Sonntag, 28. Juli 2013

Back home...

Well, I've been home for about a month now. It's still home but I forgot some disadvantages and advantages of that place. The best thing about being home are the busses and 'endless' possibilities. There is a down-town to walk around, shop and drink a coffee or eat ice cream. There are festivals to have fun and hang out with friends and loads of strangers. There are bakeries who make awesome bread and pastries and dang it's sooo green over here:D do you know what was pretty facinating? The windows in school! Finally there were windows n class rooms and not only one but five or so:D My American school had rooms without any windows or if you were lucky two tiny ones. A disadvantage is that the stores don't have everything and you often have to wait for products to arrive. I also miss my hostfamily and friends from Texas! I also miss the good weather! I was shocked about the rain when I came home. Rain is not that bad, though;) Moreover I had two go to school for the last two weeks. It was not necessarily bad but boring and unnecessary! But I experienced that "Freistunden" are very nice and some days I didn't even have to go to school because my classes were canceled. The other days we gardened the schoolyard, went to ice cream places, ate breakfast, tied bracelets or sunbathed on the schoolyard. Pretty fun except waking up earlyin the morning:D
My plans for the future are to volunteer for YFU and before I will go camping with them and attend the last meeting to finish my exchange. On Friday my host family visited my fmily and I in Germany and we had loads of fun:) I also went back with them to the vacation resort for a day and we had some more fun and nice conversation. THey miss me and I miss them but I guess we all have to deal with it;) It's part of the plan. I think this might be the last post in this blog and hope you liked to read about my experiences. I just want to tell you that the decision to go abroad for a year was the best in my life. See you later!

Sonntag, 16. Juni 2013

More FUN!

                         Maroon 5 Concert in Dallas!!!<3

                                                       




                                              Proms

                                            My hair for Mormon prom(self-made)


                                               Our Prom dresses for regular prom!<3

                                                 


                          My Sweet Sixteen birthday stuff




                             Young Women Camp 2013


My first self-made tie dyed shirt for Camp







                               5 mile Walk from Church





                                  Stockyards Fort Worth


some picture cause it's faster than words...

                           Orchestra Trip Houston 2013

                                                  Space Center                                         

                                            Butterfly house in the natural museum

                                                    Gorgeous Kemah Boardwalk

                                                   Palm trees are still a cool thing!

                                                    Sunset at the Boatwalk

                                                         Feeding stingrays:)  

                                                  Smiling stingray

Last weeks in school

So school is already out since last monday but I am going to say some words about my last days in high school anyways. It did not feel real that I would leave though! Well so first of all there were loads of banquets and I went to four. The swim banquet, the bowling banquet, the honor banquet and the orchestra banquet. The best one was the orchestra banquet. It was a huge party and everyone was having a good time. Everyone got a silly award and afterward the orchestra teacher gave out serious awards. I got the silly award "most innocent" and the other exchange student in orchestra who is from Denmark and I got a medal for being an exchange student from our teacher:) That was really nice of her! At the honor banquet were just soooo any people and it was for people with academical achievements. I received an award for straight A's. A is a grade in the US. It is 1-2 when one would translate it into the German system, but pretty easy to get an A in every class as long as one tries and studies a little bit. The bowling banquet was alot smaller than the other ones because it is a club and not accepted as a UIL sport. My host sister is in it so we went with the whole family and it was catered by texas Road House so there is no way I would miss that! Texas Road House is my favorite restaurant over here!!! Steak heaven*__* So and the swim banquet was at a golf club and that was nice as well. We just did not get silly awards like at the orchestra banquet, so I and many other people did not get an award. So yeah and by the way banquets are kind of like "Abschlussfeiern" or "End of the School year Parties"... I also got my "Zeugnis" that is really boring and ugly last week. There are just my grades on it and nothing else. I finished with all A's and scored a 98(without extra points) on my US-history final exam what was the best I've ever scored in US history, even though I did not study outside of school very much. Then we had our last orchestra concert may 28th and many seniors cried. It was also the last concert for my orchestra teacher because she is going to retire. Orchetsra was a good class to have and the Orchestra teacher really qualified! We won sweepstakes(the best one can get) all years she taught the orchetsra! And this year we also won another competition in houston and received an award for our band, choir and orchestra together that only two schools in the whole US receive. Plus we were nominated ot of three schools for the best orchetsra in a school musical. Pretty cool how many things you can win over here;) eh and then we ha to do an ensemle with four people together for a "competition" and we got the best we could have gotte: 1 and an award for the best ensemble that played in front of that judge. We were really surprised! But happy and shocked at the same time when our orchstra teachr gave us that special award for the best group the judge had seen the whole day long. So orchestra was really incredibly successful this year! It was awesome to be part of this and thank you so much Dr. G!

I am alive!

Yeah so I haven't posted anythink in a very looooooong time but it really did not feel very long to me. I am going to leave Texas in 10 days and I don't know if I should be sad or happy. It is really bittersweet and scary. I mean in one way it will be really exciting to see my friends again but in another way it will be strange and I have changed soo much that I don't even know what I was like before I came here. I don't even know how to speak German anymore and I don't know what my home is like anymore. Texas is so familiar to me right now and Germany a foreign country. My Mom even answered to my mother's day e-mail "you sound so american". I think that's kind of funny and they told us the same thig at our re-entry orientation. People might tell us that we are so american but it will mostly go away after a while. They also told us that we will adjust again and hopefully keep the good stuff that we learned and get rid of the bad stuff. It will be exciting to be back again because I think I will learn even more about myself that I did not notice before and learn more about Germany that was normal just one year ago. I will miss some things over here but I don't know what exactly I will miss and I think I will that too figure out back in Germany at "home". So yeah I am trying to enjoy my last days over here and trying to figure out presents for my host family and a good way to thank them for the incredible things they've done for me! I cannot do anything to thank them enough or be ever grateful enough but I will do my best to give back the most i can!

Donnerstag, 7. Februar 2013

Musical:)

Well, I decided to continue my blog:) I haven't written anything for a moth so yeah the last month was pretty busy! I participated in the school musical and had loads of rehearsals. The musical we did is called "Annie get your gun" and the basic plot is a manly girl meets a arrogant guy, wins a shooting match against him, is in love with him and joins his tour(he is part of a show company), they fall in love while she becomes more girly to become the type of girl he likes, they fight when Annie makes a spectacular trick and he(Frank) is scared to loose his job in the show... They join two different companies, see each other happily again, fight again, shoot against each other again and Frank almost wins because Annie uses a manipulated gun because she realizes that it is more important to her to get back together with Frank than to win the shooting match... They sing a romantic song together and boom happy-ending:D
Joa I was in the orchestra pit so I never saw the whole show but they did not have to many problems:) one evening the mikes did not work well for the first hour and another time the actors had something weird in their face which was never fixed and I have no clue what it was... But everything was really professional! They had so many lights and the singers: just awesome! I loved it! Even if we had 4 hours rehearsal after school on somedays it did not bather me cause I just love musicals and each time we had a rehearsal I saw something new:D the music was about 110 pages long:D so no-one expected the orchestra pit to be perfect;) 
Well participating in a almost professional musical was a thing a really wanted to do even if i have not done it in the way people would expect one to do: on stage. Orchestra pit was pretty awesome! It must have been more than awesome to be a main character on stage!;D

Day(s) of midyear orientation

It was in Van Alystene a town about an hour north to where I live. We were about 40 or more exchange students and had a lot of fun! It started with a sleep over on friday and went on till 3pm on Saturday. Friday we had so much to talk about that we did not even get to watch the movies! The guys played with the different kinds of balls like you would expect them to do and the girls sat or stand in little groups and talked. Of course we also ate a lot of food like chips, m&ms and cupcakes. For that reason I was stuck in the kitchen for a while. Most exciting was to see the girls I traveled with again and some can actually understand your problems! The meeting reflected our year, we thought of what we would have done different and thought about our goals for the upcoming 5 month. A guy tried to teach me how to throw a football again but well I am just not skilled enough to do that! Man that's really hard! But fun:DD oh and we got pancakes for breakfast and not like German pancakes, like fat American pancakes:P with loads of sirup and ice cream:D our lunch was pizza or lasagna and healthy salad:D the meeting went by soooo fast! Impossible! After the meeting I went home showered and went to the dance from church. Maybe my 5th or so... After 3 you can not count any more so September, october, november, Dezember, Januar:P I was right it was the fifth:P ok the dance went by too fast but might have been the best one of all 5! First of all there was a reason that there were more guys and second of all were all people or most people in a good mood:) but you won't get to know the third reason. Sry:) well that was an AWESOME day and thank you to my hostmom to give me a ride and participate in the meeting and thank you to the church leader who let me participate in the dance:)

How is swimming going?

Actually pretty good:) I did not swin this week so we were just called in for 8:15am and next week 9am at school isn't that awesome? That means I can sleep till 7:45 every day next week! Was willste mehr, ne?:D yeah and since the season is over I gonna take teen-leadership for the last 9 weeks. And we went to IHOP on Tuesday cause it was national day of pancake and plain pancakes were free:) IHOP is like a breakfast restaurant where most people go to to eat pancakes:P
Oh and about 2 weeks ago we hosted a meet for which we got out of school early and I did not even swim and that was fuuuun! What I did? Putting the right stickers on the right medals, eating and talking about girls stuff with 3 other girls:D oh and we took the time once but it did not last long:D the meet was pretty long but since I did not swim I have nothing to complain about:)

Start spring semester

It went pretty well till know. I passed my history test with an 80(maybe 3-) and hope I passed my English test which I took today. My teachers are pretty nice. My english teacher always sits in class and says: "awkward silence. You can talk it is ok I want you to talk..." and she is relaxed unless she grades... You get like 2-5 points off for each comma you miss and each word you spell incorrectly... Seriously when they would do that in Germany I would have gotten a -10 on some tests! But we wrote only less than half a page on our test so it should not be too bad:)
My history class is less boring than I thought and people around me are nice. It just gets annoying when the teacher comments too much on me being a foreigner... For example once he pointed on a us map and ask what is there and I was the one who told him it is Chicago and then he always says: "don't let the foreigner tell you" or sth like that. Yeah but the teacher is fun and half of the class time we talk about everything else but history:) today we talked about how to become very rich and I found out that the ALDI person is the 10th richest person on earth:D Jo that's what our history class is like besides when we look at power points.