Friday, November 26, 2010

Far away

Even if you - my friends and family in Germany - are far away, I always know that you love me :)

I got a letter from my aunt and basically everyone else of my dad's side of the family. I got five different cards and they all signed on one of them:

The front side: 'Tell somebody what makes you happy'
...and the back side. 'Nice (to hear) that you're so happy.'
 And I also have this in my room what reminds me every day of you back in Germany, especially Brigitte ^^

I got it from Brigitte who is a very good family friend.

I hope you have fun tomorrow - well actually today - when you have your Thanksgiving dinner.

Thank you so much for always 'being around', you guys (and girls ^^) are awesome!

Thank You



Because it's already past midnight I have to say: Yesterday was Thanksgiving!
My first Thanksgiving ever and it was sooo awesome :)

My host family has the tradition to put a special Thanksgiving table-cloth on the table were everybody writes down what they are thankful for. Up above is mine so here are the others (I didn't get a chance to take a picture of Mitch's ...):


Kripa writing hers

What Kripa is thankful for.

Zeke signing his (Eden wrote it for him)

What Zeke is thankful for.

Josh signing his (again Eden wrote it)

What Josh is thankful for.

Steph writing what she is thankful for

That's what she's thankful for :)

Tirzah signing hers (Steph wrote it)

That's what Tirzah's thankful for - she loves her dolls :)

Caleb writing his

That's what he's thankful for.

Micah writing his.

He is thankful for...

That's what Pratish is thankful for
Eden writing hers.

That's what Eden is thankful for.

... and Malachi is thankful for...?!

Kripa and Pratish are students from Saint Cloud State who are originally from Nepal which is right there:


See where the wooden stick is pointing at?

They both came over to celebrate Thanksgiving with us which looked like this (very yummy!)


Some fruit punch before we actually started eating

Mitch preparing the turkey
My first thanksgiving plate :)

... and my second one - cheesecake :D

Tirzah decided to eat her cup cake with her cup - she was licking the frosting off of it...

... but she can also use her hands ;)

It was an awesome day and the food was really, really good. We had so much fun together at our house and then afterward when we went to Paul's and Marilyn's house. Here are some more pictures:


Sharpies :)

I was able to take a picture of Micah when he wasn't paying attention :)

Tirzah, Steph and baby #8 :)

Bob the Builder aka Malachi ^^
Playing card games and tricks :)

Group picture ;)

On the way to Papa's house...

Tirzah fell asleep ^^


Thursday, November 25, 2010

Lifeline

On Friday I got picked up by Karla - one of the volunteers of YFU who is also hosting a student :) She drove a couple of us girls to a friend of Sheila (my area rep of YFU) where we were scrapbooking from Friday about 6pm to Saturday about 5pm.

It was so much fun. We were all so focused on working on our scrapbooks so that we didn't talk at all - we listened to music so it wasn't completely silent ^^. Junior (she is from Thailand), Alice (from China) and me stayed up till 5.30am and we got up again at about 11am to go on working on the books. I took pictures of the room when we went to bed and of each page of my scrapbook:

At 5:30 am

Front side of my scrapbook

Title page

Arrival

Different Places
Back to School

Picture sets of Malachi, Tirzah and Micah

Josh and Malachi

Church Potluck

Senior High School Girls Sleepover at Calvary
 It was so much fun, thanks to everybody who made that weekend possible :)

Happy Birthday

Hey Daddy!

Happy Birthday for the third time today, even if it's over in Germany, you still have 10 minutes here!
I hope you had an awesome day since it was a holiday?! :)

Here my Birthday Card for you... sorry that I didn't send you one in a letter...   :(

Happy Birthday Daddy!

For Germany:
For everybody else:

It's over now

I had my last event for volleyball last Wednesday: the banquet.
It was a lot of fun as I already posted on my facebook wall ;) We got awards, talked to different people, had dinner catering from a Mexican restaurant and coach Merten talked about the season in general.

I got the 'Most Improved' award of my team - obviously it's not very hard to improve when you can't play at all :P
I also got the 'Senor Award' (it's spelled wrong, it's supposed to be 'Senior Award' ^^) and a certificate of participation. When I got my Senior Award they asked me to give the 'younger' players an advice and when I was struggling to find one, Claire (one of my volleyball sisters who's also a Senior) told me that I could just tell something in German... Well that didn't help at all, it was even harder. It is so weird when I talk German, I always translate into English before I start talking :D Anyways I said 'Sei gut.' which means 'Be good' :D Pretty simple.

Waiting in line for the food :)

JV1 Team with their coach

Our team getting out team awards from Coach Merten

My 'Senor Award' - I love how they spelled my name ;)

My participation award already in my volleyball scrapbook
And my team award :)