Rough and Tough Powder Puff

Hey everyone! Yesterday, the Juniors and Seniors from my school suited up and competed in the annual Powder Puff game! What's Powder Puff you may ask? It's two all girl American football teams, played with flags instead of tackling. This game is highly anticipated each year, and we practice for months! Girls from 11th grade and 12th grade battle to win and students and parents come out to support their favorite grade.
There is always a lot of competition between the grade, and the coaches for each team and actual football players from the same grade as the girls. That way, each person can work and play with their friends.
It was a very tough game, and unfortunately the Seniors won and the Juniors lost. Since I am a Junior I wanted to win, but I had so much fun that it didn't matter if I won or lost. It was just a great way to get involved with other students from my grade and the rest of the school!

What school activities do you participate in? Let me know in the comments!

xoxo

Admirable Administrators: Principal Boulton

Hey everyone! This is the first in my series of interviews with administrators of my high school. I hope you find these interesting! Some of the topics we covered in the interview are general life in a Californian high school, life for an international student on campus, and international programs like Model UN and Immersion. Immersion is a program for students who are fluent in a language other than English, taking some of their core classes in that language along with other classes to improve their speaking and writing abilities in English and their native language. Check out my interview with the Principal of my school, Mr. Boulton, below!

Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas for questions for my next interview in the comments below!

xoxo

International Week

Hey everyone! This past week at my school has been International Week! All week, we have events at snack and lunch that have to do with each culture and country from all over the world. At snack, we have customs and culture events like a flag ceremony, fashion show, and trivia game featuring major global countries big and small. Then at lunch, we have a food fair where students bring native food for sale. Students buy tickets for 25 cents and samples of food are sold for a couple of tickets. This way, each student can try a little bit of food from every country. We have countries from the North, South, East, and West the first four days of the week, than all the countries on Friday. There are all kinds of food, even drinks and desserts!
Since MUN is the biggest international club on campus, we are in charge of putting all of International Week together. We organize the acts to preform, assign people countries to represent, and administer the selling and collecting of tickets. Its a hard job, but its worth it to put on such a spectacular event!

Here is a video covering international week at our school!

What international events occur at your school? Let me know in the comments!

xoxo

St. Paddy's Day

Hey Everyone! Each year, people around the world celebrate St. Patrick's Day on March 17th. The day celebrates Saint Patrick of Ireland and Irish culture. It started as a feast day to celebrate the Saint but has evolved into celebrating Irish culture and customs world wide. St. Patrick's Day is a public holiday in Ireland, but in other places like the United States is celebrated through parties and wearing green. Why must everyone wear green on St. Patrick's Day? Well originally the color associated with Saint Patrick was blue. Yet as his recognition grew, he became linked with the shamrock, a green four leaf clover. Now, people wear green to honor him and his shamrock.

Currently in the United States, this event is not a public holiday anywhere. However, it is still greatly celebrated through parades, parties, and religious observances. It is used to celebrate Irish American culture, though everyone celebrates even if they are not Irish. St. Patrick's Day has been celebrated in the United States since the late eighteenth century, even before the American Revolution.

When St. Patrick's Day falls on a school day, everyone comes to school wearing green! However, this year it was on a Saturday. This didn't stop anyone from wearing green though! It's always a tradition no matter what day it falls on.

How do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day? Let me know in the comments!

xoxo

March Madness at Laguna Hills

Hey everyone! This past week, one of the sports teams at my school has been doing extremely well. They have made it all the way to the semi-finals for the state championship! And what sport might this be? Well women's basketball no less! Girl's basketball is a big sport on campus here, just as big as the boys team, since they are extremely good and always make it far into the season each year. This year they already became southern California's CIF champions, or California Interscholastic Federation. The teams from different divisions who win CIF titles go on to compete for the state title. Our school has already won two of its state games, which means we will be playing this saturday to see if we will go on to the finals in the capital of California, Sacramento!
Our school takes these big games very seriously, since it is very hard to advance further and further. Our whole school tries to attend each basketball game, and our school uses buses to take students to games far away. Since these are all the best teams in California, the game is played really well, and it almost seems like you're at a professional game. These girls are all amazing players. Maybe they will be playing professional someday.

What teams at your school advance far in championships? Let me know in the comments!

xoxo

College Cruisin'

Hey everyone! Junior year in the United States is a great time to start touring colleges. It is important to visit the colleges you want to apply to so you see if you like the campus and can imagine yourself living there for four years. This is a main part, and one of the first parts, of the college application experience. Luckily for me, I got to visit one of the colleges I am planning on applying to, University of California in Berkeley, for an MUN conference I attended on campus over the weekend. It was such a great experience! Not only did I get to debate in a fun and new location, but I got to experience the campus from a student's perspective as well. We stayed on the campus and walked to our MUN location each day. We also got to walk around the city surrounding the school and eat food in all the students' favorite spots! It made it feel like we were already in college.
Spending time at a college campus is a great way to see if you fit at the school! You sometimes need to travel far, but if you are considering attending the school its a trip well spent. And who knows, maybe you will be living there one day!





What colleges are you planning on visiting? Let me know in the comments!

xoxo

Joyful Jumping

Hey everyone! This weekend I attended my first track meet of the year! It was an invitational relay, a very unique type of track meet. Here, each school sent teams of three or four, depending on the event, to the meet to compete in relay style events. This means that for running events each person runs a certain distance and then hands a baton to the next runner who continues until everyone in the race has run. Then the fastest team wins! In jumps and other field events, each person from the team gets three tries to jump there farthest. Then the three best scores from each time are added up for a final score and the biggest final score wins!
It's very fun to be part of a highly selective team to compete in fun events like this one. There were many factors that set this meet apart from normal ones. First of all, this meet was between a large amount of different schools while normal meets are between two. Also, this meet was all relays, while normal meets have one or two relay running events and no relay jumping events. This makes the relay meets fun and different! We have our first normal meet against another school on Thursday! I have been increasing my long jump since the beginning of the year and can jump around 15 feet (4.6 meters). I hope to hit 16 feet (4.9 meters) by the end of the track season!

What do you like to compete in? Let me know in the comments!

xoxo

Making a Difference One Day at a Time

Hey everyone! This Thursday my school hosted a very important conference called I Can Make a Difference or ICMD for short. It takes place at a recreational facility down the street from my school, and only a limited amount of students from each grade are specifically selected to go due to their hard work and leadership skills. And I was lucky enough to get chosen this year! We got exempted from classes for the day and spent the whole day attending seminars on public speaking and leadership skills. At the end of the day, we divided into different groups and tried to find ways to make the school a better place.
At the end of the day, each groups presented their ideas to improve the school in front of the principal. Every idea was great including more opportunities for community service, intramural sports, or integrating a dance team into the school. The school principal was open to all the ideas if the students were willing to work hard to establish and sustain them. I feel so privileged to be at a school that goes to the students to look for improvements.

What would you do to make your school better? Let me know in the comments!


xoxo