November 29

“Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am”

What an explosive way of starting the school year with the project I’ve been looking forward to the most

*(drumroll)*

 The Manhattan Project!

Unfortunately the project was not what it should have been, this year we didn’t get to do a field school in a related area (ex. Los Alamos), which was the whole reason I was excited for this project. Seeing the photos from last years grade 11s made me so jealous and eager and its almost entirely the reason I stayed in PLP, but I digress.

During this project we learnt how to use a Zettlekasten and smart brevity and put all our notes in that format. These formats didn’t particularly work with how I have my notes and assignments organized in craft, so I mostly ignored them once I could (If I could explain what they are I would).

After taking all of our notes in class we put them into a smart brevity format and handed them in. Once we did that we then chose the topic for our animation and started to storyboard and plan it. Our topics had to show how the manhattan project affected the world, for good or for worse. My topic was about the reaction of the bomb and how it led to discoveries in science and how that effects the earth today.

Initially we had one week to animate a 1m 30s (minimum) video. If you’ve ever drawn or animated you know thats almost impossible to do alone, but after multiple sleepless nights and a lot of shortcuts, I handed it in on time!… Just to find out we got a week long extension. 

Here’s my animation since I’m sure you’re DYYYING to know

After that extra week I was hoping our videos would be shown to the class, which they never were. That really bummed me out because some elements of my animation were references only some of my friends would get.

The project wrapped itself up very quietly as we transitioned into our next project

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June 17

Least favourite part of the year…

It’s tpol time, the pol of t’s, the transition presentation procrastination of learning.

This year we filled out a checklist of behaviours we demonstrated this year and im mandated to choose 3 to display.

From Agency I chose  the “Accepting Feedback” section.

I chose “Consistently: Accepts feedback and makes revisions”

I think I’ve grown in this area this year, I know that in previous years I didn’t change a lot when it came to revision from peer critique. This year I’ve learnt to trust the opinion of my peers and consider what they say whether it be on my presenting skills or my work.

In humanities for example, the Pechakucha project from Seattle. The feedback I received from teachers and classmates on presenting and slide layout taught me how to better present my learning (with how I present or build my presentation).

In maker my improvement would be shown with Destination Imagination. During the whole process of building and creating we had teachers checking in on how we were doing and what our plan was, often getting advised on good/bad ideas. With the feedback and critique we received from our teachers we formed a better story and presentation, getting us 1st in provincials.

How I can improve: .Theres not many things I can improve on in this area, I can keep their perspective in mind or ask a larger audience instead of a small group.

The second behaviour I chose was from “Conduct and Integrity”

For respect I chose “Consistently: Respects the rights and opinions of others;
always listens when others are speaking”

This applies to both humanities and maker. I definitely think this is a skill that I’ve improved on this year. Along with this coming from maturity, I do think that I’ve also put in an effort to change and respect who may be speaking or presenting. I do not have recorded evidence of this in a project, but I know that I’ve had my fair share of “be quiet” in the past. This year I’ve noticed a significant decrease of teachers telling me to be quiet, whether this is a result of my ADHD meds or understanding why I shouldn’t be talking if someone else is, I still have changed no matter what and I’m proud of myself for learning how to shut my mouth after 16 years.

How I can improve: I can encourage my friends to pay attention more or I can properly listen to what the speaker is talking about.

The last behaviour I chose was from “Self Regulation”

For balance I chose “Rarely: Often overwhelmed by commitments and finds it difficult to manage balance between outside activities and school“

This applies to both humanities and maker. The reason I chose this was because I’ve picked up a lot of choirs this year and finding a balance between choirs and homework was really hard. Usually after choir I would stay at the school and do my work, usually working from 4:30 to 5:45, I didn’t have much time when I went home because I usually had some sort of chore and then dinner, the only time would be sometime after I showered, but my wifi gets turned off at 11, preventing me from staying up doing homework. This year especially I definitely had regressed from last year with less of a drive to do homework and less care about my work being in on time. I also started prioritizing math and science over my PLP work, leaving me extremely burnt out for most of the year because of how long I take on my math. Even when I had free time, I would procrastinate out of stress which led to me being more stressed which started the procrastination cycle again, so I tried my best to not remember my work and only use class time.

How I can improve: I can find a better way to regulate myself while I’ m stressed so I can properly do my work or I can make a better schedule that gives me enough time for homework, even if it means cutting out time with friends.

How does this help me answer the driving question (How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?)

I think these show my improvement this year along with the improvement I want to make next year. The goals that I want to set for myself for next year are all to do with my focus and work drive, like giving myself time to do homework or actually doing homework at home, prioritizing homework, making sure I get things in on time, and generally being more organized. Specially because next year is going to be harder with more difficult classes so I know I need to change my behaviours to succeed for next year

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March 15

A Crazy Presentation

We just finished another project called “Cray Cray Yay Yay” where we studied crazy people and their effect on the world, not literal crazy people but people who were called crazy for an idea they had.

We started this project with the apple “Think different” campaign. We got to choose a person featured in the video to make a “mini pecakucha” on.
If you don’t know what a pecakucha is, it’s a presentation with the format of 20×20. 20 seconds each slide for 20 slides.

For my “mini pecakucha” (20 seconds for 10 slides)  my options were pretty limited since most people were chosen to pick before me. I ended up picking Thomas Edison to present on. When I tell you that this presentation was SUPER rushed I mean it, I wasn’t finished my slides and quecards until maybe 10 minutes before my presentation. I was literally rushing to finish my slides in Math.

Our final piece of the project was a full pecakucha in a group of 3-4. My group was Chris, Callum, and Jasper, our topic was “think different” so we focused on how these ideas were new and different at the time and how it was considered “crazy”

Before we fully started working on the full presentation, the teachers brought most of the class to Seattle to really understand where a lot of these “crazy people” came from and their stories. We visited some pretty well known places like the MoPop (Museum of Pop Culture), Microsoft, The Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Climate Pledge Arena (not for a hockey game unfortunately), and The Museum of flight, along with some less Seattle famous places like ifly.

Last night we presented our full pecakucha with our groups. We have been working on this project for almost 2 and a half months so I’m pretty happy it’s over now.

Here’s what happened during the presentation:

What went well

  • All of our slides were completed and approved by the teachers
  • We didn’t get behind or ahead at all, every time we practiced we were always a little behind our photos, but during the actual presentation we did really well with timing. If we messed up during any part of our slides the improv or what we said put us back on track really well. A few last sentences were rushed but it mostly stayed on track
  • we were really well memorized on our scripts, we didn’t stutter over many words.

What didn’t

  • I feel like our tone could have been better or some of us could have been louder for sure. I know a few people sounded a bit monotone at some parts.
  • our stage presence could have been better I guess? I feel like we looked frozen aside from me and Chris’ hand talking
  • coordinating what to wear better since not everyone was wearing black formal clothes

How to improve

  • Practice. Practice. Practice. We were told it shouldn’t sound like you’re reading a script or that it’s fully committed to memory because you want it to sound like you or sound “conversational”. I felt like I was still messing up a few words or sentences, not going in the direction I wanted them to.
  • eye contact, I definitely remember looking at the slides or anywhere but the audience so I want to work on that
  • Not part of the presentation but the work I put into the group, I definitely am not proud of the amount of work I put in and I feel really bad to Chris and Callum for putting so much work in for me.

How did I contribute

  • I put some doodles and extra drawings on the slides.
  • info about some people and photos for the slides
  • ideas for our thesis and notes

How the field study helped me learn

  • One of the topics in my notes were about Kurt Cobain. Since he was from Seattle, Nirvana had a whole section to itself that talked about its upbringing, history, behind the scenes, etc.
  • helped me connect to the project, driving question (Why does it take a crazy person to change the world) and ideas

Extra photos and videos from the project

a few photos of me Ofc 😌💅💅💅

Huge thanks to my team mates (check out their blogs at Peter Steele fan club  Christians Portfolio Callum) and the teachers that arranged the event and brought us to Seattle❤️❤️
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December 1

A long overdue post

Even though this project happened in September. I feel like this blog post came at the right time, since I have been dealing with a lot lately, and maybe not focusing as much on things that are best for my health. It’s been a topic of discussion in my house, so this gave me a chance to reach out to my parents to discuss something new, rather than things that didn’t work so well in the past. In the end, we came up with a contract, which I’ll attach a screenshot of below.

In the past, most of what I tried to improve was screens and sleep. In a way, it’s the same now, but with a new approach. Before, when my parents have tried to improve my sleep health, they forced me to bring them all of my electronics every night at a certain time. This didn’t work very well because on my end I’d be angry, and on their end, they felt bad for not showing trust in me to just put them away in my room. No one really ended up winning.

Part of the thing we agreed on this time was a balance of freedom and accountability. For them, they know that a fully strict approach doesn’t really work with me. And for me, I know that if I’m trying to make big changes, I need to be held accountable or I might not follow through.

The first part of the conversation was talking about what hadn’t worked in the past. Next, we talked about how they’d love for me to just have no screens at all, but that it’s not realistic. So, finally they brought up incentives, and that even though I’ve been tired a lot of the time, I still didn’t have much of an incentive to change things. They said they’d love something that incentivizes me putting all of my screens away before 10:30 and not touching them again until my alarm goes off in the morning. Their first thought was money, but they wanted to hear from me. I told them that with my stressful schedule, it’s hard to wake up in the mornings, especially lately, and the incentive I wanted was to take a personal day once a month in order to give myself a break.

Eventually, we settled on a weekly payout, where the daily average gets higher if I do more days in a row. If I do one or two days, it amounts to 2$ a day. If I do three or four days, it comes out to 7$ a day. If I do all five days in the schoolweek, I get 10$ per day. The other things is that I can’t ask for money anymore, and this is going to be where my money comes from. The last thing is that there will be a payout each time I read a full book. I will try.

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October 9

This is us

Hey welcome back! this summer was long and this project felt longer, but I digress. This project was all about learning about other peoples stories. We started by reviewing a little bit about the confederation and we learnt a little about the charter rights. We chose topics that represent canadian identity

The topic I chose for the canadian identity was canadian films. The driving question I made for myself was “How is film part of our identity?”. I made my own need to knows and I did my own research on the topic so I could eventually present it to a small group. The groups we were put into had a similar topic at first, then for the second group it was unrelated topic. So for my groups I had Jackson, Charlie M, Daniel, Frankie, and Luca . For the second group I was with Keaton, Keenan, Ronan, and Sofia. (Un)Fortunately I was at outdoor school for councillor training that weekend so I couldn’t have done much research other than the 2-3 days we had in class so I felt a little behind when we had to present. I think the second presentation went better than the first though because I felt like it went smoother and I kinda knew what I was doing there.

The project didn’t end there though, we held a human library. A summary of a human library is it’s basically a bunch of people talking about their stories and experiences in their own life. The person I brought was my step-grandpa. He grew up in Bulgaria and he lost his thumb while climbing so he avoided the draft. He then went on what he called “a permanent vacation”, the government let him go on a vacation to Greece and he just never went back to Bulgaria. He then had 3 options on where to immigrate to and (like I mentioned earlier) the 2 places he wanted to go to most accepted him and he chose to go to Saskatchewan, Canada instead of South Africa. From Saskatchewan he then moved up to Yellowknife in NWT where he just barely scraped by with his wife. He now owns a company and is pretty comfortable where he is in life now.

Other people of course brought who they could and who had a unique experience as a canadian (or something like that). Of course if I had the photos that Charlie took at the time of writing this I would use them but the timing is just unfortunately off and this is due tomorrow so I’m not waiting. Anyways have a nice day, Byyyyeee.

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June 19

Ugh

I rather slam my head into an actual pole than do this but anyways, welcome to my grade 9 tPOL. Since theres an introductory paragraph i have to say, I’m going to put it all here because theres no way it’ll fit on a cue-card. Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner. Anyways, just like its (just as bad) counterpart, the mPOL, I will be going over my learning and my growth this year, and what I can do differently next year. 

First I want to talk about how I’ve overcome some of my academic weaknesses over the year. Since most of my PLP classes ended after the mPOL, I’m mostly going to talk about humanities. Some weaknesses I’ve overcome (or improved on) are, being shy about my work around my academically smart friends, asking more questions to teachers and my classmates, and paying better attention to the lesson.

Some weaknesses I still need to work on are pushing myself to help in group work. The most recent example I can think of is for the WW1 project I definitely let my group do all the decision making and planning. I let them do this because I much rather be told what I need to do with instructions instead of telling others what they have to do. Overall for that issue I think it stems from my ADHD or another problem to do with my mind that I don’t quite understand at the moment

Small Things I want to improve next year would be being more active on basecamp and Showbie so that means checking my grades or following the lesson on basecamp instead of Doing whatever else. I think I definitely could improve if I tried to follow along or check my work more. Another thing I could do would be sitting down and doing my homework after school every day, I started the year doing that and it made me feel so good being responsible and actually getting my work done but its slowly faded out by the time we got back from Alberta. The last thing I could maybe start doing is not call out even if it’s an appropriate time to (like the Canadian history project we did with the debate over confederation [I REALLY WANTED THAT CAPITAL MAN])

I realized by now while writing this that I haven’t even mentioned the driving question. The driving question for tPOLs are “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?” I feel im ready to move on because I feel like I’ve improved enough in my weaknesses and I’ve possibly even refined some of my strengths like my optimism and overall good vibe in teamwork. Along with the growth I’ve made in humanities im also ready to meet new people i can work with and get to know next year.

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January 31

mPOL (again)

It’s that time of year again where I talk bout my growth so far and how I want to progress, thats right it’s mPOL season. And just like last year I have no clue how to start this and it’s due in like a day so here I go. First off the mPOL declaration that I have to read, Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner. Anyways, the first area I want to reflect on is humanities. The growth I set for myself in humanities are (in summary) the following :

•working on the social aspect of class, not being shy around people i know are smarter than me

•asking more questions

•being less shy/more extroverted

I set my humanities grade as extending (🌈). I chose extending because sometimes I feel like I’m on the border of accomplished and extending and I just need a little push to make sure I get extending. I’ve grown in those areas quite a bit, I’ve been asking my friends more questions and even though I’m familiar with mostly everyone in grade 9 PLP, I still feel like I’ve warmed up to a few more people. The way I can grow more this year is by paying attention and really thinking about the topic while the teachers talking just in case I have a question I can’t ask later. I usually realize I wasn’t paying attention or didn’t catch something sort of crucial to the project and I feel too embarrassed to admit I wasn’t listening or forgot. That’s another way I can improve, asking the teacher something even if I forgot and my friends dont know either.

For Maker 9, these are what I set for myself for growth (again, in summary):

•put more effort into group projects

•try to be the “leader” in group projects, being responsible and making sure everyone is on task.

•actually put effort into Destination Imagination (isn’t happening this year I think)

I set my maker grade expectation as extending (🌈) as well. I chose extending because I wanted to push myself to work harder. With the projects we did this year I don’t think there were many big projects that we had to work in groups for, small things here and there but nothing super big. With a small project that happened recently, we made a rollercoaster and I know I put a lot of work into that. Another example of a group “effort” I put a lot of work into would be setting up for the winter exhibition, even though thats not a project I feel like I helped a good amount in my room. A way I can refine the goals I set for myself would be making sure I dont overdo it with the work I do. I want to make sure everyone does an equal amount of work so it’s not unfair for some people. 

Another class I set my expectation as extending (🌈) for is science, I chose extending because I knew I already really liked science and I feel like I’m really good in some science subjects. Here are the growth goals I set for myself:

•working on focusing, not always talking to my friends.

•work on ignoring friends, even if I know it might be a bit rude I need to remember to do my work.

•maybe sitting alone or somewhere else if I really need to.

Honestly, I haven’t grown the most in these areas, with some projects it’s easy to talk and do work like the most recent project we did with operation boxes where I could paint or draw while talking and not have any issues but sometimes if I needed to do work that required thinking then sometimes if someone started talking to me I felt as if I didn’t respond I would be being rude. To achieve my learning plan goal, I need to remind myself to tell my friends that I need to work or remind them to do their work if I noticed they arent done too.

For the extra minutes on my presentation here are some “jumpstart” questions provided to us:

•“of the work you completed this year what are you least proud of?” I’m probably least proud of would be the puppet show on reproduction for science, I never finished it and I kept thinking that “enough time has passed it’s too late to start making the video”, basically the ultimate form of procrastination “due tomorrow? Nah, do tomorrow” (I did that with science blog posts too). I wanna work on not doing that next term and handing in work even if it’s late.

  • “Did all the work you completed this year meet your standards?” Definitely not, It’s hard to always have your work at your standard or higher without burning yourself out. Also different people have a different standard for their work, one persons standard might be higher and easier to burnout than someone else. I definitely want to work on getting my work up or past standard next term. Some ways I can remind myself to get the standard up would be some accountability for myself or a reward I can give myself if I do good work on something.
  • “When did you feel dissatisfied during the working process of working on projects?” It differs from each project but an example I can give is the most recent humanities project. I liked the topic we were doing and I liked the teacher but there was no break in work it was constant homework, understandably it was a 2 week project and there needed to be homework to do it in time, it just felt like I was behind in it (even though it was my fault for not focusing and getting behind because of it).

I think what I’ve written is a little over 7 minutes so I’ll leave my mPOL here, thank you again for coming to my presentation.

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January 4

Why am I glowing?

Winter exhibition.

…

So we finished our projects and held an exhibition to show off what we made. The grade 8s made what they called “Pandora’s box”. The obviously better grade (grade 9s) made videos of a theme and how it relates to James Camerons “Avatar”. My theme was religion and beliefs so i made a video about different religions and the Na’Vi’s religion.
(Oh yeah here’s the video if you’re curious vvv)

The exhibition was super fun! Our engaging activity was face painting so we took shifts painting peoples faces. Some of the grade 12s liked the designs i did so they kept asking for me to paint them. Some of the face paint examples (people could mix and match)
Of course Whats a blog post without the reflecting… the ways I probably could have improved during the exhibition were being at my station longer than the face paint station. I also could have been more productive with making my video since I waited till the rough draft due date to start editing and filming b-roll. I definitely could have done a better job on answering how avatar is connected to some real life themes. Overall I think I did okay on this project but theres lots of room for improvement thats for sure.

Here’s some other photos I could find of the exhibition:

A mountain banshee I made

The snacks of course

I drew the mountain banshees too

My friends 🙂

That’s it for this post, my next post is most likely my mPOL. Until next time, bye bye!

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January 3

Viva La Revolution!!

Welcome back! 2 projects are done and this is the first blog post of them. I’ll be talking about the Revolution project we just finished up. Since we got to choose the revolution we got to research, I chose the American revolution. Why? Because I wanted to, nah I actually don’t remember but anyways. After we chose we got put into the groups, we were told if we were defending the revolution (effective) or prosecuting it (ineffective), I was defending the American revolution. Most people got their first pick like me but some got their second or third because of the amount of people needed. Groups were made, and we started to study our revolution so we could fill out a graphic organizer, here’s what mine ended up looking like.  

Since we got to choose the topic we were interested in, I didn’t have much of a problem focusing. Of course thats not saying that I didn’t do it efficiently, there was definitely a faster way I could have filled out the organizer or better ways to research what I needed to know instead of assuming i’ll need to know it. After that, we starting making our affidavits for the mock trial. 

(While I was editing this, I couldn’t find the affidavit to link to this post, sorry you gotta use your imagination)

I’m not going to go over all of the exhibits but theres one I want to talk about which is the witness interview, our witness was John Lauren’s (played by yours truely). “He” talked about what he did to help the revolution and to try and free slaves. I think my group could have worked together better for the affidavit and filming. Almost the whole time the people pulling the groups weight was Susan E

After we filmed all of it we uploaded and handed it in and then it was done and we got to just chill out for a few classes. The project went okay, it definitely wasnt my favourite but it wasnt the worst project. Anyways, look out for the next post, its all about the Winter exhibition. Goodbye for now!

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November 9

History and geography

Welcome back, summer was long, but the first humanities project was completed already.

As soon as summer ended we were threw into a project then onto a bus headed to Alberta. So we made journals and got to spend half our day on buses for 8 days with a bunch of sweaty 14 year olds. Let me explain it.

As I mentioned we created basically journals explaining the driving question (which was “How has the geography of the West shaped who we are?”) so I’ll show you the book I made so I don’t have to re-explain everything

How has the geography of the West shaped who we are?

Even though in the book it says “reflection #” that wasn’t necessarily the day it happened. I want to explain what really happened per day.

Day 1:
Sept. 22, 6:30AM. We met at the school to load the Seycove bus. We took a 3 hour bus to our first spot to eat lunch, Costco! After we finished lunch we got back in the bus for 2 hours to get to Craigellachie so we could visit the last spike (I bought polished jasper and a keychain). After the last spike, we drove to three valley gap to visit the heritage ghost town to film videos then we went to get our stuff and got our rooms. After we unpacked we went to go get our food and then we did the daily night reflections and after we got about 45 minutes to use the pool there. After curfew I still had some fun, our rooms were all next to each other so we could talk to people on their decks. Even after we got in trouble for it, my room stayed up and kept talking. The three valley gap will still be my favourite place we slept in.

Day 2:
Sept. 23, 7:45AM. After breakfast we took a 30 minute bus to the Revelstoke railway museum. I learnt a lot about trains and I got this photo of the inside of the furnace. After that there was a 45 minute bus to glacier nation park where we did the Loop Brook trail. After the hike we had a picnic then we bussed for 2 hours to Yoho National park to look at Takakkaw Falls. We bussed to Morley to have dinner at smitties. The pancakes were so good but so filling I felt so gross after. Once everyone finished we bussed 45 minutes to the place we would be sleeping in for the next 4 nights, the HI Calgary City Centre! I was in a room with Sydney, Mackenzie, and Frankie. It was a really big room and we had our own bathroom, it made so many people jealous. After that we went to the common room and we wrote our daily reflection. I went straight to bed I was super tired that day.

Day 3:
Sept. 24, 7:00AM. After breakfast we took a 1 hour bus and got to one of the most fun spots we went to in my opinion. We went to Skyline Luge Calgary. We got helmets and got on a chairlift to the top of this big hill. At the top we were given a strange looking go-kart. We were lined up on the top of this hill and were released to race down the big hill on this really thin track. I was second fastest on the trip (Julia was easily the fastest). After our 5 runs, we headed to this really nice buffet named the A+ Buffet. It was an Asian themed restaurant but it was also a buffet so we could have whatever we wanted however many times. The sushi was so good I wish I tried more while I was there. After lunch we went to the beakerhead festival, in…well… beakerhead. It was really fun, there were tents et up showing off science or art and it was really cool. There were live dancers, my favourite was the dancing robot. The robot gave me and Brooke his slap bracelets. I can’t ignore mirrorman though, he was the performer that come on a before the robot. He was cool and gave us stickers. After we did some activities, we  went and watched a big mech go through an obstacle course and destroying things. It was so cool and it was a super cool project that the guy worked on for the years he was. After we got back, we had dinner at the hostel and then went to bed. Overall a pretty fun day it was definitely one of my favourites.

Day 4:
Sept 25, 5:15AM. Ok first off, who in their right mind would think 14 year olds would be happy with waking up at FIVE IN THE MORNING?? BECAUSE I SURE WASNT. Keep in mind it was an hour ahead of BC so it felt like 4am for most of us. Anyways, we took a 2 hour 30 minute bus to Blairmore to go to the frank slide (I bought quartz earrings there). The museum was really cool and the view was even better. I learnt a lot at the frank slide, specially history. Theres not much to talk about because I think a lot of it is in my book or nothing stood out to me enough to talk about. After the frank slide, we had a small picnic before taking an hour bus ride to Fort MacLeod. We went to the Head-Smashed-in Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site (for the sake of my sanity, I’m going to refer to it as H-S-IBJ), which is another museum. It was pretty interesting actually, we learnt about the history of the jump, why people used it, and other things related to it all. I enjoyed it a lot but we had too much time to look around so I got a little bored. After the H-S-I-BJ, we went to…….NANTON CANDY STORE!!!! It was huge and there was a bunch of candy I haven’t had since I was really young, like honeycomb toffee and root beer flavoured lollipops (both of which I’m not allowed to eat because of my braces but I had already broken a bracket before the trip so what’s there to loose). After Nanton we took an hour bus to Calgary to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings. Theres really nothing to talk about for that. After dinner we drove back to the hostel and went to bed.

Day 5:
Sept. 26th 7:00AM. We walked to the Calgary Zoo. That’s basically what we did like all day. We had to make a video there too. I don’t really like zoo’s so theres nothing that really stuck out to me so its better if I just show the zoo with photos. After the zoo we went to the library to waste some time while we were waiting for mr Hughes to get the bus. After mr Hughes picked us up we went to Chinook mall to have dinner. This wasn’t a regular dinner though, the teachers let us wild and we got to buy and eat and do whatever we wanted to. So of course, me being me, had bubble tea and pretzels for dinner. Then I dragged my friend to hot topic. I bought an overcoat, a corset, and some earrings. Then I let my friends bring me where they wanted to go as payback because they didn’t really want to go with me to hot topic. We found a cool record store while exploring the mall, it had some posters I was tempted to get. We got bored and went to a bath and body works to smell stuff, it was fun, I think I bought lipgloss while I was there. After a while we walked to the meeting spot and waited for the teachers. We got driven back to the hostel and I’m pretty sure most people fell asleep pretty fast, I do remember packing up and cry laughing because there was a kfc chicken burger in the bathroom, I dont know why it was so funny but my whole room was in tears because of it.

Day 6:
Sept. 27th, 6:00AM. 2 hour bus to Banff. I was tiredddddddd. We went to Cave and Basin National Historic Site, we learnt about the history there and the snails in the pools. May I point out the whole place smelt like sulfur. We got to see the actual cave with the pool in it. It was really hot in the cave. After that we had a picnic  for lunch again then bussed to lake Louise for an hour. Once we got there we had a huge (optional) hike. I’m really glad I did the hike the view was beautiful and the trees were a beautiful shade of yellow. I saw Logan trailing behind his group so I caught up with him and we walked together to the top. After the hike we all went back down and took some photos at marine lake. Once that was done, we had dinner at Bill Peyto’s Cafe. The food was so good there and my table had amazing people, we were talking about songs and who was what song it was great. After we finished dinner we went to the bus and got told our room groups. We got to our rooms and just got to do whatever for a bit. There was a creepy dude outside our window that we told off. Other than that I didn’t have any problems with the day.

Day 7:
Sept. 28th, 6:00AM. We bussed to Peyto lake to have an early hike that I was convinced on for fruitatons. It was pretty but it wasn’t my favourite. After the hike we bussed to Jasper National Park. We had a small snack then went to the Columbia icefield and we stayed on the glacier for about 30 minutes then took the special buses back down then we went to the glacier skywalk and learn about how glaciers form and the wildlife in the area. We bussed to a nice little river afterwords to eat dinner. Once we were done we got back in the bus and drove to HI Banff Alpine Centre.

Day 8:
Sept 29th 5:45AM. I woke up not as refreshed as I wish, we ate then took an hour bus to lake Louise for a hike that I definitely decided to not go on it. I choose to take the free 2 seat opportunity and sleep. After that we had another picnic then we bussed for 4 hours to Golden. We stopped at the golden skybridge. It was super fun, we got to go on a ropes corse and we got to zipline over a super big valley. While on one of the ropes corse I was on a small zipline and then hit a tree super hard. After the skybridge we had dinner at husky house, I had pancakes and they were actually the best pancakes I had on the entire trip. After dinner we went to the Days Inn Golden for our last night. After we were told our rooms we got our bathing suits on and went to the pool. The pool was pretty fun there was a huge slide. After that we went to bed thinking the next day would be normal.

Day 9:
Sept. 30th 7:00AM I FELT SO SICK AND ANXIOUS IT WAS TERRIBLE! So many things went unplanned that day. First, before breakfast, we watched the bus drive away. So immediately people were confused. We went to eat breakfast and after we went back to the rooms we were told the bus had broken down and the teachers were figuring out what to do. I started feeling super anxious to the point I almost threw up. I took a nap on the floor and around 11am, we had to leave our rooms and pack our bags into an uber, the uber drove off and we weren’t being told anything. After that we were told that we had to walk from the motel to the gas station down the highway. As soon as we started walking I got hit with a wave of energy and I felt super good all of a sudden I was super happy about it. After we got to the gas station we were told that the bus had broken down and we were talking a normal bus back. After the bus got to the gas station we filed in and got our seats. We would be sitting in those seats for the next 9 hours. You can imagine how fast we ran out of conversation with our seatmates. Anyways after the 9ish hours, we were back in Vancouver. The trip was just over, it didn’t have a proper “finished” feeling. We just got picked up and went home.

Now for the dreaded after trip work…

Nah I’m kidding it wasn’t bad at all, we held a small exhibition showing off our books which I have already embedded (check it out) so I dont have much to talk about. 

The trip was super fun looking back at the positives, but there were some parts I really didn’t enjoy, But of course, thats not the teachers fault, the activities were super fun and helped us learn. There were still fun activities where we barely had anything to learn about it so I appreciate that. These trips are always the best part of PLP even if the homework is unbearable (I’m currently 3 blog posts behind woo).

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