Wilderness Survival; Wednesday, Second Period [01/17].

[sword_chocobro]

While the weather was still pretty wintry, it didn't seem that bad to Gladio, but, ultimately, he decided he'd rather have the students focusing on the lessons on these early weeks rather than the cold, so it was another week in the danger shop on the same mountainside where they'd been last week to build their fires. And while it was hardly freezing, it was still a bit chilly. Didn't want anyone getting too comfortable, after all!

"Alright, guys," he said, "first things first, we're gonna review what we covered last week by having you all gather up some wood to get a fire or two going before we get into today's lesson. Pretty much that's going to be how most of these classes start, to the point where it should just become second nature when we get to a sight, to start getting that fire going, with maybe a few exceptions. But today's not one of 'em, so let's get some wood gathered and get some fire to work by."

Once that had been taken care of, then, it was onto the lesson of the day, which some more savvy students might be able to guess based on the amount of rope and tarps around them that week. "After knowing how to build a good campfire," Gladio said, "your next big important skill in wilderness survival is shelter, and, next week, we're going to go a little bit further into detail about different shelters for different conditions, but today, we're going to keep it simple, because there's an important skill to learn before you get too deep into shelters that'll be useful for a lot of other things across the board, and that's knowing how to tie a good knot.

"A good rope can help out in a lot of situations, from getting you through difficult terrain, making traps for wild animals, and one of the big ones is using them in making structures and shelters. So we're going to learn some of the most useful ones and spend a good deal of time practicing them until we're confident we've got it right, and then, we're going to use those knot skills to put up some basic tarp shelters. There's a lot of different styles of those, too, so we'll go over them once we get to it, but for now, we're going to start in with our knots. Now, who here's already got a pretty good handle on knots? This'll be good review, and as for those unfamiliar, our first one's going to be a clove hitch, which is probably the most versatile...."

Conversational Japanese; Wednesday, Fourth Period [01/17].

[id_kill_him]

"Konnichiwa, minasan!" Yukari greeted cheerfully. "Did you all remember to bring food for us to enjoy this week, as we discuss Japanese food etiquette and phrases? I sure hope so!"

If you didn't, you couldn't really be blamed, because she never actually said it directly to the class, unless you were Arden, in which case, if you did forget and deprived Yukari of the barbeque she'd been looking forward to all week, well, then, things might not get pretty.

She was definitely waiting to see who brought food and what was available before getting started, though, before lifting up a little bit of whatever looked the most delicious and declaring, "Itadakimasu!" and then taking a bite.

"Now," she continued, perhaps before that bite was completely finished being chewed and swallowed, "itadakimasu is a very common and traditional thing to say before eating in Japan! There is no real direct translation into English, but the closest thing would probably be 'I humbly receive.' It's generally a phrase expressing gratitude for the food you're about to eat, so, in this case, it's very accurate, because I am grateful for all this delicious food! If I were serving the food, I would offer it with a meshiagare, which is sorta like the French bon apetite! And when you finish a meal, you say gochisousama deshita, which means 'it was a feast' and shows gratitude and a compliment to the chef, as well as the person feeding you!"

There was another bite of food swiped up, and then Yukari started handing out a few more vocabulary sheets, and a few other worksheets as well.

"These are, of course, the very beginnings of the basics," she explained, "but we'll go over these words, the pronunciation, and the proper social contexts for each today, and, of course, if you have any questions or would like to elaborate on anything, well...." Here, she gave a chuckle, though there was a slightly add edge to it, "there are plenty of other experts in the class who can help you out as well!"

You wanna be in her class about basic Japanese while already knowing Japanese? Well, get ready to put that to use, then, because Yukari was very lazy and if she had an opportunity to foist her work on someone else, well...

"So, let's start at the top, and repeat after me..."

Music, Wednesday

[suitably_heroic]

“So we’re going to be trying to teach you a little bit of both theory and genre in this class,” Atton said. They were back in the Danger Shop, that large white plane with all the instruments in the corner. He stood in front of the blackboard, wearing an Opeth shirt this time, his arms crossed.

“Most of you probably know what the basic building blocks of music are. You’ve got the melody, which is a succession of sounds that forms kind of a sentence of sound, and the rhythm, which keeps the beat - one, two, three, four, that kind of thing. Oftentimes drums, but there’s a lot of ways to create rhythm. Leapfrogging off of that is the concept of harmony, which is the sound you get when you play multiple sounds at the same time. We tend to call that a ‘chord’ - for instance, hitting three piano keys at once.”

He eyed the class. “Any questions?” He didn’t think there would be, but see last class re: trying not to be a hardass.

“Sheet music is how music’s written down on Earth,” he continued. “It tries to capture both the melody and the rhythm." He pointed at the board, which had some musical notation written on it, and a couple of notes. “Those are the notes. How high up on the bar they are tells you what they’re supposed to sound like. Are they high notes, or low? The shape of the note tells you how long the note should be played - and thus informs the rhythm.”

"There are different keys that music uses," Lana said. "That is, a different relationship of notes that dictates the overall sound of a song, and often the mood. The simplest one is the one you see here." She waved at the board again. "One note per line and one per space, starting one line below what's called the staff. That's the key of C. The letters go from A to G and then start again. It's also the same as the white keys on a piano." She went over to one and played a scale.

"So, if I were going to play these notes, they'd look like this." She pointed to another section of the board, and then played it. It was 'Joy to the World'. "Which is a religious song from one of the holidays we've just passed. A lot of music on Earth is religious."

She pointed at the board again. "So this note is here." She played it on the piano. "The next one is here, and so forth. Today why don't we all try to figure out how the notes look on the instruments we've chosen? We can look up whatever we need it, and work it out together."

Trust in Teamwork - Wednesday, 1st Period

[snipsnspecks]

Today the teachers weren't any closer together, but they were using the excuse of the obstacle course set up in the middle of a fake backyard to be separated. "Teamwork is all about communication," Anakin said from where he was standing disconcertedly close to a bunch of clean, empty. suspiciously people-sized wheelie bins. He was also holding helmets, also a terrible sign.

Ahsoka for her part had an equally disconcerting stack of blindfolds. "After all, you never know when you might lose sight of your goal, as it were, and have to rely on the advice of others."

Anakin shot her a look for that. "So you'll get to see just how well that works when the person giving the advice isn't terribly good at it. You're going to pair up. One team member gets into the wheelie bin. The other gets the blindfold. The person in the bin is directing the person in the blindfold through the tasks on this course. That person may not speak Basic."

English, Anakin.

"Allow us to demonstrate," Ahsoka said, shooting Anakin a look right back before tying a blindfold around her own eyes. "It's simple enough if you're willing to listen to each other." Or if you could just use the Force to navigate. Either or.

Anakin climbed into the wheelie bin. "How's your Huttese?" he asked, sticking on the helmet.

Ahsoka's reply, delivered in bright and cheery Huttese, was very much not printable.

"That sounds anatomically unlikely," Anakin said dryly. "Right. We have three tasks to accomplish." He switched to Huttese. "//Straight ahead for two meters.//"

And he was wearing a helmet if she "accidentally" dumped him on the ground.

Ahsoka would never do that. That didn't mean she had to be gentle as she pushed the bin either.

Make this look good, he sent mentally. Because he was bossy forever.

Just for that (and because they came from a very dramatic line of Jedi), Ahsoka wasn't going to use her hands to push.

Necromancers Guide to the Undead, Thursday, Period 1

[deathsmajesty]

Mornings were still an Abyss bedamned curse, but Liliana would be lying if she tried to say she wasn't in a better mood than last week. Clearly, it was because she was looking forward to actually starting to teach, rather than just make small talk. If she wanted to host a social hour, she'd start holding salons in her own home, at a reasonable hour of the day.

( For every living person, there are generations of dead. Which realm would you rather rule? )

Ah, her coffee was done, time to bring this lecture to a close. "We will get further into particulars about each time as we cover them individually, but for now, does anyone have any questions about the basic classifications or what an undead creature actually is?"