June 2018

That's it: end of elementary school, time to graduate! It all began 8 years ago!


I am just as silly now, I have added some inches to my height, lost some teeth, made tons of new brain connections ( some great, some, not so much), made friends, tested the limits, pushed some boundaries but always happy and joyful ( that's if the Ps let me do whatever I want... which is getting harder to achieve nowadays...).

I had a great year in 5th grade, tons of projects and fun activities; just wish I could have done more what I really wanted to do and less of the non fun stuff... like singing in front of an audience the day of graduation: who thought this would be thrilling to do? Papa's arm had to reach so high that it was shaking all over the place so after stabilizing the video, the quality is not so great.


Now for some pictures...

Then came time to pack my bags to head to Paris with all my friends. I was EXCITED but also a bit nervous about staying two weeks with another family: although we had done a few Skype sessions ahead of time and my correspondent and I hit if off right away.
First it was time to board the plane and leave all the parents behind: there were some tears... on the parents' part! We were 27 total and those are the pictures of my teacher who was in charge of 7 of us.

The entire trip was a great experience and I was super lucky to be with a family that welcomed me very warmly and who managed to survive my weirdness and did not quick me out before it was time to go. THANK YOU to them and MERCI to T. who was a great correspondent to have. We had many late nights having fun in the bedroom and many memorable pillow fights. Hopefully we can get back to pillow fights one day when he comes here!
Here they are ( minus N., big sister), welcoming me as the bus arrived after the long trip to the city of lights. They did not have far to go since their apartment is just across the street from the school! Quite a change for me since it takes between 25 to 35 minutes to drive to school here.

Thanks to the teachers and thanks to T's parents, we have many pictures of the trip. And here they are in a video that is more about snapshots of kids than of sites in Paris but it was all about the experience of being away from home for 2 weeks.

May 2018

As the school year was coming to a close for us 5th graders, it was time to enjoy things outside of school. And since Maman was stuck into her Report Card season, Papa and I had all the fun.

We went on our 1st camping expedition of the year. We took our bike to explore this cool road along the Columbia River. And our campsite was quite great too!

Later in May, we went to Bend where Papa and his PPP team once again joined to race: they actually won their division. Not bad for old farts! In the meantime, I always have fun over there, riding horses, climbing trees. I was already feeling a bit on vacation that month!

April 2018

Do you know that when you are in 5th grade at my school, you get to choose an inquiry that you want to tackle with other classmates: you need to do all the research, all the organization of the data you gathered and get to the bottom of things while preparing to present in front of an audience of your peers and of adults.
Let me rate the experience for me: I HATED it. Sure I learned about urban planning but it was way too tedious for me and practicing for the repetition became really boring.
Maman taped the whole thing. You can see how super into it I was. View at your own risk... it is super long so fast forwarding is ok!



Luckily, there was a break right after so to the Pacific Ocean we went and I dove with joy in the water, forgetting all together the experience. We were lucky to have quite a beautiful weather for it being April. On day 2, we even got the beach to ourselves. And if you watch closely the short video, be ready to see my running performance... we got a good laugh out of that one!

To end the break, we had another good time with T and her family!

March 2018

During March, I became an activist. Although I play a lot of video games where there might be some violence and weapons involved, I do not like that students like me or kids like me are in danger in real life because some weapons are too readily available. So when a march formed in our town, I decided to accompany Maman to  it. 

 Protect our future... And vote!

 And this, is when my classmates and I began working on our PYP exhibition project. See, we had to come up with a subject we strongly wanted to inquire about and the whole research process took us a month... If you look closely at the pictures, you will see that I like sharing idea and I am not so much the note keeper or secretary...

 Hot air balloon experiment in Sciences: this project was a lot harder than we thought.