School

As I've said before, I attend Anderson High School in Austin Texas. School goes Monday through Friday, from nine in the morning to four fifteen in the afternoon. I have to be there at seven thirty for band practice and normally leave at about four thirty except on Mondays, when I have band until seven that evening.

Our school has a wide variety of clubs most of which meet anywhere from weekly to monthly. Some of these clubs include the Darfur club (working to end the genocide in Darfur), the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance), Mu Alpha Theta (Math club), Spanish club, French club, Key club, and Anime club. The main reason we have so many clubs is because its relatively easy to start a club. All you really need is enough interested students and a teacher sponsor. In many ways, the variety of clubs reflects the personalities and beliefs of the students on campus.

For an American school, our academics are fairly rigorous. We are an IB school which naturally causes our classes to be a little harder. For all our core classes (Math, Science, English, and Social Studies) there are two levels of difficulty. For Freshmen and Sophomores there are regular and Pre-AP classes. Juniors and Seniors have regular and AP classes. Pre-AP and AP (or IB) classes are significantly more challenging then their regular counter parts. There are also many electives that can be taken as Pre-AP or AP classes.

This year I am taking all four of my core classes Pre-Ap. I normally have anywhere from one to five hours of homework on weekdays and about two to twelve hours on weekends. Band and homework fill up my schedule pretty fast. Currently, we normally have a football game every Thursday or Friday and a competition almost every Saturday. Games take up pretty much the entire night and competitions normally take at least five hours.

While I feel pretty busy most of the time, I enjoy Anderson. It's a lot of hard work, but it's still a lot of fun. While I sometimes wish was taking easier classes, I need them to be competitive and I get a lot out of them.

Illegal Immigration

We have illegal immigration in the United States. The majority of the illegal immigrants are from Mexico. This is because of two reasons. Firstly, there are only two countries that border the U.S, Canada and Mexico. Canada and the U.S. have higher standards of living then Mexico, so it’s easier to make a better life for oneself in the U.S. then in Mexico. Because Texas is on the U.S.-Mexico border, we have more illegal immigrants then many states.
There are many problems with illegal immigrants. Firstly, it is currently easier to get into this country illegally then legally; which sets a very bad precedent. Not only that, but also these immigrants often do not pay taxes and yet rely on government-funded resources such as education. Also many illegal immigrants have a fear of law-enforcement because they are, after all, breaking the law. Because of this, areas that have large numbers of illegal immigrants also tend to have higher crime rates since no one will call the cops. To a large extent our country debates over what to do about illegal immigrants rather then doing anything. However, we do have border patrol, which deports illegal immigrants when they’re found.

What I did this summer

This summer I went to camp in Missouri for the seventh year in a row. It was a lot of fun. I got to water ski twice, which was really cool. I also got to climb on lots of things. This included everything from the high ropes course to a couple of cliffs. I also got to go spelunking, which was very muddy and very entertaining. It was easily the most exciting two weeks of my summer. In comparison, the rest of my summer was rather dull.



I sat around the house, read, watched TV, played video games, hung out with my friends. All the normal summer things, I guess. My friend, Evie, and I attempted a huge project which ended disastrously. Otherwise I generally hid from anything that remotely resembled hard work and half dreaded, half looked forward to band camp.



Band camp starts a few weeks before the end of school, in July. It's a lot of hard work but it's needed if we don't want to embarrass ourselves once marching season starts. We went from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon. Four the first four hours we marched out on the school parking lot learning everything from basics to the show. Then we had an hour or so for lunch, which was really nice. Then, after lunch, we went inside and worked on our music.

So I went to band camp for three weeks or so and attempted to learn to march. Then school started and summer was over. In some ways it was really productive, in others it wasn't, but it was fun.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Angela Lupher. I'm a freshman at Anderson High School in Austin Texas. I live with my mom, dad, and my eleven year old brother, Michael. My mother is an aspiring writer so she spends all her spare time on her laptop. My dad is getting an engineering business off the ground so we don't see him much right now. My little brother just started middle school and I think he likes it. I have a overenthusiastic dog, Pooh, and a hamster.

I really love to read, especially fantasy and science fiction. My favorite book in the world is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. If you haven't read it, you really should. I also really like Harry Potter, anything by Jim Butcher, Bloody Jack, Ender's Game... Well, you get the idea.

I'm also a band geek :) I play baritone and I'm in marching band. It's a lot of fun and my section is easily the best (although Mellies are a close second). We have practice every morning and also in the afternoons on Mondays. We play at football games almost every Friday. It's really fun, even though it is a lot of hard work.

I have lived in Texas my entire life although I really love to travel. I go to Missouri every summer and I've been to California and Wyoming several times. I got to go to Europe a couple of years ago, which was a lot of fun. Basically, other places really interest me.