Thanksgiving

I know this is late, although we should treat everyday as thanksgiving when it comes to giving thanks. There is so much to be grateful for, for example; life. God has given us all a special gift and that is life, I usually overlook how blessed my life is. I have a roof over my head, food, internet, smartphone, and all the small things that have been given to me. I should be thanking God everyday all day.

This year our family went around in a circle giving three things that we are grateful for. It was hard to think because we forget even the littlest things, or stuff like electricity or water. Two necessities, however we overlook it and think that we won't have to worry about, especially being in America.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
God Bless! 

Homecoming Week

This week has been pretty different and interesting!
Firstly, less homework, thank God!!!!

Secondly there were different spirit day themes, which were okay. I didn't dress up to the theme at all! But the themes were, mountain state, class color, commercial character day, old vs. new, then the Rampart colors, which are Gold and Blue. The most interesting day was the old vs. new because people went all out! Some dressed like grannies, some like kindergartner's, it was cool!
Then there were all sorts of activities going on, there was powder puff, which is when senior and junior girls play football against each other and the boys became cheerleader. I wished I would've gone to see the game but unfortunately couldn't. Another was the homecoming game!!! It was interesting, as it was my very first football game. Luckily I was able to hang around some friends and had fun with them, otherwise I don't think I would've enjoyed it as much!

Then just last night was the DANCE!!! It was fun! However, unlike the Hope Formal, they didn't have food and whatever food they did have, they ran out. But it was fun, I didn't know half the songs they played, but I got to hangout with friends and some people I don't really get to hangout with.
It was a good experience, and I'm really glad I was able to go for my senior year!

Overall pretty good week, 'relaxing' for an IB student, fun, De-stresser, and overall a good time!
I miss everyone back in Cambodia and I hope you guys are doing well!

Thank you guys to all who read this, it's a blessing sharing parts of my life and story with you!
God Bless!!!!!  

Crazy Week

This week is shorter, yet feels like the longest week yet.
We had Monday off because of Labor Day, however this week I've been staying up extremely late because of some catch up work. We didn't realize how much catch up work we had till now, well so far only in English. btw: extremely late like 3-4am and waking up at 6 for school (#notfunfunfun)

It hasn't been fun or healthy, I've been drinking around 3-4 'good sized' cups of coffee a day. Anyways kind of crazy. Hope to rest this weekend!

However, Serah and I presented on Cambodia and a bit of our lives at school, which was pretty cool. The comments so far have been very positive. They started last year, just inviting people to share their multicultural experiences to raise the awareness of the diversity within the school. This school is pretty diverse (not like Hope), but it wasn't I was expecting when first coming here.

Anyways, besides English and Extended Essay, Serah and I are pretty much 'ahead' in the classes, on the base of knowing and going through the curriculum, which is great!

Socially, I feel that I'm fitting in more, been saying hi to people in the halls, becoming more into the 'talkative' person that some people know me as.
Homecoming is just around the corner for Serah and I as well as other Senior events (there are sooo many!!!!). Hopefully we can relax during those times and take a 'break' from school.

Anyways! Thank you to all the readers, its been a blessing writing and having people read it, is an even bigger blessing!
God Bless!

First week of Senior Year

Wow! It's already been a week at Rampart High School and it's been pretty good! It's different from Hope International School in Cambodia, 1. It's like 4+ times the size of Hope (1700 in high school), 2. Lunches are actually pretty good here and reasonable. 3. different teaching style, 4. Strict rules on tardiness.

The school is more diverse than I expected it to be, I met a half black half white student, Koreans, Mexican, etc... And some of the students are military kids and have travelled to different places! I wouldn't say I've made 'friends' yet, but I have met people and know who they are. I still sit alone at lunch, which isn't bad because then I could finish early and do other stuff. I am getting along well with people. I have a couple of group projects coming up so we'll see how that fans out. 

My classes and teachers are really nice and understanding of my situation.

My classes are…

IB HL Biology

IB HL History of Americas

IB HL English Literature

IB SL Math Studies

IB SL Spanish Ab

IB SL Business Management

Guided study hall
ToK

There are have been some changes to the classes I take because of complications faced. 

I didn't realize how intense Hope was until I came here. In quite a bit of classes I'm 'ahead' in them as we have covered the topics already. Its going to be a good time to revise and brush up rough edges. There is also some work that I have to catch up on. It's a mix, but it's not going to be as intense as Hope was. 

Now the lunches! It's pretty good, there's a variety of choices, there are burgers, nachos, pizza, and subs mainly, which all come with a free vegetable bar! The prices are also reasonable.

This is the sub! Not as good as subway or fatboys but not too far! 

And the nachos! Yum!!! It's so unhealthy though! 

About the tardiness, unlike Hope where you can just get a late pass stating whatever and handing it to the teacher, the policy at Rampart is stricter. If your late you are marked absent and then the teacher informs the office that you have made it and are late then you have to go to this attendance office and do some stuff. I don't know how accurate that is, because I haven't been that late, however it is a lengthy process. Pretty crazy! 

Here are some pictures I took around the school. 

This the soccer (football) and American football field. 

The cafeteria! 

From the parking lot, this is the view of the school. 

Thank you to all of those who take the time to read it! I'll probably post once a week or so.
God Bless! 

Update in Colorado

Wow! Can’t believe I am actually here in Colorado and it’s only been about a few days. Things are a bit hectic, before we started school, we aren’t even sure what school we are going to. No internet, no cable, and not very much food. 

These past couple of days, I have some pretty serious jet lag. Yesterday (my time) I was up since 2am and manage to stay up most of the day with a nap. Today I was up at 3, and kept waking up. Luckily, my dad has been making some starbucks for us! 

About the schooling. There are two different schools, one is Air Academy and we would take AP and Honors. The other is Rampart and thats the IB school. There are other schools but those are the ones in our district. The first day we got here, we had signed up at Air Academy, in case the IB school didn’t work out. Then just yesterday my dad contacted the IB school and it turns out, it’s less complicated then I thought, but still complicated! The co-ordinator has to just get the details done. We haven’t transferred yet, so we are still enrolled at Air Academy. 

The issue with the IB school is that they don’t IB Business Management HL, so Serah and I have to do one of our SL courses at HL level. But now I have to choose another SL level, since we did the switching of group 3 and group 6. 

We will see how that goes. 

Anyways, we haven’t had any fast food here, we’ve been cooking our dinners, and basically skipping lunch. The air is so dry up here I’ve been forced to drink water and luckily there’s this water that I actually like, lol! 

There’s an update so far, and here are some pictures of what I’ve seen and just around! Thank you guys! 

 Saw some deer! I think these are mule deers so they are smaller. 

18

WOW! Still can't believe I'm 18, yet nothing has really happened. This year I was thinking and planning a small get together after church and not make my birthday a big deal. However, this summer we've been hit with sudden news with us moving back to the states, so my birthday became a bigger deal than expected.

Anyways, I'm 18. God has blessed me with 18 years of life. It's all gone by extremely quickly, I feel like I was just a child yesterday.

This is when I was just adopted into my family. I don't remember much from China or anything. I was a very chubby Chinese girl. 

This was probably when I was in second grade. See the difference? I remember we would love to go to the park and play around. This picture was taken when I was out with my two older sisters with my mom. We use to have our daughter and mother outings and bible studies. I don't remember the details, but I know I had fun! On the playgrounds my favorite parts would the be the swings. They still are when I go the parks! 

This was when we came back to America after a short while in Cambodia. This picture was taken when we were baptizing my little sister. I was probably 13(?). 

These pictures are me within the past couple of years. There isn't too much change in appearance, but I feel like I've changed in maturity. When you get older. you don't really recognize too much change in physical appearance but you start to notice a change inside of you. 

This is the change in me from the past 18 years that I can remember. 

More about this you can read at: http://childoftheking-maggie.blogspot.com/ 

July 4th

First off, Happy Birthday America! It's weird to think that America is only 239 years old, so young (for a country).

Today has been a fun day, one that I didn't expect. It was a slow morning, but we watched a movie, then cooked lunch, then the fun came. A nursing student who is staying with us invited one of her friends and we did nails for awhile. The friend studied cosmetology and she did our nails mainly. We felt very patriotic with our nails.

After nails, we played a fun game of scattergories, which I have yet to beat an adult. Scattergories is one of my favorite word games, and very educational. We played that until we ate dinner. For dinner my sister and I made roast beef. We were going to make corn, but turned out the corn was expired. But the roast beef was pretty good, from the feedback given.

Yes that is a big piece of meat! 

And don't forget, what's July 4th without sparklers??? We had so much fun, going to our park area and lighting our sparklers and trying to spell USA but failed! 

 HAPPY INDEPENDENCE AMERICA!!!!!

Reflection of School year 2014-2015

A lot has happened this year.

• Annual Formal 
• Annual School Musical
• Annual Camp Week
• Moving of Hope School
• New Director
• IB deadlines 
• SAT 

and the list can go on.

There has also been family things going on, social stuff, and other stuff. It's weird, my sisters are graduated! I'm extremely proud of them as they deserve it and have earned those diplomas.

School has been rough, with this being the first year of IBDP its an intense year, as teachers cram theory and teaching in, as next year we will focus more on application i think. Also there have been initiations of several different IA (basically a research report). School has definitely been challenging and the most challenging ever.

When your in IBDP you don't get much time for socializing, so my social interactions have been pretty limited, especially in the second semester. Also due to a period where my dad was gone for awhile. I did go to EPIC at the beginning of the year and that was AMAZING!

Camp week was amazing though and a great time to just get away from school work. This year 11th graders went to ADRA which is an organization near Preah Vihear, which is a team building organization. They have several rope courses and challenging activities which required encouragement and support by peers. It was an AMAZING TIME!

The moving of the school was a pretty major part of the year, as we had to prepare to say bye to the old campus and say hello to the new campus. For those who were at Hope for awhile were more affected by it then others. It was still a big move and we are still moving.

SAT oh goodness. I probably died, but SAT was a trial. Trying to stay ahead in school yet trying to study for the SATs was extremely hard. Not a fun experience, so hoping I won't have to go through that again.

Update

Hey guys! Sorry its been so long that I've posted, things have been very chaotic.
Firstly and usually, school! With the IBDP (International Baccalaureate Diploma Program), we have to do IA (Internal Assessments), basically coursework in EVERY IB subject, so thats 7 different IAs we have to do. The IAs are a research paper based off a well developed research question with relevant research.

• English is the easier one, because we have already started and it's throughout the two years and isn't so combat as the others. 
• History we have started a couple of weeks ago, but yet to have to picked a topic, and our teacher wants us to have it submitted by September, but we do get some class time to work on it, but it's mainly for the guidelines (what we are doing now) and other stuff, not much research. 
• Then math, it too was started a couple of weeks ago, and I think this is going to be the worse one because we are like 10 topics behind, which means we get less of the short 10 hours of class time we already had. So it's very frustrating, but what's worse is that, I really like math and numbers. 
• Business Management, seems like its going to be an easy research, because it's basically trying to solve a real-life situation. 
• Biology seems like its going to be relatively easy, but also difficult, because I hate writing up a science lab reports. I was never good at them. 
• We have started planning and will be presenting a practice presentation for TOK.

Anyways, thats a boring list of what's going on and what school has been up to. 

God Bless y'all!!!!! 

Camp 2015

Camp 2015 has been amazing! We went out to the province, Preah Vihear, and it was great! I usually would've been super creep out and I was at first, but after going through it I'm glad that it happened. We experienced what most Cambodians daily lives are, no hot water, squaty toilets, and no air conditioning. It helps open our eyes and it's like a knock in the head and making us realize we are so blessed. Especially us 'rich' foreigners. I felt so spoiled and I am. 

The different activities we did were; giant swing, gibbon swing, water slide, slippery snake, zip line, and several smaller group activities. 
So the giant swing, this was a swing that you are hooked on two ropes tied on trees. Your teammates are pulling you up on the trees, and you can adjust how high you want to go, then release yourself and swing. So fun and kind of a thriller! 

The gibbon swing is another type of swing. First you climb up a tree, probably the hardest part, then you are on a plank then jump and try to swing onto a pole hanging in mid air. We are on two harnesses though, so it was very safe. Very fun!!! But I didn't swing, I just jumped and they let me down.

The water slide, the best activity! This happened every evening after our tiring day! A great way to end the day. But it was so fun, and actually kind of dangerous if you think about it. I somehow did a weird 360 flip on the slide the first day, and kind of damaged my knee then. But still fun!!!!

Slippery snake! That was not very fun, I got stuck within the first 10mins going up. This was a log diagonally going up against a tree and it was very slippery. But you're attached on a harness so it's safe. But it was one of the first activities, so I had some trouble with trust in the equipment.  

Anyways, so camp! We did so many different activities. And surprisingly I did all of them, with some tears, and screams. 

Firsts, Lasts, and Changes

Sorry guys, I haven't posted in ages.
It's been so hectic here, assignments, tests, 'firsts and lasts' (explain later), and CAMP IS NEXT WEEK!!!!!
This year for Camp my grade (year) is going to Preah Vihear which is up north in Cambodia, near the Thailand border. There is this NGO called ADRA which has lodging and a challenging rope courses. I will update y'all when I get back (if I make it back in one piece).

Anyways, so I mentioned firsts and lasts. This means mainly for our school, we are going to be moving to another building and for those who have been there for ages will be effective. So it's the first time going to be in a new building, but the last time at our scattered campuses. In a weird way, I love the way our school is laid out, its clustered together. And there are those spots where just everyone gathers, either the small basketball court or the big basketball court. And it's just great to see everyone (generalizing) mingling together. And to me the buildings and the layout, might have been weird, but that's what Hope was, weird, but together and bonded.
So this new building will be a change, a big change.

Being a TCK (Third Culture Kid) and an MK (Missionary Kid) you get use to change. But overtime you learn that no matter how many different times you go through change, it never gets easier, because you are leaving apart of you livelihood.
This year are a lot of goodbyes to many different teachers. This is always the hardest part of the school year, because I get attached to the teachers and they have helped me grow and partially made me who I am today.

So many different changes, many different first, and many lasts.