Saturday, October 30, 2010

Faithful

Wow, it's been a while again :)

I was bored the whole day for the first time since I arrived here in America: and it feels awesome!
Because I have a pretty bad cold, I'm tired almost the whole day and that's why I got up at about noon today :D I took a shower and when I opened the door Steph, Malachi and Tirzah were in the laundry room which is right next to the bathroom and Steph said: "Good morning!". I think that was pretty funny.

After I had 'breakfast' I skyped with my Dad, what took kind of long (about 2 hours) :) It's weird because every time I look back and try to find out what we were talking it's always just a little bit. But it's fun.

When we were done skyping I wrote with my aunt and a friend from Germany and I also answered a message from my godmother and her daughter. I read it again after I already sent it and realized that I would like to blog a lot of things that I wrote down in the message so I'm just going to copy these parts :)

Right now I'm just enjoying being bored after lots of busy weeks! Because I'm done with volleyball I have a lot more time^^

I enjoy going to church/Small Group/Youth Group a lot :)
And I would like to be baptized again here, because it's now that I understand the Gospel more and more each Sunday and I accept Jesus as my Savior :)

I'll go to Minneapolis tomorrow to go to the Theater with a friend of YFU right after church and I'm pretty excited about that.

It's so awesome her at school, it is not as hard as the German schools so that I don't have difficulties to understand the things we are studying. I was kind of afraid that it would be hard since it's in another language even if I think that I know English pretty well because I studied for 7 years already. But it's not as hard as I thought it would be and I'm sooo proud of myself that I have an A (~98%) in Math right now (I used to have a D in Germany ^^).

We had a bone lab in A&P and were able to see and feel the bones of a cow :D Including the knee joint and it was pretty awesome to see how all the muscles, tendons, and ligaments work together :)

The class (A&P=Anatomy&Physiology) is my hardest because we have lots of tests and I have to study vocabs and other things all the time, but it's so awesome and interesting. If I'm really going to study medicine I'll know lots of stuff already from that class :)

We have lots of projects and funny things in our Health class, too. We already watched two movies (A Beautiful Mind, and Philadelphia). Our first project was to pretend that we are HIV- positive. Our teacher gave us 9 little medicine bottles filled with Skittles and other pill-look-like candy we had to 'take' every couple of hours. They all had special instructions on them, e.g.: 'Take 1 pill every 4 hours on an empty stomach.', 'Take 2 out of this bottle every time you take one of bottle #1', etc. I made a schedule and set my alarm so that I don't forget to take them :)
Right now we have a project where we should write down what we eat (for 4 days). We went to the computer lab and typed everything into a special program and we printed 7 pages full of information about our diet. Now we should answer questions and write down how many vitamins, proteins etc. the diet included.

And I had a choir concert on Thursday and there will be a Band Concert on November 4th :)


Our whole Choir (Women's Choir of Apollo High School)

And again with our director Mr. Parker (I had my camera in my bag and Steph took the pictures Thank You!)

Chamber Choir of the UMD

And the whole Choir of UMD


I also got to know the American snow a couple of days ago :) It feels weird to have snow in October since I always had 'real' snow (enough to go sledging) in January. We were very excited in 2005 when we had snow on my dad's birthday which is on November 25. I don't really know what I should think about the snow: on the one hand I'm glad that the mosquitoes are gone, on the other hand I really enjoyed having a warm summer :) I also don't have a lot of winter clothes so that means shopping!

I hope I'll be able to post my next post very soon to keep you updated :)


Friday, October 22, 2010

Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf

I was just about to watch a movie on my laptop when Josh and Malachi came into my room. They both had a book in their hands and I asked them if I should read the stories. They said yes and both laid down next to me in my bed.
I think Malachi fell asleep after about 2 pages of the first book. After I read almost the whole second one I asked Josh if I should go on reading or if he just want to go to bed (he looked very tired and didn't hold the pages anymore) but he said keep on reading. After one page he was sleeping as well :)

I love that German lullaby a lot, here are the lyrics:

 1. Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf!
 Der Vater hüt' die Schaf;
 Die Mutter schüttelt's Bäumelein,
 Da fällt herab ein Träumelein.
 Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf!

 2. Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf!
 Am Himmel ziehn die Schaf.
 Die Sternlein sind die Lämmerlein
 Der Mond, der ist das Schäferlein.
 Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf!

 3. Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf,
 so schenk' ich dir ein Schaf.
 Mit einer gold'nen Schelle fein,
 das soll dein Spielgeselle sein.
 Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf.

 Schlaf, Kindlein schlaf!

And in English:

1. Sleep, baby, sleep!
Father guards the sheep,
Mother shakes the little tree,
Then a little dream falls down for thee,
Sleep, baby, sleep! 


2. Sleep, baby, sleep!
 
In the sky, draw the sheep.
 
The stars are the lambkins.
 
The moon, which is the sheepherder.
 
Sleep, baby, sleep!

 
3. Sleep, baby, sleep,
 
so I'll give you a sheep.
 
With a fine golden bell,
 
This shall be thy game journeyman.
 
Sleep, baby, sleep.
 
Sleep, baby, sleep!


I also loved to watch 'Das Sandmännchen' which is a German TV show for kids, unfortunately there is no video in English on Youtube :(


It was soo cute tonight ^^


Joshi and Chi laying in my bed :)


Thursday, October 21, 2010

Lost


On Tuesday we had our last volleyball game and it was also Senior Night. It was so amazing even if we lost again.
→That's why I chose the song, right in the beginning Chris sings: 'Just because I'm loosing doesn't mean I'm lost!' And I absolutely love the song :)

Because it was Senior Night all seniors were supposed to make a poster with pictures of themselves on it. They hand them on the front door and made also made posters with our names where a lot of the teammates (not all 60 girls who were in the volleyball program but about 20...) signed and wrote something for us.
When Freshmen, JV2 and JV1 end their games the seniors (there were 4 of us) came on the court and there were always two girls who read something about you. After that they gave us the cutest baskets ever with awesome stuff in them:

1 'We ♥ our seniors' Shirt
1 'We ♥ our seniors' PJ-Shorts
1 Self-made pillow in our favorite color
4 Chocolate bars with special sayings
1 container of red and blue (Apollo Colors!!!) M&M's
1 Zip-lock bag of M&M's (all colors)
1 bottle of M&M's with special sayings
2 Tootsie pops in Red and Blue with another cool saying
2 Handkerchiefs with Apollo printing on them 

It was awesome!

Here are some pictures of the things and also a picture of one of my roses that I got from Mitch on parents night. They are kind of dead by now and I forgot to take a picture when I got them so I tried my best to make it look beautiful :D

The Tootsie Pops
The handkerchief with the M&M's
My volleyball wall now... with the poster they made for me and all the sister things I got
The poster
...and again
The poster I made for the entry doors.
The 'thing' about me in the program

One of my roses Mitch gave to me on Parents night
The pillow they made for me
...and the shorts.. sorry it's very, very dark (they are gray)
The t-shirt in neon yellow


The basket

...and again

 The candy I got
The Zip-lock bag of M&M's
And the chocolate bars

Last Time

 So on Monday was my last volleyball practice :(    :)
:(  Because I had an awesome time, being part of a team, being another 'sister' and playing volleyball in general

:) Because I finally have more time for my family and homework so that I don't have to stay up till midnight during the week (today doesn't count it's MEA Break tomorrow and Friday!), my knees hurt very bad so that I feel like I'm 120 years old (I can't go up/down the stairs without pain...) so I hope that it will go away now!

I took a few pictures of my last time at volleyball practice and because I already had the camera in my bag I thought I could take some photos of my neighborhood, the school bus, and my classroom (one of the 7):

Way to the bus station (takes me about 1 minute to go there :P)


Sunrise

Bus is coming

My Symphonic Band music folder

Symphonic Band Class room (my locker is one of the yellow ones)

Last time setting up the nets

Aren, Taylor, Emily and Amanda

Weight room: The road to success leads through these doors (see phrase over the door :P)

Elizabeth

Rhona, my coach (Taylor kind of likes 'leaning' pictures...)

Taylor

Amanda


Favorite: Running around the entire school, YUPPIE! (not)

Waiting for the serve

Coaching

The 'bench'

Old MacDonald had a farm

Right after Caleb, Eden, and Mitch picked me up we went to the bank, home, changed clothes, picked our beans for the Potluck up, went to Mitch Dad's house to pick up Eva and then finally head to the farm.

Okay, so what farm?! George, one of our friends from YFU and Church knows the owner of a farm and arranged that we exchange students and our family can go there. When we arrived, we talked a lot to the other students/host family members. After about an hour we went outside to see the horses and after that we ate some food before we went outside again to drive around the property on a hay wagon.

Some pictures:

A silo

Two of the about 50 horses... or 40 I don't know :)

Mitch, Caleb, and Eden

Pippu (exchange student from Finland)

On the hay wagon tour (sightseeing :P)

Group picture on the wagon tour

Pippu on the wagon

One of the large corn fields


Wednesday, October 20, 2010

A night to remember

Wow it's been a while again :)
So I'm going to post more posts during MEA Break and on the weekend to have everything seperate :-P

Starting with our Senior High School sleepover at Calvary:

It was sooo amazing, we had so much fun ;)
It was from last Friday (Oct. 15) ~7PM to last Saturday (Oct. 16) ~9.45AM.
We started with playing some games (Twister,...), dancing (Chihuahua) and eating some food. I don't remember the 100%-right order (I should probably try to post right away the next time...) but time ran very fast and we had a fashion show, a woman who goes to our church as well (Angel) told us about her life and gave us tips what we probably shouldn't do and we sang worship songs for about half an hour ^^
We talked a lot between the different activities and time ran very fast.
Another thing we did was:
We all sat in a circle and Kari had a band of ribbon. She hold one end and throw the rest to another girl, then she was supposed to hold her part and throw the ribbon to the next girl so that we eventually all were part of a very weird star thing of ribbon :D Every time you throw the ribbon to another girl you said something to her, what you admire about her, why you want to get to know her more, etc. It was so awesome to hear all these things :) At the end, when everybody got the ribbon we cut it in pieces and we are now wearing them as a bracelet or around or ankle to remind us that there's always something about us that is awesome :)

Here are some pictures:

Cami (sorry when I spell your name wrong!), Kari, Rachel, Alex and Becky.

Fashion show

I love you girls it was sooo much fun!

Kari, Becky and Rachel (our leaders)

Part of the awesome decoration of the Youth Room

Door to the hallway