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Hello again. It has been a long time, I know. The summer went by and came and almost went another school year. This year was my first year on varsity cheerleading. The team should be called drama. Girls getting kicked off, girls crying at every practice. Oh boy. But we all came together to turn out somewhat decent. Next year however, is going to be bad because we have 5 girls returning from last year. We had a 20 girl squad, 15 were seniors. After football season was my first time on Varsity basketball cheerleading. It is very different than junior high. We actually did stuff. It was probably the most fun season, but i had to miss half of it for my all star team. But now that's over, and we just had tryouts last week. I made it (huge surprise there, not). Not to be mean, but our school is definitely not known for cheerleaders. Nobody respects us. So, this year, they cut 5 girls to make the team better. I hope we are pretty good. Everyone will just have to wait and see.

Now, my all star team. We started off with every girl coming from a level 1 or 2 team, or not cheering at all, to bring a level 4.2 team. That means level 4 stunting and level 2 tumbling. There were about 7 girls at the beginning who could tumble, out of 26. It was a disaster at the beginning. We got 1st place at our first competition in December (went against ourselves.) hahah The next week we went against one other team, but they beat us. We had a lot of work to do. Our next competition wasn't until March, so we had a lot of time to work. And that is what we did. More girls got tumbling and the stunts got better. The one flyer quit because she couldn't stay up, and she wasn't ready for a level 4 team. And we put up this other little girl, let's call her snip snip. She was okay, but she worked kinda hard so we kept her in. When March rolled around, she wasn't doing good so we got a new girl from the older team and put her in. She flew in the girls spot while snip snip tumbled in the front. But the practice the day before we left for competition, a different flyer was doing her back handspring and she landed on her fingers funny. She hurt them, but she toughed it out for the competition. We got 6th place. But we really improved from the last competition and it was pretty much like a first competition for us, so we did pretty good. She went through the 2 days of competing to find out when she gets home that her hand was broken. She was out for a couple of weeks. A different girl from the older team was brought up. She flew in that girls place. Our coach had snip snip back in flying after that competition, along with her fill in. But when we went to the next competition, snip snip bobbled on the first day, so she took her out of the one leg. That was a crazy time. We were in 3rd after the first day, but ended up in 5th place because the girl with the best kick full didn't do it and the one leg bobbled a little. My flyer, princess, was doing really good with her one leg, but she could not twist for her life. So my coach had us do a suicide instead of the double down. Thank god she is the odd ball flyer and we were in the middle. She was the odd ball because every other flyer was 8, 9 or 10 and she was 15, so she was the center to make it look balanced. I am her back spotter for the opening one legged, and the basket tosses, but i fly in the middle of the pyramid. All of the girls from last year always scream OMG Joelle is flying whenever I do my suicide. Its great. We have international all levels this weekend, and then next weekend is our last competition for the season :( I am very upset, but its always fun to start over with a new team and new routine.

School. It stinks this year. My schedule is:
1. Band
2. Study Hall
3. Lab/ Gym/ Study Hall
4. Honors Chemistry
5. Honors Algebra II
6. French II
7. Humanities II
8. Humanities II

I hate band with everything. We got a new band director this year. She stinks. She was so mean and she just changed everything our national champion marching band did. But half way through the year she got married and left, giving us our old director back who was teaching chorus. Obviously, I love study hall. And then Chemistry is one of my favorite classes this year. I am doing really good in it. My average is a 98. My favorite subject is math, so I love Algebra, but my teacher is so slow, so this year it is boring. I spend half of my math minutes doing sudoku while my teacher rambles on. French is okay, but we aren't learning much because we have C lunch. That means we go to the class for 30 min, lunch, then back to class for another 30 min. But its great because it take the teacher 15 minutes to get us under control and start. The one half of the room is bad, and the other is good. Its so funny how segregated we are. And the last period of the day: Humanities II. It is worse than Humanities I. Not because it is harder, that's the thing. We don't do anything in the class. I don't understand their teaching. I like little facts, not reading a paragraph of a primary source and figuring out what it means and how it actually has information that would 7 pages of notes. The history part of the class is what we did that in. It wasn't terrrrrible, but i still missed Humanities I teaching a lot. But the literature part of the class was horrible. We all were failing all of the tests because she wasn't going over the book. If said you didn't need to know something for the test, it means study it because it will be on there. For more than half of the year we read poems and had to find a meaning out of them that had nothing to do with it. There was so much interpretation that we all got wrong. Oh, and the teacher was pregnant again (: What is with our literature teachers being pregnant? But at least this year the teacher left the first week of April. We have a full time sub now and she is so easy. She pretty much told us all of the answers during the test, and when we were going over it and you said you didn't like the question she would mark it right for you. The class just got a whole lot less stressful (: Holy Crap I wrote a lot. I hope I come back soon and let you know how I do!

With lots of love.
Joelle

Summer or not?

Okay, so it has been a week since I have been out of school and it feels like I should have school tomorrow. Has summer even started? So that Humanities test i was talking about, I got a 90% on the Aeneid test, a 95% on my Rome History test for Humanities, and a 100% on my Humanities final. I was pretty proud of myself, but i could have done better on the tests. My final Humanities grade is a 93%. Oh, and that Biology paper, didn't get to write it. I got an 87% (terrible) on my Bio final. I still got a 91% in that class which is actually really bad for me, but good for other people. In French I got a 99%. wtf. i always got a 100% in that class. Whatever. I got a 100% on my geometry final so that is good, my ending grade is a 100%. And then i got a 100% in gym and band so I did okay. This quarter was the worst of mine in all my classes except geometry. That is okay, I made it through my first year of high school, my first year of Humanities, and my first year of history day. So I feel kind of good about how the year ended.

So, the day after the last day of school was Saturday, and guess what I did. I went to cheerleading camp for my school team. WOAH!! It was amazing! There was drama every day, and my stunt group did amazing! (Can anyone tell I am being sarcastic?) hahaha well that was hot and cold and dry and rainy, and hailing. I tried out for "All-American" but didn't make it. I made All-Stars every year, but this year they only picked seniors so it sucked for me being a sophomore.

It wasn't all that of a disaster because it taught me that I won't get everything in life. Some people are so babied that they can never face disappointment. This one girl I know didn't make it one year so she refused to try out again because she doesn't want to fail. Her mom hands her everything, and its very annoying. The one day at camp she couldn't find something when it was sitting right on top of her bed. My coach said oh, your mom is not here to find it and baby you. It was sooooo funny because her mom is always there and is a control freak. My parents don't really care. Like they do, its not like they are sucky and don't discipline me, but they let me do things on my own. They allow me to feel success that I created all by myself. If they were always there to do things for me I don't know if I would have been able to do it by myself again. My parents allowed me to feel failure and not baby me and buy me things to make me feel better. They allowed me to pick myself up, brush myself off, and try again. I feel very good about how my parents raised me, because it allowed me to feel more mature quicker, but not a total grown up.

So I might talk about this again, because it is kind of late and I have a lot of feelings on how my parents raised me compared to others. But.....

I came home from camp and the next day I left for Great Wolf Lodge with my Aunt Sue, Uncle Robbie, Robbie, Emily, and my brother Adam. It was sooo fun there and the place was amazing. I wish I could go back a different week ;), because it was nerve racking. We stayed there Wednesday and Thursday. And after I got home, my mom took me for a hair cut. Talking about those things would be a blog post in their own. Then, I went to Elena Twist's Grandfather's wake. Rest In Peace Joseph Orrson.

Today, I stayed at home and did nothing. I cleaned my room and unpacked. It was a very relaxing day. Now I'm ready to walk 3 miles at my brothers senior project tomorrow morning. It will be fun and I am really in the mood to run/walk. Afterward I have my cousin's graduation party and then my family's friend's graduation party.

As you can see, I had almost no time to relax and enjoy summer. I cannot wait until the summer feelings set in and I have fun.

"Take your time in life and enjoy the little things. Time will fly by and you can never get it back so do not wish the time away."