Blog 1.5 AEP10 || Illness, Woe, and Other Blessings || Shasmeen M.

picture of me ruminating on life in bed on Tuesday

I can't believe it's barely been a week since we returned from camping! Aside from AEP, these past few days have been a lot. Let's break it down a bit: from a cough that's been sweeping throughout the school, to the looming specter of quizzes next week, an unhealthy amount of after-school excursions, and heaps of assessments I have yet to accomplish, there truly has been a lot of exciting development. Making decor for Teacher's Day (which also happens to be Miss Disa's birthday! Happy belated, Miss!) and an extremely late-evening gala were the cherries and icing on the already wobbly cake. But I digress! As students, we must march on. Slowly. Since I'm still pretty drained.

Monday morning unfolded in classic Monday fashion: with the mind-bending, contortionistic Contexto. We were off to a good start with Janek's unwaveringly insistent suggestion of "berry". And then it seemed a good start was all we could get. Hurling a few more suggestions at the board, like "pie", "fruit", and "banana", the closest score we attained was tantalizingly close, but every logical guess afterward was still falling short. 

In the instance where Contexto veers straight into the realm of complete absurdity, I've begun to utilize my own device (a discreet euphemism for using my phone) to recreate a separate game of Contexto and try more guesses to minimize the class' own. It's like shooting in the dark with not just one metaphorical gun, but two! How fun. The more chances of hitting the target, the better. After observing the class game for a bit, I got the idea to use "zest", which was pretty close, then took another shot with "lemon". Sadly, our time was up before we got it right, marking our first lost battle against the scheming game. This wouldn't do, so I kept going on my device, coming up with "herb", "oregano", "nutmeg", and finally the answer, "cinnamon". 

Truly, the mechanics and internal systems of Contexto-logic will never cease to bewilder me. From fruits to cinnamon and oceans to villages, the nonsense never seems to end. We inputted the answer on the board with what I hope was a collective sigh of relief.

Afterward, Miss Disa took the wheel (Get it? Like the Wheel of Doom? Get me a mic and a stand-up comedy stage, please.) and commenced a vocab quiz review, with a great twist. Each of us was tasked with defining a few handpicked words from the twenty given in Unit Four. In my case, I was assigned the words"attainment", and "bequeath". Both words possessed relatively self-evident definitions, therefore it was challenging to pin down a concise elaboration of either that encompassed a fully comprehended meaning. Fortunately, we were granted the privilege to use online resources to assist us in this task. From my extensive, untiring research and courageous foray into the deep catalogs of the internet, I was able to garner both dictionary definitions in a few minutes. "Attainment" is a noun referring to the achievement, while "bequeath" is a verb meaning "to be given by will, after someone's death". Proceeding to answer the quiz on the website itself,  everyone took turns to answer when their word popped up on the board. It's an undoubtedly effective method, and I'd like to see it integrated into our routine in the future.

The next day, I wasn't able to attend AEP due to having finally succumbed to the ailment spreading throughout the class (and all of the Philippines, it seems now). I tossed around in bed that morning, knowing that I was dearly missed and that the class was barely continuing without me. Unfortunately, I have now uncovered the depressing truth: I had missed the blind drawing game, the vocab quiz, and a further activity on bar graphs. Not only will I likely have to make up for these missed assessments, but I now hold the knowledge that I have missed the rare activity I could have jumped into with full confidence. Reading the Padlets and published blogs on the "fun", and "memorable" game makes my heart wrench in potent regret. 

Okidokey. I'm pretty sure that's around it for this week! As tumultuous as it was, I'm still holding out for a successful recovery from this cough. We've got a ton of work for October ahead of us. See you in the next one! :D