When we visit, we usually do in time for dinner. Once the food is unloaded, we great the supervisors who run the orphanage and then wait for the girls to assemble in the room in which they eat in. The girls always eat first and there were approximately 30 of them, all dressed in donated clothes some looking tired while others cheerful as though they didn’t have a care in the world. The orphanage truly was poor in the sense that there were no beds nor tables, they ate and slept on the floor in the same room. The room only had a few shelves installed into the walls which contained metal boxes for each of the children to put their clothes and school books in. Once the girls were assembled and had all washed their hands, my cousin and I passed them their plates and began serving the food. This summer we served biryani, a popular Indian dish consisting of steamed rice flavored and cooked with seasoning, herbs, and vegetables along with boiled egg and dhai, seasoned yogurt with chana dhal,which are chick peas. After they had eaten we also gave them Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars, since we knew what a rare treat this was for them. Each of the girls ate every last grain of what they were serves regardless of if they were full or not. Watching this every year does bring on some guilt, when I think about how much food I waste at times simply because I am full or do not feel like finishing it. Seeing this every year, I try every year to waste less and less food and no adopt a method in which I take smaller portions that I know I will finish before taking seconds or any larger portions. Before they ate, they always prayed and thanked whichever religious figure they believed in, for the food they received. Their gratefulness always triggers my gratefulness for the luxurious I am given with. After eating we usually have the chance to interact with the girls while the boys assemble for dinner. Once we serve the boys as well, we’ve gotten to play, talk, and watch TV with them. Watching and hearing their loud laughter while watching Tom & Jerry reminds me of how grateful and humble they have for everything they have despite not having everything they deserve as children. While it wasn’t some great and sudden realization, I did realize over the years that visiting this orphanage every summer gave me a chance and in some way a ‘reality check’ of how thankful I should be for the live I have. I hope this will continue with future visits I have. Living in a first world country, I do not often get the chance to interact and help others who make less than a dollar a day, but every summer, even if its helping by a small way, I love visiting the orphanage and helping serve the meals. It often reminds me of how poverty stricken some parts of India are, and I hope to be able to somehow be able to help those in need in the future, either through donating and charity or volunteer work. The next few summers I plan to go to the orphanage a few nights a week to read to the children or help them with their homework.

The Narayan Seva that is conducted in the Sathiya Sai Baba Temple, is a group of volunteers that meet every month for 3-4 hours, and prepare packaged food for the homeless, and deliver the prepared food that very day. I began volunteering in the beginning of October, 2012. The first time I did it, we were making ‘obentos’ that consisted of rice along with some salad and vegetable tempura. Being a religious place, they did not serve meet nor poultry. The volunteers were a few elderly Indians and quite a number of Japanese Hindus. After being greeted very warmly, I was instructed to wash some of the vegetables, such as the lettuce for the salad. That was an easy task but the next one wasn’t quite as simple. Then for the next hour, I helped cut eggplants and pumpkin for the tempura. I, who had never cut vegetables in my life found this hard. It wasn’t the actual cutting that was the challenge but it was using the strength to slice the vegetables neatly, and to cut them horizontally so that they were no more than one centimeter wide. Thankfully, the other volunteers were very understanding and patient and after half an hour of cutting crooked eggplants, I finally managed to get it right. Besides learning a basic cooking skill that day, I realized something else. It amazed me how cheery, patient and hardworking the Japanese volunteers were. Growing up in Japan, these characteristics of the Japanese people were not surprising, though I never did notice it as much as I did that day. For them it was not just some charity, but something they did out of the goodness of their hearts. Though it may make some skeptical, standing while cutting vegetables for 2 hours straight, did no favor for your back! For them, it did not matter how time consuming this charity was, and I admired each of them for being so welcoming of newcomers and devoted to getting every detail right for the obentos to be as tasty and presentable as possible. For the next hour, I sat filling hundreds of plastic obentos with rice. I had to be gentle to fill them up as completely as possible but not push down with my spatula or the rice would not have the same freshness nor taste once packed. After seeing all the hard work being put in my the other volunteers to make the obentos as appetizing as possible, I could not do this task robotically and I filled the rice as carefully as I could without consuming too much time. Eventually, once 200 obentos had been filled with rice, I helped add some salad to the side. While two other volunteers and I had been filling the rice, the tempura had been cooked and ready. Next, the tempura was placed on the rice and then we all got to work packaging it with chopsticks and plastic bags. The work and effort that went into it couldn’t be seen on our faces since everyone looked so proud and happy. This look remains everytime we were finished by 12 or so. The second time I went, we were making Japanese style vegetable curry. I had the job of washing and separating mushrooms, which I can’t stand the smell nor touch of. But by reminding myself that it was for someone who probably hadn’t had a decent meal in a few days, was surprisingly good motivation. It felt good to be able to give back to a community that has given me so much in the first place. I not only had to learn and develop a lot of kitchen skills, but I had to stay committed and this was especially challenging when it was time to wake up at 7AM on a Sunday morning. Nevertheless, it all payed off once we saw the sight of about 150-200 obentos being packaged for people who would truly appreciate it. It was an extremely community-involving experience. I’m glad to continue this every month, and included are some photos that I took of my second time there.

Firstly, America and Europe both attempted to improve living and working conditions of both their inhabitants through differed methods. In the 1920s, America set up The Prohibition urged by groups such as the Anti-Saloon League in an attempt to help family life. Europe took a different approach through the League of Nations, which tried to improve living and working conditions of people worldwide. Both had their share of failures but statistics also reflect some success. Such as the League freed 200,000 prisoners and 400,000 slaves and blacklisted four Swiss drug companies. The Prohibition on the other hand, brought down national alcohol consumption rate by 30% in the early 1920s.

Our units also contrasted heavily based on the response they got by the public and those affected. For example, the Treaty of Versailles was taken badly by Germans, and even some Americans, which prompted them to go against the League of Nations. Americans took other units we studied positively as they benefited the economy and their lives during The Depression. The New Deal received a very enthusiastic response by the majority of Americans and helped lower the unemployment rate by a considerable amount. Other ways our units heavily contrasted was we studied time periods that had a vast different in economy and financial flourishment. We studied the 1920s and the large consumer sales, which helped, boost industries and helped the economy. Contrastingly, we also studied the Wall Street Crash that was accompanied by the Great Depression, which set the whole country into a large financial recession thus impacting Europe through the lack of American loans being sent to Europe.

In conclusion, the units we studied showed the various ups and downs of the early 20h century and how they affected the lives of people. We studied in depth, how various attempts to help people and countries co-operate succeeded or failed. Connections between failures such as the Treaty of Versailles leading to particular failures in the League because the Treaty led to neither Germany nor the USA joining being a major weakness were also made. In conclusion, this year we have studied very interesting units in chronological order, which enabled us to understand how the turn of events affected events that were to come.

Google Docs on Statistics on 1920s Boom
https://docs.google.com/a/yis.ac.jp/document/d/1IdI-TbHGJXW1Q–6uF8dO5dB3pCRDs3s-HiREpH6k40/edit?hl=en_US

Causes of the Depression slideshow
http://www.slideshare.net/multimedialearningllc/causes-of-great-depression

Treat of Versailles Active History Main Page
http://www.activehistory.co.uk/Miscellaneous/menus/GCSE/The_Peace_Treaties.htm

League of Nations Active History Main Page, Structure, Theory
http://www.activehistory.co.uk/Miscellaneous/menus/GCSE/Interwar_Europe_1920s.htm

League of Nations’s aims, structure, weaknesses on Bitesize
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir1/aimsrev1.shtml

League of Nations: Successes and Failures
http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/history/A0859217.html

Complete Revision on League of Nations on John D Clare
http://www.johndclare.net/league_of_nations1.htm

Bitesize’s basic overview on WW1 and WW2 LON and TOV
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir1/

FDR’s New Deal Acts on my blog, list of all his acts
http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/15modekurtin/2012/06/12/fdrs-new-deals/

We included Roosevelt’s characteristics into our Facebook fireside chat. We made sure to include the use of simple language and referred to the audience as ‘we’. Also, we have added in some of his most famous quotes such as “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”.
A Facebook page, made by Elliot and I demonstrating how Franklin D Roosevelt would defend to the New Deal through modern technology. We have encorporated memes and milestones under the Facebook page. We have also made various fictional characters such as the farmer “Chuck Smith”, Republican “Mack Hoover”, and businessman “George Middleton” and tried to show how people of their class and occupation would respond to the New Deal.

As I started my final piece after experimenting, I did the background first so that once it dried, I could work on proportions more extensively. Thus, I think proportions is a strength in my work, such as the umbrella, the horizon lines, and the stand. I can see an improvement in proportions and some on techniques and brush strokes. I did not want to make my work abstract, not change realistic colors, but make it slightly more simplified and play-like similar to Alex Katz’s work.

I think goals that I would like to include are time management especially towards the end. I overestimated how long it would take to finish the background and it took me one whole period as I kept practicing. Also, I want to improve my brushwork so I can blend colors in better, especially at the top of the umbrella where the darker shades of red as shadows stand out a little too much, not adding much tone.

2. Mineral composition, grain size of the rock and the presence of lines of weakness affect the rate of weathering
If the mineral composition of a rock and the chemical bonding is weak then factors such as water, wind, and ice can easily weather it away as can continuous temperature changes. The grain size of the rock affect the rate of the weathering as well because the bigger the size, longer it takes to break down. Presence of lines of weakness influences how much water can get through and how easily it can break the rock down.

Chemical weathering
Chemical weathering changes the composition of a rock, usually breaking down the chemical bonds. Chemical weathering most often happens when there is a direct effect between atmospheric chemicals or biological chemicals including heat, water, ice, pressure that break down rocks and other sediments.
-Acid rain when is rained down, breaks down rocks such as limestone.
- Carbonation is when carbonation combines with other things in the atmophere to cause carbonic acid and reacts with rocks.
-Oxidation is when oxygen reacts with other metals and rocks (most commonly iron) and oxidzes to produce rust.

Physical weathering
- There are two types of Crystallization weathering. Ice Crystallization happens when water seeps into a crack in a rock and freezes due to water expanding when it freezes. This process widens the crack in the rock causing it to break apart. Salt crystallization occurs when saline solution gets into a crack in a rock and crystallizes due to change in temperatures. This expands and widens the fissure in the rock until it breaks. This process is more likely to primarily happen in coastal regions and hot, arid climates.
- Frost Shattering occurs in cold temperature regions and where temperature reaches above and below freezing point. Water fills the cracks and joints in the rock and freezes. This repeated process of freeze and thaw will eventually shatter the rock along the cracks.

photos can be found on

http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/15manjit/2012/02/21/weathering/

Our pastel unit started as something I had a limited experience with. There are various types of pastel ranging from oil, soft, and wet. For our unit, it compromised of oil or soft. Many famous artists use pastels because pastels are found to be helpful in capturing passing effects, particularly clouds and skies. Because pastels are a dry medium, changes can be made easily. With oil pastels, you can scrape it off while with soft pastels you can smudge errors out. There are also similar techniques for oil pastels and soft pastels as found in our research. For instance, you can lay the both types of pastel on their sides to create blocks of color.

We then went on to redrawing Monte Saint-Victoire in both oil and soft pastels. Doing this it enabled us to try out techniques ourselves and decide whether we preferred soft of oil pastel. I found that I liked soft pastels better as they were easier to smudge and create better light and shadow effects. I found the oil pastels to be too strong and oil as well as when trying to draw shadows, too overpowering. Soft pastels also let you draw the sky without the various shades of grey and pink overpowering it, as when I tried drawing with oil, the sky took too much attention away from the green fields. Though I found it was hard to have small details using soft pastel, layering colors and succumbing could be used for more detailed areas such as grass and the tree trunks. Next, we compared two pieces of art (Sleeping Baby and Women Combing Her Hair).

Before starting our final piece we did some research regarding oil and soft pastels including videos and tutorials. I found that a few of these videos helped me start my final piece as it showed me techniques (Blocking by using the side of the pastel) to be time efficient by covering large areas. Also, though I found it to be an oil pastel technique, I used Sgratiffio for the sky and the green hills. Doing so was time efficient but layering colors later stopped it from looking two-dimensional. I was worried about my hills looking two dimensional against the blue mountains in the background so I referred back to our research. I then tried to make sure light colors are present in the background while brighter and more pronounced hues are found in the foreground so that it created the illusion of depth. I continually used white on top of blues (layering) as it looked more realistic than using lighter hues of blue for the sky (source2). Proportions were not as heavily focused in this unit as it was more about color but the roof of my house wasn’t as slanted as it should have been. I used a very dark shade of red and brown for the roof so it was very challenging to fix.

Using our research I looked up some of R. B Kite’s work as I had troubles doing shadows against the blue mountains. R.B Kitaj’s work had shadows prominently using black as opposed to grey, purple, or blue. I tried using black on the mountains appearing nearer to the house but this looked too strong and appeared to be the outline of mountains. To revert back to my original blue, I practiced effectively smudging on some scrap paper before using blue to darken the sides of the mountains. For the shadows to look real, I used vertical strokes around the edges, as I found that when I tried to draw the shadows as they appeared in the photo, it looked as if I had drawn a outline of the mountain and then filled it with blue.

The shadows on the green hills were very similar difficulty I came across. The practice drawing we did using “Monte Saint-Victoire” did not help as there were no shadows on the hills indicating where they sloped and where they met the valley in the center. I layered very dark hues of green color for the hills so I couldn’t use an even darker hue of green for the shadow. Using purple of blue was out of the question, as they didn’t even show up on the green when I tried. I came across Source1, which used greys for shadows. I used grey in vertical strokes again to show where the hills met the valley and how they sloped. Because the grey shadows stood so prominent against the green I went back and slightly smudged it before re darkening it with green on top of the grey. I think the resulting shadows and slopes on the green hills were one of my strengths.

My sky used various hues of white, grey and blue with little pinks and purples. As I started doing the sky, I learned not to smudge too much of the blue against the white clouds as this simply smudged any detail. Because the pink kept rubbing away every time I put my paper away, I had to redo pink hues near the white clouds each time I worked on my final piece. If I had to redo the sky I think I would make I my goal to add hues of pink as I went along with the blues and whites instead of finishing the sky and then adding strokes of pink and purple later. I would also choose to carefully plan before hand the sky to add in more hues of grey as I used yellow to sketch out the composition of my piece, but started the sky on scratch.

I think the major weakness of my work is my immediate foreground consisting of light grass, and red and white hay. Because there was a limited amount of olive hues, I wasn’t sure which color to layer it with to look three-dimensional. I played with colors such as beige and red to make the contrast between colors more intense. I added a few shrubs using quick vertical strokes starting from the base, a technique that we found in our research. I think this would relate to one of my goals of time management. I spend most of my time on my sky, house, hills and mountains leaving the foreground area to the last class. I underestimated how long it would take to draw the shrubbery and blend the colors well. Next time, I plan to carefully structure out how much time is needed on each part of my composition and try to save at least one last class free for final edits and touches.

Throughout this unit, my technique with soft pastels had developed considerably. I learned various techniques that I was able to effectively apply to my landscape and was able to be creative by playing with color contrast and changing the colors of the house’s roof and base to further increase the intensity of contrast. I learned how to add shadows and texture as I went along doing my final piece.

Source 1- http://www.dueysdrawings.com/pastel_tutorial.html
Source 2-