Back From L.A.

Hello Everyone!
Oh, I missed you all so much...

But I have come to tell you about my wonderful trip to L.A. It really was great.
The weather was great, the academy experience was fun, and I got the chance to make new friends. It was a great experience for me to go there! The palm trees there? 
B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.
But it's great to be at home. It's rainy and chilly, but it's still home. 
Alright, so I will warn you beforehand that this will be quite a long blog post. No, wait! Don't leave! You try fitting a whole two weeks into one blog post. Not so easy. 

When we first got there, we stayed at my mom's close friend's house. We were there the whole two weeks, in fact. The first day we got there, shopping at outlets, relax. The prices at the outlets? Maybe 10 times cheaper than the prices here in Vancouver. Fell in love with the frozen yogurt shops there. Why don't we have shops like that in Vancouver? Gosh, it was really good. There are around 15 different toppings and different flavours of frozen yogurt, and it tastes so fresh and cold... dare I say... even better than ice cream?
Anyways, let's start with the academy.

So my mom's friend owns this academy; she started the whole thing. I got to take English lessons and Algebra 1. I have to admit, it wasn't the BEST TIME OF MY LIFE but it wasn't as bad as studying during the summer sounds. We went on fieldtrips every Wednesday and had golf lessons every Tuesday and Thursday Afternoons. It was actually pretty fun, now that I think about it...

American work is a lot harder than Canadian work. Everything that you do there is a little bit more advanced/challenging than in Canada. I guess I thought that the work there was better, just because you never got bored learning the same thing OVER and OVER again. Not that we do that in Canada...
Sorry I'm jumping from subject to subject, it's just that I need to get my ideas out right now while I have them.
The student's ages range from 5~13. Grade 1 to Grade 8. Basically they teach you what you will learn in the grade you are going into next, and so it's preparing you for the next grade's work. For over-achievers. -^-^- Really Helpful though, so I'm very glad that I went. I would've liked to stay longer and study, but... I was kind of homesick. 
We wrote lots of essays, and after reading a excerpt from a book or reading a whole book, we would do a vocabulary section and a reading comprehension section + we would write an essay. It's quite a bit of work, but it was all worth the experience. I had the best teachers, and my English teacher was very... um... detailed with her marking. She took the time to write down comments about my essays and stuff and marked everything... with A LOT of detail. I'm talking red pen markings ALL over the page. It is kind of ugly to look at, because it looks like lots of mistakes, but gradually, they started to disappear until I only had just a few on my page. At first I was kind of shocked to see this many mistakes on my page, but then I accepted it and tried my best to do better on the next essays. I was thankful for such a great teacher who took time out of her day to help me improve my writing. Oh, and my Algebra teacher, she was extraordinary. She knows the answer to every problem and can help anyone with anything. She is a math genius. She is so patient, and when a student complains that he (I'm not naming names but -heehee- there's this boy who did this) doesn't get it without even reading the question, she is completely willing to help him out. I had the best teachers there. 
The studies start at 9:30 in the morning, and we have math first, until 12:30. Math for three hours. I know people that are in my class (at school) who complained that 1 hour was too much. WELL TRY THREE HOURS! Same for English, and then we would end at 4:30. 
So that's pretty much everything about the Spider Smart Academy.
After going there, my mom took me to Disneyland for two days! Yep, the happiest place on earth. IT WAS SO FUN. SUPERB. FANTASTIC. WONDERFUL. AMAZING. fuperbasticfulmazing. Yes, it was that great. I mean, the name itself is self-explanatory; the happiest place on earth. Gotta' agree with that~~
So, that was pretty much the end of my trip. It was a really great experience, and next year, I would definitely like to stay the whole summer for the program!