20 of January - Wednesday

The end of the Mocks had finally come but, more importantly, the beginning of Term 2 has arrived.

Ah, I can tell some of the U6 are feeling it already: the expectations of the second term, the tension of the IB's and last, but not least, the uncomfortable sensation in the gut that this is our last term in St. Paul's...

Luckily after our Mock exams were over we didn't need to go to lessons...that's a fate destined for us tomorrow and Friday...

First lunch? Mixed Grill.

17 of November - Tuesday

Lunch was good today! We had hamburgers and french fries. Unhealthy, but delicious just the same!

With the school play just looking over the horizon the rehearsals are becoming more and more frequent. Next week: A Midsummer Night's Dream!

10 of November - Tuesday

This one's coming a little bit late. I have an excuse, mind you. The blackout. There has never been a blackout like this in Brazil since 1999. 9 States in Brazil were almost completely powered down and this affected everyone up to a point a bit beyond the Brazil / Paraguay border.

So that's it people. I was going to write this post a little later than usual but, oh no!, the blackout hit and the power only came back at 1:15 am of today.

The girls had a game of football against our traditional rival, Graded school. The game grinded on with both sides battling valiantly. The score was 1 - 1 so they had to go into overtime. The penalty shots ended the game. St. Paul's beat Graded: with a score of 3 - 2.

What I forgot to mention on the Monday post was that this is reading week! We had a whole senior school assembly with the Headmaster who addressed this information to us.

Mr. Mugan's "Bookaholics" video was finally presented on a big screen after, if i'm not mistaken, 10 trailers.

The game was mentioned and so was D.E.A.R. This stands for "Drop Everything And Read".

This is basically when someone walks up and down the corridors ringing a bell. Students and teachers are supposed to stop what they're doing, grab a book and read for 20 minutes. The only flaw I see in this is that whilst some teachers take this seriously, including when we're doing an important piece of coursework, other teachers do not stop to read no matter what we're doing; trivial work or not.

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

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.

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?

30 of September - Wednesday

The end of the second month of term is pulling up. Expect to get a lot of "A pinch and a punch and the first of the month!"'s tomorrow, my dear readers!

Both the Form 5's and the Upper 6th Grade round was today. In tutorial this morning some students got terrible news, some got fairly normal news and some got spectacular news. Those who were not in the morning tutorial for any reason (such as myself) received them after lunch in the tutorial period then. (By the way, I imagine that the Wednesday tutorial period which has been around since probably ever is to consider the tutorial period lost once a week for assemblies.) Your guess is as good as mine but I think it seems like a logical explanation for it.

Pre-contested events today included the popular hurdles and the oh-so-longed-for high jump.

During the lunch break, Walsh University came for a talk although, unfortunately, very few students attended the talk. Although we are going to be getting some more college talks soon it does seem that their number is decreasing, what with all the college applications and all.

Following straight after the Walsh talk we had Mr. Mugan explaining to us and giving us more information about the dreaded Extended Essay. The presentation focused more on the actual details of it, like the layouts and the abstracts...

Oh, and as as final note: Sodexho concocted a new desert for us today. Actually, it was more of a change from one of the regular deserts. Instead of using "Sonho de Valsa" bomboms to coat the pavê we have, they used "Negresco" cookies. Whilst I do prefer the Sonho de Valsa Pavê I confess I rather enjoyed this new desert. Oh, and why do they insist on mixing the best deserts with the worst main dishes and vice-versa? We had pavê for desert but the damn battered fish as the main course!

23 of September - Wednesday

It was a quiet day until about 13:00; during lunch time. Oh yes, the 6th Form Centre was active today. Not long after I arrived there after lunch, Zé and Matheus put a couple of chairs in front of the door, to barricade it. Of course, that wasn't much of a barricade so Zhao and I joined. Pilling up chairs until they were about 2 metres high. Some chairs at the bottom were there for support. It wasn't long before I got a bit carried away: I put a small table in front of the door. Then I lifted up a sofa and put it on it's side, against the chairs.

What many of us didn't notice was Mr. Thomas standing there, watching us, just waiting to leave through the very door we were barricading. Well, suffice to say that we got a "Put-everything-back-in-one-minute-or-you-are-all-banned-from-here!"

Well, we managed to tidy it all up, Mr. Thomas was set free and we started reapeating the events to the other people that passed by. The only shame was that we didn't do it again and didn't get to see the effect on other people. After all, the whole point was to see people's reaction when faced with an enormous barricade!

Today was also the first House Assembly. Windsor got together in the Art Centre, Tudor in the Theatre and Stuart in the Cafeteria. With the Athletics Day coming up all the signing up was important. I'm not sure what happened with Tudor and Stuart, but the house meeting for Windsor went very well.

17 of September - Thursday

We had our first fire drill of the term today. It was after break, about halfway through our maths lesson. The procedure was as normal; everyone leave all their stuff behind and go directly to the field.

Well, it seems that we didn't learn very much with previous fire drills: apparently we were just as noisy, unorganized and rampant as in previous drills. But hey, we are only teenagers after all!! If a bunch of friends gather on a field during classtime, how can chatting between themselves possibly be prevented?

Oh, and people have been ripping off the pictures put on the U6 wall, including the one I put up. If every person has the right to put one picture and it can be anything I'm going to keep mine there!

16 of September - Wednesday

Halfway through the week and I already feel like I'm going to collapse...oh well, fazer o que, né?

Anyway, we had two Varsity victories yesterday: the Boy's team beat PACA 3x0 whilst the girls beat PACA too with an impressive 6x0.

The science Group 4 Project began today. It'll be very, very annoying having to come into school at 9 am on Saturday to do our project. An entire triple period was devoted to getting into our groups and deciding what we're supposed to do. The positive side is, of course, that it will only take Saturday to finish it; as soon as we're done on Saturday the Group 4 Project will be over.

Mrs. Obi gave us another one of her interactive lessons today. It seems Mr. Cooper Blanks is not feeling too well so Mrs. Obi stepped in. It was all about currency exchange with Cashflow money representing the currency of one country and "Class Bucks" representing Mrs. Obi's money. Everyone had different amounts of money but the Cashflow money was only used to buy Class Bucks. Class Bucks, on the other hand, were used to buy chocolates. Clearly there was a mad dash of people wanting to get Class Bucks. Whilst the original cost of 1 Class Buck was about 1500 Cashflow Dollars, by the end the demand for Class Bucks was so high that I bought a Class Buck for 4 Million and 100 Cashflow Dollars whilst Brian bought it for 17 million!

Of course, in the interest of fairness, everybody got a chocolate at the end regardless of having bought Class Bucks or not.

15 of September - Tuesday

All that happened today was a set of games.

Football games, basketball games, etc...

I believe that we were up against Graded school but I'm not sure what others, if any, were there too.

I'll try to get results tomorrow and put 'em up here.

14 of September - Monday

What a day! So much work for a Monday. Economics, we had a test. Chemistry, a practical and lots of exercises. Maths, don't even get me started...

As you've undoubtedly noticed, this blog is aimed at writing about Upper 6 life and not about the lessons but, to be honest, lessons are practically all that's been going on.

I'll just write up 3 things that I've learned today.

First off, a few of my classmates have gone on a Geography field trip. They'll be back on Wednesday. I'll be sure to ask a few of them what they went through and post that here later.

Swine flu has been slowing down at school it seems. Whilst in the first week alone we had at least 3 infected pupils, now in the 4th week we're still at (I believe) 10. Unfortunately it's spread to the Lower 6 so now infections don't seem to be limited to the prep and pre-prep school alone.

Apparently the school is looking to recruit new teachers too. In the Estadão newspaper, there was an enormous add sent by school looking for new teachers. Someone sent an e-mail with a photo taken of the newspaper and they even printed out a copy and put it up on our Upper 6 board! Go figure!

11 of September - Friday

The end of the week arriving and most of the school already turning on their "relax" gears.

Today was a pretty normal day with nothing out of the ordinary happening, though I must say that Vicky's stretching exercises during P.E. though were spectacular and extremely envigorating. I don't know exactly how to word this because describing pain as "good" without sounding like a masochist is extremely hard. Hmm...despite it seeming like every cell in my body was screaming in agony when I was done, it was a "good" pain because it was one that left me (and I'm sure the others as well) with the feeling that we had improved our fitness.

It certainly was a healthy and good alternative to dodgeball, an activity that I've been wanting all week but never seem to find enough people willing and able to play when P.E. lesson finally arrives.

10 of September - Thursday

I must say that the only interesting thing that happened today was the Northeastern University talk that we had this morning at 9 am. Pity there's not much to be said here again.

One minor change though; at the start of the term, the school used to post the school lunches from Tuesday to the following Monday on the school's Intranet. That was great since we knew what to expect for that day and the following week. Now that's been changed and now we only get the daily school lunch. Now I have no idea as to why they changed that but....you know....

9 of September - Wednesday

It sure seems this week is being quite uneventful.

During maths today (our first lesson) many of my classmates came in to talk to Mr. White in order to get a permission slip to go to Graded. I didn't go, so I'm unsure how the talk went, but I'm pretty sure it was some sort of university talk too.

Lunch time was a tense one where, all of a sudden, one of the puffs would come out of nowhere and smash you or the person next to you on the head. Yes, it was an all-out war of puffs. It sort of reminded me of how dogs fight. One second they're just staring at each other and, out of the blue, they're tearing at each others throats. Similarly, there we all were, just sitting on the sofas when one person would get up and randomly attack another. This usually led to a collective attack on the surprised, assaulted individual.

Suffice to say that all was going great and it was lots of fun until some people came down, decided to lie on the puffs and spoil our fun. Oh well...c'est la vie.

Ah, yes. I might as well talk about something I read in the newspaper this morning. Well, today is the 9/09/2009. I read in the newspaper that a hospital near my house has 23 caesarean sections reserved for today because some parents think that it will be cute for their children to be born on the 9/09/2009....999.

8 of September - Tuesday

What happened today? Hmm...a big load of nothing, really.

Apocalyptic weather was really the highlight.

This morning the sky was darker than usual. All was good until people started arriving in school. Then the rain started. The sky darkened until it seemed it was 10 at night. Sometimes the rain would stop for a few minutes but during most of the day it seemed like the end of humanity was arriving...and in a lot of style I have to add.

4 of September - Friday

Three main events happened today. First off, Alberto told us, in assembly, a little extract of the speech he had given the McCann Society the day before. It was about Economics and credit. I think we will all agree with the fact that this was a very good speech and we hope to hear similar extracts from the other speakers in the McCann Society ECA.

Film today was quite unique experience: no teacher came to the class to teach us. Robbie, Zhao and myself stayed in the classroom and worked on our Film Courseworks. At 9:15 (15 minutes before the end of class), Mr. Burnside, our film teacher, walks in and asjs us what we are doing. We were then asked what lesson we are supposed to be having. The answer? "Film, sir...with you..."
All 3 of us were given Bene's by Mr. Burnside; I think it's my first Bene in about 3 years...

Extended Essay's were due in today and many people were in a drastic hurry to finish them off and hand them in. 4000 is a lot more than it seems, for some people.

With the large amount of rain we had, P.E. was a very limited class. We had the option of Table Tennis, Dodgeball, Futsal or work in the 6th form centre. Dodgeball and Table Tennis were abandoned as nobody showed up for them.

3 of September - Thursday

The second draft of everyone's Extended Essay is due in tomorrow. From what my friends have been telling me and from what I've seen lately, Extended Essay drafts are very similar to the TOK essays. We're given ages to do it (in the case of TOK essays; a month) so people who don't do it immediately end up forgetting about it until the week (or weekend if you're lucky) before it's due when a friend reminds you about it. Then most people react in a "Holy Sxxx" attitude and work their sorry little asses off to get it done. Yeah...this Extended Essay deadline is not the final draft; but people are scrambling to get it done nonetheless.

On a lighter note; we've had a visit from a great friend of ours today! SteVe came by to visit us in the few weeks he has left before he goes back to England to face another brutal term of school. Hell, it's great to have good friends who live abroad suddenly come to visit the school again. In case you're reading this Steve, your surprise visits are awesome! Keep 'em up! And this blog is just as much for you as an ex-student as it is for us current U6.

Basketball game against Chapel today after school. I don't know the results yet again; but here's a photo to inspire you guys.

2 of September - Wednesday

With the Brazilian Independance Day coming up, we had the usual annual Assembly about the important date. It was pretty much the same as every year; an address by the Headmaster, a video about the country, the inspiring speech by Mr. Assis and, finally, the singing of the Hino Da Independência.

We won't have classes on Monday; but we will have them on Tuesday.

It seems our U6 board is going to constantly be under changes. We've had another picture added today. Matheus together with Hugo Chavez. (Matheus is in the place of Evo Morales; well, Matheus is Evo Morales) It looks great. I'll try to put the picture up here some time! No offense meant, of course, Matheus!

Yeah; I also got the scores from yesterday:

Girls won 1x0.

Boys lost 0x3.

1 of September - Tuesday

It seems someone didn't like Megan Fox being put back up again without Michael...she was kidnapped once again. This time, though, there was no random note, and no indication thatshe will ever be put back.

In fact, it almost seems she's been given up on: Matheus put up a picture of his idol Wormtail (Peter Pettigrew) from the Harry Potter series in her place.

We had 2 football games today after school against Graded School. Unfortunately I'm not aware of the results yet. They shall be put up in tomorrow's post.

It seems also that there was history test going on sometime during the day. Apparently, Teti just got up without saying anything, walked up to Mr. Thomas and did the good old "A Pinch and a Punch for the First of the Month". It was random. Random, but brilliant nonetheless.