It's the Last Day of School! (Plus: My Year in Review)

Next week, I'll have my graduation ceremony, and then I'll be done with eighth grade and on to high school. It's so odd... I feel like we just started school. Almost like my life is flashing before my eyes. Like one day I'll blink and I'll be 82 years old with twenty five cats and a parakeet named Polly.

Since exams are over and there isn't anything to do, I spent four hours playing poker with my friends.

Yes, four hours. It was great.

(We didn't bet actual money, don't worry.)

(If we had, I would be bankrupt by now. To put it simply, I did not win.)

So what has eighth grade been like? I think it was pretty good, overall. I liked all my classes, though I struggled in Geometry (I'm more of an algebra person. Proofs? Not my strongest suit). Theatre was probably one of my favourite classes, although my teacher is TOTALLY obsessed with Elvis. I mean, we spent an entire class period talking about the King of Rock and Roll, and I know SO many facts about this guy now that I didn't know before. Not sure if this is a good thing...?

For our final exam, I did a scene from Waiting for Godot, the absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, with a partner. It's a really, really weird play. I loved acting every second of it.

I made new friends, which is never a bad thing.

I went camping with Girl Scouts... twice. The first time we stayed in air conditioned cabins where the biggest sacrifice we had to make was a lack of wi-fi (which somehow I survived). The second time we were roughing it, and at night we could hear coyotes howling right outside our tent. Fairly terrifying. Extremely cool.

I read an amazing book called The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender which was, as the title suggests, both strange and beautiful.

I ate the best Thai food I've ever had in my life.

I wasted an absurd amount of time on Pinterest.

I learned how to play three different card games, and have overall played about 16 hours of each (which might be an exaggeration, but not much of one).

I wrote a book, which was a very stressful but very new experience. I'll definitely be doing NaNoWriMo again next year (and you should too!)

So that's my year in review, pretty much. No real adventures, but lots of new experiences. And, as Albert Einstein says, "The only source of knowledge is experience."

Love, Emily