18 of September - Friday

We were told in assembly this morning that, as of Monday, every student in the 6th form centre was going to receive an identification card that will be used to get in and out of the school grounds during lunchtimes. I'm not sure exactly how this will work, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see on Monday.

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.

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.

7 of September - Monday

Holidays!

The 7th of September is the Brazilian Independance day and, as usual, no school for us today. Yaay for us.

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.

31 of August - Monday

Economics is usually a good way to start the week; except when we have a test at 8:15 in the morning...well, that's what we get from convincing Mr. Cooper Blanks to put the test forward from Wednesday to the next Monday...

We had a college talk today, we had nuggest for lunch.

Other than that, nothing went on today? What news? No news. Boring...boring day; boring beginning of the week.

Oh...by the way; today's word of the day is Quizzical.

28 of August - Friday

Okay. Today a felony beyond imagination happened. Megan Fox was kidnapped. Yes, that's right. She was stolen from our U6 Wall and the thief left a note in her place.

It only said "Return Michel and I'll put back Megan".

Now I'm not sure which of the two happened but either someone printed another identical Megan Fox picture and put it back up or the thief just put it back. In any case, Michel still hasn't been put back up.

OH YEAH! And our library door was opened again today! Okay, lemme explain this to whoever doesn't know: there is a passage from the 6th form centre straight into the school building through the library. This, however, had been locked for just about a year since the librarians complained about the excessive noise cause by us...

After a whole year of whining, moaning and general complaint they finally listened to us and opened the door to see if we can control ourselves. If all goes well, the door will stay opened and we won't have to hike outside just to get back into the building through another door!!

Starting the week with economics is great; but it's also great to end said week with P.E.! Some of use decided to try out a new sort of game: Dodgeball. I claimed that the only real way to play dodgeball was to use a ball that hurts on impact! I mean, what else could encourage people to avoid getting hit?! Well, suffice to say that whilst we didn't get a steel-hard ball like I'd have enjoyed we also didn't get the soft, spong-like balls that dodgeball is usually played with at school. Despite the ball not being so hard though, the other team still mentioned that I played somewhat like a maniac, making the game personal and throwing the ball very hard. HAHAHAHA! I mean, what's the fun in any sport if you don't play to win? ;)

27 of August - Thursday

Probably the most interesting thing that happened today was the confusion over lunch. We had grilled chicken today, but many people thught it was strogonoff. Others thought it was Chicken Nuggets.

Let me clear up the confusion:

• We'll have strogonoff tomorrow,
• and chicken nuggets on Monday.

Other than that, not much happened; so I'll just stick a random photo down here...

26 of August - Wednesday

At many points last year, when we were in the Lower 6, we had periods when we were locked out of our centre. These periods lasted from a couple of hours to a couple of days. These depended on both Mr. Thomas's mood and what exactly we did to deserve the punishment.

Well, suffice to say that our messing around started today when we decided to play some Dodgeball indoors. The game didn't seem to last very long after I was hit in the face by Steiner soon after the start of it. Anyway, Lucas put the ball away soon after, and that was that.

We pretty much had a normal day today with the exception of another UBC visit. Few people attended as it was pretty much dedicated to people actually wanting to apply there. A lot of questions were answered and the guest speaker was brilliant and charismatic.

Oh and by the way....battered fish is just another fancy name for "Fish a la Milanesa". It's getting rather annoying Sodexho trying to trick us into thinking there's new food when all there is are new names for old food...

25 of August - Tuesday

I believe that with most things in life, long-term planning is key even if, when the thing you planned for finally happens, the plan goes to hell and things happen completely differently.

That's exactly the process we started this morning at break time. Most of the U6's gathered in Room 301 to discuss some important future matters.

We divided the year into 4 teams, each one in charge of a specific section.

• Yearbook - the preparations for our own, private U6 yearbook. A tradition started last year.
• The U6 trip - where we will plan the U6 trip during the second term. Things like where we will go, what we will do, etc...
• Fund-raising - for the aforementioned trip we'll need all the money we can get. This team is in charge of doing everything they possibly can to make the amount that we have to pay for the trip as reduced as it possibly can.
• The U6 Party - traditionally, every year there is the U6 party where we host a party for (usually) F4 and up. Preparations needed include finding a suitable location, reserving the place, choosing dates and selling the tickets, and other stuff like that.

It's weird isn't it? It seems only a few weeks ago when I was looking at the other U6's and cowering under their immense size, longing to be able to go to their parties and hearing tales of their glorious U6 trips. It's hard to imagine that we were once the size of the current F1's, who now cower before us and want to go to our parties...

Tomorrow we'll be having UBC over to talk about applications. That'll be something to look forward to!

The bad news about tomorrow though: we have "battered fish" for lunch; whatever the hell that is anyway.

24 of August - Monday

I sort of like starting the week with Economics. I mean, it's sort of a pleasant start to the week and not something like starting straight up with Maths or Chemistry...at least with Econ there is the option to go slowly, slide by slide or even just working listening to some music!

Today we had some college visitors! Yale, Princeton and Columbia Universities all came by with one speaker each to talk to us. This was their first visit in their College Talk tour so, as they said themselves, they were completely ready to give us information on the colleges and hand out pamphlets and fliers with more info. I don't think that missing one period of Chemistry had much of an influence here. I think it was a fair trade for the info we got.

HEY! I forgot to mention that a good friend of many of us came by! Aryssa! She visited last week but now she's returned, participated with us in the Yale/Princeton/Columbia talk and had lunch with some of us.

It's great having old friends come and visit again, isn't it? Some friends just aren't forgotten and are always missed, no matter how far they go or how long they stay away.

"Pasta in Various Sauces" was halted by and a double period of Portuguese was followed by a talk by Mr. Thomas on writing UCAS College Applicatations.

21 of August - Friday

Last year the assemblies for the 6th form were on Thursdays in the Chapel. This year it's been changed to Fridays in the Theatre.
The assembly team (made up of Veronica, Celine and Marina) told us that they the plan for the day was to have 2 new teachers and 2 new 6th form tutors tell us a little bit about themselves.
It started with Mr. Case, followed by Mr. Loveland. Mr. de Luca and Mrs. Machado have already been teaching here for more than a year. They talked a bit about themselves because they were new tutors.
Lessons followed normally during the day. The free period that many U6th people had before lunch was used to take advantage of what was rightfully ours. At the entrance of the 6th form there is a cork board. That particular board belongs to the U6 but it's been empty for all of the week for now. We decided that the best way to use it was to give every member of the U6th the right to put up one picture on there. After a while, the board was filled with pictures of female models and/or actresses put up by the boys and pictures of male models and/or actors put up by the girls.
Not much else happened except for the short, 10 minute talk we had before P.E. lesson. The new head of P.E. was introduced and the different style of P.E. was explained. Since the U6 knew all this after an entire year of it, we were pretty much just scenery in the 6th form centre.