CAS Blog

 At Sunday School, one of the things that I do is help to prep students for their upcoming bar or bat mitzvahs. In order to do this, I have to be able to know and speak all of the important Hebrew prayers such as the V'ahavta and the Avot V'imahot. However, these prayers are no easy task to learn. There are so many different characters and vowels that come together to make numerous different sounds. I also have to learn how to chant the prayers, if the students prefer to chant them instead of reading them. Learning all of this is not an easy task, and requires lots of planning and prep. So, I have had to spend countless hours on the weekend studying these prayers. I recite them when walking around the house, when I am in the shower, when I am at breakfast, and whenever I have free time. If I am struggling with learning a prayer, I will watch a youtube video of someone else reciting the prayer so that I can follow along. I will follow along with the person on the youtube video ...

         A couple of weeks ago, my school was let out for spring break. I was extremely excited as I would be able to pursue one of my hobbies being golf. So, I made a tee time during spring break to go play 18 holes in the early afternoon. Once the day arrived for my scheduled tee time, I got my clubs and headed over to the golf course. When I got there, I practiced on the range to warm up before I played 18 holes. Once I hit all of my clubs a couple of times, it was time to start playing. I got my clubs and went to the first hole. When I got to the tee box, I grabbed my driver, tee, and golf ball to hit a shot. As I swung, the golfball veered to the right, indicating I had made a slice. I was a little mad, but I kept on playing. My next shot was with my irons, then my pitching wedge, and finally my putter. Once I finished the first hole, I went to the second. Like the first hole, I got my tee, ball, and driver to hit my swing. When I swung, my golf ball decide...

       A while back, I became extremely interested in learning to yo-yo. I, for some reason, thought it was so cool to do tricks with this little trinket in your hand. So, I decided to buy one of these yo-yo's and give it a try to see if I could learn some of these tricks. When I got this brand new yo-yo, I tied it on my middle finger, and then slung it to the ground like one was supposed to. However, when I tried to tug the yo-yo back up, it wouldn't respond. At that moment, I didn't realize I got an unresponsive yo-yo. Now, I had to learn how to bind the yo-yo to bring it back up to my hands, which is hard in itself. After a couple of tries, I was able to decently bind the yo-yo back up into my hands. Although, I now wanted to learn some cool tricks. So, the first one I tried to do was rock the baby. This is where you take the yo-yo string and make a cradle for the yo-yo (the baby) to rock through. It was a little difficult at first, but I was able to use the inter...

     Yesterday I was bored, so I decided to go play 9-holes of golf. I didn't think I would have time for      18-holes, so I only played 9. With this being said, when I was on the course, I played super well. I was able to hit my irons, chips, and putts, all with accuracy and precision. However, the one skill that was giving me trouble was my driver. The main reason it was giving me trouble was because I hadn't hit my driver in a long time due to the fact that whenever I would hit it, I would hurt my shoulder. So, when I would hit my driver off of the tee box when I played these 9-holes, I would hook it right almost every time. This made me super mad, as I wasn't playing my best game of golf. Although, I realized I needed to try and work on my skills if I was going to correct my swing. So, I changed my stance a little, moved the ball more towards my left foot, and took some practice swings before I hit the ball. After doing these things, I started to hit m...

       A couple of days ago, I went skiing with my mom and brother in Telluride, Colorado. We left on Wednesday and came home on Monday. One of my favorite things to do when I was skiing was going on the ski jumps in the terrain park. In Telluride, there are three terrain parks where there are jumps. The first one is on a trail called Ute Park, where there are the smallest jumps. Then there is the lower part of a trail called Hootbrown, where there are the medium-sized jumps. Lastly, the upper part of Hootbrown is where the largest jumps are. By the end of the trip, I wanted to go on the largest jumps. With this being said, I began my journey to do the largest jumps by starting on the smallest jumps in Ute Park. Once I arrived at these small jumps, I immediately went off of them. My balance was good, and I didn't let my fear of falling get in the way of me doing the jump. I then moved on to the lower part of Hootbrown to do the medium-sized jumps. These jumps were 3x...

       A while back, I decided that I wanted to learn how to do a handstand. I had done gymnastics for a period of my life and I got pretty good at it. However, I ended up quitting because of the amount of work I was getting in school. One of the things that I wanted to learn was how to do a handstand and walk around. Years later after I quit, I chose to learn how to do it. So, the first thing I did was find the best place to do a handstand. I realized that it would be best to do it in my front yard on the grass. This way if I fall, I am only falling on the soft grass. I then went outside to the front yard to start practicing my handstands. Once I got outside, I thought I was going to be able to handstand. When I tried it, I immediately fell over. I realized that this was going to be harder than I thought. So, I decided to brainstorm the best ways I could start to learn to handstand. I figured the best way is to start in a headstand. My balance was pretty good, so I ...