Paintball... or Painball?

Saturday:

HEYYY it's Beam's birthday! SO unlike Psi or Dino, Beam actually had over 10 people go to his party. Also, it wasn't at his house or some restaurant, but instead, we went to a paintball park! We played 4 games in total which might seem quite little at first glance but it actually took around 3 hours. The games last usually less than 10 minutes though LOL. It's mostly because after each game you need to fill up on ammunition, rest a little, and also wait until there's an open place. There were only like 4 or 5 different places in total so you need to wait for an open one to play. 

You know, before coming to the party Dino was scared of dying here. Getting shot by paintballs. Turns out, it's not THAT bad. Only left bruises on me for 3 days or so. It's a bit painful though. 

After that, we got in the car and went back to Beam's house. It's right next to the school btw. Literally a 3-minute walk away. However, just as we were going to park we saw a dog with a collar wandering alone on the street so I got off the car to catch it. AND I caught it YAY. OH, and the owner was nearby so after we called them and told them our location they came right away to pick up their dog. 

Oh yea, Rama couldn't come because a kid in his baby sister's grade caught COVID so he needed to get tested before he could go anywhere. Sad timing though. 

Btw, I'm in my math class right now but... I know all the stuff so we're all good. 

classroom aura

Friday:

Hey. Let's see, the first period for Friday was supposed to be English but instead, there was a colloquium where a guy came to talk to us about the history and the influence Chinese people had on Puerto Rico. That took up the entire period sigh, I was actually kinda looking forward to English class. Our teacher is always super energetic and it kind of attaches to you too which is nice. The first class of the day is generally the one where you shake off the sleepy feeling so her lively aura definitely helps in that aspect. 

In Spanish, it went just as I had predicted last time. The rest of the poem presentations took up the entire class and since my group already presented last class, we got to just relax and listen to them. Oh, you still had to pay attention because the teacher had us make these "conceptual maps" as she calls them, and you need to fill in a few key points on every presentation. Plus, it's worth points and my Spanish grade is in need of a boost right now. 

Lastly, in History... Yeah, I completely forgot what we did in History heheh... I asked Dino and he forgot too LOL. SOOO I'll leave this one super-duper short? Sounds like a plan. 

the orientation to a "new" school

Thursday:

Well, isn't this a great sight. 

Right now, at this very moment, I am sitting in the middle of my school's gym. There are about 50 other students here with me, and I just happened to choose the center middle seat LOL. So, all my teachers are around, there's music playing in the background, they're walking around greeting students. I was greeted already by 3 of them haha, English, Spanish, and then French. In that order. And I know, I'm not taking French class anymore but I had her for a whole year in 8th. She was a bit sad that I changed electives and that I didn't continue with French but she understood when I explained that I didn't want to lose piano. However, she did express that I was welcome to join her French class for next year... Yeah, I didn't break the news to ber I had already chosen AP Physics... Anyway, almost all of my classmates are here right now, gathered in this gym. It's air-conditioned btw since it's an indoor gym. The feeling is, quite indescribable.

And that was the last sentence I wrote before having to close my laptop and listen to the presentation given to us by the principal. Btw, we counted at the end and I figured out that there were 57 students exactly that came that day. That means around 15 or so will be remaining online from my grade. I actually thought there might be more, but I guess everyone is all super ready to go back. 

At the end of the presentation, the principal asked if there were any questions and, at first, people were hesitant but then I raised my hand. I gotta say, it was pretty cool to see everyone turn their heads towards the guy who raised his hand first, especially when I'm sitting right in the center of the whole gym LOL. Oh and I asked a second question too because I wanted that thrill again and secondly, I actually did come up with a meaningful question. 

Ah so basically in this presentation he gave us the schedules that we'll be using. Classes will still remain to be 80 minutes long. However, Wednesday will no longer be a free day. It'll be virtual, 40 minutes of all seven classes. 

After the orientation, Beam, Psi, Rama, Dino and I went out to grab some lunch. There's this burger place near our school so we just went there and then after eating we went to Beam's apartment which is very close to the school too. Literally 3 minutes walking distance. Probably less. Anyway, it was a great day and I also got to see a lot of people that I know. 

3-day diary

Next up, a fusion of what happened on Monday and Tuesday, AND WEDNESDAY. 

Monday: 

So on Monday, I had a quiz in Physics class. It was a nice quiz though, and I had studied for this one. Basically, I had all the information down so I got through the quiz pretty quickly and got a full score too. 

Later on in PE, we had our "final online presentation" and it was about speed. That went great too, my group went first and got a 70/70. Plus, we actually sent it to her right after we finished so there was no way that she was going to mark it as late as she did last time. Anyway, my grade in PE isn't a 100% anymore but at the very least it's still an A+. 

Lastly, in Math, there was a quiz on the circle equation. Yeah, 15 questions, easy 15/15. Nothing much to say about it except for the fact that almost everyone finished in less than 15 minutes which is quite rare for this class. Usually, the kids in our class take like triple the time it actually takes to solve the problem and I don't know how, but they did it. 

At night, I did some problems from 42points. And we're going on to the next day. 

Tuesday:

Soooo, some big news for today. My parents got their first vaccine shot! Heyyy, ain't that exciting news! And I'm pretty sure you can't get the vaccine if you're younger than 16 so I'm probably not getting it anytime soon LOL. 

OH YEA, and in Spanish today, we had our presentation. You remember the one about the poem analysis? Yea we got a 92% on it which honestly, is not that bad. We only had ONE grammatical mistake thanks to Otter being part of our group and the rest of the points lost were because of a dumb mistake we made when making the slides. We incorrectly wrote an example of the application of a poetic term and we wrote the WRONG name of the term. Damn, we totally could've gotten an A. And yet we didn't. Sigh. Oh btw, we were the ONLY group that got to present that day so at least we get to sit back and relax on Friday since we already went. 

Wednesday:

All in consideration, not a good day. Well, it started out ok. 

I took my grandma's class in the morning, and that went swell. Right after, I got a haircut, courtesy of my mom. Then, we went straight to the hospital. Doctor's appointment. And we have a line. And a 3 hour one at that. 

Basically, we spent most of the afternoon and evening pent up in that hospital. Just for them to tell me that there's nothing wrong with me and that everything's fine. My actual time spent with the doctor was less than 7 minutes. Which cost 43 dollars btw. Boy, that's more than 6 dollars a minute. 

So we get home and I'm late for my 42points class. Oh wait, the AdobeConnect application wasn't working. How convenient. So essentially, I missed the first 30 minutes of my class. It finally started working after that. 

The rest of the class was just finishing the problems from the worksheet that we had started last time and also introducing a new topic. The topic of invariants. You know how variables are stuff that CAN change? Well, invariants are simply stuff that can't. Such things could be conditions in a problem like the parity of something, the sum of all the numbers, the product of all the numbers, the residue of a certain mod, etc. 

And we're done. 

 don't forget the round-trip

Saturday and Sunday. 

I'm just going to sort of, combine these two posts into one. So let's start. 

Saturday, this Saturday was the actual test. You know that mock test I took last Saturday? Today was the real thing. And I made some dumb mistakes. Which is exactly what you don't want happening on the real thing. Sigh. In the end, we got 9/12 questions when we could've gotten 11/12. So we got a silver medal, but I just can't help thinking about how we might've gotten gold had I not messed up those two easy questions. On one of them, I applied the formula wrong. And the other one was a distance problem. I had found the distance from A to B but the problem asked for a round-trip. And that's where I tripped and fell.

I should definitely read the questions again carefully after I finish the problems. Anyway, this was the main part of Saturday. 

As for Sunday. in the morning I had my grandma's class of course. However, Sunday classes are not completely devoted to enunciation, contrary to Wednesday classes, which are. And on Sundays, the main focus is reading more and understanding more information. Yeah. DAMN IT. I totally didn't forget what happened the rest of Sunday. 

Oh wait, I did a bunch of problems for 42 points at night after dinner. Yeaaaaa, and now I just want to hurry up and get all these past posts done so ill be leaving now, ONTO THE NEXT. 

"give credit where it's due"

And we're on Friday. 

This Friday was exhilarating. It felt like everything was under my control. Well kind of. 

The first class was English, but we really didn't do too much. The reason was that most of the teachers have already returned to school in preparation for the students coming back to school in a week. My English teacher, of course, was no exception. So, when the whole school's internet system shut down, the teacher could only connect to google meet on her phone since the computer she uses is with ethernet cable directly connected to the school's system. And on her phone, we couldn't do the things we usually did. That led to us just finishing the whole class discussion of the R&D questions, and we were let go early. 

In Spanish, the Wi-Fi situation was still not yet resolved until around half an hour after class started. This class was mostly dedicated to a group project on the analysis of a specific poem. Each group got a different poem, mine is called "El mar" or The sea. And sure enough, the poem is a description of the sea. It says, the more we uncover about the ocean, we realize the more we have YET to uncover. The mysteries of the sea seem endless, just like the sea itself. 

It's a beautiful thing, knowing that there's always more to learn. When everything is clear and certain, it feels like there's no fun because there's no surprises. And yet, when things are opaque and uncertain, people panick and are afraid to find out what's on the other side. That leap of faith. Could be only a small hop, and it's still what most people fail to comply. 

Fact is, I'm not done with the project. And I need to wake up earlier. For now, moving on to the last and final class. 

I was excited for this class. History. Ah, presentation day. I had talked with my team beforehand and we agreed on volunteering to present first. The teacher agreed. And the video started to play. Ngl, it has a bit of a slow start. There are a few surprises along the way, but the highlight of the whole video rests in the last 90 seconds. 

Haha, basically what happened is that I had Fox speed up my voice to 1.15 speed and that made my pitch sooo much higher. It was very clear though and completely coherent which is the important part. The cool thing is, it was super funny. You could tell that everybody in the class was caught off guard by this enthusiastic high-pitched voice. I even saw Dino laughing in the corner of my eye. Anyway, I'm glad they liked it. 

Now, we just wait for the teacher's final grade. The BEST thing about presenting first is that you don't need to stress about anything right after you're done. You can just sit back and relax as the rest of the presentations unfold before you. 

Also, one thing I did was that after our video ended I opened up my mic and gave credit to Pen for spending a lot of effort on making a nearly 6 page bibliography and to Fox for editing the whole thing together. It's important to give people credit for their work, and if you have the chance to do it publicly, it's even better. As Rama said, "You gotta give credit where it's due." It not only shows people that you are grateful for their work but it makes them want to collaborate with you more in the future as well. On a side note, it's a great way to strengthen bonds you want to keep. 

Okay then, that's it for this blog. Good night everyone

memory failure

 Thursday. 

Say, my memory is really holding up so far. I've been writing blogs from 3 days in the past. Now, of course it's more difficult than doing it the same day haha so, I'm going to need to brush up on my history. The history of the past three days that is. 

So I DO remember that I had my classes today obviously. 

In Physics we had more practice time on mirrors, reflections, and the formulas. The magnification formula and the mirror equation. Oh and there's a homework I still have to finish. 

Ahhh I'm on a strict time schedule right now. I'd estimate that I have another 3 minutes to write to I'm going to get straight to the point. 

Music, didn't do that much. 

PE, worked more on Powerpoint presentation, misread an instruction, had time to fix it luckily. 

Math, a non-graded assessment on circles. The equation of a circle. You know, x^2 + y^2 = r^2. The teacher took the whole class explaining it though so I really don't understand how people still didn't ace the assessment.

After school I worked on 42points worksheets and had a nice dinner. I don't really remember much of what happened after LOL. Good night

classes have been chosen

Going on Wednesday. 

Took grandma's class in the morning. It was a good class. You know in Mandarin, there was always this one sound I couldn't get exactly right, it was words involving ü. For some reason, I just couldn't pronounce it clearly. So in today's class we trained mostly on these words. And I think it's starting to become a little better. Little by little, yea? 

After a little while I had a meeting. This was a meeting I had scheduled last week because of a conference all the students had to attend. Each student in the 9th grade needs to meet with the advisor and discuss about the classes you'll be taking for the following year. I made an appointment for today from 12 to 12:30. 

It went great! I think it was way smoother than I expected it to be. Mostly because the advisor was really nice and humorous so I wasn't tense during the meeting. You can tell that she's definitely developed quite some social skills, well at least, from the books I've read on social interactions, I think she's a veteran. Sure, she's got way more experience on the field so that's possible too. Anyway, I still think that it's an amazing thing to learn. Not only do you facilitate yourself when you're socially skilled, you also make the other person feel more welcomed, more warm, and just better overall. I still need to learn more on that aspect. Oh also, I picked out all the classes I'll be taking next year. 

AP Physics

Pre-AP/Honors Chemistry

AP Capstone (required)

English (no other alternative)

Spanish (regular, not honors)

AP European History

Precalculus B (the highest option I can take)

And I also looked over the History project one last time. 

half decade

A memorandum of Tuesday. 

In English, we were divided into new breakout groups. I was super lucky this time to be divided into the same group as both Psi and Beam. Basically the most loaded group out of the few. In groups, we went over and did all the reading & discussion problems and finished ahead of time LOL. We ended class with a quickwrite. 

Spanish went well. I can't quite remember if I told you but in Spanish class we're doing a poetry unit and the last piece of work we had to do was to create our own original figurative speech, for example, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, and personification are some of them. Anyway, she had us show her our work in this fashion: 

In Alphabetical order, each student was to read out their example. And you know what? She said mine was the perfect example after many others had mistaken theirs. Boom. Jerry isn't that bad at Spanish after all huh? Oh yeah, the teacher also introduced a new project we would be working on. Poem analysis, groups of 3. I'm with Rama and Otter, let's see how it goes. 

Finally in History class, we spent it on just finalizing the project. Writing the outline, organizing, y'know. The usual things you do before handing things in. 

Right after class, I had a doctor's appointment so went to the hospital, which is right next to my school btw. I even saw some of my teachers as they were walking out LOL. Anyway, as I was waiting for my appointment, my dad went to Walmart to change my data plan to one where I can call without paying by the minute LOL. The hospital isn't that far away from Walmart so we just walked for like 25 minutes to get there. 

When I got there, my dad said that it was about time to change my phone. It's around 5 or 6 years old now I think and there really isn't any problem with it except for the fact that my storage is full... So, I got a new phone. Regular iPhone 11 with 128 GBs of storage. That's double what I had before so I think it'll last for at least another half decade LOLZ. Unless it breaks or I lose it, which in that case,  I might end up having to pay for it myself. 

So as you can see, fun day!

images

Recalling Monday. 

In Physics we talked about mirrors and reflections. The image that appears when you look at a mirror. Now usually, when it comes to plane mirrors or flat mirrors, the image you see is a virtual image. This means that your brain tricks you into thinking that the object is actually through the mirror. 

Now of course, in this day and age of technological advancements, we obviously already know that the object isn't actually on the other side of the mirror. However, this type of image is called a virtual image. When it comes to concave or convex mirrors, the image could be inverted (upside down), enlarged, and sometimes the images seem to be on the SAME side of the mirror. This type of image is called a real image. We also did some classwork. 

As for Music class, the teacher timed me for each of my 3 pieces to see how long it would take to play each one. Castle in the Sky was shortest, around 

PE, we worked on our PPT for speed, the next and final component. 

Math, some work on SOHCAHTOA

The date is set

Woah. Today (Sunday, Feb 28) was a really tiring day. 

Early in the morning, I had this Zoom call with a few relatives of mine for about an hour and it was fun. Basically, my grandma wants me to talk more with those kids and there are 3 of them in total. There's the oldest sister who is in 10th grade, and a younger sister in 3rd grade, and the smallest brother in 2nd. Sadly, I had something else planned too so I couldn't talk with them for longer. But then again, they live in China and the 12-hour difference makes it super hard to meet. 

After the meeting, we went straight to San Juan. That's the capital of Puerto Rico btw, and in San Juan, there's a special little part called Viejo San Juan. In that part of the capital, there's a ton of historical fortifications that the Spanish built here back when we were a Spanish colony. Anyway, I came here for my history project and I was meeting up with Fox to film a video of us talking about the forts. We walked all over Viejo San Juan and that took like 3-4 hours.

Later, I spent the rest of the day at my mom's store, since it's in that area too LOL and it was lucky that I got back when I did because as soon as I came through the door, there was a spate of customers. So much so that, at one point, there was even a line of like 5-6 people. That usually never happens. 

So yup, I got cramps after walking so much when I got home too. I guess I should crank up the exercise now that we're going back to school soon... OH WAIT, I forgot to tell you didn't I? Well, guess what? Our school is officially starting hybrid classes on March 15th. That's so insane. We're finally going back! Even though it's only for 2 days a week, that's still a lot better than none at all LOL. OKAY, that's it for this post.