Awards Night

Carmen was smart and wore flats to her school awards ceremony. She was invited up onto the stage for the Jim Finnman Science and Technology Award, Warner Family Catch-a-Dragon Award, Senior Girls Basketball Most Improved Award, Citizenship, Excellence in Acting, Top Band Student, top mark in Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science, Honours with Distinction, and World Affairs Award sponsored by the Flannagan Family.
I'm super proud of you Carmen and all your hard work!

High and Dry

Last week we got 6 months of rain in 2 days, and that meant disaster for Calgary and several surrounding communities. We are lucky enough to live on high ground and have food and water stored (we didn't turn out to to need the food and water, but it gave peace of mind and saved me from standing in line for hours at the grocery store as people around us did some panic shopping).

The last week of school was cancelled for all of my kids. Carmen and Chloe are disappointed to end the year this way, and not to wrap it up properly saying good bye to friends and teachers. All PAT's in our area were cancelled, and the rest of the diploma exams were made optional. Steven opted to do his Chem 30 diploma today, so his year finished off normally.

Next is the clean-up. Many opportunities over many months, I expect.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

So a little more about the school play:

First of all, my children should be involved in anything headed up by this woman. She is a superior human being and we need more teachers like her.

The play this year:

The true story is of a girl, Sadako Sasaki, who lived in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing by the United States. She developed leukemia from the radiation and spent her time in a nursing home creating origami (folded paper) cranes in hope of making a thousand of them. She was inspired to do so by the Japanese legend that one who created a thousand origami cranes would be cured by the gods. Her wish was simply to live. However, she managed to fold only 644 cranes before she became too weak to fold any more, and died on 25 October 1955 in the morning. Her friends and family helped finish her dream by folding the rest of the cranes, which were buried with Sadako. They also built a statue of Sadako holding a giant golden origami crane in Hiroshima Peace Park.

(Thank you Wikipedia)

Carmen played two roles, the first (in order of appearance) was as Sadako's school teacher.

And the second was as a the spirit of Sadako's grandmother's friend, who had passed away on the day of the bombing.

The play was lovely, sad, and inspiring, and I'm so glad Carmen got to be a part of it.

Okay, actually Carmen had three roles: the third was the official tyer of square knots.