Just The Way You Are

Wow, it's been quite a while since I posted my last post.

What was 'Wonderful to me' then actually costs me a lot of time right now so I guess that's one of the reasons why I didn't blog. That and the fact that nothing really exciting happened...

BUT it was Eden's birthday yesterday and I thought I should post something about that :)

Happy belated Birthday to...

... the best roommate you could ever think of

... a very special friend

... a teenage girl

... my little sister

I really miss you and I hope you had a great day!

Just The Way You Are 

 

Wonderful to me

Okay, I think I might post pictures of Christmas some other day. All the pictures are on my computer and I usually write my blog posts with my laptop - I'm too lazy to put them on my laptop also - so I guess you're just going to have to wait :D

However I really wanted to post about this:

Yesterday I went to a YFU - Youth For Understanding - meeting (of members). Here in Germany YFU separates the whole country into different groups (national committees) and I'm part of the one called 'Westfalen'. On this map, you can see where the different committees are. The meeting lasted about 10 hours and we had a lot of different things to talk about. We also voted for a new head of our group :) Since YFU is a non-profit organization/association almost all of the people working for it are volunteers. I think there are about 30 people working in the main office full-time but the rest is volunteering :)

We also have various representatives for different aspect. For example there is one representative for publicity. That person's job is to organize presentations about YFU (e.g.: in schools,...).

Then there are also representatives for:

• cooperation (keeps members motivated and helps wherever he/she can) 
• publication (responsible for the yearbook and some other stuff that is released by YFU during the year)
• interviews (has to find rooms, team members, etc. for the interviews of the applicants who want to go do an exchange year)
• preparation (organizes the orientations for the students that are going to leave)
• follow-up (organizes the orientations for the students that just got back)

We voted for all of those and a couple other ones - it's hard to find the right translation so I just didn't list them. Anyway I was voted to be representative too and I will take care of the parents :) Meaning I will organize meetings/orientations for the parents of the students that will leave to go abroad this summer. It's my job to be available to them in case they have problems and I will have to find a location and team for the meetings. I'm really excited for that even though I thought it would take up too much time in the beginning. I was asked if I was willing to do it a few weeks before the meeting yesterday and after I thought about it for a while I really wanted to do it! I think it's a great way to get more involved with my exchange organization :)

I'm going to take some pictures now for my art project ;)

Wonderful to me

Zu schnell vorbei

First of all here are the answers for the 5 Mastery Test Questions I posted last time:

1d)    Rheumatic Fever damages the valves of the heart.
2a)    The visceral pericardium is also know as the epicardium.
3a)b) The structures that prevent the mitral and tricuspid valves from swinging into the atria during ventricular contraction are the cordae tendineae and papillary muscles.
4c)    The aortic bodies containing pressoreceptors and chemoreceptors are located in the aortic sinuses.
5a)    Venous blood flow is maintained by all but which of the following factors blood pressure.

Now then my report about our Scrapbooking Sleepover :)
Karla picked us up at the mall at 5pm on Friday and took us to her house in Kimball where we had the Winter Fun Day too earlier this year.


Karla also took me to the Fire Department - her husband is a fire fighter - where we picked up some tables for the scrapbooking.

That was in front of the building

The Fire Department of Kimball

Star Spangled Banner and POW-MIA Flag

A picture that they have in the building

Just in case you couldn't see it -there is German!

And she let me put on a fire fighter outfit. It was her husbands since he was out of town and they wouldn't need it in case there was a fire somewhere. We took a lot of pictures and it was a lot of fun. So here for my daddy in Germany who is a volunteer fire fighter himself a couple pictures of your little daughter :)

Me putting the shoes and pants on

With the jacket on too

... and the helmet :)

With one of the fire trucks

The oldest truck they had - they don't use it though

And the most interesting truck for me - the ambulance

Well I didn't take any pictures while we were scapbooking but it was basically as messy as last time :D We had a lot of fun and I got 16 pages done - makes a total of 31 super heavy but beautiful pages ;)

Here are some pictures of the pages!

Page about being Student of the Month (Note from Principal, Letter and Certificate)

Schoolpaper on the right and Schedule, notes and Report Card left

Whole Year Schedule, School map, Name tag left and Assignments right

Family pictures from October - Tirzah, Malachi, Josh and Zeke

More family pictures - Caleb, Eden, Micah and Kathi

Steph and Mitch, Family picture

The day we took the family pictures

And more of those

Just to show you how big it is already - Christmas, Easter etc. missing!

I think it is very big already and I didn't even start with the pages about Christmas, TCX, Blizzard, Easter etc.

When we were too tired to continue scrapbooking on Friday night (about 3am) we laid down started watching Centerstage. It's one of my favorite movies so I watched it about 15 times already and was way to tired to focus. I think I fell asleep about half way through the movie :)

Doing all this scrapbooking I always realize how fast time is passing... that's why I picked "Zu schnell vorbei" as a title which means "Over too quickly" or "Gone too quickly". I really like Clueso's music.

Zu schnell vorbei

Misunderstanding

 Okay so there was a "little" misunderstanding yesterday :)

I thought we would go to Minneapolis to a theater after I read this message:

The Loring Theater in Minneapolis is hosting a 90 year old gathering of that era characters from Oct 18th -30th Long forgotten characters will be on hand, spine chilling tours of the upstairs rooms and the basement and be greeted by these characters the best time for me is 29th or 30th. let me know 

But we went to a little tiny village where they had kind of an haunted house thing in the elementary school and the church. It took us a very long time to go there (about 2 hours including picking up some other people) even if it's just about 20 minutes away. We drove in the wrong direction for about 20 minutes :( It wouldn't have been so bad if we had two people waiting for us who eventually made the tour without us after they were already waiting for an hours.

Still it was a lot of fun even if it was very scary :D

Misunderstanding

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

Old MacDonald had a farm

Eagles

Finally there's a new blog post :)

As a few of you (the Facebook-readers) already know, we won our second game :)

It was a home game this Thursday vs. Brainerd and it was sooo much fun! Rhonda - our coach - had made a deal with us before we started playing: If we win one of the three games, we would get chocolate chip cookies afterward. When we won the first one she said if we would win the whole match, we wouldn't have practice the next day (Friday). So we just went to 'practice' to finally get our volleyball clothes (t-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts) and talked for about an hour.

We also had our homecoming kickoff on Friday where they presented the homecoming (king&queen) candidates, the homecoming week themes for each day (Hippie Day, Fake injury, Workout, Pajama, Spirit Day) and then the teacher played basketball vs. the students.

For those of you who follow Steph's blog as well probably already know that I'm pretty busy with my full schedule. Sometime I really think I'm getting crazy because I'm never at home and I don't see my family, so that I miss them when I'm out of the house - which is ridiculous, how would it be once I'm back in Germany?!

And now that I had my first YFU Orientation today (which was awesome) I feel horrible because we had a couple of sheets where they ask how many time we spend together with our family and what kind of activities we're doing together. I really try hard to spend time with them but it's just so hard with all my volleyball practice and the games (I'm glad that I have my last game on October 19th). Don't get me wrong, I really love to play volleyball and the experience of being a team member and get to know the American team spirit is awesome, but I feel like I'm drifting away from my family. 

That thought is running through my head for like a week now and I can't find anything to change that feeling except getting an 48-hour-day. 

I planned to skype with my brother Marcel and I forgot about the YFU Orientation so I send him a message via facebook that it's going to be later, but he didn't had the time 'later' so we couldn't skype again (he was at his girlfriend's house the last time I skyped with my family). The last time I talked to him is over a month ago and now the emotions kind of overwhelm me. I won't say that I'm homesick, because I really don't want to go home (sorry Germany). It's more that I miss the feeling of family, simply because I'm never home to be part of it :(  

(I don't know why but I'm kind of too emotional today.)

When I wrote this Eden came into the room and asked me if I would like to watch Letters to God. I said yes, because I reeeeeally wanted to watch it ^^ 

When we watched it, Zeke came and laid down next to me - and gave me the family feeling I need :) 

All of these kids are amazing! I'm so glad to be here :)

Eagles

P.S.: I got an A+ in Language Arts and Math  :)

In the Lake

Today Eden, George, two other exchange students from Germany and Switzerland and I went to Quarry Park. They searched for granite there and the quarries filled up with water after some time.

It was so much fun there, especially when we drop Eden in the swimming pool quarry :)

Here are some pictures:

The granite rocks

Formed granite

Walking aaaall the way to the swimming pool quarry

Plants on the granite rocks

One of the quarries

For my brother and father back in Germany :)

We planned to go back there again on Monday and really go swimming, have a picnic and all that stuff :)

Tomorrow I will go shopping with two girls from youth group to find all my volleyball things ^^

In the Lake