I should say we worked really hard to prepare a great dance. Furthermore, Elena though off not only about the dance but also about our appearance. We looked like true Africans, as you may seen in the picture below.

 

After our performance, people were all screaming and applauding. Despite some mistakes that all of us did, the performance was really incredible and I'm truly happy that I had a chance to dance it.

Sand Dance
 

Furthermore, since the morning part of the celebration was prepared to be the orienteering competition of classes, I decided to contribute by being at one of the stations. In our prepared station freshmen had to show their team work by figuring out how to turn over the blanket while standing on it. It was really funny to watch how people were struggling to do it. Furthermore, we got some bribes (chips, candies, drinks) from smart freshmen to make this task easier (we allowed some of them to step off the blanket). Being in this station, not only we had a lot of fun, but also had a chance to know freshmen. It was an amazing activity.

All in all, as always, there were various opinions about the event. There were some difficulties with the sound and the organizing during the event and I agree that this part should have been done better. Yet, from my perspective, we did quite well, since the main purpose of this celebration was completed - freshmen were shown what the Lyceum community looks like and christened to become a part of this community!





This activity included two aspects of CAS - Creativity and Action.