Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Clocks

Last weekend was great!

We went to the Albertville Outlet Mall on Saturday :) It was so much fun and we - that is Eden, Zeke, Malachi, Mitch, Steph and her two friends Kelly and Karri and me - shopped a lot!

I got...
... 2 new pairs of shoes:
                          Nike
                          Converse

... 5 new t-shirts:
                          a khaki one from Aeropostale
                          a pink one from Aeropostale
                          a gray one from Converse
                          a light blue one from Converse
                          a dark blue one from Converse (it looks more black in this picture)

... 2 new dresses (that I'm wearing as long tops :D):
                         a blue one from Aeropostale
                         a pink/blue/white/khaki one from Aeropostale

... 3 pairs of Nike Footie Socks

... and finally! something that Dad will like and Mom will hate just because I already have 'enough': a watch :) I love it it's from Fossil and I always wanted one, but they are so expensive. It still wasn't cheap but compared to the $80-$120 that you usually have to pay it was very good!
Here it is:


The clock face looks actually kind of pearly so that it doesn't seem silver like in the picture, but - depending on the light - pink, white, green or yellowish :)

It was sooo much fun :)

Apart from that a friend from band and I tried to figure out how to play 'Clocks' together yesterday. She memorized it (she's playing piano) so we basically just had to figure out what I have to play. It was so much fun just to jam around a little and we definitely have to repeat that again!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Let it snow

Ahh it's snowing again!

Don't get me wrong! I like the snow and I'm more than glad that I'm in Minnesota and not in Texas or somewhere else where it's already warmer than normal summer temperatures. But I started to like the 40°F/4°C :) It felt so warm I didn't even bring a coat when I went to school.

Anyway as Steph already posted we have snow since last night and because it's icy too the schools were closed today. I really couldn't believe that's true. We never had a day of or even a late start because of the snow. Sometimes the activities after school were canceled or one time we had a 2 hour early out but that's it.
Today our Boys Basketball Team is playing for State in at the University of Minnesota/Minneapolis and a lot of people wanted to go down there with the bus including our Pep Band. So originally I was supposed to go down there to play the Saxophone with our band but because of the weather there was no bus going down there and I got to stay home the whole day :)

Sunday, March 20, 2011

How Great is our God

Last Sunday in Youth Group we watched another talk from Louie Giglio.
It is called 'How Great is our God' and I think the title already tells you what it's about :)
It's amazing and it just blows my mind every time I watch it - so here it is:




I just love it how he illustrates everything. And laminin is really, really cool!
Watch the video it's great!

Die beste Zeit deines Lebens

Last Saturday a couple other exchange girls (Pippu, Nina, Eva, Julia, Seno, Christin, Kim and Anne-Marie), George, Mitch and I went down to The Cities to the Mall of America to get our dresses for prom at the Operation Glass Slipper Event that was hold in a big room in the mall.

Eden took a couple pictures while we all got our dresses - just us girls, Mitch and George had to stay outside :D

Measuring to find the right size

My 'Fairy Godmother' for the day, she was helping me with everything

There were toooons of dresses
My Prom Dress ... with purse and shawl

Group Picture


After that we all went shopping for about 2 hours before we headed back home. This mall is huge! I think you would  need weeks to be able to go to every single store :)

So yeah, we had a great time.

But I also know my date when I have to go back to Germany and when I tried to find a song for this post just now I ended up with 'Die beste Zeit deines Lebens/The best time of your life' because it talks about not wasting the time you have and I thought that would fit perfectly!

In my case this time (that I shouldn't waste) is 143 days long and ends on July 28th, 2011. I'll be back in Germany on July 29th, so 8 days before my 17th birthday. So all in all I will spend almost a whole year here in America because I left only 6 days after my birthday last year... :)

My original date was June 23rd, but I really wanted to stay one month longer and YFU students from Germany have the possibility to change their going-back-home-date as long as their visa is still okay :)

Here are the lyrics for the song in English:

Best time of your life

Everything just circles around itself
The world in which you fail again and again
And when you think you can't go on anymore
The next step is often not so hard
It's often easier than you think
If only you stay true to your will
You can achieve more than you believe
Even when it takes away your strength
This here is the best time of your life
What are waiting for in vain?
The time ticks
Like a bomb before the explosion
Come
If you want it you can do it
You listen to Nirvana to cry
Come stack away the old photos
Paint new pictures in your heart
For short while just forget the old pain
It's not forbidden to stand still
To look ahead again
Enjoy every single moment
Make way for your talent
You are grieving for the old times
You are alone and believe in nothing anymore
Hope is far away for you
Feelings only on the internet
Every day is the same for you
Everything gray in gray and without aim
You lose heart with every small thing that happens
But after ebb there's a flood coming

Friday, March 11, 2011

Walking on Sunshine

As mentioned earlier we went outside for a walk yesterday.

I really wanted to use this song for the blog post so that's why I'm writing a new one and didn't put the pictures in the other post ;)





The sky ;)

True Colors

I ran into our little table in the living room two days ago and now my little toe is very colorful :)

But I also finally figured out what was wrong with my camera settings: the ISO-Sensitivity.
I realized that yesterday when Mitch, Hope, Micah, Eden, Zeke, Josh, Malachi and I went outside for a walk yesterday.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Here I am

Here I am - this is me
There's no where else on earth I'd rather be
Here I am - it's just me and you
And tonight we make our dreams come true

It's a new world - it's a new start
It's alive with the beating of young hearts
It's a new day - it's a new plan
I've been waiting for you
Here I am

Here we are - we've just begun
And after all this time - our time has come
Ya here we are - still goin' strong
Right here in the place where we belong

Oh It's a new world - it's a new start
It's alive with the beating of young hearts
It's a new day - it's a new plan
I've been waiting for you
Here I am
Here I am
Yeah
I've been waiting for you

Here I am - this is me
There's no where else on earth I'd rather be
Here I am - it's just me and you
And tonight we make our dreams come true

Oh It's a new world - it's a new start
It's alive with the beating of young hearts
It's a new day - it's a new plan
I've been waiting for you
Oh It's a new world - it's a new start
It's alive with the beating of young hearts
It's a new day - it's a new plan
I've been waiting for you
(Waiting, waiting, waiting)
Oh Here I am 

(Oh, Here I am) 

Here I am - next to you
And suddenly the world is all brand new
Here I am
Here I am - where I'm gonna stay
Now there's nothin standin in our way
Oh Here I am - this is me 

Exactly today one year ago I got my information where I'm going to stay for my exchange year. It was a Saturday and I slept in... I always do - very, very, very long :D When I came downstairs my brother and dad were watching Formula 1. I sat next to them on the couch and after about 10 minutes I think Marcel said there was a letter from YFU. It was just a regular letter so I thought it would be more information about Orientation or some other meeting, but in stead I got my host family!
I was soooo incredibly excited that I started screaming and I ran back in the living room to tell Marcel and Dad. Then I kind of got mad that they didn't woke me up earlier, but then again I thought it was my own fault because I can get very grumpy when I can't sleep in on Saturdays :D
Anyway I remember that my mom worked the night before and was still sleeping but because I was so loud she woke up and I told her too. And then I started googling everything I could possibly google about: Saint Cloud, Minnesota, Apollo, etc.! I was so excited ;)
After I did that for about 3 hours I realized that I should probably send an email to my host family. So I did... it took me about 1 more hour because I wanted it to be perfect, because it's the first personal thing that the Theis would get from me... the email is 12 lines long. It is so funny to read it now because I remember how I sat there with my parents in the living room with my laptop at midnight writing it :)

Three days later, March 9th, I checked my emails before school at 6 o'clock in the morning ... I think I checked them literally every 30 minutes during that time. I ran into my parents bedroom to tell my Dad that Steph send me an email back with a link to her blog. It was really nice to be able to look at all the pictures when I came home from school - it was so hard to concentrate in school for 8 hours because I really wanted to read the blog :D

I really can't believe that all this is already a year ago.
"Here I am" now and "There's no where else on earth I'd rather be"

A couple YFU exchange students from the area met yesterday for a potluck at a volunteers house and we talked about "Paying it forward" - telling people about the exchange program to find new host families or exchange students for the upcoming years so that the next exchange students know their new family as early as possible. There are students every year who don't know where they are going to spend the next year until just a couple days before they fly to their exchange country.
So if you're interested in hosting a student this next year please talk to me :) I would love to tell you more about being an exchange student or you could also have a look at Steph's blog to get some impressions what it's like to be a host family. I really like this post.


Thank you so much to everybody who made this exchange year possible!
Especially Steph and Mitch who let me be "No. 11" in their family :)


P.S.: Dad you remember where this song is from? Little hint: It's a movie :P

Friday, March 4, 2011

Beautiful

Last Saturday we had a Spa Night with our Youth Group Senior High Girls at Jodi's Loft. It was so much fun and super relaxing! We all wore PJ's and brought a pillow to make everything comfortable. Grace straightened my hair and that was when I finally decided to get my hair cut again :) It just looked way to long and my last hair cut was in July '10 so I thought my hair would probably split pretty soon - I was surprised that I didn't find any split ends so far.

Anyways I asked Jodi if she would have time to cut my hair this week and she said that I should text/call her and she would figure something out.
So then yesterday after school Sally and I met in the Band Room after school where we waited a little and then about half an our later we drove to Charisma (the name of Jodi's Loft - see website linked above).
My appointment was at 4pm and I basically didn't have to wait at all :)
As always I didn't really know how much shorter I wanted it to be - I usually think "Oh just a little this time so that it will grow!", but then I always end up cutting it short :D
I think I really do want to have long hair again (it hasn't been longer than shoulder-length since 3rd grade...) but I just don't want to wait for it to grow -.-

Jodi did a great, great, great job. I don't regret getting it cut at all even though it's probably shorter than ever before! I like it a lot - and I have my curls back that I stole from my Daddy when I was born!




The quality of these pictures is pretty bad, I know! I took a couple with my Nikon camera, but it didn't work out at all! I recently struggle a little with finding the right mode to take pictures with so the colors aren't right at all. So I took these with my Laptop-Webcam, which was also easier to hold :) But my glasses reflected from the light so that's why the first two are without glasses...

After I got my hair cut, Sally and I picked Tony up. He goes to Apollo too and is an exchange student from Japan. It's always very funny with both of them because Sally is half Japanese so they usually speak Japanese and because I'm teaching her German since we first met we usually speak English and whenever she can say something in German (e.g.: "Wie geht es dir?"- "How are you?") then she will always say it in German :)  The three of us went to an Indian restaurant and we then drove to Apollo to play our last Pep Band for the Boys Basketball game: Apollo vs. Tech
We won and that was pretty cool because we're basically rivals so it's kind of a big deal to beat them :D For me it was just funny to watch all the fans cheering for their team... I'm not really into sports ;P

On the way home we had to pass the MAC and because there was something going on too (probably hockey game) a police officer controlled the traffic so that the people from the Mac could leave the parking lot. It took forever to go home - about 20 minutes instead of 5 - and Sally didn't really like that. So I bought her German chocolate that my family send me with my Christmas Packet (can't believer there was still something left :P), wrote "Thanks for driving me home!" on there and put it in her band locker where she keeps her trumpet. She was pretty happy :)

In school I had my last Math test, a Reader's Theater performance for Acting class and the US History Vocab Final today. Now I have Spring Break and I will get new classes: American Dream (LA) and Digital Photo on Monday, March 14th :)

By the way Mom, the packets arrived today... that was super fast this time!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

A Night to Remember

 ... well two nights actually :P

Okay so then finally a new blog post :)
The Night of the Stars: It was sooo much fun to be part of that great show!

At first I didn't even know that I was in the show, then when I found out I didn't want to play but because I felt bad to say I won't play after such a long time I just did play. After the Solo/Ensemble Contest then I felt so comfortable about it that I just thought that we'll do fine.
And by now I'm not really nervous before concerts because I've been in concerts since I'm about 4 or 5. So when we finally had the show it was just awesome. I met a whole bunch of people from Youth Group in the Green Room and before that night I didn't even know that they'll be in the show - I think they didn't know that I was either ;)

We played our quartet in Act 1 (7th performance) and we were able/allowed to watch the rest of the show after that. It was super funny, for example Taylor Latté Boy and its response to it :)

Then when I came home from the show on Friday at around 10pm my friend - Julia who went to the Hockey Game with me - already waited for me. She wanted to see the show and I thought it would be great if she could stay over night from Friday to Saturday and see it on Saturday since she had Basketball practice very long on Friday.
So we watched a movie, ate popcorn and apples with chocolate that I melted (Eden said we would ruin perfect chocolate :D).
On Saturday then there were a couple other exchange students from YFU and also more students from Apollo and from Youth Group that I know. I really, really enjoyed those two shows!
Julia ended up having another sleepover at our house because we figured it would be easier that she would go to church with us on Sunday and her mom would take her home afterward... and we were able to spend more time together of course ;P