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

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).