Winter/Snow Day Reflection

Snow day took place on the 8th of February. Some things went well and some didn't. I was responsible for the obstacle course alongside with Stefan and Shaun. Until lunch we had classes of different sizes attempting our obstacle course and their times were recorded and the winners announced. They enjoyed it and that meant that our aim was met. During lunch students tried the course several other times for fun and because they wanted to improve their times. Then we repaired the course and after lunchtime we had a large amount of students at the spot and coordinating them was extremely difficult. Eventually it became impossible to coordinate everyone and we decided to conduct a relay race. It was okay until there was an injury and students were sent to classes. The main flaw was in the planning. We could not anticipate all of the possible difficulties that we would face and unfortunately not much help was offered with the planning, so really, it was an event, which was completely organised by year 13.  At times we had to improvise, but improvisation does not always work. Also, the lead time (inbetween time) between events was not taken into account, students did not come to events on time because they had to change and if we could redo the winter day, this would be where we would concentrate our attention. However I consider this a fairly good attempt. We conducted the Snow day, we entertained the school and showed the students several interesting winter sport activities, such as hockey, rugby in snow, football in snow, snow painting and several otheres. We came up with creative ideas together, such as providing hot chocolate. We worked as a team and this is what made the day go relatively well. I have gained a huge amount of experience and I understood that it is extremely hard to make everything go perfect when conducting such an event.

Winter Activity Day Project

The date for the winter activity day has been finalised. It will take place on the 8th of February. Year 12 Students will be running the indoor activities and the year 13 students will be running the outdoor activities. Year 10 will be taken to Bitsevsky Park. I will be involved with an obstacle course which was built in the volleyball area. The snow was very deep and we have dug paths and hills. Students from lower year groups will attempt to run a lap and their times will be recorded. This project has taken several weeks of preparation and was something new to me, as before I have never planned a project in a team. I hope to see our work prove succesful. Our aim is to entertain the entire school and to show them that there exists variety when it comes to winter activities. Basically, our aim is to entertain and our gain from the project is, to learn how to successfully run a planned event whilst working in a team.

Winter Activity Day

After finishing the Mock exams some students from year 13, namely Vinit, Stefan, Shaun, Gregory and Mark have decided to make the Winter activity day possible. Stefan has created a plan which was submitted to our CAS coordinator Mr.Gray. It has been decided that this event will take place allegedly on the 8th of February. We decided that because of a lack of "workforce" it would be smart to delegate some of the tasks to the year 12 students, as they are quite a large group and we hope that they will be able to creatively come up with a few ideas for inside activities, where as the year 13 students will be running activities outside. Outside will take place the following activities: Obstacle course on the volleyball field, fotball in deep snow, snow painting/sculpture building and perhaps hockey. Inside will be held quizes and other winter related activities. Perhaps the year 10/11 students will be taken out for a hike in Bitsevsky park. I am personally taking an active part in building the obstacle course. The entire even will help me try something new, as I have never before planned a project myself. By following the plan I will try to execute it with the help of my classmates and I hope our main aim to entertain the younger kids will successfully be fulfilled. We will be working at preparing everything and I will update the blog when I feel that a fair bit of progress has been made.

School Gym

Every two or three days I go to the school gym. I have read a lot about proteins and nutrition and have understood that bench press exercises alone without protein are useless. Therefore I have devised a plan to train different muscle groups every day, which is more efficient and will not require me consuming any protein. My aim is to now follow the plan and gain 2-3 kilos of muscle until march with the help
of ordinary food.

Weather Club

Since October we have resembled taking readings for the production of the end of year graph. The amount of people participating has fallen and it turns out that there are 3-4 pairs left that go out once or twice every break time and take reading in the cold. At the moment our main flaw is that the reading cannot be taken during weekends, hence every monday the readings are inaccurate, but perhaps we could be using readings of a weather forecast website in order to fill in the gaps. Our aim will be to maintain consistency and try to compare data with previous years in order to at least attempt to make judgements about the issue of global warming.

Fuel Filter

So, on the past long weekend my driver and me have bought and changed the fuel filter. It was spoilt because of the bad quality diesel sold on Russian petrol pumps. Last week the temperature fell below zero and this resulted in a condensate forming in the fuel tank. Water reached the fuel filter and the car was displaying an error continuously on the computer screen. The challenge was to locate and understand which one of the two filters was affected. It could have been the one under the hood or the one which is situated at the exit of the fuel tank. Obviously, as the fuel tank was under the car it would be quite difficult to change the fuel filter there, as we have not got such equpment, which could lift a 2.7 tonne car to a height of 2 metres. So we knew that the system was interconnected but the fuel filter at the exit of the tank is much stronger and  universal and rarely needs replacing and therefore we hoped that be replacing the one under the hood the error on the screen would disappear. Under the hood it was situated under the second fuel pump, which extremely difficult to unscre. We had to borrow an electric scew driver from the electricians to do it, as by ordinary human hands and a spanner it was impossible to do. We changed the filter, which is quite small in size( I expected it to be bigger) and th error disappeared. Again, I have enriched my knowledge of automobile mechanics. Our future plan is to monitor the condition of the car and if something breaks try to fix it without the help of official Toyota workshops, which by the way do not always do the job and just leave the old filter but reset the computer with a special program. The old fuel filter is displayed above. ( a clean one for a landcruiser is supposed to be grey)

Reparing again..

This year in july my fathers car turned three years old and the warranty finished. We travelled to Tver' in summer and a small stone hit the windscreen and formed a crack. Untill october the insurance company was finding a place where we could repair our car and they told us to go to an unofficial Toyota workshop, claiming that it is reliable. After we got our car repaired thei we noticed that thee new winscreen allowed wind to pass through on the top. On day it rained and the water went thriugh, down the "torpedo" and floded the comfort blocks of the car. This resulted in the wipers turning on randomle, headlights not turning off and other electronic issues.Then my driver and I went to the Toyota official workshop and asked how much the repair would cost and they said approximately 92 thousand roubles for three blocks of comfort. We decided that they were lying to us because water could not simply kill the entire brains of the computer, so we decided to fix it ourselves:) We dismantled the entire floor and part under the hood and tried to dry the computers. We used fans. It was an extremely difficult task as the car had lots of protection against ordinary people trying to repair it themselves. We spent about 1.5 hours to dismantle it and then we put the fans on. We managed to expose the steering an put some oil on it so that it works better. The main difficulty was to lovate these computers and finding the right ways of deassembling the car and then putting all the parts back as they were. I have learned alot about how to locate where wires go and how to carefully deassemble car parts and not brake them. Photographs helped to remember where some parts went( but thise were not on my camera, my photos are above) I also understood how to lubricate car parts. Our next step will be replacing the fuel filter which is under the fuel pump. I will update on that as well.