Birthday Dinner

So, what's happened?

Okay, so first of all, I made muffins for my host mother's birthday!

And then we had a pop quiz in Math I had to write - and there was some comfusion:
My teacher: "You have 15 minutes, use them wisely and don't waste them!"
I look at the two exercises, start on them - they solve beautifully.
I turn the page around - it's empty. I turn it back, turn it over again - still empty.
"eeer, Mr Murphy, is it only those two on the front?"
"Yes, why? You finished?"
"Yes?"
"Well, that was quick - you took 3 and a half minutes."
Yeah, well... so I went over the exercises again, but I couldn't find any mistakes, so I sat there, staring into the air...

Then on Friday we had another pop quiz, and I did all the exercises we had gotten (a work sheet) and except for two I could work all of them out.
We get the pop quiz - and I fail the first one. Starting to panic, I leave it and go on to the second one, solve it beautifully (there is little more satisfying than solving a mathematical equation, seriously) and then go back to the first one.

The equation was (tan x + cot x)² = sec² x + csc² x

My way of solving looked like this:

Which is very obviously not equal.

But since one boy had already handed in his test, I must have made a mistake somewhere. So I went through it again and again - but couldn't find it.

Well, so I thought, let's tackle the other side.

I was just about getting started when he said, "Okay, the 15 minutes are up. Who needs more time?"
The complete (almost complete) left side of the room raised their hands, so we got five more minutes.

I started on the right side and ... that was almost anticlamactic.

What you have to keep in mind

The actual solving

It took me, what, one minute?

So actual working time was maybe three minutes, but you know where my mistake was?

Apparently I can't just square it inside the brackets when it's gonna be squared later on, too...

so second step.

But well, I didn't know that; explained it to me later.

I will make up my test on Tuesday, April 23rd - yes, I could imagine better birthday presents, especially as we have a regular Math test there, too.

Today we had a birthday dinner for all the April birthday people - and Jenna, whose b-day was in January - at Andy's parents' house, with the whole family.

It was super nice, an unbelievably amazing Turkey Dinner and then cake and lots of talking :)

yeah, and I'm beat now, I'm off to bed - good night!