The First Day of School

For once, school started here at a sane day, September second. I was well prepared for my new middle school after taking a tour the day before. All my old friends from elementary school were here, but most of them were on Omega, not Sigma. Omega, Sigma, and Delta are the three teams at Diamond, and they all have different teaching styles. My team, Sigma, teaches very precisely, with lots of routines and very clear explanations. Omega sometimes strays off the curriculum, and is quite random, with some freedom, and Delta is a mix but with a more nurturing environment. Most pupils fall squarely into one of those three categories, and the team system works very well.

So far, I haven't learned anything except the various routines of the teachers. Going two days with only routines starts to get slightly boring after a while. Maybe after the weekend I'll start to do some proper work. Who knows what the year has in store for me.

The Berkshires

Three things come to mind when I think of my grandfather and step-grandmother's house in Berkshire County: swimming, mowing the lawn, and climbing huge trees. That's about all I did. I would spend most days either by mowing the lawn or by scaling a 70 foot (roughly 23 meters) white pine across the field, then going for an hour long swim. Obviously we did other things with our cousins, but life was simple, mostly.

Vermont

After coming back from England, We visited various various grandparents' houses. First up was my father' mother, living in a small town near Middletown Springs, in Vermont. We had lots of fun there, assembling zip lines and hammocks, picking vegetables from Granny's overflowing garden. Lots of cousins came to visit, all very enthusiastic about the zip line and the various activities inside, like table tennis, rocket balloons and cooking. Our family got a chance to have a relaxed lifestyle after lots of fixing up new problems in the house and ones that the house-sitters ignored. Therefore, we had seen them before (arrrgh!!). Anyway, going to Vermont was a nice break to see our relatives for a while and catch up on family news!

We're back

After coming back from a long year in England, I thought we could relax and chill out. Noooo way. All the old problems with the house before we left were still there, along with a few new ones mixed in. Dad was on his own fixing them because Mom is still in England, and we had to go without the stuff being shipped for a month.

On th plus side, however, we kids got a raise in our allowance, and we have a couple of projects going on, like putting in wooden contraptions to climb up the tree in our backyard, and making ceramics projects with our newly aquired wheel. We also get to go to an awesome camp in Concord called Summer Fenn for a few weeks.

But it seems like summer is already over. It's already August and it's less than a month until school starts.

Overall, it's pretty cool coming back home.