water colors

After school, I tutored in English. We’ve started reading Breaking Dawn in English. She reads and I help her with vocab and understanding some phrases and words. Then, I hung out with Melissa (italian exchanger). We ate lots of ice cream and talked. It was really nice.

Later, I we went to the VoKü (Volks Küche). Mimi, Hanni, Carla, and some others where there. We ate Tofu shish kabobs and seitansteaks. The Tofu things were good.

me and my tutor student

Then I went home.

Later, I went to Hanni’s house and ate vegetarian chili and hung out and cuddled with Mimi and Hanni and Stina and Leo. Tomorrow is a feiertag (vacation day/holiday) because it’s May 1st. And we get tomorrow and Thursday and Friday off! There are lots of partys for the ‘Tanz in den Mai’ (Dance into May). We went to this one but it was really bad so we didn’t go in. Instead, we went back to Hanni’s and watched TV and ate chocolate instead. it was nice

I took some photos during the free periods:

massage circle

bakery

yum!

free period.. what else? :)

he’s always sleeping

this time he got a pillow

school

everything stays in his hair :D

Papers are ALL OVER this desk. Seriously. Everywhere. I’m bring busy! I’m getting shit done! Slowly but surely I am crossing things off… I’m really hoping I’m right about tomorrow’s lessons… with this IB conference thing back at my school I should only have one lesson:

PSHCE = free
English = free
TOK = free
Chemistry
Free

Sounds good huh!

I can get more things finished!

This week we consider:

the Chinese zodiac
the longest queue ever
Lemar
premium cinema seats
stop-motion water
baby clothes
asexual koalas
Mike Leigh vs. Red Dragon
Les Miserables vs. Undercover Boss
Mary Poppins vs. The Sound of Music
Pete Doherty vs. Peter Brame
and
the point of kissing.

Plus: Olly’s going to build his business empire on XXX fortune teller fish, whilst Helen’s looking into a range of mouth condoms for slimmers; and Martin the Sound Man is a shrivelled little short tongue man. But at least he’s not the only one.

This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is further contemplation upon the masterwork of David Sneddon, star of Fame Academy series 1 and AMT245. It’s a song which bears many hours, nay months, of interpretation. This week’s lesson: what’s up with your sleeves, Sneddon?

Instead of whatever Valentine’s love token you were planning to give us, please send your QUESTIONS: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis. (Although, when we say ‘instead’, we do mean ‘as well as’, if the token was heart-shaped boxes of Ferrero Rocher. Keep ‘em coming.)

See you next Thursday,

Helen & Olly

ALBUMS • iTUNES • CLASSIC EPISODES • BOOK • QUESTION ARCHIVE • FAQ
iPHONE APP • ANDROID APP • FACEBOOK • TWITTER • YOUTUBE • MERCH

You may be wondering why an AP Physics class would go to a fire station in the middle of Vermont winter (turn the winter up to eleven!!). We went there to see the thermal imaging cameras that they have.  It was cool, but I think its a sign that I play too many video games when I looked at the camera feed and immediately thought of the AC-130 mission from Call of Duty 4, but I digress. It was fun, we played with the cameras, then went out and looked at the fire engine (It was 2nd grade all over again).

The best part of the day came when we got back to school. Upon getting back to school I quickly realized that I had a free period, at the end of the day. One of the greatest feelings in the world is hearing the bell, then realizing that you don’t have to do anything for the rest of the day. The only problem is now I’m supposed to go to track practice, but that would require me to get up from the computer, and I just had a big lunch and its cold out and you know. Plus I have to work on this blog, I mean look how terrible it is, I think it would really be best if I just stayed home and worked on my blogging skills. It’s settled then no track today! But then again, I need the gym credit and…nope that’s it, the only reason to go to track, although I can’t graduate without it, hmmm what to do.

So I just finished my first piece of homework for the night- English is all completed now so Mr. Asshole now can’t yell at me tomorrow, it’s up to my classmate to hand that in now so yay! (Y)

Now to do my Philosophy, I think I’ll post it up here when I’m done- just to give me a goal, I’m becoming so unmotivated…. *sigh*

Oh! I’ve returned the movies. I need to go buy the “Death Note” trilogy now. :3

But I haven’t done the Christmas Presentation, but that can wait I suppose. At this rate I reckon I’ll be sleeping in my first period free tomorrow…. ewwww Thursday again, that means basketball before schoooooooool, whyy!!

I think I don’t have Chemistry again tomorrow… not sure, but if I don’t then yipee! Haha! So potentially I have 2 free periods tomorrow, this will be very exciting!

Christmas Concert on Friday Night! It’ll be my very last time performing at the gorgeous St. George’s Church. I’m not in any way religious, but that church… I’ve been going there for school events for as long as I can remember. I’ve had solos, choir performances, a capella performances, readings and flag carrying gigs there.

St. George’s in the Sunset

Inside the Church

So, yeah, that’ll be bittersweet. This year has been full of sweet and bittersweet moments. It’s my last year in school-school, I mean, next stop is the University Bus and that’s some scurry shiz… Everything that I’m used to, all my annual routines are coming to an end and it’s so strange! To sit here and type that I’ll never sing with the choir ever again at Kranji War Memorials or at St. George’s Christmas Concerts? Weird. Downright bizarre.

I don’t like this “growing up” thing.

Where’s Peter Pan when you need him, huh?

What else… so yeah, Sixth Form is ending. On a more positive note- I MISS THE ENTIRE SCHOOL DAY ON FRIDAY!! Rehearsals, hella yeaaaaaah! Hahaha. Plus it’s a St. George’s Concert, which invariably means MCDONALDS FOR LUNCH!! WOO!

It’s tradition, once you’re old enough to phone and order food for yourself, you buy McDonald’s at rehearsals for St. George’s. Heeheehee. We’re not supposed to but we’re rebels.

So that’s Friday night. I’m going out with my family to commemorate it being my last year in the choir, I’m bringing one of my closest girlies too because she needs some girl time and we’ll probably get ice cream and watch a chick-flick if she sleeps over. I’m looking forwards to it!

Saturday Night is the double Carolling Night. Yikes, despite all odds I have a group to go carrolling! Yay! So both singing gigs are covered, what hasn’t been decided yet though, is which charity we’re going to support. Ooops. Haha, I slight oversight, we can fix that later

Yeah, this should be pretty smooth sailing from here on out… Just have to survive basketball tomorrow morning, then English (ugh) and then 6th period Maths (<– WHAT KIND OF SADIST DOES THAT???)… then I have tuition after school. Should be a good day!

However, I have to admit that m y first day as a Proper Sophomore wasn’t bad at all. I started off with Chem, in a class  where I only actually know four people, including one of the teachers. We got to play with Legos (read: we performed an activity involving Legos, all in the name of scientific inquiry), and do pretty much nothing for about twenty minutes. Since Chem (and really all the science courses that require Lab Time) has block periods once in the four-day rotation, I had a free second period. I was more than ready to spend the following hour laughing to myself whilst reading Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens. I highly recommend it, along with  the rest of her works.(I ♥ Libba). Luckily, Ari–a friend of mine from last year’s Latino Fest–happened to have the same free as I, so we spent the whole period roaming the building, and looking for people. We found Maddy in her Finance class, and Elizabeth in what presumably was her History class.

We both had French next, so near the end of the period we headed up to the third floor, and waited across the hall, in between rooms 322 and 324. When the bell rung, I saw Danny walking out of his French class (in Mme Pretat’s old room!), and said hi and agreed to work on some Club Fair posters later.

Madame Palumbo is such a contrast from Madame Pretat, I daresay. These two are incredibly different. Mme Palumbo is a French native, and therefore speaks flawless French. It sounds so… pretty when she speaks it! She also seems to have her wits about her, in a way my former teacher didn’t.  She seems to know how to control a class, although it really is hard to tell on the first class. (I think I should add that Mme Pretat was a very nice lady, but not nescessarily the best teacher. She discussed the Deschanel sisters with me during class, for chrissakes! and she didn’t really know how to explain stuff to people. Or how to shut people up).

My last class of the day was Geometry, and both of my teachers seem not only really nice, but really able to explain everything appropriately. She even gave us Hershey’s Kisses. They had us do a worksheet on finding patterns–both numerical and shape-y. I felt like I was back in grammar school.

I’m actually excited for the classes I had today, although I wish I could say the same about the people in them. I know very few (if any) of them, but it seems that they aren’t the types I would voluntarily hang out with because if they read, it’s because they are forced to, and that is something I’ve personally never understood, and because they give off Decepticon Vibes, and are therefore not made of awesome. I shall reserve judgement for later on, when I have more data to go on by, like you know… October!

I hope all of you who have gone back to school, or will do so in the near future have a great time. Remember to keep an open mind, and try not to focus too much on the 20+ episodes of Twin Peaks waiting to be watched after school.

As they say in my hometown, DFTBA!

and yes, I did just quote John Green.

Cheerio!

There are a few obvious ways. Facebook- befriend one, and strenuously go through their friends and add anyone in the same network as you or with their school added…

Or you could just try and strike up a conversation with them. When you’re new and they ask you what your name is, it normally helps to have an interesting (if annoying) name that might have a story or other to tell about it. People often ask me where mine came from. And of course my life’s story is far from dull…

I had one such experience today. I got to meet the nurse!

Yesterday evening, I experienced unbelievable pain in my hip. I immediately recognized that it must have been a ligament due to its location, the depth and the type of pain I was feeling. I’ve had many bone, muscle and ligament injuries and I think ligaments are by far the worst.

Anyways, stretching, nor a good bike ride did anything to relieve it (though on the upside, I broke my record of 32 km/h with an astonishing 36.5! Tour de France, here I come! ) so when I got to school and it was still aching, i figured it was time to make one more introduction.

I put the heat pad on earlier this morning, for about half an hour during a spare period, and when the pain returned about an hour later, I was grateful to have another spare now (later in the afternoon). Gives me a moment to catch my breath and catch up with you guys!

Actually I should probably go off and try and choose a topic for my biology project now!

Hope you are all having a better start to the week, and year, than me!

At last, this Monday, K was extremely delighted to have this post Class Prefect awarded to him.  His face was gleaming with joy…We all enjoyed that day.  I was mentally preparing him to be more responsible in class, and reduce his mischief at least for the period he held his post etc.  Tuesday morning was the most easy of all days for K to get ready for school. He  started off very well behaved and was wearing the badge, “Class Prefect” and that too with a pretty smile.  Things didn’t go smooth for him that day at school. That evening, when K returned home, his face was dull and he was almost about to burst out. He said his teacher had  took back the post as he was giggling with his friends during one of the free periods that day when no teacher was around.  What a tragedy!! I too felt bad for him and made him understand why the teacher had done so.  K might have felt bad about the day’s happenings. The next day he had been good at school and as a result, the teacher had once again made him Class Prefect.!! Hope he continues to be one for a few days at least!!

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.

xox

One of the best things about my timetable has to be the free period I had first thing this morning. A free? First thing on Monday morning?! Awesome, I know, I now have a whole extra hour in which to wake up at the beginning of the week. As, unlike the rest of my year, I’d all ready finished my holiday homework I spent most of my free period drinking tea and helping in our pathetically small, but abundantly stocked school library. If there’s one place I feel like I really belong at school it’s the library, I also helped out at lunch getting Library cards to the new year 7s.

After the joy that was my free period I had my first English Literature lesson, it was nice, most of it was just listening to our teacher talk for a bit. And then we talked about books and since I’ve just told you that I like to spend the majority of my free time in the library you can guess how much I liked that. The other good bit about English was learning that “The World’s Wife” the poetry collection by Carol Ann Duffy is one of our set text. I like quite alot of Duffy’s poetry but the World’s Wife is by far my favourite collection. My favourite poems from it are Mrs Beast and Anne Hathaway. They are of course both about the wives of famous men as are the rest of the poems. What I particularly like about these two though is that they show the wives to be strong raunchy women that make there males counterparts seem timid by comparison.

I the middle of the day I had Maths and Biology, both were unremarkable and at first glance both these classes seem very quiet which is a shame but I suppose it means that I may actually knuckle down and work this year.

My last period was Geography, which was good because I know what’s going on when it comes to Geography, a lot of he AS course is the same as that at GCSE but just in more depth so I feel like I’ve all ready good a firm footing in what we’re learning about. I did however make a bit of a fool of myself when Mr T started talking about the capital of Bosnia which I confidently remarked to be Sofia when it’s not, it’s Sarajevo, Sofia is the capital of Bulgaria but I only realised that after I’d said it and Mr T had laughed at my failed attempt to sound clever. Oh well, serves me right I suppose.

Blah blah classes predictions vs. reflections. You know the deal. Without any further ado…

Homeroom: [...]  A few of us had some issues finding our lockers (YES!  H-BUILDING AT LAST!  No more back of K netherlands for me!) because apparently we’re blind, or something?  But it’s all irrelevant because we will never have homeroom again– or we might.

Locker in H-Building was freaking awesome.  Would’ve been even more awesome if I actually had stuff to put in it this year.  Hah.

Also we did have homeroom at the beginning of second semester, and I was there because Cornell was on break and I wasn’t taking a spring semester Cornell class anyway.

Linear Algebra: Thus far we’ve been mostly doing stuff I learned in Precalc, which makes for fairly dull lectures and very dull sections, but I’m excited for the material we’re going to learn.  The teacher is nothing to write home about but at least competent, which is more than some of my past math teachers have been.

See here for more reflection on Linear Algebra.  Also I think you could call the instructor “competent” only under a rather distorted definition of the word.

Also, I actually miss Calculus a lot.  Not only the people (and the teacher!  and the puns!), but the actual subject.  We did a problem in section that involved a derivative and I was seriously like “Gasp!  Derivative! <3″.

Sigh.  Calculus.  I wish I remembered any calculus at all.

Free periods: Yes friends, plural, because I am a goddamn senior.

No more need be said.

English Literature: [...] Not composed of nearly as many slackers as I thought it would be; I guess last year’s crop of AP Lang kids scared even the overachievers.

What I didn’t realize in September was that by the spring, everyone is a slacker.  I think the thing about being scared by Lang might have been pretty accurate though.

Ms. L seems inclined to talking in meticulous detail about things, which makes it perilously easy to zone out.  I suspect it will be somewhat easier to pay attention when we’re talking about books (like Dante’s Inferno!!!) instead of her grading policy.

I AM SO AMUSED that I gave mention of Dante’s Inferno no fewer than THREE EXCLAMATION POINTS.  I really enjoyed reading the Inferno for maybe the first dozen cantos, but our discussions became so repetitive that we all were just sick and tired of the thing by the end.

Also, it turns out that it is just as easy to zone out to the sound of Ms. L talking about books as anything else.  Ms. L could be talking about the asteroid bound for Earth within the next 24 hours and I would still zone out.

The grading policy is actually kind of funky.  She compiles a “profile” of your work each quarter and does not take an average but instead makes a decision on a final grade based on your performance, how much she likes you, and maybe astrology.

Fortunately for me, Ms. L liked me.  Also the stars and planets were aligned in my favor.  So grade-wise I came out pretty well.

Computer Science: Which I’m taking almost completely because of math seminar– just another reason to be grateful I was in that marvelous pseudo-class, because thus far, this is hands down my favorite class.  Ms. T kicks ass like none other [...], and there are some super cool students here too.

I have nothing to add.

Each year there’s a class or two that I just look forward to every day, and this year CS was that class, partly due to the material we covered and those “super cool students” but also in large part due to Ms. T, who could be talking about Canto XXXII of Dante’s Inferno and still engage us in her hilariously sarcastic way.

Since I never took either of the Intro to Programming classes, the normal prerequisites, I was initially nervous that I’d go in knowing absolutely nothing about what anyone was talking about.

This was a problem for about the first two days.  I think I did fine after that.  Programming is one of the few things that I’ve learned relatively late in life and that still feels completely natural to me.  At least it did, until I made the error of trying to program tic tac toe on a Klein bottle at the end of the year.  But at any rate.

Government: Uh.  Well.  The teacher, Ms. D, is young, enthusiastic, new to the district, and almost oppressively optimistic and idealistic.  She is absolutely a friendly kind of person– we spent the past two days just chatting about ourselves– but I have a hunch she’ll be a less than impressive teacher.  One overly fond of worksheets.  One better suited for middle school.  Oh, Ms. D, prove me wrong, I beg you!

She didn’t.  But the class was still endlessly amusing in its pointlessness.  So many YouTube videos.

What took the place of Gov second semester was, of course, math seminar.  Which was good fun and all, but I can’t honestly say it even approached last year because last year was simply unapproachable in its awesomeness.  Sorry, everyone in seminar this year.

Latin: Ah, the ever-loved “Latin multilevel.”

Um, yeah, about that.  Ms. N literally spent a total of like 59 minutes working with AP Latin this entire year.  The rest of the time, she worked with Latin 3 and the two separate Latin 2 groups, and Maddie and I were on our own.  And before the AP, we were actually so much more self-motivated and productive than anyone has any right to expect from a couple of high school students.

Although we did have story time for about ten minutes each day.  And after the AP, it was story time and dress up time and picnic time, every day, all the time.  Maddie my dear, let me just publically say that Latin is an impossible language, and I could not have survived AP without you.

I’m really glad Ms. N decided to just start right in with learning Latin.  There only so many periods of “And this is the curriculum, and these are the four Ps and a G…” that one can tolerate.  Which for me, I guess, is three.

I did appreciate Ms. N’s getting-down-to-business attitude on the first day, but when we threw a party and she had us translate a poem about a wife committing suicide, I realized that it was going a little too far.  Also she actually gave us poems to translate during our first class after the AP exam.  Fortunately she also let us go outside to work on them unsupervised, so we could, uh, work at our own pace.  Yes.  Work.  Of course.

PE: But do I even need to tell you about this?  It’s the same every year.  Except Kati and Molly are in it!  For now!

What the hell, Kati and Molly were totally NOT in my gym class.  Whatever.  PE was relatively okay this year because I could hang out and complain about it with Christa and Benika.  But seriously, we did like five units of handball and ZERO units of badminton.  There is something very wrong about those proportions.

Free periods: More of them!

Indeed.

Well, first semester I walked to Cornell for class one day a week and to volunteer at the public library three days a week, so I’d only have 8th free on Tuesdays.  But second semester I didn’t have a Cornell class and I only volunteered two days a week, which left abundant 8th periods per week to completely and thoroughly waste.

Eighth period was the one period I most consistently spent doing nothing.  Which was AWESOME.  Because doing nothing meant lounging in the Tattler office or at the creek with some people who have permanently screwed up my sense of normality, for which I am endlessly grateful.  Because no one wants a normal sense of normality.

Addendum: [...] I won’t be taking the bus much, as I’ll be either working, taking the late bus, going to Cornell, or ambling off campus and taking a city bus.  Which is awesome.

First semester I was literally on the morning bus one day a week and on the afternoon bus no days a week.  I took both buses a little more frequently towards the end of the year, but never more than a few times a week.  It was nice.  School buses are annoying.

I had a great time sophomore year and a better time junior year, in spite of my full course loads.  Senior year couldn’t possibly be worse.

Except it actually could be.

Let me explain.

High school most of the time is simple. You worry about high school, and that’s it. Senior year, you worry about high school (at least a little), and then you worry about all sorts of other shit, not least of which is the college application process. It’s so much more complicated.

Also, if you’re anything like me, i.e. a nerd with little to no social life, I would advise you to think more carefully before you take preposterously few classes only because you’ve heard people tell you it’s awesome.  I know, I’m one of those people who told you it was awesome, who always got at least six hours of sleep and walked to Gimme! for coffee and had the luxury of being able to finish her English homework first period.  But there are not only intellectual but social aspects that you miss when you’re not in more classes.  And you lose every right to complain about school.

I’m not saying I regret taking only four-ish classes, but I am saying that the postives and negatives of taking a heavy course load versus a light one are not as clear cut as you may believe.

Which is why if you asked me what my favorite year of high school is, I would have to flip a coin.  Heads is junior year, tails is senior year.

Anyway.  Class of ’09, I shall save my official blog post congratulations for June 25, but serious props to you for making it through high school.  The worst is over.

A teacher came to tell me that the debate would be taking place in the library next week, so (meaningful stares at the clutter) that would give me time to tidy up.

When?

I would just shove it all into my office, but I honestly don’t know when I’m going to have time to  even do that! You know, having a free period just means people feel less worried about interrupting.

Friday’s 4th period where we all had a free period was pretty funny. I was playing Sims on my phone and we were laughing at how this guy on it fell in love with me after i was talking to him, but didn’t like my hug, but licked the peck i gave him o.o XD Then kirsty told me to marry him so i could get money and extend my house.

So imma milk him for all his money and then divorce him XD

———————-

Yeah, some of my classes have been a bit “AHH, what do I do? I’m nervous!” but apart from that they’ve been ok. Business Studies seems fun too. TO the fact that there aren’t many in there and it seems really relaxed at the moment, not overly but i’m hoping they’ll ease us in?

That’s it really.. Need to write my essay for Media studies now and read for Business soo i’ll get on with it =]