AOC weekend 30/04/12

Let’s test how fast I can type without breaking my laptop shall we? I apologize for spelling mistakes and sentences that don’t actually grammatically make sense from now.

First Year Exams are overrrrr

Yes that’s true! We’re done. Three weeks of codes left but those exams are over. YAY! Though I don’t know how I did in any of them yet and that’s a bit worrying.. I will soon enough and these aren’t TOO important for me as I’m not applying to the US, where your predicted grade is extremely important.

AOC Service Weekend

What a weekend! I’m so happy I went on it. Turns out the majority of my friends are lifeguards and this weekend they had a trip to prepare for their beach lifeguard exam this week. Luckily my service took 11 students to the North of Wales for a not-so-intense outdoor weekend.

On the trip there were the AOC instructors Simon, Rob, Phil (also an English teacher) and Alan (also a Chemistry teacher). And students:

Oli- Hong Kong

Gerry- Nambia

Agnete- Denmark

Ilisha- Signapore
Karl- Ireland/ Bermuda

Claire- England
Hana- Norway

Ine- Norway

Eleri- Wales

Liesl- Australia

Friday night: Leave at 4:30, stop and have dinner at Pizza Hut. Arrive in a very farmer house, in the middle of nowhere by 9:30. We were joking about it being perfect for a horror film…but the joke was short lived as it got later and we realized how there was not only no cell reception but the need to lock the house was pointless… no one came that far out. It was perfect for what we needed though.

Saturday: Wake up at 7:30, bowl of muesli J I was SO shocked that it was cold enough to see my breath indoors. Never had that happened before.

Hour and half drive to the start of our hiking day! 10:30- depart on my first climbing of a mountain: Cader Iris. Mount Snowdon would have been an extra hour drive, with more hiker ‘traffic’ and only 200m extra climb to say we’d been to the highest point in Wales. I was quite content. The hike really worked my legs, and I was so proud of my borrowed hiking boots… I felt unstoppable in those beasts. We made a good pace and stopped little. At one point it started snowing as it was so high up- but since we were climbing at such a slope it was cold. Phew. I had such a sense of pride getting to the summit after about two and a half hours, 890m in the air and looking over the beautiful mountains all around. There was even a special room the was sheltered to eat our sandwiches in… though it became really cold as the sweat dried on our bodies. Onwards!

IAs

The work that I do have to do in the next three weeks will keep me very busy nevertheless: two Internal Assessments in my Higher Levels. In History we have to write a research essay on a topic of our choice, but it should somehow link to what we’re studying. I chose to write about women in the First World War, how their involvement contributed to getting them the vote in 1918, focusing on Britain. It’s not as exact and precise a title as I’m sure it will be in two weeks’ time. So much fun ahead…

Geography I have to do a write up on an experiment we did at the local Llantwit Major beach, measuring gradient of the beach compared to the pebbles and whether the steepness correlated with the erosion. Doesn’t sound too complicated yet but I know there’s a lot of calculating and analysation to come.

Both of these are worth 20% of the subject… so in total these two IAs are worth the same amount as my Extended Essay and my TOK essay combined.

Second Year Exams

Started today. For the next three weeks they’ll be in exams, finishing on different days. Sadly it seems French is always the last day (May 22^nd this year), and I will be taking that exam next year. Which means my celebrations won’t really happen at AC since second years leave the next day. L