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

Wednesday afternoon last week the students had the opening ceremonies of their sports fest.

The only thing I can say about it is that the faculty team members of the same color joined in from the first event - the tug of war, and I guess it’s not surprising that the team the Dean was on won at the end of the day.

In the morning of the next day the faculty had what was apparently the culmination of our sports fest from June, although the scores from the previous events (badminton, table tennis and basketball) were not added to our standing then.

I didn’t even know that was the reason for the suspension of classes on Thursday morning until one of my teammates approached me that Wednesday afternoon and told me that she had signed me up for some (if not most) of the games.

And here I was thinking it was because of the consequences of the one-day sports fest held thirteen months earlier (also on a Wednesday) when both students and faculty were absent the next day because of exhaustion (and exposure to the elements because of the water balloon fight and the paper boat race).

Since I did not attend the games on the afternoon of the Foundation Day last July, I also don’t know if that had it’s own prizes at the end of the day.

At least the Dean finally explained why the color of one of the teams was changed from yellow to light green (I was on the original green team, which was then renamed dark green). He said it was so that all the teams would represent the colors on our school logo. That made sense.

We did finish on time, at a little before 1pm, because some of the games such as car pulling and the obstacle course were skipped. And the snack that the dean’s office asked the cafeteria to prepare was eaten for lunch by the faculty and the students (who were asked to officiate some of the games) alike.

At 240pm I still met my mechanics lecture class, where a surprising 17 out of the 22 students still showed up (these were mostly freshmen, who were not asked to referee and oversee our games earlier). In fact, some didn’t even know that classes were suspended that morning (after all, it wasn’t formally announced at the end of their own sports fest the previous day but only got out by word of mouth – or text), so that I saw a few of them shooting hoops at the court in between our games.

I discussed the answers to their last quiz, which surprised some of them because of how easy it was, especially the fact that all of the requested quantities could be attained from the preliminary given, and did not require them to solve intermediate values.

It wasn’t until the next day that I returned their test booklets to them though, via their group envelopes left in the faculty room again.

On Friday I met my Mathematical Methods 1 class, of which again more than three fourths of them showed up in the first 15 minutes (despite the fact that some of my co-teachers cancelled their 8am classes due to lack of students). It was after all, the last day before a four day weekend, where some teachers had also cancelled classes the afternoon before due to the overwhelming need to rest after the morning’s physical exertions.

We talked about the systems of equations with two variables, and the three ways of solving them: graphically, by elimination and by substitution. It was the first time since mid September that we had a Friday class that was not a quiz – which makes it 11 quizzes total they will have now.

And that’s last week. Tomorrow I’ll talk about yesterday’s mechanics lab session again (one day after discussing the previous one) and the three lectures today. For now, class dismissed.