Shine Day 2011

Normal lessons took place in the first 5 periods. We watched an intense movie, Flatland in Math. For Chemistry, we played against 9WT and named our group "The Dark Awesome Side." Sophie, Nicole, Theya and Jennie's group was named "ToJones" after their initials.

More later for the Talent Show.

Community Service Day 3

Same as before, we did the same sequence of events for community service.

First was construction work. We dug a SWIMMING POOL. Our group, Mindanao 3, was the first to actually start the digging. This time, all of us had to get a shovel or pick and dig like the Seven Dwarves of Snow White. Ms Battram wanted us to sing a song while digging but in the end we weren't singing anymore. She just sang "You guys are rubbish cause you're no longer singing." The soil was filled with rocks which made it even harder to dig deep into the soil.

Secondly, we did feeding again. This time, it was in a school---the San Juan School. A long ride prior the feeding was experienced and so I took the time to sleep for a bit. Since it was a school this time, the kids were very much more clean and civilized. The school even made a song about San Juan using the tune and some of the lyrics of Jingle Bell Rock. They lined up for the porridge while the other people who were not feeding had to socialize with the kids. The first pair to feed was two people who I have forgotten, followed by Danny and Tanay then my cousin and I fed the kids. We finished the whole container filled with porridge. I heard from one of the teachers that the day before's feeders (Visayas 3) were not able to finish their porridge because of time confusion. When we left, the children were following us all the way to our bus. By the time we were all seated in the bus and the bus started moving, they ran with our bus. Then they were making the middle fingers at Marco since he looked like Justin Bieber and Hamish, the boy's guy.

During lunch, Caitlin was with her friend from the Jesus Christ Catholic School (CCS) while Fuh Meei and I played Slap. A boy named JP (John Philip) watched us while playing when Caitlin came to find us. He said he knew how to play and Caitlin took my place while Fuh Meei arranged the cards for a 3-player Slap game. The boy won. He's a genius for learning how to play so easily. Fuh Meei won next then the boy won again. He then made some magic tricks that confounded us. He was able to guess the card we picked from a deck of cards he would show us. He was also very fluent in English. The card tricks, according to him came from Facebook.

Thirdly was tutoring again where I read to Antonette Gonzales. She was the girl I took care of with my cousin in the first day. She immediately recognized me and made me read Rapunzel to her. After we read an animal book, Dora and numbers book. I played tag with her on the way back and waved goodbye.

Sports and Creative Arts Dinner from 6:30pm to 8:30pm occurred. Caitlin and I were in Table 15. We talked. It was her last day today. Unfortunately, we were grouped with 9WT people. It was awkward. The food was so little that I wanted more by the time dessert finished. It was a great but tiring day overall.

Community Service Day 2

Hiya! Community service again today, did origami in the 2 hour bus ride to the Evangelical School of Cainta. I made a rat, attempted to make a bear and a flower but failed. My seatmate, Denise, read the Throne of Fire from her kindle. I am thinking of reading that book soon. We talked a bit about the Nicholas Flamel books and so on. When we arrived, stickers were handed out. They were similar to name tags for the tutoring sessions in the afternoon. Anyways, our schedule was to do some construction work (digging) in the morning until 10am, do feeding in some nearby village and lastly, tutor some Grade 5 to 6 students.

Construction work in the start was the worst. Hellish labor had to be done. Even if I did not do any digging or shoveling, I passed the sacks of gravel from one person to another in order to transport them to the top of the 4-storey building where it was needed. The sacks were absolutely heavy. High chances included some grains of gravel to stick to your hair, eyes, skin, face and arms. It was horrible. I was really tired in the first 5 minutes. I could not imagine how real construction workers can survive these ordeals everyday.When 10am came, everyone rejoiced. Obviously not a lot were used to this kind of menial work.

Feeding in a nearby village came next. The long bus ride took about 1 hour so we were able to chat a bit in our small groups. My group consisted of Ashley, Denise, Amy, Leela, some girl in Year 7 who was also in the Nature club (she asked me yesterday if I was Denise or Maxine), Emma Thackray and Ms. Battram. First, songs were sung, from A Whole New World in Aladdin to Friday by Rebecca Black. We shared stories, especially about a certain man whore in Year 7 and how he is liked by many and liked lots of girls of any age. Also, before FOBISSEA, he kissed his precious crush Marga while dating a girl in ISM. Ms Battram told us stories about her Year 10 days. Apparently she snuck out of her room with a friend out of a window from the 10th Floor while her teacher got hysterical when he found out. Dangerous, huh. Also, during her Year 11 days, they put a live sheep in a Welsh teacher's classroom and hid all the clocks of their school. In the feeding, I helped give out and transport the people's bowls for them to be filled with porrige. The first pair was Miguel and Kai, the second, Tina and Marco, the second, Tina and Ashley. It was short but memorable. We didnt finish the porridge.

Tutoring was unexpected. I thought we were supposed to help the kids with some homework such as Maths and English but instead we were faced with learned and fluent-in-English kids who just wanted to get to know people. Therefore we just exchanged information about ourselves. Then we played Ultimate Ninja (which I am so bad at) and Duck Duck Goose (same horribility as my skills in Ultimate Ninja). Kids took Jackie's email address and we all safely went back to school 15 minutes before the expected time (2.30pm).

Watched City Hunter, Ao no Exorcist, Gosick and Naruto Shippuden to catch up with the ones I missed these past few days since I was too busy. They were all EPIC.

Community Service Day 1

Today was a really tiring day. I had to rush to school in fear of getting late but I made it just in time. We had community service in Cainta that day. I went into Bus 3 but was moved to Bus 4 beside Jennie and in the same bus with Sophie. My group was Mindanao 3. Sophie was very sociable, talking and gossiping with Tanay, Hailey and Danny. The bus stopped for about an hour in the middle of a road due to the other buses driver's violation of the traffic light and an accident.

I was in the same group as my cousin, Denise, Alex Tan, Jackie, Tina, Ashley Tan, the Veras, Hamish, Leleah, Emma Thackwray, Danny, Tanay, Leela, Amy, Marco and so on. The first activity we did was scraping tiles off so that the orphanage can replace the old tiles with new ones. It was very difficult to scrape them off, I tell you! One tile took my cousin and I about 20 minutes. I guess we picked the hard tiles though. Alex Tan was a beast! She could take one whole tile in 1 minute or so. And that is not a hyperbole. I bled in my left index finger.

Our second activity was after break when we fed some unfortunate people. At first I was not able to follow so I asked Mr Mandan, Mr Tibbits and Jessie for directions. Amy and Leela scooped the porridge and filled the bowls of the people with porridge. The people liked Amy better so they always went to her instead of Leela. The boys then played basketball with the children and the rest of us played tag. Jackie was the favorite of the kids. She ran after them in a funny way. By the time we had to leave, almost every kid was shouting out, "Bye Jackie!"

After lunch, we had to entertain the children left in the chapel. My cousin and I shared kids since there was a shortage of them. We colored, memorized animal flashcards, did some origami, maths and many more. That was the end of the day and when riding home through Bus 5, I was eavesdropping about the love life of certain people in our school, BSM.

Caitlin's leaving party came after. Here's a rant from Alysha, who also went to Caitlin's leaving party with Theya:

"OMG MAXINE! First of all, how could YOU of all people WEAR THAT SHIRT to Caitlin's Leaving Party;s leaving party. It was not only inappropriate, it was also very optimistic in a situation where you were not supposed to be optimistic as Caitlin was leaving. I mean, like, seriously, a shirt that says ,"I'M VERY VERY VERY HAPPY **heart shape**. Seriously Maxine, I am sure that we can all do better than that. Secondly, not swimming was absolutely horrifying as it was her leaving party and all you did was just sit there and watch us swim.

You didn't even help to take out the insects when we needed it most. I can say that you are very dependable. NOT. Thirdly, the cake you gave Caitlin said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD" instead of "GOODBYE CAITLIN, WE WILL MISS YOU" How could one get that confused with writing on a cake? Finally, the hug you gave Caitlin at the end was acted on only when requested.

In conclusion, all that I can say, is that I WAS JUST KIDDING ON THE ABOVE. I was bored, and I wanted to waste time (BOTH YOURS AND MINE). So yeah.LOL. This was Caitlin's idea."

It was the four of us. For preliminaries, Caitlin and I played ball games while Alysha and Theya chatted in the side. They swam while I read the Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. We all then ate some cheese pizza with coke and juice.

Tomorrow we will have to tutor some Grade 5-6 children. I'm so excited. It's gonna be fun.

Shine Day 2010

Today was a different day, having 2 quizzes in a row, both in Science and Geography. My group consisted of Caitlin, Helena and Alysha and we got into 2nd place. During geography, it was the opposite. I was in a pair with Helena, who named our group No More Than 30, and was in last place with 2 points. Alysha's group name with Caitlin was funny. It was, I will give everyone 30 house points. They were in 3rd place though. We finished watching A Christmas Carol in Art, ending it with Merry Christmas! And had karaoke twice during Music and ICT. Mr. Griffiths (ICT Teacher) sang "Bakit Pa." This is his last year in BSM and is transferring to another country, but he still has property in the Philippines so he might still come back.

The last period, period 6, wherein we had to go to our form rooms then to the hall to watch the finale of today's Shine Day. Shine Day is a talent show celebrated every year in our school and it was kind of fun. Even if I was squashed between four sweaty smelly and humongous people, north south east and west, who were noisily clapping and singing all throughout the time, enjoying themselves, I found the songs sung/danced interesting. There was a Year 7 student who sang a slow song but it was good. Another was a Year 9 student who sang like a girl but it was also wonderful, he sang "I can Go the Distance" in Hercules. Some even cried at that song. A troupe of dancers and singers from Year 7 also did "Keep Holding On," which annoyed me as they just kept repeating the same action and lyrics the whole 10 minutes or so. There were also very young cheerleaders from Year 3 I think, whose shirts spelled BSM Shine Day 2010. They waved their pompoms and stuff. A little entertaining, I would say. The best part of it came last, wherein Mr. Savage's (Drama Teacher) "band" played a song. Mr Savage had a nice voice, which I came to realize was why he previously in his younger times was a vocalist of a band. He could also play the guitar/base (I'm not sure). He sang "Do you believe music makes magic..."

Friends (Helena and Alysha) came over and we watched a Thai horror film called "The Coffin". I recommend it, it's nice and scary but has a happy ending. And after that we watched "How I Met Your Mother" for the first time. Not a bad day, I should say.

!Eclipse Warning!

OH YEAH! Forgot to mention that the Eclipse is coming near! June 30th here we come! :-))

Another Day

Hey, today's a new day, and it started with Sherlock Holmes and the Red Headed League. I didn't really watch it cause I was busy looking through the newly printed yearbook of 2009-2010. I signed some too. We then watched the recently produced "A Christmas Carol" for English after. We stopped at the part wherein Bob Cratchit made a fail slide during Christmas Eve.

Thinking Skills was not so boring after all. We had to discuss the topic, Keeping Safe Online, and touched a bit on cyberbullying. This included giving advice to different situations wherein a girl was being targeted by a cyberbully. It was also an embarassing period because as my friend read the victim's message, she nominated ME to give the advice. My mind went totally blank at that and so I could not answer the message/give the advice. I was saved when a classmate spoke out the answer, not knowing that I was already chosen for the reply. That was when the teacher asked me if I knew what to reply and I said I did not know. Since then, I was terrified that she would ask me again. After, we made role plays about cyberbullying but I was saved by the bell. My group was the last group so we did not have to act it out.

Never-failing-to-be-interesting Science was next and guess what? We had an end of year quiz that was to be done in 3's or 4's. I teamed up with my 4 some close friends and in the end we were one of the winners, having 21 points out of 40. It had 4 rounds but the rest of the rounds are to be continued for tomorrow. I keep telling myself to study but I actually don't. So, nevermind.

In Maths we watched "Numbers," it's a series that mostly involves dead people and the police. I did not particularly like the episode we were watching and so I and a friend got scolded by the teacher as we were talking/argueing about the Yearbook.(I asked her to sign her name, but she shaded her whole face with black permanent marker!)

Drama involved Sharades or as our teacher called it, Sharads. It was fun and I was relieved that I did not have to act. I enjoyed trying to guess the acts but others obviously know a lot more than I do. They always get the answer in record time! Trust me, they're that good.

English horror during the "A Christmas Carol" movie began when Ebenezer Scrooge slowly came near his home and on his knocker, Marley's face appeared. Marley then shouted, "Bah!" and the whole class got shocked. One guy (Paco) even shouted, "Ahhhh!"

Targets for the next day alive:
1. Do well in Music performance tomorrow of "Sleepy Shores"
2. Do better in future Drama sessions.
3. Do your best at improving yourself on that day.