First day of school.

First day of school, as some people say, you either make it or break it. I think I did manage to get through it. There were a couple of nerve-wrecking things especially because it’s the first time for me in an international school. Everybody there all had different hair and eye color!

In the morning we went to the chapel to have our assembly. Surprisingly, there were no anthems to sing, or flags to raise. We were introduced to our teachers and our theme for the year, which is “Walk the Talk”. I did not know quite a lot of people there so it was normal for me to sit alone in a row with nobody else sitting beside me. I suddenly missed my old school and kinda wished I was back in my old school because at least there was somebody that would want to sit beside me. But there were some friendly girls that saw me sitting alone and decided to sit beside me, from that moment I knew that I was in the right school, at the right time, and for the right cause.

My locker wasn’t ready yet. So, I had to keep all my heavy textbooks in my bag. My mother also helped me lighten my load. :)

My first class for the day was English. It was taught by a nice lady. There were only 12 students in this class. The rest of the students were either in ESL English or Honors English. Our teacher handed out the heavy textbook and a notebook and a file.

After that I went to Concert Band class, I felt a bit out of place there because I felt it was more for the senior students there because they already knew what instrument they play. The teacher never said anything for new students with no experience. I got signed up for percussions. Well, I love percussions, its way easier to me, so I’m quite pleased. But the pieces that they will be playing (some Repertoire something of Grade 3 or 4, I think) sounds hard, so I hope I will catch up with it.

The next class, I had to rush all the way back to Algebra class which was quite far away. There were more students in this class. We had homework on the first day. Oh well, I don’t mind anyway, it took me like 10 minutes to finish it. It was just basic addition and subtraction except with algebraic expressions.

After that, it was lunch time, my favorite period of the day, where I can kick back and relax and have a nice meal by myself or talking with someone else. The food was good. I met Aunty Sulo there. ^^ The meals were mashed potato, garlic bread, ham, peanut butter or ham sandwich. There was a salad bar if you wanted something more light. The drinks were only lemonade or water.

After a nice satisfying lunch, I went to the e-learning lab to take my online Psychology class. The whole room was filled with seniors because they were taking AP (Advanced Placement) Psychology class. I found out I was the only one that took the Psychology course. That’s fine because there is no group work required in this course and the classes are held online.

Moving on, I went to my World Geography class. There were 3 Davids in my class including myself kinda annoying sometimes. My Geography teacher had all of us to dot the places on a map on the board of where we lived or visited. The most dotted one was Malaysia of course, the U.S., Korea, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, France, England and Australia.

I went to Science class after that, I was just amazed by the white board which was a white board and a touch screen monitor at the same time… Amazing….

My Old Testament class was taught by Dave Addink, a very nice guy from my church. Wow, so much reading to do… We are supposed to like read 27 chapters in a week? A bit tiring but I think I’ll be fine because we are going to study that in class too. Besides, I love the Bible. :p

After that it was the P-Period fair, a.k.a. extra-curricular activities.

I signed up for:

Mon: One Heartbeat (Drums)

Tues: Writing Workshop

Wed: Music Theory

Thurs: Dalat Ambassadors ( Dalat Worship Team)

Fri: Music Theory

I had a great time at school today, I unloaded all my books in my locker that was finished by the time I left school. I played with some computer desktop games at the computer lab. I picked up my password for my Dalat email account. After that It was about 6 o’ clock already, so I went home with my mother.

Orientation to new school.

I went to school for newcomer’s orientation. I got showed around the school. It was fun. I talked with some of my teachers. I was very content with my courses that I have picked.

They are:

English 9

Concert Band

Algebra I

Physical Science

Personal Psychology Online

Health Online

World Geography

Old Testament Issues

Life of Christ

Not bad I would say. They’re very interesting courses.

I'm back from an exciting mission trip.

I just came back from an exhilarating mission trip from Macau. It was great fun. I had lots of fun there and had lots of experiences there too. There were 14 kids and 6 staff that took part in this mission trip.

We took a plane from Penang to KL and then KL to Macau.

We lived in a nice apartment there. Its amazing how 16 of us could fit in to that apartment that has only 2 toilets. :) The other 4 slept in another house.

We did an English camp there. It lasted for five days. We taught the children from the local schools English while trying to evangelize to them through making friends.

We did an outreach performance in a park near the place where we lived. We also got the opportunity to perform in some of the local and international churches there.

There were many amazing moments, like there was once we were walking across the street and one of the members were not paying attention to the street, she walked out and a car was driving so fast straight at her. I rushed out to hold her back but there was this invisible force that just pushed me back indicating that I should not jump out. An in a flash of a second, I saw the same invisible force which pushed me, pushed her back into the sidewalk. That was a very amazing experience to me.

A lot of people ask me what I learned and gained through this camp.Well, through this camp I:

• Have grown much closer to God.
• Learned how to listen to God’s still small voice.
• Witnessed spiritual warfare
• Understood how strong Satan and his angels are and how much they want to crush the seeds of men
• Learned how to call on God’s name and seek him as my refuge
• Learned that God does answer prayers
• Learned that God can heal
• Learned that God isn’t someone superior sitting up there that doesn’t want to have anything to do with us. In fact, he wants to be our loving father.
• Learned that prayers are very powerful and they do make a difference

One of the most important things I’ve learned is also spending quality time with fellow Christian brothers and sisters is very important and vital for our spiritual growth. It can change the way ion how you look at things and how you want to deal with it.

Through these 17 days that we were together, we each grew vey close to one another. We really knew we were going to miss each other after leaving this camp but fortunately for most of us, we were from the same school. We may not be seeing each other that often as we are from different grades but have decided to make an effort to meet up once a month.

I’m so glad that I had this extraordinary opportunity to do so many things and experience so much in just 17 days….

I will continue to cherish this awesome trip in my heart and used what I have learned in the camp to apply to my daily life.