Back to School

Abbie really, really enjoyed our end-of-summer trip to San Francisco. She brought her camera and was able to get some good photos. She also enjoyed all of cooler weather, the sightseeing, the awesome food, and the trip over to Berkeley.

Having fun catching the moon on our balcony in San Francisco

All good things must come to an end, however, including summer break. Monday was Abbie's first day back to school and she wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but the first week is over and she seems to have survived.

Obligatory 1st day of school photo

In general, I think that she likes her teachers this year, but she isn't thrilled that all of her 9th grade friends are now in the high school while she is stuck in the middle school. She devised a brilliant plan to spend the first 20 minutes of her lunch break in the library, and then go to the cafeteria to eat with the high schoolers (as opposed to eating with the middle schoolers and then heading to recess), and her plan was successful for the first four days. Ultimately, however, the vice principal caught on and told her that he would give her a pass for the library on Fridays only; other than that, she needs to be eating when the middle schoolers eat. Definitely not her preferred outcome, but there's not much that she can do about it.

Class-wise, she has chosen theater and strings this year for her arts courses, and she is looking forward to auditioning for the play, which sounds like it will be an interesting one (more on that later). Her academic courses are pretty standard - honors algebra, history, physical science, English, and French. She is definitely making good progress with her French - this morning I overheard her asking Siri to start a timer for her in French. We also have all sorts of fun photos and memorabilia from our trip that may come in handy in class this year, including a French speeding ticket that we were surprised to receive in the mail this summer - you don't generally see those in the textbooks!

As for athletics this year, Abbie initially signed up for cross country, but the practices were nearly killing her (she is not used to running), and she wasn't enjoying it, so she very quickly switched to volleyball and likes it much better. So, volleyball will be the activity this fall and then in the winter, she will switch to a different sport. The winter offerings are pretty weak, so I think that she might get stuck with basketball, but we'll see.

As for other current events, Chad decided to encourage Abbie to learn to type by telling her that he would buy her a laptop if she could get to 35 words per minute with 90% accuracy. This motivated the heck out of her and she spent hours and hours typing during the week before school started. She has already reached her goal (we think), but she needs to prove it to us by doing a series of typing tests in front of us. So far, her nerves have gotten the best of her and her performance when we are watching is not as good as when we are not watching, but she will get there soon, no doubt.