I haven’t posted in a while! I’ve been busy! I shall walk you through what has happened! First, my family, the lady we’re staying with, my mom’s grandparents, and my dad’s mother went out to dinner before my graduation on tuesday. Then my high school graduation started at 7, and ended around like 11 pm or something. After graduation, at 11:30 pm, I went to Safe Grad - basically a big overnight party for all the graduates to make sure we don’t die. I arrived at home around 7 am on wednesday dehydrated, full of junk food, and deprived of sleep, but chose to tough it out and sleep at 10 pm that night. I slept for twelve hours, waking up at 10 am on thursday. Around 4 pm on thursday, my family and my grandmother went out for chinese food to celebrate my brother’s grade 9 graduation. This may seem weird, because in most of the world, 9th grade is the start of high school. Not so where I come from. Junior high starts in 7th grade, and ends in 9th, which makes more sense than 7-8 and 9-12.
Anyhow, pictures and descriptions of pictures follow. Oh, about my outfit for my graduation - I meant to have a plain black, button-down shirt and my standard black/red tie, only they got lost or sent away or something. So I had to wear the bow tie. When I told people I had no choice but to wear it, most of them assumed my mom had forced me to. It looks alright I guess, but the tuxedo shirt wasn’t exactly my favourite option.
My diploma being awarded, with two awards within - $100 for high academic standing (I think 90%+?) and $35 for top mark in sociology. Still have to get thank you notes for the people who donated those…
My father and a woman he grew up with, plus me and her daughter.
A friend of mine who often lived in our basement so he could get to work on the weekends.
My prom date and I, but now without any distinguishing characteristics. Graduation gowns make everyone equal!
The Matt Squared conglomerate, now with fewer essays to write.
AHA NO GOWNS FOR US - off to Safe Grad!
My dad wanted to get a picture of me with his friend’s daughter. We’ve been in various french classes together, and we had a study period together last year, but we hadn’t spoken much in a long time.
My excellent calculus teacher, and while I could try to make a math joke about him, I would only bring shame and dishonour to his good name and hit or miss sense of humour.
To replace the picture that never survived prom, we now have a picture of my english teacher and I for posterity. Huzzah!
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Here’s a run-down of what we do for Safe Grad: the teachers take in $25 (or $40 for late people) per person to cover costs, and put out a call for volunteers and food donations from parents to help out with stuff. After graduation, everyone gets a name tag and gets checked onto a bus, then the list is checked to see if anyone who was signed up hasn’t shown up. If they aren’t there, their parents are called. We go on a half-hour bus ride out to a lobster supper place, from which there is no escape until it’s time to leave in the morning. Also, no students are allowed to drive themselves there - buses only. Anyhow, we get there and eat subs and pizza, as well as drink way too much pop and not enough water. Chips and assorted goodies are also available.
After about an hour, a casino is set up in the lower level with poker, blackjack, a couple kinds of roulette, and maybe some other stuff I didn’t notice? Anyway, you get ten $100 things to start off with, and at the end of the night, whoever has the most money won a TV. Whoever came in second got an iPod speaker station thing. If you run out of money, you can get $1000 more, but are no longer allowed to win anything. This means that you can get more money multiple times and funnel it towards the greater good, as long as one person in your group doesn’t go back again. I didn’t play anything, but other people did and I lent them money and scouted out the competition and generally just tried to stay busy.
Casino is closed for about an hour around 3 am for karaoke with randomly drawn prizes given out in between songs. We continue to gorge ourselves on junk food and drink pop, again no easy access to water for some strange reason. Casino opens again, and shortly before 4:30 am coffee is brought out. Then we collect all our stuff and hop on the bus to go to a local amusement park for an hour and a half.
There’s not much there - one small rollercoaster, bumper cars, bumper boats, a ferris wheel, some spinning stuff to make you sick, and go carts. There were only a few people working because it was 5 am, so if you wanted to go on a ride, you had to get people to line up so they would shut down attraction X to open attraction Y. Go karts were popular and I didn’t do it because the lineups were long and I lost people so I didn’t really want to compete with strangers because that’s less fun. I went on the rollercoaster once, bumper cars once, didn’t want to get soaking wet on the bumper boats, and aside from that just talked to people and debated what we felt like doing.
We got on the buses from there and went back to the school, where we had a continental breakfast. My grandfather and my mom were waiting for me, so I grabbed a croissant - it was awesome - and left because I knew I wasn’t hungry, just dehydrated.
Then I spent the rest of the day working at getting 100% on Rathcet & Clank: A Crack in Time. I really love those games, and I had completely missed out on the optional mega puzzles the first time through. They’re really neat and excellent, and I had a lot of fun doing that.
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So my brother’s graduation, he was meant to wear his own pants and jacket with the black shirt and tie I was supposed to wear to MY graduation - but since they were lost, he also wore my tuxedo shirt and bow tie. I got a black t-shirt with minimal stuff in the chest area and threw on my own jacket and called it a day.
My brother and I after exiting the intensely hot gym of his (and previously my) junior high. Traditionally, the graduation was held in the gym of the high school, using the same set up used for the high school graduation - however, since ours was done at the local sports arena place, that wasn’t an option.
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Anyway yeah that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m not dead!