Last few days in School....

                     
                           Nice pic of me hanging out with 'Fluffy' last night.


Well It can't technically be called "Last Week In School" because we came back to School after the Holidays on Thursday....

Well it couldn't have started off worse to be honest, I have been suffering from a nasty sore throat and was pushed into School jacked up on painkillers and barely awake (I did not sleep well at ALL Wednesday night, had the highest temperature known to man and that god damn sore throat that hurt every time I swallowed). I hadn't left the house for five days and STILL somehow managed to catch malaria! Of course, the day had to start off with a Maths Test (seriously, whats up with all these Maths Tests?)! It should have gone fine (I had revised hard the previous night) but fell to pieces because I, like the IDIOT that I am revised for completely the wrong thing! I somehow had managed to write down in my book that I had to revise for Chapter 1 in Maths when you actually had to revise for Chapter 2. OOYS! I fell and hit the ground hard as you can imagine, another casualty for the already limping Maths, and the irony was that if only I had learnt Chapter 2 it would have been the only Maths Test that I could have had a good shot at to finally get a respectable score! Poor, poor Maths. Tears and throbbing throats aside, I then went into Sport. Now I hate Baseball and Endurance, but at least I'm good at them, Ping Pong (aka table Tennis) is just about the only Sport that I truely SUCK at. Trying to hit that pong ball is like trying to score 20/20 in a Maths Test (I pray for the day)! And why does it have to be table Tennis? Why not regular Tennis? We've got a Tennis court, so why do we have to do this crap? Trying to catch that ball after it bounces off the table is like performing an obstical course, with it bouncing under other tables, hitting walls and going in the other direction and its path just generally being completely unpredictable! Its hell trying to catch that thing! After that travesty, I went into S.V.T. That Test that I thought went well didn't end up with the Result I was expecting (I got a meagre 12/20, could have been 13/20 but of course I had to spell a few words wrong!), but at least the lesson was interesting (for once), we were studing volcanoes and had to write a short text about the infamous Pompeii fiasco. Volcanoes are cool, mainly because they make great material for Hollywood blockbusters (you only have to see 2012 to be blown away by those great special effects). 

After lunch (having spluttered down a bowl of soup, which tasted like acid with my sore throat and getting jacked up on MORE awful fizzy painkillers), we had another MASSIVE Test in German. Graded out of 40 points, it covered six pages and contained just about every single thing we have looked at in the past few Months, which just by sheer size alone made it impossible to remember EVERYTHING. I filled in a good portion of it, its just another one of those you-either-know-it-or-you-don't  Tests. I skipped a few things, with a few examples of that time when the answer is on the VERY tip of your tongue, but it just doesn't really form in your mind (its so faustrating when that happens! But you can't just write "It begins with a W" can you?). My multi-languistic brain was in overload, as when the Test asked you to translate the German phrases into French you mentally have to translate that into THREE differant languages. MULTI-TASKING OVERLOAD! A bit overwelming, but I should at least get 20/40, which wouldn't really harm my Trimestre Results because I already have a perfect 20/20 in German. After School on Thursday it was pretty much more painkillers and sleep! 

I had developped a headache AND a cold/cough by Friday, adding to my growing list of symptoms (both quite minor, and my nose is starting to clear up a bit now). I must have had every disease known to man by then! I STILL managed to walk into School, although I was careful to stay away from people just in case I infected anyone and turned them into a Zombie! I normally avoid them all anyway, so it wasn't a major change. Friday was okay, the only thing worth noting was my Science Test, which garnered a respectable (although the teacher could have given more) 16/20. I lost four points because I spelt kg and m3 with capitals when they were supposed to have been in lower case, not bothering to draw every single molecule in a syringe (which would have taken ages, and I only had 50 minutes to do the Test) and getting -1,5 because despite writing everying neat and tidy, screwed up on ONE question and had to scribble it out (they take points off if you write scruffy) and getting a Maths question wrong (you had to calculate the mass of air in a container). Apart from the Maths question, I consider most of the mistakes a bit nitpicky and could have garnered a well deserved 18/20. SIGH, Its almost impossible to get a 20/20 in France nowadays!



In other News, I have just watched the latest Episode of Merlin (with my dog Obelix pictured above and below, who enjoyed it as you can clearly see), and quite enjoyed it, and it seems to be really campaigning against Doctor Who. I now liken it to sort of a Medieval DW now. Although the hole "trying to kill the king with seemingly no reason" plot is really a bit tiring now! A bit of variety please?


Well this ends my recap, and I swear that if I see another 'GOD DAMNED PAINKILLER, I THINK I MIGHT JUST SCREAM!!!!'       

This Week In School: My Poor, Poor Legs...

Well, I ran (or very slowly jogged) for almost THREE Hours this Week, and as you can tell by the title of this Post, my legs aren't feeling very well at ALL. In fact, there's a tendon on the back of my right leg right now that is just begging to snap (its already been stretched to bits, poor thing). You know I wouldn't be surprised if my leg had actually broken off during that cross country race on Friday: SNAP! Commentator: "looks like Tim's leg has just finally had enough...." I think I might just pull a sicky next Year (or maybe not), because that was bloody soul-testing. Our College and the one from Mauron always join together every Year for the traditional "Cross" race. A stupid tradition if you ask me, and one of the most pointless things in the entire UNIVERSE that exists only to torture both your soul and your poor, poor body (if I ever feel anything below my knee again it will be a bloody miracle). You can check out my in-depth rant about Endurance running in one of my previous Blog posts here: http://thelazyteenagerinfrance.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-you-know-what-really-grinds-my-gears.html. As if the cross country race wasn't enough, I was also swamped with a TON of Tests: two in French, two in German, two in Art, one in Technology and one in Sport (kinda, he'll be evaluating our performance over a period of weeks). If you think thats bad, wait til' you see the Tests next week...  
The German Test was easy, you just had to write down a string of numbers you heard and then recite another string of numbers to your class while making sure that you p-r-o-n-o-u-n-c-i-a-t-e-d every word correctly (may I also point out that these were SURPRISE Tests, the type I particularly hate because its just an exuse to pray on the kids who don't learn there lessons reguarly), anyway I got 20/20 but everyone in my class got at least 18/20 so no big feat. In the Technology Test I got a measly 8,5/10, which is just quite frankly an insult (SO WHAT I FORGOT TO PUT THE "S" ON THE END OF THE WORD! WHY CAN'T NOBODY EVER GET 20/20 IN THIS LESSON GOD DAMMIT??????), the guy clearly doesn't have the guts anymore to give me a 10/10 rating! I may also comment on my teachers name: Mr Bastide! Anyway after the insult of Technology, I should fare better in Art, in which I had to represent 1 second of motion in 25 Images (fairly easy, akin to the famous stop motion techniques of the 50s Sci-Fi B-movies. Not hard per-say you just need to be a good drawer: ex: a man putting his foot down is about one second, so you'll just have to illustrate that mouvement in 25 different boxes). French was a bit of a disaster as you had to study an old poem, which was clearly wrote by homeless drunk man sat on the side of the street somwhere as it didn't make a lick of sense (one minute the poete was walking down the street describing the "shiny" stars, and then it jumped to him riding a polar bear out in the artic desert! MIND F*CK ALERT! And the dictation were you had to write down a text said to you with as little spelling and grammatical errors as possible, and seen as the French language has so many god-damn words that sound the EXACTLY the same (the sound E has multiple spellings for a start, the word could finish by ee, es, ais, ait, aient, e, i ect...), so basically I'm (pardon the profanity) f*cked. Music was really easy, you just had to read a Biography about Jean-Babtiste-Lully to the Class (imagine my surprise when I found out that "Lully" was a man!), and I also recieved a very welcome 17/20 in the Test we did last week....So all in all, a mixed bag, just PLEASE DONT MAKE ME RUN 6 KILOMETRES AGAIN!!!!!!!!
Now exuse me while I rant at my bedroom wall for fithteen minutes: "ONLY GAVE ME A 8,5/10 DID YOU? WHY YOU LITTLE...$%£@*!"  

NOTE: I didn't actually rant at the wall like a madman for fifthteen minutes, it was just me being "funny."

This Week In School: The Germans have invaded!

 

THE GERMANS HAVE INVADED! Well…maybe not like that, but they sure as hell walked in like they owned the place.  This Week the German correspondents arrived,  much to the anticipation of my Classmates (more like nerve racking tension I‘d say). Apparently this is the first time my School has done this sort of thing, because the moment they arrived out of their posh looking bus the French just sort of huddled up in the corner like scared Babies. Which I don’t blame them for doing, as they were (with little exaggeration) F*CKING HUGE! A lot of people say that I’m tall though next to a German I might as well be the size of an ant! They have to physically duck to get through a doorway. And to make matters confusing, you couldn’t tell if half of them was a Boy or a Girl! There’re so thin and gangly and have loooong hair (the Boys had bloody ponytails!).  Much akin to the sorting hat in Hogwarts, they then proceeded to pair the German-ists (the people studying German) with the correspondents based on there likes, dislikes and general personalities. Luckily I had declined the offer to have a German correspondent before the Summer Holidays because we don’t have the space for someone else (although he could have had the blow-up double bed), and some of my Family might have had a few issues with the Germans infamous track-record. The idea of a German staying in my House for a week didn’t really please me either at the time (not to mention the fact that you knew nothing about them before-hand, heck its probably just luck if you get one of the nice kids) so I just sort of accepted it. It was all very reminiscent of the famous evacuations in the 1940s actually. For the rest of this week the Germans were touring Brittany, taking a peek at Josselin ect…. To be honest it just seemed like an excuse for half the School to have some fantastic days out with there newfound German ‘friends’ (arguably). Except they probably weren’t ‘great’ days out because of all the blistering weather. Its been raining over here for four days non-stop (EDIT: just started to brighten up a bit)! I didn’t really have anything to do with them til’ Thursday when they spent the entire day with our Class. For people that know little to no French they were surprisingly good at Maths (or at least better than me). The lessons were of course dumbed-down because they were there, so Thursday was one of those days when you could lie your brain to rest (for once). They completely annihilated everyone in Sport, and of course the French then began to blame anyone in their Team for whatever reason. For losing them the game (back-stabbers the lot of ’em) Once the Germans had settled in mid-day the French got surprisingly nasty towards them. They would make fun of their language, laugh at them, and in one case actually verbally insulted one of them. No doubt due to Sport… All in all despite being the size of a mountain they turned out to be quite normal. We’re supposed to be going over to Germany next Year, we’ll see whether I actually pluck up in the courage to go. In the meantime, I really have to get my head down this week, due to the Germans being here we now have to catch up with the missed lessons (which is generally an excuse to put out more Tests). And this headache I’ve suddenly developed isn’t helping things at all…