School was fun this week as I began 7th grade officially. There was some new kids that I have never met and a lot of my friends that I already know that decided to come back. My school is called an "alternative school" or some people call it a "charter school" and sometimes kids or their parents decide not to come back and go somehwhere else like the big school in town or the private school in the next town over. Mostly, people stay because the school is fun and we go on lots of trips in the big white van, but I hear some people don't like it or that we don't take enough tests to be a good school. I don't like tests so it is good for me, but Dad and Grandpa disagree about sending me to my school because Grandpa says school should be tougher and teach kids to "survive". Luckily, Mom and Dad don't agree with him and they think I am learning a lot there. The teachers always remind me to keep writing and they allow kids to talk about their lives and what troubles they have and that sometimes the best way to learn things is to leave the school and see it "with our own eyes". We also get to watch movies sometimes and I told my teacher about my Grandpa and he promised to show one of his movies in class sometime. I was really surprised and said that we could show it in history class because some of his movies are about real people and my teacher said it is more about "film history" and that is good enough. I told Grandpa about this and he laughed and said that he always knew he was "history" as long as its "living history". After that we talked about one of his movies in which he played a miner during the "gold rush" in San Francisco and that it was about a real person named Henry who liked to sing about finding gold and living in a city where everyone was after one thing. I said "gold?" and Grandpa said yes and he also said that someone should make the same kind of movie about Hollywood. I asked if there was a gold rush in Hollywood and he said slowly "there wasn't then but there is now". I asked if we could see it and he said "you see it all the time". I wasn't going to leave confused this time so I asked him what the heck he was talking about and he said while winking at me "movies my boy movies".