Blog Redemption :)

Okay, you win. After all the posts and comments telling me to post, here it is. Peter, now it's your turn. Anyway, I am sorry I haven’t posted sooner. Or more often. It’s not entirely my fault…our computer wouldn’t let me post pictures, but I finally got it working. The rest of it is my fault. “April and Michelle” just isn’t quite the same without April… Well, now I’m out of excuses, so here it is: the one you've all been waiting for!

So, graduation isn’t exactly a recent event anymore, but it was a really big milestone in my life. In honor of that fact, I decided to kind of make this a recap of the last year of my experience as a high school student! (I’ll do a separate one for Graduation.) And sorry that the pictures aren't in order....for some weird reason, they didn't post in the order I had them in...but you'll just have to live with it, because I'm not going to start over:)

Seminary Graduation

Yep, I warned you they were out of order! haha I guess we'll just start here anyway. I'll post in more details on the actual high school graduation, but this picture is from seminary graduation. I don't remember how they do it in America, but we had a really nice program with our stake a week before graduation. I think I was the luckiest one---I even got a picture with our wonderful mission president and his wife!

Seminary Graduation Dance
After the program, there was a really fun dance. This is a picture of Leina, Latai, and me, after we'd been decked out! In the middle of the dance, all the graduates were invited to come stand in the middle of the tennis court so that people could come give us leis. If you think Halloween is cool, you should've seen how much candy I got from this!

Form 6 Picnic
The Class of 2008 sang three songs at graduation ("These Are The Days", "Graduation Day", and "O Home Beloved"). We practiced every day after school, and the Friday before graduation they announced that we'd have a picnic after practice. So, after a shortened school day and practice, we all headed to the very back of the rugby field, where we had a fun time just enjoying the food and playing together one more time...

Form 6 Ball
Or senior prom, or whatever you want to call it. They didn't want it to conflict with studying for exams, so they moved it to third term. Kinda crazy, but it was still really fun. My mom sewed the dress; even without the box of patterns she left in America! (isn't she amazing?!) I went with Manase Taumoepeau, and we had a ton of fun...or at least I did :)

Coronation of King George V
There were a lot of activities in town to celebrate the coronation, and marching was one of them. All the schools marched around town and past the palace. (That's our principal, Sione Tafuna, and the student body officers.) Most of the other activities took place at night so we didn’t get very good pictures, but they were a lot of fun. They even had a pretty cool show of fireworks down on the wharf. (For the record, fireworks are way cooler when they're also being reflected in the ocean.)

‘Atele Social
‘Atele is the all-boys government school on the island. As part of their graduation celebrations, they had a dance and invited about 30 girls from each of the other high schools. It was fun, but I have to admit that I like Liahona boys a lot more! :)

Marching for Parliament

Recognize the one on the left? Yep, that's April! Even though she's back in the states now, she was still here and got to march with us for the opening of parliament. The one in the middle is Erica McKee, President Eric Shumway's granddaughter who was here for a few months. And for those of you who are still confused...I'm the one on the right.

Speech Competition

(Leina, Me, Lute, and my teacher, 'Ilisapesi)

My friend Lute and I participated in a speech competition to represent Liahona. I won first place and received a $200 cash prize, as well as a cell phone, (cool, yeah?) and Lute placed fourth. (It was also really neat to find out later through Dad, who met one of the judges, that I didn’t win just because I’m a palangi. In fact, they decided at the beginning that they were NOT going to let me win, but I guess my charm won them over in the end :)

Sports

The track and field events are referred to generally as "sports". There are two days of sports at Liahona for inter-house competitions, and 3 days for inter-college competitions. It gets pretty hot and muggy being in the sun for 10 hours a day, but it's lots of fun to watch and cheer on the school. Unfortunately, Liahona broke its winning streak of 3 years....*sigh.* Oh well, we had to give the other schools a chance, right? And don't worry---we'll be back in full force next year!!

Back-to-School Dance

This picture was supposed to be at the beginning....and now it's at the end! It was the first dance of the year, welcoming everyone back to the world of studying, uniforms, and of course—school dances! Now it's behind me, but it's okay, because I'll stay green & white forever! Liahona 4 Life!!!