Over the weekend, my grandma called and invited us to spend the winter holidays with her in South Africa. This was great news to me — I get to spend weeks lying in the sun, playing on the beach, having real fish & chips, seeing mountains all around me, experiencing an interesting and totally different culture, and of course, seeing my family.

On the other hand, it also means that I will miss some school. The trip to South Africa is expensive and it takes a long time to get there. So, to make it worthwhile, you have to go for at least three weeks.

Last year I missed the winter finals. Most of the teachers gave me work to do while I was gone (most of which I did during the 21-hour plane ride back), but I still had finals to make up. This wasn’t fun at all.

My point?

I think winter break should be a little longer — just a week or so. The break now is too short to go somewhere and really appreciate it. Also, summer break is really long, and it can even get a little boring. If we took some time out of summer break and put it into the winter break, we’d still have the same amount of time for our breaks, but it would be more evenly distributed.

It just feels like once we get started in August, aside from the occasional three-day weekend, we don’t really have time to rest until May.

We know we’re amazing, but we can’t carry around a 50-pound backpack all year. We need a break.