MIPS: MARS editor not showing correct value for ASCII string?
You have encountered the concept of Big-Endian and Little-Endian byte order.

You expect:

0x38434032


But got:

0x32404338


Note that the bytes are simply in reverse order:

38 43 40 32
32 40 43 38


Wikipedia explains it succinctly:


  In computing, endianness is the ordering of individually addressable sub-units (words, bytes, or even bits) within a longer data word stored in external memory. The most typical cases are the ordering of bytes within a 16-, 32-, or 64-bit word, where endianness is often simply referred to as byte order. 1 The usual contrast is between most versus least significant byte first, called big-endian and little-endian respectively. 


MIPS is generally Big Endian, while the processors you may be used to (such as Intel) are Little Endian.

Many processors allow you to set whether they are big endian or little endian in some configuration bits.