#blog three

I’m going to talk about sleep now and what it means to me. In my last blog post, I mentioned how the topic of sleep has consumed me and that I’ve lost sleep because of it. It’s difficult for me to come out of the rabbit hole once I’ve fallen down it. I once spent an entire week reading the entire Harry Potter series and then watching the movies. I was unmovable. I barely slept. It wasn’t worth it, I had already read all the books and seen the movies more than once, but I can beat every person I know in a game of Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit.

A few people have asked me about MAP. MAP stands for My Anxiety Plan. It provides people with strategies to help manage their anxiety. There’s actually a lesson plan online that I’ve seen and it has like six units and forty-five lessons.

Another song of the week! This is one of my favorite songs of all time. It was my song for the summer. Feels rather beachy to me and makes me want to sway.

So this past week, I watched a couple videos on a new game that people said was terrifying. Horror is my favorite genre of game and movie, so of course I had to check it out. Thankfully, a day later, my roommate bought a ps4 and this game with it, because she was interested in it as well. I ended up watching her play it the whole way through.

Until Dawn is an interactive drama survival horror adventure game exclusively for PS4. Yes, most of it is cut scenes, but I was so immersed in the story that I didn’t care. You play as one of many teenagers (I am assuming they are young) who are spending time together in an old ski lodge for vacation. They play a prank on one of the girls, who then runs into the woods alone (big surprise). Her twin sister comes after her, and then you witness them both die. The group of friends, who don’t know what actually happened to them, come back a year later by request of the twins’ brother. He wants everyone to be together again, you know, for his sisters. However, things take a crazy turn as they suspect someone, or someTHING, watching them. Weird things start happening, and the decisions you make either let you make your escape or get killed. Along the way, you have to find clues as to what ACTUALLY happened to the twins and who the crazy guy following you is, as well as what actually happened in the mines there. Usually when you play a game, you skip through all that crap, but I read everything cause I really wanted to know what happened. In the end, you can either kill everyone in the group, let everyone live, or anything in between. The decisions you make also effect your relationship with the other players, so if they have the option to save you, they may not if they don’t like you. How many people can you keep alive until dawn?

The graphics and mechanics of this game are absolutely phenomenal. Josh, the twins’ brother, is Rami Malek (from Mr. Robot). Sam, my favorite of the bunch, is played by Hayden Panettiere. Real people in a video game? Can you believe it? Those are just two of the ten or so who are in this game. The developers actually made some of the characters really funny so you’d like them, and others extremely annoying so that you WANT to kill them off. Smart, right? Here is a video of my favorite youtuber playing Until Dawn.

I have been truly terrible with this blog! Ah! But right now I have a few baby sitting interviews lined up, a “casual business type coffee” meeting with the guy who offered me the job in London with a possible opportunity to work in their Barcelona office, I have found a great “intercambio” language exchange evening (Monday evenings), and I am going to a quidditch tournament the weekend of my birthday. So all in all - it’s going pretty well here.  I just need to sort a Catalan class / Spanish too, and then it’s mostly all good. 

I had Alex for the first time alone today and all went very well! He seemed pretty chilled out with me which was great. He cried when I dropped him at nursery though... which was sad and a little awkward! 

Oh, and last weekend was 11 September - or Catalan National Day. I went to the parade / demonstration for Catalan Independence which was interesting. I’ve never been to something like that before. 

I've just started working at my placement school, so I haven't seen much yet. They are reading the outsiders and the teacher has learning targets and essential questions up on her board every day. I've mostly seen them reading, rather than being assessed. They've worked on a worksheet in groups that discusses gangs of today and of the 60s.

The learning target for today was about "judging people by how they how" and one of the passages in the book was about how the Socs get away with everything because of their looks and their money, while Greasers look like hoodlums, so people assume everything is their fault. Ponyboy talks about how, in his experience, Greasers can be some of the nicest people and Socs can be the meanest people. 

They did a Quick Write about their opinions on the matter, which I think was collected for points. The connections of lesson to assessment was pretty clear. I know that they'll be writing a five paragraph essay about the book at the end of the week, but I'm not quite sure what they are writing about. Talking with the teacher, she said that she feels rushed to finish the book, because there is another class who needs to read it and they have to reserve a time for laptops (which are slow and don't work very well). In the past, she has talked about multiple themes, but she's focusing on the issue of conformity this year.