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About: Katie
- Website
- http://www.okskeener.blogspot.com
- Profile
- Hola, me llamo Katie. Soy candianse. Tengo 18 anos. For those who don't speak spanish fluently like myself. My names Katie Kowalski. I'm currently ranked as Candians top jr women in freestyle kayaking. I've been kayaking for 6 years now. I first learnt how to kayak with Ottawa Kayak School/ Keener Program and where I'm currently an instructor in the summer time. I took a year off before starting college and I'm lucky enough to get the chance to be apart of New River Academy's gap year in chile for the next 10 weeks shredding the gnar on many different rivers.
Posts by Katie:
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- Tracy and I when we went out to lunch with my parents.
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- Tracy, Jess and I in the Quincho before the Puppet show
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- Me in my gypsy cabin. <3
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- The Kowalskis !
Author Archive
Landscape ! pretty.
Monday, March 1st, 2010Rules of Photography Assignment !
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Here are some pictures from our last photo assignment in Pucon. The assignment was to try and get an example of the different rules used in photography. Some of the rules we used were; Rules of Thirds which is one of the most popular ‘rules’ in photography. It works like these imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect. The human eye is naturally drawn to those lines.
Another technique we used was the Golden Spiral Rule where there should be something leading the eye to the center of the composition.
We also used the Golden Triangle Rule; it’s more convenient for photos with diagonal lines. By drawing a line from one corner of the screen to the opposite corner with a line drawn perpendicular making 3 triangles.
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Pucon Life Style Photo Assignment !
Friday, February 19th, 2010GRAND Flash Album Gallery
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Caperucita Roja and much much more !
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010Even after spending an amazing week at the Rio Fuy in Choshenco getting away from the rain and back to the sun and the heat was great. These past few days have been a nice change of pace for everyone, with the parents arriving and everyone tired from long days at the Fuy. The teachers decided to change to half days of school for the remaining time here in Pucon. Giving the students and teachers time to relax and more time on the water. On an academic note, after 3 weeks of working on our puppet show “Caperucita Roja” aka Little Red Ridding Hood, in our Spanish 3 class, we finally got to present it to the rest of the students, teachers and families. Lorenzo has the perfect scary wolf voice, kyle pulled off the squeaky girly voice of little red ridding hood without laughing to much. David Gorski had two characters, one as the narrator and the other as the brave woodcutter who saves the day. Taylor was the voice of the caring mother and I was the voice of sweet little old Granny. After the puppy show, Mr Hughes had the wonderful idea of playing a game of spoons with everyone including the parents. Gosh I love that game and got way to hyper playing it. Clay and I dominated to say the least, without getting any letters while Kyle was the first to go, Matt Smink fallowed shortly after. For leader ship class this past week, we’ve been working on making systems for everything here at the base so everything can run a little more smoothly which we presented to the rest of the students 2 days ago. I was really excited when my parents arrived with my camera so I could finally start taking some pictures in photo class. Our assignment for the day we did classes in town was to take life style shoots. Which involved sometimes asking people if you could take their pictures or just snapping a few photos without them knowing. Then the next photo class we had to get our best pictures together and show them to the class, we would talk about each one and Matt would tell us what he liked about it and also how we could improve it to make it a stronger picture next time. Yesterday Callie, Tracy and Jess had their mentor activity. First the ladies made dessert which was a chocolate fondue with fruit then once we cleaned up the Quincho and Taylor cleaned her face we all piled into the Tahoe and headed to the hot springs for a couple of hours. This morning while most of the students decided to take full advantage of their time to sleep in a few of the students got up to do a morning workout kayak session till regular morning working started at 9:30. Then periods 4 threw 7 then to the rio. While I opted out of kayaking today to spend the last afternoon/ evening with my parents before they leave tomorrow morning. It’s been great having them around for a week. It’s nice to be able to share my experiences with my parents who make it possible for me to travel to awesome places like Chile.
- Katie Kowalski
Gap Year Leadership Project
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
The streets of Pichilemu at night (c) David Gorski
| As a Gap Year leadership project, we had to research prices on a five night stay for five persons with beds and three meals at a hotel. These are the negotiation guidelines we were taught:
· Negotiate price before service · Must get three bids as a company protocol · Must meet a budget of 11,000 pesos per person per day (22 dollars) · Establish a written price with a signature This task began during our stay at the Siete Tazas. Before we set out to haggle for prices in language we barely spoke, our Spanish teacher Lorenzo gave us a lesson on working with numbers and Spanish phases that may come in handy. After this short crash course, we ran up the hill to talk to a man named Jose about prices on cabins in the area. The conversation we had with him was frightening and awkward at first, but we gradually worked into a rhythm of conversation and discovered that he was quite friendly and honest. He had a cabin available for five people with a kitchen and bathroom for 35,000 pesos a night. We managed to get this price down to 30,000 pesos. Not bad for our first time, we were well below our budget. We had Jose sign on this price and told him that we were off to look at other options. Soon after this project and an exciting week of running waterfalls high up in the Andes Mountains, we left the Siete Tazas National Park for a beach town called Pichilemu. In Pichilemu we continued this project with a lot more opportunity considering that we were surrounded by hotels and hostles. We went to three different places searching for the best deal. At the first hotel we spoke to a woman named Eva who ultimately gave us a deal just within our budget (11,000 pesos a day) including meals and everything else we asked for. At the second place we met a patient man named Luis who gave us a great deal but only offered breakfast. He was actually able to correct us on a few flaws in our Spanish, which we all got a good laugh out of. Finally, we checked out a set of cabins near the beach. This turned out to be our best deal. It didn’t include meals but they offered us a cabin with a bed for everyone, a kitchen, and Wifi all for well under our budget. This project was a big step out of our comfort zone, but with that came a valuable lesson in self sufficiency. Created by NRA Gap Year Students
 Gap Year students left to right, Katie Kowalski, David Gorski, and Kyle Bisset (c) David Gorski |
Week 2 in Chile !
Thursday, January 21st, 2010Entry numero dos,
So we didn’t have internet for a while and been busy so I haven’t been able to get a blog up so I finally decided I would sit down and take the time to go over the last week. So the last day on the Miapo was kinda…interesting to say the least. But one good part about the run was, that we had to hike out to the road by walking across this one guys field. And it was crazy, right out of a fairy tale; there was a white horse and these amazing peach trees that had the best mini ripe peaches ever. Then the next day we headed to the Siete tazas which are 7 fun little drops in the middle of no where. Seriously in the middle of no where…no internet…. No cell service…nothing. They only run their generators at night. And it only gets dark at like 9:30 so you only have like an hour and a half to charge up any electronics before they turn off the generator. We ended up getting here late evening on Tuesday the 12. We got up super early the next day to go on this 4 hour hike up one of the mountains. Which was really sweet, but super exhausting. We saw a bunch of cool looking flowers, bird, plants and trees. Lorenzo, my Spanish teacher is really into nature so he knows like every single name of everything in the forest. Then had lunch and went boating. The 7 teacups are pretty fun. The first 5 drops are all between like 3 to 8 feet that you want boof and the last 2 are a little under 20 that you want to tuck for. I landed on my head on the last one…good times. The put in and take out are pretty sketch though. If you were to drop your boat on the crazy walk to the stair at the take out, bye bye boat. Your boat is gone, in the gorge and eventually over this never run 90 footer. Thursday was a pretty chill day, beside getting up at 8:30 to do morning workout, which consisted of doing pushups, going from 10 to 9 to 8 to 7 and so on… then after you make your way down to one, then 30 seconds of sit ups, then you repeat that 3 times. Which is a total of 165 pushups…I can hardly do 5. But I did them… and didn’t complain… to much. Then we did 2 hours of Spanish class, and 2 hours of videoing just going over the clips from the day before, the next few days consisted of kayaking, class and swimming cause it was really hot and had this really nice place to swim like a 2 minute walk from our hostel. We left there on the morning of the 17th to head to Pichulemu for a few days of ocean kayaking. So for the past few days we’ve just been getting up early having breakfast morning work outs, class, and surfing some big ocean waves. And just chilling at the beach. Its been a pretty good second week here with NRA’s Gap Year Program. And we meet up with the high school soon !
Katie K
Lorenzo y yo on our sweet 4 hour hike.
my two first wonderful days in Chile !
Sunday, January 10th, 2010Dear Diary, ( entry numero uno)
These past few days have been pretty hectic. Returning home after spending a month with my sister out in colorado and only having only a couple days to see all my friends, spend time with my family, apply for college and get all my stuff packed and ready to leave for chile on the 7th. Packing for 10 weeks is not an easy task. what girl can go 2 months with only two t-shirts? But eventually after repacking a few times i got all my stuff to fit. On the morning of the 7th headed to the ottawa airport where i had to fly to Chicago. Weather in Chicago wasn’t very good, so my flight to Chicago was delayed. Then my flight leaving Chicago was delayed to Dallas. The Dallas airport is sweet btw. it has a mono rail around the airport. I felt like I was on the simpsons… except that one almost crashed. Met up Mr. David Gorski. Again the flight to Santiago was delayed as well, because of technical difficulties? Something about a gas gage or something. The flight was okay, long, a little under 10 hours. I was lucky enough to sleep for most of it. Once arrived in Santiago met up with the other gap year student, Kyle. and on the other side of customs met up with the teachers, Matt and Lorne. From there we drove about an hour out side of Santiago to the Miapo river, we had a little car trouble on the way but nothing a little duck tape can’t fix. We had a nice relaxing evening and got up nice and early for a run this morning. Spanish class went well, as did video. After lunch we went kayaking ! 
All in all it’s been a pretty good 2 first days in Chile. hot hot heat. (he he. shallhorn)
Katharine.
New River Academy
Rt. 2 Box 245
Fayetteville, WV 25484
(304)- 574-0403
Fax: (304) 513-2247
New River
Academy
