Autor: Pia Speh

Last Monday and Tuesday I had a first aid course at school. It was for all grade 10s in the IB program, so we were about 50 students. We met from 8am to 4pm in the library and three instructors from St. John Ambulance taught us a lot about first aid. We started with easy things and went on with CPR and AED. We often worked in groups or pairs and we learned a lot in these two days. I already knew most of the things, because my last first aid course was only a few month ago, but I learned something new too. I’ve never worked with an EpiPen or seen one. Here, mostly everybody knows how to use it and deal with allergies. We also learned about airway and breathing emergencies, wounds and bleeding, bone and joint injuries, things like poisoning, head injuries and so on. It was a lot!! And we are going to have a test next week. Nooo! At the very end of the course we did some nice group work. I was in a group with my friends Sarah and Alessia. One of us was the casualty and was told a short story by the instructors. Then, the others had to deal with the injury. Well, one time, Sarah came to us and was holding her hand. She told us that she had cut herself with a knife and at the exact same moment she dropped a bloody plastic finger and started laughing 😂. It was really funny! Another time I worked with Larissa and we did random bandages and the instructor criticized almost everything. Yes, we had a funny time 😝

Recently, it was the Terry Fox Run at my school. Terry Fox was a Canadian athlete 🏃🏻 who suffered from cancer. His right leg was amputated. Nevertheless, he ran through whole Canada and raised a lot of money for cancer research. He died at the age of 22. The run is still well known to this day and there are many runs in his name to collect money for cancer research. All students in my program had to look for sponsors and collect money. We collected over 3000 dollars!

In the morning, in the first period, I had gym. The school had ordered turquoise t-shirts for the run. My gym class and I went to all the other classes to hand out the t-shirts, stickers and tattoos. Kaylee, Erika and I, we put the tattoos on right away, in our face. We looked really funny (It was horrible to remove them in the afternoon! My face looked like a tomato or like a really bad sunburn.) ! In the second period, all students went to the auditorium and we talked about cancer. There was a young woman and a man, who suffered from the disease and survived. They told us everything about their lives and the battle with cancer and their young children. It was very interesting. Afterwards, everyone went outside for the Terry Fox Run, but is was more like a walk and we walked for more than one hour. It was cold that day, but I had fun with my walking partner: Erika 🙌🏻

On Sunday was my friend Kaylee’s birthday dinner. All my friends were invited. Larissa, Kaylee and I, we met earlier in the afternoon. It was my first time at her house and I met her two dogs and three cats. They are really cute and the dogs needed attention all the time and sometimes they jump on your lap without warning 😂. Kaylee showed us her house. We watched TV: The Good Doctor and Grey’s Anatomy. Then, Kaylee and Larissa wanted to show me the movie Beetlejuice, by Tim Burton, because we saw someone with a Beetlejuice costume on halloween. Almost everyone knows Beetlejuice, but I’ve never heard of it. Well, we started watching it, but all of us were tired and fell almost asleep. At about 5.30pm Kaylee’s parents, her sister, brother and the three of us went to ‘the Rail’, a restaurant in Kanawake. There we met Erika and Sarah. We had a really good dinner and cake too. I LOVE ice-cream cake and it was a Reese’s one 😍💗. The waiter brought it to our table and there were sparklers on it!! And we all sang Happy Birthday for Kaylee 🎁🎉.

Two days ago was halloween 🎃👻🕷! It’s way more fun in Canada than in Germany. Nearly everyone wore a costume at school and the teachers too. My friend Erika wore her pyjamas, Sarah was a disco lady, Cassandra a creepy schoolgirl, Larissa was Wanda (a marvel character), Maxime, a TV show character, and Kaylee a cowgirl. There were some scary costumes, but also crazy costumes, like a businessman or a pickle. This day, I had my usual subjects: English, history, maths and gym. In english we worked on the normal stuff, but my teacher went around and gave us candy! Ms Dann is so nice! And in history and maths I had a test. My history teacher wasn’t there, but another teacher gave us the term tests. In maths, it was only a small test, but it was bad. Actually, I thought it was bad, but at the end I got 88%, which is absolutely ok. SSR and gym was the best! In SSR we usually read our books. Well, not on halloween! My teacher, Ms Caisse, put on Thriller from Micheal Jackson, danced the whole lesson, and handed out candy. Sometimes she can be very strict but watching her dance was hilarious 😂.
During lunch break we took this picture:

From left to right: Kaylee, Larissa, Cassandra, me, Fiona, Sarah and Maria.

Fiona was a mime, but I don’t know what costume Maria was wearing. She didn’t even know it herself, haha. My friend Erika isn’t in the picture, because she left after the 3rd period. She was sick. And Maxime was somewhere else, when we took it. No problem girls, it’s an ugly photo…
In gym, we were allowed to do what we wanted. Some people played basketball, or hockey, but Sarah, Kaylee, and I played badminton. I think it was funny to see a disco lady, a cowgirl, and Minnie Mouse playing badminton, because we were too lazy, to change our clothes ☺️.

In the evening, Larissa came and picked me up. We went to Maxime’s house. There we met all the other girls and all together, we went trick or treating!! We saw many scary and haunted houses and many people, who opened the doors, wore costumes. It was really cool, but cold ❄️.

 

Next Tuesday is halloween and many houses are already decorated. Some people are crazy: they have big blown-up ghosts, cats, and pumpkins in front of their houses 🎃💀👻. They also have graves and skeletons in their front yards. Yesterday I saw a big tree with a spider’s web and a big spider. At school, many teachers decorated their classrooms too. My english teacher has a huge mummy in her room! And you can see many pumpkin garlands and signs with creepy slogans. On halloween, all students are allowed to wear costumes at school and I’m going to dress up like Minnie Mouse. Diana brought me to a big halloween store in LaSalle and I bought a dress with white dots and Minnie Mouse ears too 🐭. That’s going to be so cool!! I can’t wait!

I had an IB off day this Wednesday, but it wasn’t really for hanging out with friends or doing something cool, because I had my english essay due on Thursday and I had to study for my history test also. I got up in the morning, had breakfast, and did my homework almost the whole day. For the test, I had to learn about 60 pages in the book by heart. I was so tired afterwards 💤 but I think I did better in the test than last time.

Friday after school I went home with my friends. Erika, Maria, Sarah, and I had a sleepover at Erika’s house. First, right after school, we went to Sarah’s house. She forgot her pyjamas and all her other stuff. Later, Erika’s mother picked us up and we went to Erika’s house. She lives in a cute house, together with her parents and her cat Camomille 🐱. Camomille is a white, brown and fluffy cat. Omg, I love her 💗! Erika, Maria, Sarah and I, we decided to go for a walk and on our way we visited Claudia. She is in my class, too. She came with us to Erika’s house and we had hot chocolate together, but then she had to go home for supper. Erika’s parents are really, really nice and they bought and made asian food for us: egg rolls, rice with plum sauce and cherry sauce and broccoli. It was very good! And we had cheesecake for desert. Chocolate and lime cheesecake 😍. Then we went downstairs and watched TV. We wanted to watch a movie, a scary one. It was quite boring, but the Cheetos and Doritos were good, haha. All of us were really tired, because of school, so we went to bed at 11:30.

On Sunday, my friend Larissa and I went to the mall in Châteauguay . She isn’t in my class, but we have french together. It was a rainy day and she wanted to buy a black dress for her costume for halloween. She wants to go as Wanda, the marvel character. We went to a bunch of shops and she found a cool dress at Ardene. The mall is quite small, but is was fun with Larissa! After our small shopping tour, we went to Tim Hortons for a hot chocolate and pumpkin spice latte ☕️. We sat there for a long time and then we went to another shop. Afterwards her father picked us up ☺️

Last week was very stressful. I had a math test and a science test at school. Over the weekend I had to finish two 800 word essays. This is why I didn’t do anything during week, except studying and doing my homework. Sometimes I went outside, for a walk with Cooper. Luckily my english teacher changed the due date for the essay, so I had more free time on the weekend. That was great because we did some exciting things:

On Saturday afternoon we went apple picking 🍎! I never went apple picking in my life, but here, many people do that during fall season. There are big fields with apple trees near Châteauguay 🌳. Desmond, Diana, the dogs and I met with Tara and her daughter. They were waiting for us. Then we wanted to go and start picking the apples, but there we no more left!! All of them were already picked. Oh nooo!! We were too late… So, we just went for a nice little walk in the fields. And I found an apple! A beautiful red one. I didn’t eat it right away. I had it later in the car, but it was very good! After our walk we all went to the small shop nearby. There, we bought more apples, carrot cake and apple donuts. Then we sat on one of the benches in front of the shop and had the donuts. They were quite good 😊

 

 

On Sunday my family and I went up north (Diana, Desmond, Samantha, Patrick, and I). And of course, the dogs came too. It took us about 1,5 hours to get there. The sun was shining and all the trees were so pretty 😍! They were yellow, orange, red,… and looked very nice. We went around with the car and stopped sometimes. Desmond showed us some beautiful places ☀️. At Bromont, we had a picnic with sandwiches, chips and fruit 🍇🍞🍊

 

 

On October 13th, Patrick’s friend Ronnie invited me to a dance show, more precise, a ballroom dance show. Ronnie did ballroom dancing when he was younger and he knew that I really like it too. He and his mother picked me up at about 5:30pm. At first, we went downtown Montreal to get Ronnie’s photography equipment. He wanted to take pictures and videos at the show. He rented a camera and lenses at a photography shop. It took us a long time to get there because of the traffic on the streets. Then we had to go to Vaudreuil-Dorion, which is 35 minutes from downtown. The show was in a big hall and the dance floor was in the centre. All around it were several tables and some people had supper there. We didn’t see the the opening, but we arrived on time for the next dances. First there were many dancers from Montreal and surroundings. Most of them were older people. There were various categories and dances, for example: Viennese Waltz, Waltz, Foxtrot, Jive, and Quickstep. Quickstep was my favourite!! It looks like so much fun and the women’ dresses were falling so beautifully. Between the different competitions were line dances. Line dances are extremely funny, haha. All the old people, who didn’t compete, went on the stage and performed a group dance, all together. And sometimes people joined them, who can’t dance or didn’t know what to do. Later in the evening the more professional dancers went on the dance floor. Some came from all around the world. They performed latin dances and all of them were very good dancers!! That was such a nice and exciting evening! Thank you so much!!

 

Today is October 9th and it’s thanksgiving 🎉!! Thanksgiving is always on a Monday, but we celebrated yesterday.
In the morning, I got up late and went down in the kitchen to have breakfast. It smelled sooo good in the whole house, because my family prepared the turkey for supper. It was gigantic: 8.5kg!! All our guests came in the afternoon at 3 o’clock. Our house was full: 30 people, 5 very happy and excited dogs and two cats 🐱🐶. We had three big tables in our living room and everything was decorated lovely. Everyone brought something for the big buffet. Diana and Desmond made the turkey and stuffing, too. Usually you put the stuffing into the turkey, but we had it separately. And omg, it was delicious!!! The stuffing was the best! I couldn’t get enough of it, haha. After supper we had desert: many different types of cake, pies and fruits 😍. I was so full afterwards. The whole family is very nice and they had a lot to talk about. Later in the evening I played my two favourite pieces from La La Land 🎻. They loved it!!

 

 

 

 

Monday was a busy day. I had two tests at school: history and math. Math was pretty easy and history wasn’t bad either. In history, we are learning about the Act of Union (1840) to the BNA Act (1867). That’s only 27 years of history, but a lot of important things happened there and we had to know mostly everything by heart. After lunch break was the 2k run. Everyone was very excited!! Luckily it wasn’t too hot or too cold this day. The boys of grade 10 and 11 started. After their run was finished it was the girls’ run. I had a good start position. It took me 9:07min to the finish!! That’s my best time. And I was the first girl from grade 10 and 11! Really cool! ☺️

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to school as usual. And on Thursday and Friday I had no school!! Yesss!! I had a 5 day weekend. First the two Ped Days, then the weekend and Thanksgiving on Monday. That was awesome! On Friday everybody was at home. Samantha and I watched TV and then we were bored 😂. So we decided to go shopping. We went to the ten 30, which is a big shopping mall nearby. We went to many shops and spend a lot of time at Zara, Forever 21 and Sephora. Actually we spent too much time and were late for supper. Therefore we went to ThaiExpress on our way home and bought noodles 😍😍

Monday was my fist IB Off Day. On IB Off Days, all the IB students can stay at home and do their homework, organize themselves and enjoy the ‘no school day’. I didn’t have homework so I stayed in bed until 8 o’clock and at 9am I went to the gym with Desmond. There were only 4 other people, but we had fun and did some exercises. In the afternoon Desmond and I wanted to go to a park and feed the birds. The park was really nice 😍. We walked through the small forest and stopped at the green meadow. There, we waited for the birds. Usually they land on the peoples’ hands, Desmond told me, but no bird came to us. They were all sitting in the trees chirping. Sad life 😢…

In the week I had some running practices for the 2k run at school, which is next Monday. I improved my time from 9:50min to 9:20min. That’s pretty cool! It’s fun to practice running at school, because after the practice we can do what we want. For example football, soccer, walking around… And I got back my french text: 95%!! Often the teachers give numbers of percentage on tests and exams. And of course, 100% is the best. I’m very, very happy with my mark 😊😊😊

On Friday we had six dogs at home! Six dogs! It felt like being in a zoo! Three dogs were playing in the house the whole time. One dog was sleeping, one dog was barking for food, and the 6th dog was hiding under a chair. In the afternoon, after I came home from school, Desmond and I decided to go for a walk with them. 1km took us half an hour, haha 😂. Desmond had the ‘difficult’ dogs and I had the ‘easy’ ones. There was a really cute Labrador puppy: Archie. He’s gorgeous 😍!!

 

On the weekend, we were invited to a birthday dinner of Diana’s aunt, so David’s, Sam’s and Pat’s great aunt. The whole family met at her house. I met everyone and hopefully I remember all names next week on thanksgiving. Ok, I don’t, but I try 😂. I had some nice conversations with a few family members and then, Mike (cousin’s husband), David, Sam, Pat, their cousin, Amanda, and I played ‘Phase 10’. It was the first time they played this game and I had to explain everything, but they understood it very quickly. We had a lot of fun together and they really like it ☺️.

P.S. I found out that my friend Reggie loves eating cornflakes: