Volleyball

Volleyball has definitely been a hit this fall.Abbie has commented repeatedly on how much she enjoys it. Unfortunately, she is on one of the B teams and they have only won one game so far, but she doesn't seem to mind. Doing something that she enjoys, and having it be in the air conditioning is enough for her and is much preferable to cross country! 

 

I don't often make it to school in time to catch her games, but I did manage to get there one day and capture a couple of photos of her in action. She is lucky number 13, but it doesn't seem to have hurt her performance at all.

Emily absolutely loves going to see Abbie play. She just admires her big sister so much. After the game, she always wants to go into the locker room with Abbie, which often results in an eye roll from Abbie.

In addition to volleyball going well, theater also seems to be going well. The play this fall is the Seussification of Romeo and Juliet. Just as it sounds, it is roughly the story of Romeo and Juliet (although no one dies in the end) set to Seuss-like rhymes. Abbie was really interested in being one of the two narrators and she was able to get the role that she wanted -- she is officially Narrator #1.

Also, as a new source of excitement, Abbie was able to pass her typing test and score herself a new laptop. She absolutely loves it (not shocking!) and is actually appreciative of the fact that we enticed her into learning to type. She has started to enjoy a weekend routine of taking her laptop to Starbucks on Saturday mornings so that she can work on her homework (and sip pumpkin spice lattes and eat coffee cake!).

As for the social scene, it is still a bummer to have her friends in the high school, but she has been talking to some of the 7th graders more and has also been corresponding with a number of French pen pals. One is a pen pal that was arranged through school, but the others are ones that she met through and online website (yes, it is closely monitored, etc.). She has been surprised at how much they have in common in terms of music preferences, etc.

That being said, they also seem to take turns inadvertently horrifying each other. This past weekend she asked her French friend what she had for lunch on Friday. Her friend gets to leave school for two hours for lunch, so Abbie assumed that she would have some sort of delectable French meal. Not so fast -- she had Burger King! Yes, that's right, Burger King for lunch in France. Bleh. Abbie's lunch was equally as horrifying (at least to her pen pal) -- she had chicken fingers. That sounds fine to us, but there is no way to translate it without leading her pen pal to believe that she literally ate the fingers of a chicken for lunch. She ended up sending a photo of chicken fingers so that her pen pal wasn't permanently disgusted. :)