Picture & Fee Day

August 30, 2013 at 5:02 pm • Posted in Education by Lisa

Today is “Picture & Fee” day for sophomores at Mercer Island High School!

On Mercer Island, picture day is a big deal at the middle school and high school. It is a day that marks the beginning of the school year. Kids go to school the week before classes start to get their pictures taken for IDs, pay fees, etc. Everyone also catches up with friends on the events of the summer, talks about teachers for next year and compares schedules.

As Wescott, Yve and Otto’s friends left for picture day it hit them that their year is about to be really different. While their friends are following the traditions of Mercer Island public schools, they are experiencing a whole new version of “Picture & Fee” day…spending 2 hours at Rite-Aid getting passport photos taken for VISAs!

Jones posing for the 3rd time for his VISA photo. You have to make sure there are no shadows or it might not be accepted for a VISA!

There are some things that are really bittersweet about leaving on this trip! Missing a year of school sounds cool in the beginning but realizing you will miss out on the experiences of that year with friends is hard. Luckily, the kids all have really good friends here on Mercer Island so plugging back into the social scene will be relatively simple.

We contemplated selling our house which is what a ton of people do when they leave for a year to travel the world but we decided that re-entry back into society would be much more complicated having to buy/rent a new house, unpack into a new house and plug back into school. We will have to settle for just selling two cars!