Brand New Day

PROM! Prom is this weekend and I am really excited. My shoes arrived today which I will be honest I didn't think was going to happen so it was quite the miracle. A lot of the girls at my school ordered their dresses and shoes online and there is something strange going on with the delivery thing and so even though we all ordered with express delivery (20euros/200rmb extra!) most of the items seem like they will not arrive in time. Luckily though mine and my friends shoes arrived today and I am really excited that they fit and look lovely! (they are REALLY high though (I can walk on them just fine but they are higher than any shoes I've ever had before))

Also I ordered a book called "Light" by Michael Grant that arrived today. It's the last book in a series called GONE. I really love the series so I'm really excited (been using that word a lot in this post (sorry about that)) to read it. 

Photo from Goodreads.

More on the school side of things, I had a biology test today that I think went well today. I had a bit of a panic yesterday with stress and worrying about everything so it's a good confidence booster for exams that that test went well. For the next 4 classes in math we have a test every class... it's practice but I don't like it... we had our first one today, I think it went alright but I didn't understand the last 2 questions (out of 5 so that's a bit of a problem). We'll see how it goes. For now I'm just excited about this weekend even though I still have to study a lot as well. 

On the 20th I'm going to help paint the guard house, our legacy gift is to improve the guard dormitories for my schools guard and part of that is painting. Although I'm not a good painter this is only coloring blocks of one color so I should be able to handle that! 

It's Time

Welcome back to school! Not. First block this morning I had Chinese class and the teacher walks in and says we have a reading test. Not so bad necessarily but this test was awful. I had no idea what any of it meant so I had to guess more than half of it. This makes me a bit more nervous about my final Chinese exams but I hope that it'll be better and I will have had more practice with these exams. But still it was not the best way to start the first block on the first day back at school after a holiday.

This weekend I finished reading "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls. It was such a good book and I would recommend it to everyone. This morning I started reading "Where'd you go, Bernadette" by Maria Semple. I only read a few pages so I don't know what I think of it yet but I hope that it'll be good!

Photos from www.goodreads.com

Tomorrow I have a geography test and on Thursday I have a biology test. So I have a "fun" week ahead... Oh well only 11.5 (half of this day is already over) more days of "real school".

Do You Wanna Dance

Two weeks ago my dad and I went to the 2013 Bencham Gala. This is the Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands Gala committee and its held once a year. My mom recently had neck surgery and was not recovered enough to go with my dad so I went with him. I wore my prom dress (prom is next week) and because the theme was purple my accessories were purple! I was probably the youngest person there and got some confused looks because people expected to see my mom but when I introduced myself as my dad's daughter it made a lot more sense for the confused people! It was quite fun to go there and hang out with my dad, for me it was also a sort of "practice prom" because I was able to see if I liked my dress and shoes (the shoes didn't work very well so I will be wearing different ones at prom). Overall it was a really fun night and we were the highest bid on the items we wanted in the silent auction! Here are some photos!

With my dad! 

Relax My Beloved

I haven't posted a new blog in a long time because it has been so busy with school work. Final exams start in one month so I have been really busy with preparing for those. Although I don't need a certain amount of points for my college I still want to do the best I can so it is quite stressful. I am trying to relax more because like I said I don't need a certain number of points and doing my best is really all I can do.

We had spring break this past week but for the majority of the week I was studying. Of course I also hung out with some friends and that was really nice! I also started watching a TV show called "Face Off". It is kind of like Project Runway but different. The participants are special effects make up artists and they get challenges and have eliminations etc. It is so cool to see what they can do!

Original can be found here.

We only have 12 "real" days of school left. I'm really excited to go to college but it's scary that high school is almost over! Before we all leave we have some fun things going on as a class, we are going to the great wall for a group photo, we have a senior breakfast, we will have a senior assembly and after exams we are going on a "China studies" (camp) trip to Guilin. It'll be really fun to hang out with friends and as a class without people applying to college and studying. Graduation is happening at the Confucius Temple and I've seen photos from previous years and it looks so wonderful! High school is almost over!
I'll try to post more frequently but with exams coming up I can't promise anything :( After exams I will for sure be able to most more and I'm excited to be able to post things (both positive and negative) about the process of going to college and post high school life!

Give The Love Around

No Weekend Exams!

Some of my friends had their first exams today and I am so glad that I didn't! First of all because HELLO it's the weekend, why would anyone want exams now? And second because I am still not feeling great but now I have two days to recover before my first exams on Monday. I just made a little schedule for today that I will hopefully stick with and it also includes giving myself a manicure and going to the Kids+ store that is really close to my house to buy some goodies to make myself a flower crown and one for my friends whose birthday was in October and I still haven't given a birthday present... I gave everyone else birthday gifts except her because I couldn't figure out what to give her. She is what I call my designer friend, she designs and makes clothes, always dresses super nicely and is going to study in Paris after graduation... So yeah I had a little trouble figuring out what to give her. Also she got me the cutest and loveliest present ever!

Cutest box ever..

 So luckily the present was from her and two other friends but I have a feeling she put it together. So I will need to figure something else out as well besides the flower crown. We'll see what I find when I go shopping later. Okay I am now going to study and try not to procrastinate by reading other blogs and rookiemag.com ....

update: I started feeling sicker throughout the day so after I studied I just went back to bed. So much for my plans...

Cooking alarm, english pepermints, english tea, special, tea and a sewing emergency kit

Just don't tell me how it ends.

Ruby Sparks

Being sick is not great. In fact, although I know worse things can happen, it sucks. I haven't been feeling great for a few days and yesterday I knew I was going to get to sick. And I did. After selling most of the sweatpants during lunch, I went home and slept for a few hours. When I woke up I watched Ruby Sparks and I loved the movie. 

Original can be found here.

It was a wonderful story and I (like I said before) loved it. It is a romantic comedy about a writer who one day finds one of his imagined characters cooking breakfast for him in his kitchen. And she is real. I like the idea behind this movie, it is clever and witty and a change from the same story line that most romantic comedy movies follow. 

Mock exams start on Monday so being sick now is not the best timing. So time for bed in the hopes of feeling better in the morning. Good night.

On Top of the World

Sweatpants, money and exams.

I am currently a grade 12 student of the Western Academy of Beijing. Every year the graduating class of my school has a legacy gift. The class of 2013 will be helping our schools guard house who need a lot of rebuilding and new things. To be able to accomplish this we needed to raise money and I have been in charge of a group who have organized a sale of customized sweatpants. After quite a long time of organizing the 174 sweatpants were delivered today! There was one tiny detail, the man that made the sweatpants for us didn't label any of them how we asked him to and so we first had to figure out, through the names on the pants (quite often nicknames...), who was the buyer of each pair and sort them into homerooms. With the help of the lovely people in the picture below we were able to do this in less than an hour and we were able to sell about 50 pants today so we will be selling another 120 tomorrow. We will earn a lot of money from this for our legacy gift so that makes me really happy and excited and makes all the energy that was put into this completely worth it!

Next week we have mock exams which is a part of the IB diploma (a high school programme).We have to study everything we learnt in the past year and a half and so far the studying has been going okay but could be better... I finally started reading rookiemag.com at the beginning of this week and have not really been able to do much else! I can't believe I didn't start reading it sooner but I am working hard to catch up and rookie yearbook one has been ordered from amazon! 

I was listening to the song On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons on the bus ride home this afternoon and for the first time I realized how relevant it is to being in senior year. At least for me the lyrics were wonderful and made me a lot happier after a busy day at school. It talks about how we have been looking forward to something for so long and now it is here/so close. Everyone can interpret that in their own way but for me, today, that was a wonderful song to listen to.