To celebrate the success of the Mesa School’s Millennium Miles reading incentive program, hundreds of balloons with student letters attached were released from Mesa School at 3:15 p.m. Monday afternoon, one of which has brought home a geography and weather lesson.

Wednesday morning, the school received word that one of the balloons had been found by Doris Champagne in Biloxi, Miss., Tuesday at about 3:30 p.m. The balloon that fifth-grader Miranda Ayala released had been wind-swept all the way to the front door of Champagne’s office.

Champagne said that as a mother of four children she was "really touched" by the balloon. "I called (Mesa School) up and was really surprised to find out that you all had just released it," Champagne said.

Larry Schwartz, a Mesa School fifth-grade teacher, turned the discovery of Ayala’s balloon into a class lesson about geography and weather. On Wednesday, Schwartz’s class learned how far and how fast the balloon traveled to reach Mississippi in such a short amount of time. In this weather unit, the class discovered that Ayala’s balloon traveled 1,223 miles to Biloxi, and that the balloon would have had to hit a jet stream to make the journey so quickly.

A newsletter with each student’s name and the title of a book that the student read during the Millennium Miles reading program was attached to each balloon. Ayala said that her balloon carried the message that the Guinness Book of World Records was her favorite book that she read for the program.