Winter Break is a week away (21st December) and everyone is getting hyped to go home. My Christmas plans have been finalised and I'll be staying in a host family for a few days before heading off to London on the 25th. It will be strange to have a Christmas away from home, family and everything I'm used to but I'm also super excited to go to LONDON! It's always been on my bucket list, and it's coming a few years earlier than I expected which is awesome. School is beginning to wind down for the year. Last week was the last of our activities so this week the second years can focus on studying for block week which is coming up fast (this is when they have all their exams to determine their predicted grade). Block week for first years is apparently super chilled out. We watch movies, do labs, field trips and basically make the most of having longer classes. For marine science we're going to an aquarium in Sidney, north of Victoria (what a coinkidink) to study the animals and plants they have there.
Christmas Break will be a welcome change from IB schoolwork (although no doubt there will still be lots of homework) and an awesome chance to chill out, catch up on work and sleep before the intensity of second term hits. Recently I've not done much out of the ordinary flow of Pearson life. A couple of weeks ago I went whale watching with Eagle Wing Tours. Noah (Netherlands) and Asia (England) came and we saw so many whales! It was incredible. We also went house skating. Japan House went to Colwood for an afternoon to go ice skating. It was SO MUCH FUN! Everyone was at a different ability level which made it super fun. I've only ice skated once before, in Denmark for about 45 minutes when I was 10. It is so weird to get caught in someone else's track and not be able to turn, kind of like skiing but way more precise. We had a man come to our marine science class to teach us about the effects of rising salinity on marine species, and what we can do to help reduce or stop the impact all together. It was so interesting to have him there, although Laura (our teacher) is so knowledgeable that she basically could have taught the exact same class off the top of her head. On Tuesday (11th December) we had a guy called Mark Leiren-Young come to talk to us about Orcas, specifically the Southern Resident Orcas (the pods that live around here). He's a journalist and made a short film about the orcas which he showed us, before answering a bunch of questions. When we went whale watching we had seen the actual whales that he was talking about so it was funny to hear that they had names and families, and that we'd met them all before. Unfortunately Mark had some bad news. When they made the documentary, there were 83 southern resident orcas left in the Salish Sea, and population rates were rising. However due to fishing (us eating the orcas food), damming (us stopping the orcas getting to their food) and cargo ships (us ruining their echolocation), the orcas are declining. There are a bunch of negative effects that come from this. If an orca lost weight 100 years ago, it wasn't a problem, they'd burn off their fat for a bit until there was more food and then they'd put it back on. Now though, when an orca loses weight all the toxins that it had ingested and that were stored in it's fat reserves are released into it's bloodstream, making it sick and eventually killing it. It was a very intersting discussion and Shefa, our global politics teacher is trying to get him to come back next term so we can talk more about it. We decorated Japan House dayroom and the tree out the front with Christmas lights, so now out house is super colourful. On Saturday we went into town with Travis who took us to 'The Boulder House' so a bunch of us could go climbing. Pedro (Portugal), Asia (England) and I went, and climbed for a couple of hours. It was super fun, but real rock is so different from plastic rock!! So, getting ready for London, finishing up the term and getting ready for part 2 in January is what I'm up to right now. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy your New Year. 2019 here we come! B
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Hey!I'm Bella. I love writing about all sorts of things, and here are a few of them for you to read. I hope you enjoy :) Archives
April 2020
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