LEO FINAL BLOG

Hello Blogger and good morning to this wonderfully jocular day! Today is the assignment of our final blog! Hooray! Today, after a beautifully swift round of Contexto (this is a lie), we were told to begin doing our final blog, also known as the blog of the year, also known as try not to forget anything you did blog, also known as try not to remember that one embarrassing thing in your head you did two months ago blog!

Moving on from that humorous introduction (I hope it was), and now that I probably caught your attention, let's move onto the most serious of all serious questions: have we learnt something? Now, multiple choice question, is the answer A? We didn't. B? Had we? Or is the answer C? We did ... but proceeded to forget. If you answered C, that is wrong! The answer is D, that we did! Yay! Fireworks! Fireworks! Celebrations!

So, going over everything that's happened so far, we've done plethora of activities this year from beginning to start, but before that, I want to share a little bit about the genesis of my coming! I was a little boy in the middle of nowhere ... in China, and then suddenly I was like, "I don't want to live in this wretched, lonely, barren place anymore!" (I wasn't, I was very much wanting to, I just want to make it more interesting.) and then I was enrolled into Fountain International School and brought to another wretched place, just make it 10 times hotter (I'm thankful, honestly, because there's no cold season, but still!). Then, as far as I can remember, I was nervous, scared, fearing for my life, but then this divine angel of AEP comes forth as I lay all my burdens to rest!

During the first term, if I can actually remember it well, I began still living in the edge of China, begging my parents that I can go face to face. It was an awful beginning for me, having to constantly go online and pitifully bawl my eyes out at the sight of not being able to go and meet my classmates. It was a pretty grouse-y time, a time full of whiplashes of the word "face-to-face" shredding the back of my brain and slowly moving forward and forward until the brain is completely shredded, flying in the wind. Maybe I never had one in the first place, but sans the weird crying and yelling, I'm glad that I got the chance to go online. Having to do AEP online, it was just listening to the lessons seated upon my bed, listening to everything and everyone do things without me, as I sit in solitude wondering if I was forgotten in the classroom, just staring at the screen until someone calls out my name. (Apparently Chloe had just told me I was). One thing I missed while I was still online was the rain during scrabble days, since the terms after that was all barren of humidity and rainfall, which makes me think that whoever the god of weather is hates me. It would be great to hear the pitter patter of the little raindrops and smell the petrichor while playing scrabble ... and also not be seated with a partner who probably didn't like doing the job either (sorry Sayum!). As for the main lessons, the tenses were pretty simple to learn. I can still recall most of what I had learnt because it got embedded in my head after doing a few assignments, such as present continuous (I'm going to do ...) or future perfect (I will have to do ...). So, that's a good thing. I think the project was pretty good as well, as being assigned the director of the project had allowed me to connect with my classmates.

During the second term, I spent half of it in utter boredom, watching empty vestigial atoms of air float around my empty room since most of my personal functions are gone, moved to a new country, while I haven't been yet shipped to the pearly gates of the Philippines. I just sat there, staring at a tiny, yet blaring screen that hurt my eyes every 20 seconds of just staring ... menacingly. Then, ever-so magically, I just teleport! The day after, I'm seated in class, doing assignments along with the rest of the class! For the first half of doing absolutely nothing in my room without anything but the chipping blue-painted walls and laying on a dreary plain-white mattress that sat on a wooden frame, we did passives (The work was being finished, the place was being cleaned, etc.). Passives were lessons I had had in the past so I was well acquainted with it, but however, I did learn a bit more than just plain old passive, which included different tenses in the active with replacements of passives, and those were a tad bit more challenging, but I liked it nonetheless. I just wished I hadn't been behind the screen all the time like a prisoner in a jail cell. The second half of me actually being there were for causatives (I had him run, He helped me finish, etc.). Those were okay, though I think I had learnt about confusing the teacher with grammar (Sorry Ms. Disa!). But, all jokes aside, I had learnt some new grammatical techniques which I had definitely learned to use in real life day-to-day languages. As for the project, a poem! Yay! I did say I was experienced in it, but never said I was an expert...! (I say I am, but we move on.)

During the third term, which is currently ending, it was packed with some of the better lessons and activities that we have done. Most prominently, we did the 14-day challenge! Hooray! Woo! Celebrations! Applause! But what was the 14-day challenge? Well, the 14-day challenge was just a challenge for 14 days. It was an extraordinary turning point, a change in everyone's lives, that one speck of happiness earned to fulfill your lives! As challenging as it sounds, it was challenging. The main goal given was to break out old, bad habits to make anew. It was a whole list of questions we had to answer for a fortnight, which involved some things such as an act of pure kindness, a change in a deathly diet, or, most importantly, had you finished what you tasked yourself to do in the morning? It was a fun time to count and recall what you've done during the day, and I enjoyed it. Maybe having it while the camping trip happened isn't so bad in retrospect, since I got to answer it in my head before I slept. But anyway, as for the lessons, there were many. For example, we had done conditionals (if, when, whenever ...) and a lesson for when your rent is due (before, by, until ...) and then our project, which is about finding that one tiny little mishap in everyone's daily speech and using it to create a detailed description like those children who correct anyone who mistaken "your" and "you're" every-so often on the internet. I did a poem, since I did say I was experienced! But sadly, I did go a little bit overboard with the editing and lost the premise of the project.

Recalling about some of the activities we did, which weren't lesson-specific but it was part of AEP, there was oral activities in which we go on DOGO News and read out a short, yet super shocking, headline that Ms. Disa personally chooses out for us! In the end, it's usually a short trivia like jeopardy where the one who gets the answer right will get a trillion dollars! Yes, you heard that! Right on the spot. So during the final parts of the oral lesson, we just have a short discussion of facts where each of us brings out an non-aforementioned fact, and if they don't that means they didn't listen and that means we get to read another news article, woo! But we usually just read until our heart's content. Another thing we had often was the games. My personal favorite is word bomb because I naturally type fast, so I just snatch wins every game! It's fun to play because of the adrenaline rush you get as the bomb comes towards you then threatens you by merely just ticking and ticking and ticking and ticking and BOOM! you're gone. I use that adrenaline to pour my heart out into supercalifragilisticexpialidocious but it always goes into vain because only now I realize word bomb has a letter limit which doesn't make lots of sense. But anyway, the other thing we did was Scrabble, and honestly, not my favorite. Despite the fact that I'm a conqueror in word bomb, I lose in scrabble every time. I'm starting to think it may not be me and the game just hates giving me letters that work together or it's my teammates' faults because I'm always grouped with them and losing, then when I play solo I'm second overall (sorry Sayum and Janek, but it's true!). Moving on, we did morning word exercises everyday; my personal favorite? Hurdle! The others are fairly easy to do, except Contexto because that game is rigged, and bore me since we usually finish them quickly. Hurdle is the only one I actually feel like challenges me as we have to go and make notes and think and all that stuff while some of us are probably screaming out a word in spite of the game.

To conclude, maybe if I had joined earlier during the pandemic, I think I would've been killed during the middle of it, since I couldn't move around for such a long time. I mean, having to wake up, go to sleep, wake up, sleep again, then brush my teeth for lunch and sleep again, then wake up, then sleep for another 3 or 4 hours, then shower, then sleep, then sleep ... and sleep. Though, the thought of it sounds very, very pleasing, the reality of it only gets spoiled when you account for the duration of it's entirety. For 6 months, there I was, sleeping and waking and sleeping and waking and magically going outside into the world, but apparently, it's a dream, and then I wake and sleep and wake and sleep and ... it just becomes a completely endless and quotidian cycle of the waking and sleeping and ... yeah. It only gets attenuated as you realize time is fleeting, and soon enough you'll be present in modern day society, with all the traffic, people, papers, lots and lots of papers, hand-worked projects, and a lot more which you had reminisced in the dissuasion of the virtual life. My advice for next year, don't go online! Some better advice, meh ... there's not much to say other than the year was pretty great, and I had enjoyed throughout. I am completely content with the flow of the three terms, and I think the extra additions such as pre-class activities and oral make school life surmountable. Though, I definitely will miss being the cynosure of the classroom when I can sit still, look pretty on Ms. Disa's phone.

LEO 9A DEBRIEFING

    The 14-day challenge was given to us on the 15th of February, nearly after the halfway mark of the shortest month of the year. This supposed challenge had given us the opportunity to fix our lives and give us some perspective on what it's like to be a motivated and well-kept student! Of course, some of us are already like that — very prim and proper students, but some do need a bit of help. As imagined, those who were like that even before the challenge started will do it the best, and those who aren't, won't. Me? I don't know. I'd say I'm in the middle, like a good student with a bit of freedom in schedule, so I'm not very busy most of the time.

    During the 14-day challenge, I did an okay job in keeping up with the challenge here and there. The reason why I would say I didn't do terribly is because I followed the challenge throughout and I didn't miss everything, but at the same time, I didn't do the greatest since most of what I'd been doing before the 14-day challenge, so it was pretty easy to keep up and do what I was planning to do during the day, minus time constraints, since a few more were added to my schedule, and some were a bit chaotic to follow due to immense amounts of homework I had.

    Despite that, however, I was learning how to manage my time to fit the schedule which was the actual challenge I had, because I'd been mostly busy during it. I think some of it was a pain for me to finish during the camping trip and the aftermath of it, considering that my body was in shambles for the entirety of the days following. The stretches did take a huge toll on my pain, but regardless I was able to do it, though I was asleep most of that duration.

    During the 14 das, the main thing I wanted to improve my writing. I did plot study, vocabulary study and a bit of free journaling, which was basically writing anything I wanted to, like some overly descriptive writing about my day or some short scene of my maladaptive daydreams I have every so often, I would say my creative input had improved, however I didn't feel much had changed, only by just a tiny bit. I guess most of the poems I've written were slowly getting more and more advanced with extra connotations, literary devices and all that, which is great, but it isn't not something I wanted to improve.

    Another thing to talk about was the sleeping schedule. It seemed terrible, but it's a habit for me to sleep 5 hours and nothing more, nothing less. If I were to sleep for more than that, even with 8 hours, I would feel terrible the entire day and it's hard for me to concentrate without feeling tired. I think it's because every time I sleep over 5 hours, I often wake up during the night for no reason and I'd have to wait a few hours before I feel tired enough to sleep again. Unless I can get at least 10 or more, I made it a habit to keep it to 5 hours minimum and maximum.

    Some improvements I think could be included, one of the tasks could be "do something new and out of your ordinary schedule". I think that would make it more challenging, for me at least. I think that it could've been done in a time not during a very sporty event, since... what happened then shall not be named anymore. But overall, it was a pretty good project. I did enjoy getting back to my old schedule that I used to do before time constraints happened. I now know how to plan my week better! Yay!

merry christmus (Leo's Wonderful Posts)

 What a wonderful day to be sitting here writing this on a chilly, winter afternoon with a cup of hot cocoa and a glimpse of snow right outside my window! Just kidding, living in a place without any snow is such a bummer. Although it's already freezing here, snow never came upon this land, sadly. So, it's kind of a lose-lose situation — it's cold, just cold. Living somewhere without contact to any warmth is unbearable. The thing about freezing climates is that I lose focus trying to find warmth somewhere else, so more often than not, I'll be off scavenging my closets just for a fluffy jacket and whatnot. Yes, I know, I have breaks to do it, but typically I'm eating during the breaks as I forget what that I'm supposed to be under warm clothes. But, you know, at least we have a change in weather. Anyway, cold aside, I know the Philippines must be warm. I haven't been there in 3 years after the pandemic hit. It's sad, really, that I could've been out in a warm place, but now I'm stuck in a position, quite literally, because of the shivering temperatures that make me sick. On the topic of Philippines, my flight has been confirmed to be right after my exams, which, finally, I get to come over and feel the heat. After packing everything's to be in the house, heating is incredibly scarce, just to save up on some money because the electricity bill here is terribly high, which isn't any fun. My source of entertainment has also been packed: books, devices, musical instruments (except for my guitar, which I try playing now and then since I'm losing my mind trying to find something to do), or my notebooks. It's a shame, really, that I have to face the consequences before finally ending my sought-out journey to eternal happiness! How graceful.

Moving on, since it's the end of the term, it's time for the summary! The most famous part of the AEP blog!

Wordle games! What a blast it was to play them somewhere where I can't interact much. I can't say much about these games since I only could ever guess some of the words, like that one time when we were playing anonymous wordle and somehow I managed to get 3 confirmed letters on the first try. It was kind of funny, that we then proceeded to put in wrong letters up to 0 confirmed letters as we progressed that one game. What a time. Anyway, other games we played were fun, too. Like that one game which I absolutely despise trying to finish, Griddle. Which is kind of a crossword-wordle kind of mix. The gracious amount of letters they give are so horrible, that I yell internally whenever I have a missing letter to a word. Anyway, yeah. It gets brutal when I play wordle games. Speaking of games, the game that's on my head right now is a crossword. Maybe I should go and play some after writing this.

As for the practical things we do in class (*wordle is practical*), we did the thing I'm most best at, poetry. We did lay off of grammar this term, but that's okay, since I'm horrible at in-depth grammar since, despite being foreign to English countries, I still manage to be fluent in English, so naturally I already have that sense of what to write and what not to write. Unlike grammar, however, I do well in poetry, surprisingly. I have even won competitions about poetry (just joking, the nation-wide competitions I joined I got second place), so it was, indeed, easy to come with a poem and then heavily polish it before delivering it foolishly, much like I always do. Despite that, I think it came out pretty well, even if I did manage to overdramatize scrabble. Yes, I did, but we move on.

So, as I say my goodbyes to this wretched place, I take my luggage, and finally step into the scorched lands and take my chances to melting in a boiling haven. Anyways, bye now!

leo's blog

 Hello, hello, hello!

Today we were tasked to reflect back onto the past term and to write how we felt about it. Overall, the first term was great. My grades were all high, I think, and my attention span hasn't yet faltered on me just yet. I'm still out strong and hoping to do more for this term.

As I've experienced more of what's in FIS, there's a few more differences I've found than in my old school. One, extra-curricular activities just dissolved. Although I've heard about clubs, the choices are nothing. Two, subjects are generally pretty fast, and they require a lot of notetakings. In my old school, things were generally laid back and I could memorize it pretty easily because of how slow they teach and how easily I could review and memorize each thing, although it was still IGCSE-based. Three, the examinations! Oh, how I could go on about how good the system for examinations is. In my old school, we were in giant rooms (hallway, common area) seated in split rows and columns to do the exam. We were required to follow all rules, which means to be quiet and do not speak to anyone even in and out of the examination venues. Then, the examination times were usually an hour to two hours long, but then we had to stay until the time has finished. We could not go home early to study, and we had to stare and watch the clock tick 'till the alarm. But then examinations were all one day each (some being in the afternoon with another exam), and exams were only twice a year, once a semester. So, some huge changes here and there. I've learnt to adapt.

The things we've been doing in FIS this term were:

WORDLE
Every lesson, we are given a unique type of wordle which we can play together as a team and solve it, unless it is the wordle where we go against each other in. As for the other wordles, they are all pretty fun and I've never seen anything like them before, so that's one thing. Another thing is that each are pretty engaging and entertaining to watch and guess which words could be which thing.

SCRABBLE
SCRABBLE DAYS! We had those when it rains, and it is great! Although, being online, I can't do much but sit and stare and occasionally talk when it's my turn, it's fun to watch and engage (somewhat) with my peers. And when I do get there, ON JANUARY, it would be fun to watch the rain and do a game of scrabble as the day goes. Especially since I'm a person who enjoys rain a bit too much.

PAST TENSE
So, this year, we learnt about the past tense. Using Ms. Disa's amazing videos, we've gotten information about the different tenses and specifics of it, knowing the intention and the meaning behind each of those specific tenses. Although most of what's being taught were in my vocabulary already, I hadn't known the meaning of those specific tenses since English is my mothertongue. 

PROJECT
The project! We were instructed to create a 3-day package trip in a foreign country. I was put as the manager of the project. It was a nuisance being online and trying to conduct people who were face-to-face, who could actually do anything in class. Luckily, we also did it online for us to create a canva project for a Japanese trip. It was stressful having to search up things I didn't know about and writing them down in a summary, then voicing it out quickly to get the 1-minute mark for each person. It came into fruition, and it was successful, so that's all that mattered.

Anyway, I've enjoyed the first term, and now I'll enjoy the next! Toodloo!

New Student!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As a new student, I’ve never had ‘AEP’ as an actual subject. From my last school, I was about to take English Literature as an elective subject which I was debating on whether I was excited to do, since I’m not much of a reader but I definitely am a writer, so I didn’t know whether I was going to loathe the subject or enjoy it. Anyway, AEP has been great so far! I’ve been learning new things and testing my knowledge in English every day I join a class. It’s great to be learning new things as I go through subjects and I think it’s even greater when it’s something I enjoy.

One thing I'm very grateful about is that it's a very calm environment with a way of learning by practice and practice rather than memory, unlike my old school where I had to memorize everything throughout the entire year with practice coming only after I've learned everything. We are learning future tenses and, although I can use them correctly, I still had a few things to learn before being the greatest in it. 

In addition to that, we also play a few games of wordle before we start every lesson. Although it isn't very competitive, I feel it's a very good way to grab attention because I know often I will tend to lose my focus and start zoning out or even falling asleep. Although I'm not the greatest in terms of memorizing my vocabulary, I still usually get the words.

One thing I do dislike is the fact that I have to do online classes, which I wouldn't blame anyone for since I'm not in the country and I haven't yet gotten a definite date where I will fly to the Philippines to do my classes. It's very tedious to get online and, since I didn't have online last year, I have to get used to it while being completely new and being slowly introduced to face-to-face classes without even going to face-to-face classes. That aside, classes aren't the worst though. I'm able to catch up to an extent, I guess. It just has to take a little of getting used to, but that will all be thrown away once I get to classes face-to-face.

Things are definitely way more different than what I'm used to, obviously. In my old school, we used to do face-to-face classes until 4pm and have periods of 40 minutes each. However, the teachers were often very laid back with their classes and often slowed down in the curriculum, leading to very tight learning schedules which me and my classmates used to complain about. However, in FIS, it's a very, very fast learning schedule with new topics each period which is hard to catch up with since I'm so used to such a slow experience. I have been shifting into the new routine well, though, and I'm learning things as quick as I can. I think it's great that it's so much faster with more energy rather than being so loose and you can easily backtrack without paying attention.

Things used to be physical, unlike at FIS. We used to be given reminders via books and having to write down all our tasks and things we had to do over the weekend while at FIS, I am able to get reminders through Google Classroom without having to write anything, which I am super grateful about because the books they gave us to write these reminders were super big, but despite its intention, it was horrible and obnoxiously small to write anything on it.

It's been amazing to learn at FIS so far, and I'm really grateful to be here!