School

It is now the end of the second week of school. I have been a bit busy in the first few weeks, so I haven’t found time to write about it till now.

I am now taking three classes at school and four “classes” at home. In school I am taking English III, World History, and Physics. I will give a short description of each, which should be enough for the rest of the school year.

In English, we are reading early American literature, such as Puritan poems and sermons, or the accounts of John Smith and the founding of Jamestown. We are going to be reading The Crucible next, which I gather involves the Salem witch trials.

In World History we have just finished learning about Egyptian society and will learn about Sumerian History next.

In Physics, we are learning about classical physics, specifically 1D motion. We have done some simple problems, such as:

Pretty simple to understand, as long as you know what formulas to use.

I am also doing DDF again this year. I am doing debate, which is about 9/11 security measures, etc. I am also in a funny mime about mankind and weapons. I may also be in a Reader’s Theatre, possibly from Young Frankenstein.

My sister is also going to be in the school band this year. Since my mom didn’t want to listen to my sister playing the trumpet, she bought my sister a electric bass guitar. My uncle picked one out (an Ibanez GSRM20) and mailed it up to us. See pictures below.

My mom went with a friend out to see the bears at the Chilkoot River and got a nice view. It was a bit dark out, so some of the  pictures below are a bit blurring, since I didn’t tell my mom how to adjust the ISO.

Bend, Oregon

On Wednesday night, I got back from a week long trip to Bend, Oregon, where my grandparents on my mom’s side live. It had been more than a year since I had been to see them, and so we decided to go down as a family.

At Seatac
Last Thursday we drove onto the ferry to Juneau. Our car needed some work done on it that we couldn’t do in town (like replacing a cracked windshield) and so we were just going to leave it Juneau until we got back.
We got to Bend at about 11:00 at night where my grandpa picked us up. My grandma has cancer, specifically multiple myeloma, or cancer of plasma cells, and has been undergoing intermittent Chemo treatments for the past year. She is off of Chemo now, but is still recovering and couldn’t visit with us all day long, so we stayed with some friends of our grandparents who had some extra bedrooms.
A butterfly on my grandparents porch, along with their cat, Jacob, drinking out of a bird bath.
The next day, we borrowed one of our grandparents cars and did some shopping, then went to visit my grandma. We had salmon (I had tofu, since I am now a vegetarian) for dinner, then went shopping some more that night.

The next day we did more shopping. I got a suit from my grandpa, and took it to a tailors to make it fit. We also went on a hike to Tumalo Falls, a very spectacular waterfall. Unfortunately, while we were there I got a bloody nose and we had to leave. Usually my bloody noses only last for a few minutes, but this one wouldn’t go away. I started to feel like I was going to lose consciousness, so my parents took me to a clinic. By the time I got there my nose had stopped bleeding, but I was still feeling faint. After laying down for a bit I felt better, and the doctor told me how to stop bloody noses in the future.
The next day we went canoeing on Sparks Lake in my grandpa’s canoe. It was a little hard to fit myself, my sister and parents, and my grandpa in one canoe, but we managed. It was very beautiful, and I got to practice steering a canoe (we don’t have a canoe, so I don’t get to practice much).
That night we went with my grandma and grandpa to see The Help at the theaters. It had been a while since I had gone to a movie theater, since the nearest one to Haines is a four-hour drive. The Help was a pretty good movie, although my mom said it wasn’t quite as good as the book.
The next day we did more shopping. We also went to a quilt show, where we saw some quilts my grandma had made. Later that day my dad and I helped her photograph a few of the quilts, as she was making a book of them. We also went to visit my aunt and uncle for a hour later that night.

On the second to last day of our trip, we got Chinese takeout and went down by the river (specifically the Deschutes river) below my grandparent’s house for a picnic. The next day we went into town and went canoeing on the same river. My sister got out and swam for a while, I got more practice steering a canoe.
We also went to a tile store and bought twenty rock tiles to put around our woodstove at home. We packed them all in boxes, then paid $100 to check them all. We caught a taxi to the airport at four in the morning the next day. I got some nice pictures of mountains on the way to Seattle. From Seattle we flew on a 737-400 Combi, which is half cargo and half passenger seats. It was the first time I had flown on one before.

We Juneau we did a lot of shopping for food and supplies that we couldn’t get in Haines, or were simply cheaper in Juneau than in Haines.