Graduation

As of June 9th, 2012-I am officially graduated from (American) High School. It was a very nice ceremony that was hosted at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.
My high school is very unique since it allows us to choose who we march in with. (I believe most high schools have the students walk in alphabetically. )

 So I got to walk in with my friend Sam :)

It was a nice ceremony with wonderful speeches from our Principal, Valedictorian, and Salutatorian. Our Salutatorian even mentioned me-via saying people in this class were going as far as Ghana and when talking about what we were going on to, hopefully, become (diplomat). :) Yay! Thank you Grace <3 The principal also sort of mentioned me-his speech consisted mostly of quotes from student's college essays. It was fun to hear since they were all really good and I could pick out some of the quotes as certain people's. :) I have to say though when he said, "and as one student who wrote of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict stated..." my heart about stopped. Yup, that was mine and of course everyone knew that cause who else would talk about that except for me.

Anyway, I got my diploma :)

We had 3 musical performances throughout the ceremony, the best being this one by my dear friend Kyrie:

There was also an awesome rendition of What A Wonderful World performed by the talented Powell Twins complete with ukulele and accordion. We also had our choir, myself included, sing Into the West (the song from the Lord of the Rings) as well as our National Anthem at the beginning of the ceremony.

Then we sang our class song, Good Life by OneRepublic and then marched out wearing our shades:)

All in all it was a great way to end my time in the Gray-New Gloucester School System.

 This is a picture of my best friend, Sammie D. and our Cross Country Coaches.

"ZHOP* 4 Lyfe"

Cross-Country was the best part of my high school existence. This picture showcases most of my favorite distance buddies with our coaches. :)

*ZHOP=Zukowski House of Pain an accurate representation of our coach, Zuke's, workouts.

My Family <3

P.S. I am sorry for these long posts, I just thought it would be nice to showcase some of my American life in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, some people might be interested-possibly in Ghana (fingers crossed) about my American life? And just as an f.y.i. I'm in love with pictures so my blog will most likely be filled with them, if you haven't already noticed. :)

Oh What Happens on Runs in Maine...

So as you may know I am in love with running and I run all the time. That being said, the strangest/awesomest thing happened. So, I was running down my road and there was a deer off in a field. Me being Lydia, stopped to look at it and I noticed that there was a really tiny baby deer! I swear it was only a day or two days old. I decided I wanted to try to get closer to them, thinking they would of course run off, but only the momma deer did and the fawn just lied down and allowed me to approach it! Not only was I able to get wicked close to the baby dear, I was able to PET IT!!! I was so close I could stroke it's head and back! It was so cute when it finally bounded away to it's mommy :) I could not believe that it let me pet it! I wish I had a picture to show you but I was on a run so I didn't have anything with picture-taking capability.


But here it 2 pictures offline of what it kinda looked like. Super cute right? :)

The End of American High School

My American High School Experience ended yesterday. After 13 years in the MSAD 15 school district, I am done. Yesterday I had my last classes, counted down the seconds in the school office with my class, and then left the school for the beach. I still have a week of marching practice before graduation but that's besides the point.
I have to say, I am extremely grateful to everyone I have meet and got to know throughout the years. I have learned so much and evolved into who I am today thanks to all the wonderful people I have met and I the experiences I have had. Surely, life is life and it definitely had it's ups and downs but even from the downs I have learned such valuable lessons that I wouldn't change a thing. I have been so blessed so far in my life and cannot believe that this chapter of my life is over. It is so weird that I will be going to a place where I do not know a soul, besides the other YES Abroad people. I lived my whole life in the small town I was born in-which I love since I have been able to grow up with the same people. I have so many memories from when I was little and throughout the school years with pretty much everyone in my class. I have friends I remember playing dress up with as a child who I still am friends with now. There are so many people whose lives I have crossed and had a brief flicker of friendship or a long glowing fire of friendship. Senior year was the best year I have had yet, I expanded my group of friends, inherited my awesome nickname, PAPA Larson, and have had the best luck ever. I do not know how I have become this lucky, I got into my dream college, Colby College, and they gave me such a great financial package that it is cheaper than the state school I applied to, I received the YES Abroad scholarship, and I just found out the other day that I received the Mitchell Scholarship for college-which I am not sure if I can keep or not due to taking a gap year but I really hope I can. Not only does this scholarship provide me with money for college, I most likely will be able to meet George Mitchell, the creator of this scholarship, who is my hero. He is so amazing, he grew up in Maine like me and went on to change the world. He was a senator, a diplomat who helped create the Northern Ireland peace treaty, and most recently the special envoy for the Obama administration in the Middle East.

Here's some picture from my last day with some of my friends:

This shows off my American High school hallway :p The guy in the striped shirt is my XC & track coach who is the best. We are walking back to his room after we covered it is Go Zone posters :)

  Part of Zuke's board which we put up the XC shirt Sam, Randall, Mitchell, & I made and we also put up some pictures of us on his board.

My best friend & running buddy Sammie D. in our AP Bio class

 Some of my closest friends :)

 

My best friend, Sammie D :)

 

 My best friend Sam who has been my friend since kindergarten :) 

 

This is a picture of us after school at OOB. :) 

 We got photobombed and we didn't even know it.

 The people in the front are my French class-we have been in the same class together for the past four years.