30 of October - Friday

The highlight of today was really the whole senior school assembly.

Mr. Rowe, our Headmaster was back from the HMC and was pleased to anoounce all of the sporting triumphs that St. Paul's had achieved. All of the Rancho awards and all of the excellence at the Athletics Day.

There was one detail though. The counting of the Athletics day points was incorrect. Turns out that it wasn't Stuart that won first.

The results are:

3rd Place - Stuart

2nd Place - Tudor

1st Place - Windsor

29 of October - Thursday

It seems that we didn't have one week of Brazilian food at school, it was only the first three days of the week. This time we were given the regular macaroni.

The Commom App reports are due in for tomorrow; similar to most deadlines this is when people are gonna start to rush.

28 of October - Wednesday

Oh yes. It was a pattern. Today the food was from Goiás. The main course was similar to the regular meat we had except that it was chopped into rectangles of different sizes. The desert was ice cream with an optional banana cream to put on top of it.

After lunch, during the tutorial period, Mr. Thomas gathered all of the U6 in the 6th Form Centre. We were told that our IB's had been confirmed. All that was nescessary of us was to check our information to see if everything was correct. I believe that, for most people, it was.

27 of October - Tuesday

I think I'm spotting a pattern here.

Yesterday we had food from Minas Gerais. Today we had food from the Northeast of Brazil. This included some form pie, similar to the regular meat pie that we have every once in a while. I think they added carrots this time, though.

At any rate, we also had the Chester breasts promised to use yesterday. The desert, however, was a mouth-drying peanut mixture called paçoca. It's great, but as it's mouth-drying, a large glass of water is needed afterwards.

26 of October - Monday

Well the Playstation 3 isn't in the 6th Form Centre anymore, but of course we can't expect someone to leave their PS3 there every single day. Oh well.

I was a little bit surprised with lunch again today. The lunch menu said we were going to have "Chester in Dark Sauce" as the main course with "Ice Lolly" for desert.
Let's just say that they completely changed what we had. It was food from Minas Gerais (or at least they said it was). From Chester in Dark Sauce we had Roast Chicken that was similar to the usual one except they added some quiabo to it. The "ice lolly" which I assume was meant to be popsicles was changed to Queijo Minas with some Doce de Leite on it. Probably, though, the strangest thing in this lunch was the menu. It was more than clear that they used a simple internet translator when "Doce de Leite com Queijo Minas" was written as "Cheese and Mines".

23 of October - Friday

Two surprises were in store for us today.

1) Rafa Rocha left St. Paul's today. I'm fairly certain that we will all miss him quite a lot and we all wish him the best. Make sure you keep reading this here, Rafa, so that you won't forget all of us! Best of luck at the Film Academy!

2) After school yesterday, Bia and Olivia set up and entire cork board dedicated to us Uppers. It's fantastic, inlcuding photos of us when we were little kids all the way until photos of last week. They even went got to the point of getting last year's annual review, cutting out all of our photos and stapling them up to the bottom of the board. Basically it consists of enormous, flashy titles at the top, photos down the middle and at the botton, a row of each of our individual photos. I have already gotten permission to take a photo of the board to use it as the main photo of this blog. I'll be sure to get to that on Monday.

22 of October - Thursday

Joy rained down from the skies this morning, when the kind soul of Eddie came to school today. He was bringing us a wonderful gift. It was a complement to Zé's PS3: FIFA 2010!

Oh yes! Eddie brought us the full game! Now players won't be stuck only playing with Barcelona and Chelsea. We'll also have more stadiums to play in, other than the muddy and rather unkept one from the demo. What else can I say? Hell yeah!

21 of October - Wednesday

Unfortunately for Jacobs University in Germany, the talk was scheduled during our morning maths lesson. I'm sure that most students (if not all) were unable to miss out their maths lessons for a college talk. Yes, as incredible as it may seem, nobody went to the Jackson University talk.

On the other hand two very prestigious and renown universities came to talk to us during our after-lunch tutorial period: Duke University and Brown University. ITB, the computer room where the talks too place was absolutely stuffed! I don't think we've ever had a university talk with so many people! of course, the L6 were present as well as the U6.

The lunch name today also gave all of us a scare when they gave us what was called "Kung Pou Chicken". It was quite comic when many students, including myself, went to Google Images to sort of predict what sort of chicken it actually was.

Turns out it was the same chicken that we get with the Yakisoba: chiken chopped into small chunks, surrounded by vegetables and some other spices. It was pretty good; though the Meringue that was for desert still looked like it was going to sprout legs and walk off our plates. As usual. I've still never had the guts to try it. Mark my words, by the end of U6 I'll have tried it.

20 of October - Tuesday

For the first time in the term, our TOK lessons took place in the classrooms. Up until now, all our lessons took place in the Chapel downstairs where we had the students doing their oral presentations. The orals shall continue but in the classrooms.

This seems to be college week! Only today, we had talks at lunch time from Boston University and Chaplan University. After school there were 6 Universities including Babson, Hofstra and the University of Miami.

I say it's college week because of the fact that tomorrow and Friday are also going to host a series of other colleges.

19 of October - Monday

The week long Half-term break is over. Everyone has to get back into the groove again. Was a week too long? Or was it too short?

At any rate, the 6th form was not any less enthusiastic. I'm not sure who the good samaritan is, but a PS3 was brought in and people took turns to play FIFA 2010 on it. Since, if I'm not mistaken, it was a demo game, there were only Chelsea and Barcelona available to play with. Or, at least, those were the only teams that people were playing with.

Well...that's pretty much it. No breaks after the holidays, of course, and the teachers went straight into what mattered.

9 of October - Friday

I think it's pretty interesting that the last post before the Half-Term also happens to be the 40th post on this blog. It's pretty weird to think I've actually been managing to write one post per day!

Oh, right: why do Sodexho insist on giving us FISH and YOGHURT on the last day before a holiday?! Do they want us to leave with a bad impression? I don't look forward to my last lunch at the school...

Anyway...

It finally happened! The Athletics Day! Due to the dull weather today and for the past couple of days there was only a 40% chance of it happening, but that 40% pulled through, causing only minimal problems with the events.

Now, being a Windor, I didn't spend too much time (read: at all) in the areas of the different houses. But I do know that even the younger kids got into the whole thing: wearing blue wigs, waving blue pom-poms. The F5, L6 and U6 limited ourselves to blue facepaint: either a blue spot or blue lines on our cheeks.

Slipping in the races didn't bother people much and at least three people slipping and falling straight on the floor at the end of the race just added to the comedy of the whole thing!

The results were as follows:

3rd - Tudor

2nd - Windsor

1st - Stuart

Now the whole school's got an entire week off! Happy holidays to everyone and take your well-earned rest!

8 of October - Thursday

With the Athletics Day coming up tomorrow (if the weather improves, that is) the pre-contested events are over and here are the results:

Boys :

1st Stuart
2nd Tudor
3rd Windsor

Girls:
1st Windsor
2nd Tudor
3rd Stuart

Overall:

1st Windsor andTudor
3rd Stuart

In rather unrelated news, the Rancho teams have arrived back home today. I look forward to finding out the results of the tournament tomorrow. I'll be sure to put them on here tomorrow.

7 of October - Wednesday

Although this was unknown for me until right now, I discovered that Mr. Bolland's wife gave a talk to all the senior school (except the 6th form) about nutrition.

Other than that, this week continues to be dull. No real news today. We did have baked potato (along with bacon and cheese) for lunch today. It's not a new food on the menu, but it was the first time they put it up this term.

Yeah...I need more to talk about. Any pictures for me to put up, anyone?

6 of October - Tuesday

It's amazing how different the year group is when so many of us are at Rancho! It just seems to empty, so...forsaken.

Pretty much the only event today was Cate's and Ve's presentation during TOK today. It seems that the TOK teachers weren't very happy with our essays...

After the Pasta Festival, it seems that the lunch crew reverted the name of macaroni to its normal "Pasta in Various Sauces", though this time they were more specific and called it "Penne in various sauces".

5 of October - Monday

Even asking around I couldn't find much to talk about today. Well, what can I say? It was just a normal, uneventful school day.

Yesterday, though, everybody who was either in the basketball or football teams left for the week to go the the Rancho, a tournament where schools compete against each other in a vartiety of different sports.

That makes up a great deal of the L6 and the U6. As a result of that, the lessons today and for the rest of the week will be quite empty.

2 of October - Friday

Having missed school today I am writing accounts of what my fellow U6 have told me.

First off, (and I didn't need to be at school to know this) but it was very, very hot today! São Paulo weather is so random isn't it? It's pouring one day, then it's the hottest and dryest day the next!

The U6 were entertained by Giovanna today when she sang a song she composed herself to both the L6 and the U6 in assembly today.

Oh, and did I mention that today was the deadline for the first draft of our TOK essays? No? Well it was. The rush was the same as when a draft of our Extended Essays was due a few weeks ago (you guys remember, right?). A lot of people did it at the last minute. That's us, eh? Always doing things at the last minute.

Lunch was "Beef Stew" apparently.

1 of October - Thursday

Oh man, what a day!

The main news was that the ENEM exam was apparently leaked by someone so, instead of having it on the weekend, it has been posponed for what should be a period of 45 days.

What was most tiring today was what happened after school hours were over.

At night, our teams went to Graded school to play some football (or "soccer" as Graded must call it!).

For those that stayed behind and were going to do their ENEM (depite it's cancellation) were welcome to a talk from Mrs. Viegas about techniques on the exam and ways to go well.

At 6 'o clock at night, the Handel concert began. It was a great hour of wonderful classical music in the theatre with a lot more people than I expected, to be honest. It was also the perfect opportunity to train Gian, the newest member of the lighting team, how to work the lighting board in order to be my replacement when I leave school at the end of the year.