This Week In School: Peace And Lobe

UPDATE: Yes I know I'm nearly three Weeks late on this one, it was almost finished before Halloween and I kind of just forgot about it til' now. So in the Blog when I say 'last Week' I'm actually referring to the School Week that was the 17th-21st of October. Now I'm finally back in School normal Blogging will resume.. 

I found last Week a bit boring and dull to be honest. But it was the last Week before the Halloween Holidays so no wonder I was having a bit of ‘Can it just END already?’ syndrome. It’s been a long few months, but at least I can finally lie in Bed looking at the fruit of my labours:

Nice looking report card isn’t it? Mostly brilliant, with the exception of Maths of course. I don’t think I’ve seen French Results that good in all my life, but then again that’s thanks to the numerous knowledge Tests we’ve had were you just learn a page of stuff and recite it off by heart onto a piece of paper the following morning. Don’t look at it like ‘Wow Tim has a real nack for French’ just more like ‘Wow, Tim surely works his ass off revising’ because at the end of the day (and I can say this for both History as Science as well) all I‘m really doing is learning a few paragraphs of text and writing them down. It’s not really that difficult but it is time consuming (and boring). Still I’m not complaining, the Results are what matter in the end, and this early Report just certifies what I already know: I’m NOT going to fail this Year, for the simple reason that I know that if I work hard enough I can obtain the best Result possible. As long as the subject isn’t Maths or French anyway…

Sport: After the Cross Country Race the previous Friday, I only had two days rest before I was again jogging endlessly around that bloody football field. Still at least it was to be the last time before the Holidays (I get spared for three Weeks!), and as far as I was concerned that was the only thing that kept me going for most of the time. Just one last lap Tim, just one last lap… I should also mention that my performance in Endurance has been really good so far, and my lap times always clock in at around 2 minutes which means that despite almost dying in the process, I’m very consistent and regular in my rhythm. The whole idea of Endurance is about maintaining the same speed for a long period of time, so while I might not be the fastest guy out there (think slow) I can certainly keep up the pace. Even if ‘keeping up the pace’ for me means nearly passing out from exhaustion near the end…

History: We finished Civic Education last Week and started a new chapter on the URSS and Stalin. Should be a fun chapter, and I can already see the perfect Test score on the horizon. I think 3eme will be a blast on the History side of things, the 19th Century is probably the era that I specialize in the most, and I can say that with confidence because most of the stuff that we’ve done in Class so far is stuff that I already know anyway. Thursday was the Civic Education Test on all things to do with Democracy and Liberty ect… and judging from my past efforts (there rarely has been a Test in this subject were I’ve obtained a score below 15/20 in about oooh three years) I think it went really well. 

English: Climate change last Week, and the Class was showed many a BBC news report on how Global Warming was effecting the Arctic and we all should stop polluting. I sleeped through most of it to be honest, seeing the same report repeated over and over again got very tiring very quickly. English has and never will pose a challenge for me, walking into this lesson is the equivalent of enduring a one hour pre-school lesson and even if it's nice knowing that there's at least ONE lesson that I'm sure to get full marks in every-time it does become a tad tedious after a while. I could sleep through most of these lessons and it would probably have the same effect as when I'm awake. Still it's nice seeing that barrage of excellent Results on my report card.  

German: It’s surprising how little we’ve done or accomplished in German so far this Year: It’s taken us a whole two Weeks now just to learn how to say the Weather and name the different clothes you have to wear for each occasion. I thought things would be at least a little more challenging by now, we have been studying the subject for a Year by now and I don’t recall having learnt anything substantial. It’s bare bones at best, and last Week I was still bored to buggery by it. Then again for all I know the difficulty curve could suddenly be bumped up and in a few Weeks time I could be crying over how difficult German has got but I won’t, this Teacher (although very nice, almost TOO nice) doesn’t seem to have any intention of speeding things up.  

Science: Another lesson that just seems easy to the point of boredom now. Hopefully the new Chapter on gravity, solar systems and the inner workings of the universe can inject life into proceedings after the Holiday. At least it’s something I’m partially interested about. I know I'm moaning a lot now about how easy and tedious the lessons have become, but that is NOT really a negative. I'd rather it be stinking easy than stinking hard, it's just that when it's stinking hard I tend to wake up a bit.

S.V.T: Speaking of stinking hard, S.V.T this Week was probably the ONLY lesson last Week that I had some difficulty with understanding. While the chromosome experiment a few Weeks back and the happy-go-lucky attitude of Mme. Gandon did inject some life into proceedings (and didn't really represent anything at all complex) this Week was just one BIG Mind-F*ck (if you pardon the language). I suppose it was down to a mixture of complicated words, baffling exercises and rubbish thought-processing on my part (it WAS pretty early in the morning). Still, the Test is coming straight after the Hols, so I'd best re-look at what we've done and get my head round it pretty quickly or I'll be beside myself in the Test.  

D.V.3: One lesson this Week due to the Teacher being ill, basically after the holidays I’ve chosen to do a diaporama on a job from the ‘Information Industry’ (I.E Web Site creators, computer technicians ect…) so I can participate in an online contest or whatever. It’s a bit more complex than that, but I’ll explain fully in a few Weeks time. 

French: I fear the worst for the text comprehension Test we had last Thursday. Oooh boy: The questions were a bit too wordy for me and to be honest I didn’t really understand the text either! Again I feel that my weakness lies in the fact that I’m simply not at all that fluent in the French language, even after five years of being in this country. A lot of it I’ve picked up just from listening to my Class day in, day out but if no one in my Class (for example) says the word ‘Plane’ in French and points to a picture of a plane then how can I know what the word is in French? Maybe one day I’ll be able to read a French book and understand it just as much as the English version, but for now I can just get by and do my best. Anyway unless I break open a dictionary and start learning every single word in the French language I’m doomed to fail in Tests like these. I suppose it's just something you accumulate over time. The rest of the time this Week was spent on another looong and boring study of grammar and as usual I felt both bored to death and overwhelmed all at the same time. We also took a look into the realm of uninteresting autobiographies again, this time to make sure we know the difference between the narrator talking in the present and the narrator talking in the past. Yes, very boring.

Music: Last Week was mainly around modern music again, and we heard a track from Kayne West called 'Power'. Basically it was the Teacher showing us how a lot of modern music is stitched together from old music, the track we listened to featured several tunes/beats from old songs that the composer had just tweaked a little so as not to make it that noticeable. Oh yeah and the Teacher went onto this massive rant about how Auto-Tune is the most disgraceful thing that has plagued new music and how in the good old days performers had to live without that crap ect... It was nice to see a Teacher that isn't so damn neutral about anything, and I like his method of teaching were he basically goes kinda geeky on a few topics. And by 'geeky' I mean he is rather indulgent when discussing modern music techniques to us. He even gave us a quick list of songs that he deemed to be (rough translation) 'technoey crap' and 'wonderfully inventive'.   

                    

Maths: Ah Maths, Maths, Maths, how I despise you so. I'm a treat with you in Class, but when the Test beckons it all falls apart...Going into the Maths Test we had two Wednesdays ago I felt fairly confident that I'd get top marks, simply because this Chapter hasn't posed ANY major problems in Class whatsoever and I'd learnt all the different methods down to a tea just by the sheer rinse and repeat nature of the BILLION monotonous exercises I'd had suffered through. It had all the makings of a winner. And what happened? Well I was pretty chuffed about how well it went...at first but the Teacher then decided to read us the correct answers out-loud afterwards (just so we could get a good idea of our overall score) and judging from that I'd wager that the majority of my answers were dead wrong. Which was surprising considering that it was the EXACT same thing we did in Class, so therefore the EXACT same thing that I got Top marks in every single time. I have only one explanation so far: A demon must have possessed me 'Exorcist' style during the Test and made me write down all the incorrect answers, it's the ONLY logical thing that could have happened in my mind. Well either that or I have a split personality: One that is really bad in Maths and the other that's Top Of The Class. What's worse is the fact that I WAS SO GOD-DAMNED SURE OF MYSELF, I even rechecked my answers several times before handing in the Test papers (I am known for making loads of simple mistakes in these Tests, so I'm always extra prudent), and I STILL cocked up big-time, even though I took every possible precaution so as to NOT F*UCK UP! ARRGHHH! So Maths is frustrating in the sense that no matter how good I am at any one subject in Maths, I always manage to eff' it up one way or another in the Test. I'm seriously starting to think I'm cursed, I just CAN'T have failed that Test, the clouds must have been aligned against me or something that day. 

Technology: We finished our diagramme on the 'panel project' last Week, and you can see the efforts of both me and my comrades here: 

We also had a Test on that exact same type of diagramme, just with a different object instead of 'panels'. No, this Test was on a scooter/moped and we had to do a list of all it's functions and guidelines (ex: MUST MAKE IT SAFE TO DRIVE, AVOID ACCIDENTS ECT...) just like before and represent them exactly like the thing above ^. It went well (I think), but my wording was a bit off due to my limited vocabulary. Unfortunately I forgot what the  French word for 'movement' was (it's 'deplacement') so I handicapped my way through the entire Test trying not to use that word on an object that is clearly meant for moving from place A to place B in a manner that is both effective, safe and simple. Problem is I had no idea how to spell that out clearly in French for the Test. Hopefully the Test went well, but if the Result is more on the sour side then I can direct 100% of the blame onto my ability to correctly word things in French. *SIGH* You know sometimes I wish I was French because it would make life over here so much easier for me. 

Peace and Lobe: So judging from this Blog's title you're all wondering what the hell 'Peace and Lobe' is, aren't you? Well Peace and Lobe is sort of like this weird concert mixed in with an educational lesson about our hearing and how we perceive sound. It took up the best part of Monday afternoon and we shared the concert hall with the other College from Mohon (who in all seriousness looked like they could beat the living sh*t out of my school, they literally towered above my lot) although it was undoubtedly better than the alternative (Maths, History and D.V.3) I felt really bored (well there's a surpriseduring the last half when they started explaining the inner functions of our hearing. One thing I will say though is that the group performing this act was quite entertaining, especially the leader of the band who pretended he was a famous rockstar for most of it, and actually leaped into the crowd at one point. They also performed several different  ear-pain-inducing songs, and I couldn't tell if they were either really bad or doing it on purpose most of the time! But Overall it was an interesting way of spending an Afternoon I guess.                

So I could some up last Week in School in one word it would be 'boring', but it was a nice break from the over excessive amount of Homework we've been getting recently. This Week was just another hurdle to overcome before the lovely reward: now I can now finally relax in the comfort of my Bed for good two Weeks! Long may the holidays reign, I say! Oh yes, and I almost forget to say HAPPY HALLOWEEN!