Month: February 2018

This week, I am doing a blog on my courses. A week ago, we were told to fill out our course selection form for grade ten. I personally think it is a bit early for course selection. This is because most people haven’t even got to experience half of their current courses. I was lucky enough to get both my electives in the first semester. This means I know what electives I want to do now. Some other students didn’t have any electives. So they won’t know if they want to advance in the electives they have already chosen or switch.

The first thing I did, was made everything academic. This is because I have more options next year and a higher of getting into university. Unfortunately, I could not take academic for five subjects. These are career studies, civics, and my three electives. Career studies and civics are mandatory open courses. However, I choose the three electives.

For my three electives, I chose media arts, computer technology, and introduction to computer programing. The reason I chose media arts is that I need an art course. In order to pass high school, you need at least one art credit (arts, music, or drama). Everybody in my grade agreed it was better if you get your credit early on. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up with music this year (my intended arts course). This has left me a bit limited in courses. I don’t want any drama courses and I can’t choose half the art courses ( I need the grade 9 prerequisite). So I decided on media arts which is about animation, photography, etc. I chose this over music because it will probably be more useful in the real world. The reasons for the other electives are quite simple. The two other electives are the next step from my previous courses.

In the end, these are the courses I’m taking. It is actually very simple. I just took all academic and picked my mandatory arts course. Overall, I’m happy with my choices and I hope I get them.

This week I’ll be continuing my blog on my family’s yearly ski trip. In my last blog, I left off with me and two family friend waiting for the rest of the group. When everybody gathered at the bottom of the lift, we went up together. At the top, we all decided to do a few greens before any blues. In skiing, there are 4 different kinds of slopes. Green is easy, blue is harder, black is harder than blue, and double-black is the hardest. After we did around 3 greens we started doing some blues. Soon, we ended up on the other side of the mountain. We ended going back after most of us got cold or tired.

When we got back to the house, we took a long break. Using a family friend’s switch, we play got to play many games. I ended up playing a lot of Tetris. The controls were very strange because I’m used to playing on the computer. After five minutes of practice, I got to my average speed (14 lines per second). When it was around dinner time, we went back out for night skiing. Soon, it got really dark and dangerous. On our way back to the house, I fell. During the fall, I bruised my rib. It didn’t hurt much, but it still hurt. A little later someone else from our group fell. Eventually, we made it back to the house. At the house, we waited for dinner to be made. Later, I found out that the adults would be going out for dinner. The kids stayed behind and ended up eating fries and other fried foods. After dinner, we played games and wait for the adults to return. Unfortunately, the restaurant was full. In the end, the adults returned and ate at the house.

The next day, we packed up. Fortunately, there wasn’t too much stuff. After packing, we went to the slopes one more time. Since I hurt myself yesterday, I decided to take it easy. That day, I planned to do more greens than blues. However, I ended up doing a lot more blues. After skiing, we ate lunch with our family friends. Afterwards, my family left the group to go home earlier.

Overall, I had a great time. It was fun going on our yearly ski trip. One of the negatives was no internet. To balance this out, there where a ton of games in the basement. In the end, I would have liked internet but I still had fun.

This year we had a ski trip in the USA specifically Ellicottville. We usually have a trip every year with family friends. This time we had to get up early, this is because some of the parents wanted to do night skiing. We meet up with our family friends in a cafe at time square (not the one in NYC). After we finish eating, we started our journey to the border.

On our way to the border, we stopped at an outlet mall. In the outlet mall, Kalen and I both got new shoes for school. The shopping process was very boring and I didn’t like it. After shopping and crossing the border we were in America. After a bit more driving we made it to the rental home. When we arrived it was really dark and unloading all the luggage took a while. Later we looked around the house. The most exciting room was probably the basement. There was darts, air hockey, ping pong, and one family friend brought a Nintendo switch. Overall the first day was mainly driving. In the end, we didn’t get to do any night skiing.

Next morning, we had to wake up at 7:30 am! Although most of us woke up earlier than that. Another difference from all the previous trips was that I had to rent skis and use poles. I ended up riding with two family friends to get rentals. Even though we had to get rentals my group was the first to the meetup area. My group decided to do one warmup round. When we got back down everyone was there. This was the beginning of our yearly ski trip.