My story - Part 3 - high school

After my seventh grade year being homeschooled, I went back to the dorm I had been in for 6th grade.  My parents were no longer the dorm parents, but we had great dorm parents that year.  For ninth grade it was back to homeschooling, and after algebra, my mom said "Never again."   But it didn't matter too much as we were off to the States to see grandparents again.  We loved our "furlough" as we called them then.  It was always fun to see our grandparents and aunts and uncles that we hadn't seen for four years.

The cousins four years later.

We lived near my dad's parents again on a church property.  We loved getting to know the pastor.  I think he and his wife had the biggest impact on our family.    It's not easy travelling around to different churches.  I didn't like it much at all.  Usually when we arrived at a church, we hung around helping Mom and Dad set up.  It took us a long time to warm up to the other kids there.  Then about an hour or so before we were leaving, we started having a great time with them.  We always wished we would get over the shyness sooner, but never did.

We headed back and my parents prepared to send my sister and I to boarding school at Faith Academy in  Manila.  My sister was in 9th grade and I was 11th.  So by now, I'm on my third type of schooling in three years - homeschool, public school for 10th grade where the geometry teacher was wowed by whoever had taught me Algebra, and 11th boarding.  My mom took little credit for my Algebra teaching, she figured she was no good at it, so it must have been God who got me through all that.

I would have to say Faith Academy and my 6th and 8th grade years were my absolute favorite school years.  Not that I did well.  I did awful in Chemistry despite the fact that my lab partner was got straight A's and helped me study.  I almost failed that class.   But the family type atmosphere was great for me.  Everyone was away from home except those whose parents worked in Manila.  We all knew what it was like to be so far from our parents and consequently, it seemed to me, treated each other as siblings.

The end of that year I was so excited to come back for my senior year.  It would be so much fun.  Plus it would be my first time ever to do two school years in a row at the same school.  That meant a lot to me.  I had a best friend and she and I and two others were in a Bible study with one of the elementary teachers.  It was a great time of growth for me.

If I remember right, my dad came to get my sister and I.  On the way home he told us that we were heading to the U.S.  It seems we hadn't understood or he had waited to tell us that my mom was very sick. 

Because it wasn't furlough time yet, we stayed "on duty" as it were.  We moved to the Bible school in the town where I was born.  It was a different building.  My dad would be the teacher for the prayer program while we figured out what was up with Mom.  Nothing was making sense.  We didn't know what her sickness was.

My parents

My parents listened to advice from others who worked at the school and sent us to a Christian school in town.  I remember thinking it should be like Faith because we were all believers, right?  But found it was very different and felt that there was hypocrisy.  It was a growing time for me as I had to deal with the hurt of something that was monumental to me - going back to Faith for my final year. 

God provided me with a best friend.  She was new as well, and also was an MK.   We were both seniors and it was nice to have someone to be new with.  We did everything together and we lived in the same place.  Her parents were students, so they lived in the huge building that we lived in and many other students and teachers lived in.  It turned out to be a good year after all.

And so graduation and the end of what seemed to me to be the biggest part of my life.