Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

It's October 31 and the school had classes. For the first time in my 17 years here. And students and other teachers actually showed up for it. Well, there were some who rescheduled their classes, but still, we shouldn't have to.

Of the students who did show up, most likely they're either not going to the province with their parents, taking a later trip, not going at all, or the fewest percentage if any, those whose whole family had to rebook their travel plans so they could attend school. Grounds enough to complain to the administration, I say.

Well, in my first class, around 30+ students attended. Fortunately for all of us this masteral student asked for permission to hand out a survey to my students. I'll give my sentiments about this particular survey, which I have already filled out some weeks ago, some other time.

He said it would take only 20 minutes, but the students finished at 11am. So, since they are ahead of the other classes in lecture, I said that I'll just give them an exercise on a 1/4 sheet for attendance and we'll be done.

In my 1250pm class, there were only initially 18 students who arrived. So there were no complaints when I said that we would be having a lecture because they were behind the other classes. A couple trickled in during the lecture, but some showed up just as we were finishing. They still signed the attendance sheet though, so there was a total of 23 students. And we're caught up with the other classes.

Around 25 students also showed up for my 230pm class. Now, since they are also ahead in terms of lecture like the 1030am class, I had the option of giving them the Messier Object library research or continuing my constellations lecture.

In the end I decided to discuss the constellations. I went from Monoceros the Unicorn to Cancer the Crab. I did dismiss them at 5 minutes after 3pm.

In all three classes I also gave them the materials needed for the next Cycles of Nature topic/group activity, which is about the tides. I only told them to bring the graphing papers and the writing materials though. I'm going to provide the calendars myself.

Also in my first and third classes, people asked about our stargazing session. I reminded them that the session will be scheduled when we had finished discussing all the constellations, which we could probably complete in two more hours.

This afternoon my thesis advisee also showed up to present the latest version of his thesis, but I'll discuss that after the holiday weekend, along with an international news article on teaching that may have implications here in the Philippines.