CAS week - Final Reflections - Golf clinic and the Ark Eden trip

This is the final reflections and learning outcomes achieved during Cas week:

Links to all of the different days of the golf clinic

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Link to the Ark Eden Trip
Ark Eden

For the Golf Trip, I:

1) Increase my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth
 I constantly increased my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth by constantly keeping track of which skills I needed to improve in golf and always trying my best at each activity. Throughout the 3 days, the instructors helped to guide me into mastering the different types of golf swings and would help tell me where I could improve.

2) Undertaken new challenges or an extension of an existing one
During the 3 days, I constantly undertook new challenges since it was my first time playing golf, so everything I did, from chipping to pitching to bunker shots, were new challenges to me. In particular, the half and full swings were very challenging since it seemed like I could never accurately hit the ball, as I would always miss or hit the ground before I hit the ball. With the instructor's help, I realized that my problems were caused by me improperly lifting the club and bending my left arm, not my wrist, so the angle of my swing was off. 

8) Developed new skills or increased expertise in an established area
This goes along with the points of the first learning outcome. I also learned many new skills and techniques in golf, ranging from the basics such as how to hold the club and safety rules, to more complex things like how each of the different clubs affects the flight path of the golf ball. Since it was my first time playing golf, I was able to develop brand new skills in a sport I had never tried before, and learn more about golf in the days that followed, which allowed me to increase my expertise in an area I had newly established



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the Ark Eden Trip, I:

4) Worked collaboratively with others
During the trip, I worked with the rest of my year group on a number of occasions, since many of the activities were done in small groups as a team. For example, I worked together with others to make the dinner and lunches we ate during the trip, while at the same time, another group of students got a head start on setting up the tents, while the last group helped clean and wash the plates, bowls, cups and utensils we used during the dinner. By splitting up the workload and communicating to each other what we wanted done from each group, we were able to finish a lot more in the short time we had.

I continued to work collaboratively with others on the final day of trip by helping to carry fertilizer up to the mountain to the place where the freshly planted trees were. As a group, we helped mulch, fertilize and maintain the trees that were planted by other groups before us, thereby working with the previous group to help provide the best conditions we could for the trees to thrive in.

6) Engaged with issues of global importance
 I learned a lot about permiculture during the week, which led me to think more deeply about the way we grow and produce our food, and the larger global issues that arise from it. For example, before watching a video called "Food inc", they had us guess how much of our food in Hong Kong is imported. Turns out we were all estimating the number to be much lower than it actually is.

In fact,  90% of the total food supply in Hong Kong is imported food, with most of it coming from Mainland China. 

This fact shocked me, as I never once thought about just how much food Hong Kong can produce by itself, and how woefully inadequate that amount when compared to the ammount of food such a large population needs. It also made me consider the global importance of finding a better more sustainable way to grow food in Hong Kong, since not only is importing such a large amount of food inefficient, but all the shipping containers and planes importing this food creates a lot of green house gasses, which not only affects Hong Kong, but the rest of the world.

7) Considered the ethical implications of my actions
After watching Food inc. , I stopped think about the ethical problems behind the food industry around the world today. After all, with large food companies controlling such a large part of the food industry today, is it even possible to convert it to a more environmentally friendly system? Would large food companies even consider such an action, as it involves replacing such a large part of how their company runs and cuts into their profits? How can we, as consumers, find and encourage more ethical and enviromentally friendly ways of growing and producing food? Many similar questions popped up in my head, which might make me think twice about what type of food I buy in the future.


-Rebecca