Ready or not

Well I wasn't really ready for another birthday yet, but I guess that didn't really matter :)

I had an awesome day, starting with going down to The Cities to meet Jess after just a little more than to years. Mitch went down there to pick up the Horol Missions Team from the airport and I thought it would be a nice opportunity to get there!
We met at Caribou to talk and catch up on each others lives, so good!

When we got back home I could already smell my birthday cake and I was really excited to have carrot cake again - something we need (more of) in Germany!

Somewhere between coming home and eating dinner Tirzah asked how old I was now and when Mitch said 'She's 19 now', Tirzah said 'Oh so you're a mom now?'. Best quote of the day!

I got to choose my favorite meal for supper just like every other Theis kid, thanks to Steph for cooking and baking for me!

While eating Mitch started a round of "Memories we have of when Kathi first came here" which was really fun to remember little things of my exchange year!

After supper we had the cake with ice cream - yummy!

Parents + birthday child photo

Now I just got home from a friend's goodbye party who is going to Uruguay this year - yay going abroad!

Thanks for all the congratulations, I had such a great day!

Ready or not

10,000 Reasons

It's been way to long!

After two years I finally got back home. Kimmy said that today when I talked to her in church: "I didn't know you are home yet." - that made me smile!

I arrived at MSP at 6pm on Saturday July 20, 2013 after a long journey from Germany over the Netherlands, to Iceland and finally to America. As Steph mentioned in her blog post already the timing was perfect and neither of us had to wait for a long time :)

We stopped at the Albertville Outlet Mall on our way home where I bought new Nike shoes since I didn't bring any tennis shoes. Luckily I didn't have any problems with the time difference so that I just went to bed and woke up when everybody else did.

Church the next morning was so much fun! Just seeing everybody again and their reactions of seeing me again :) I saw Tracey and walked over to her and she looked so surprised! "I thought I would never see you again in MY LIFE!", is all she said for a while.
Missed my second church family so much!

On Friday Allie and I went to Panera for lunch. It was so nice to talk to you again girl! Sally picked me up later that day and we went out for dinner and saw a movie later. I just missed my little Japanerin and her humor :)

I didn't get a lot of sleep before we left on Saturday morning to go camping down by Rochester at Whitewater State Park. I just realized that the last time I went camping was probably two years ago when I went to Sonshine :) Steph also posted about our camping trip in multiple blog posts with 100 pictures os make sure you check that out!

Speaking of pictures, I brought my SLR camera that uses films - so no digital pictures to post here :) I will scan and post a few after I get home and got them developed but for now you'll only have my texts and Steph's pictures.

Anyway, we got home from camping on Wednesday and I left again on Thursday afternoon to go camping with the Youth Group up North in Schroeder.
The landscape up there is just so beautiful! It was so much fun! We focused on "being still and know that He is God", going through different Psalms and the Lord's Prayer. Besides that we went cliff jumping, swimming, hiking and climbing - such a great trip!

I just got home last night and was very happy to finally be able to sleep in my bed again. However, Tirzah claimed it back during my second camping trip so that she really wanted to sleep in it too - we ended up sharing it which was really funny since she is about half my size but used twice the room!

Church this morning was again really awesome, I met Kimmy - so great to see her :)

I'm going horseback riding now and to Youth Group later tonight... Life is GOOD!

10,000 Reasons

Heal the World

Thank you sooo much for all the donations for the 30 hour famine!
I was able to raise $180! With that money World Vision will be able to take care of a child for half a year :)

The 30 hour famine was a great experience and I will definitely do something like that again in the future! I started fasting right after my lunch period in school on Friday at 12pm. When I came home everybody had Animal Crackers for snack (I love those!) and Micah said 'Haha, you can't have any!'... not nice :) But really it wasn't that hard not to eat - I thought it would be harder since I'm snacking all the time.

Mitch, Eden, Micah and I went to TCF to go through some bank-stuff which took a veeery long time because it was very complicated, but it was also very entertaining :D After that we went to a game store to get a couple CDs/DVDs buffered and after that we went to Little Caesers to get pizza for the others for supper - that was fun. Mitch called in before we got there so that they would be ready when we come and he ordered "3 pepperoni ... and 1 sausage please". When he said 'sausage' I said "Yes... nooooo" because I love sausage pizza but then I realized that I won't be able to have any :(

At 8pm I went to Church then where I spent the rest of my fasting time together with all the others (I think there were about 25 of us.. maybe more).We started of by playing a couple games boys vs. girls - we won! :) And then at around 9.30 Josh talked to us, showed us a very cool video. In that video kids who don't live as good as we do asked questions about our life here in America - "Do you really eat 3 times a day", etc. It also included information about the difference of our countries - "A woman in Africa walks about 6 miles a day to get water, that's how much an American walks in A MONTH!" It really opened my eyes about what's going on in the world and on top of that we then watched End of the Spear.

The next day morning we woke up at 8.45 and started at 9.30. We did three service projects throughout the day - hand out bag of lunch to people who otherwise won't have a meal -, collect caned food donations and we cleaned up a park :)
Throughout the whole time i didn't really struggle with hunger, but more with a lack of energy and I was cold all the time except when I was in my sleeping bag... then I felt super hot. I think I had a little short cold or something because I also had trouble breathing (it felt like somebody was sitting on my chest when I tried to breath in). Usually my temperature is around 96°F when I take it with the thermometer we have but on Saturday when I came home it was 98°F... I don't know doesn't really matter I guess :)

We broke out fast together at (Surprise...after 30 hours) 6pm on Saturday with rice and something like taco meat and ketchup. I think I never enjoyed a meal like that before - you really start appreciating the food you have the more you learn about all the hunger in the world!

Anyway it was a great experience and thanks again for the donations!

Heal the world 

Earth Song

So yesterday at Youth Group we got some information about the 30 hours famine that is going on this weekend at Calvary.

We start fasting at 12pm on Friday (right after my lunch period in school) and don't eat for 30 hours. That way we will see what it's like to hunger for such a long time like many people have to.

Here are some facts about hunger in this world:
 - Hunger kills another child every 10 seconds!

       So that are 8000 kids under the age of 5 that die because of hunger-related causes (starvation,      illness due to malnutrition, ...

 - More than 1 billion people go hungry every day!

One in six people on earth will go to bed hungry tonight . The odds are worse for kids living in poor countries, they have a one in three chance of going hungry!

For me personally I knew that this is an issue but I didn't know that there are SO MANY people who don't have anything to eat!

So with the 30 hour famine we also want to raise money for the organization World Vision so that kids can get food.

$30 would help to get food for a child for ONE MONTH - so that is $360 to help feed and care for a child for a year! I think that is pretty amazing and when we compare that on how much money we spend each month for ourselves not a lot!

When I thought about how I could get as many donations as possible I had the idea that a blog post about it would be so helpful because that way I can inform a lot of people at the same time about it.

So if you would like to donate some money for this please tell me! I need the money by Friday because that's when I will give it to my Youth Group leader. 

You can donate any amount of money you want and checks should be made payable to World Vision - I would actually prefer checks because I would have to write out a check to hand the money in anyway :)

Now that I think about it, it would be sooooo great if people from Germany would donate some money too!

1. Just divide however much dollars you want to donate by 1.35 (that's about the currency rate) to get the Euro value for it. 

2. Then you can ask my mom about my account information (didn't ask you yet but I hope that's okay mom?! ^^) or you could also email me and I will send the information to you... I just kind of forgot what you need for that so it would be great if you could tell me (I know it's the name, the account number, the bank name and the bank identification code, anything else?!)

3. Transfer the money on my account

4. Please send me an email (you can find my email address on Facebook, in my profile here on my blog or you could text/ask me about it!) and tell me how much money you would like to donate so that I can keep track of that :)

Any questions please (!) ask me or you could also look it up on the website I named above (World Vision or 30 hour Famine).

If you don't want to or you can't donate money then please pray for me and other people who participate in this that everything will work out and that we - together - can raise money to prevent kids from dying because they don't get enough food!

It would be sooo great if I could get enough money that would support a child for a year - I think that would be amazing!

Thank you so much already :)

Earth Song

Happy Day

Yesterday was a very happy day :)

My Christmas packet from my parents arrived:

It is very big :)

Thank you so much!

I already got my Christmas present with the packet but I gave it to Steph so that she can keep it until I can open it :)

We also left for the Fall Retreat from Youth Group yesterday, which was awesome. Unfortunately we are already back so we had just about 24 hours there but it was still very cool.

We girls slept in a cabin together with a squirrel :D

There was a hole in our window (the wood frame was eaten) so that's probably how it entered. It was very crazy: every time we got back from lunch etc. there were other girls running out of the cabin and screaming. I never got to see it but it should be very big ^^ Here are some pictures from the Retreat:

The bus

Sun goes down

Emily, Elle, Alex and Jamie

Alex

Everybody's listening to Josh ^^

Laura and Paige

Grace and Paige

Becky

This was the squirrel protection :P

We were kind of afraid and stand on the couch, table, etc. :)

That's where the squirrel escaped

Jamie and Elle

One of the fun games for our Girl-Guys competition (let the pencil jump into the cup letting it drop on the eraser)

Happy Day

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 :)

Faithful

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

A night to remember

We are the champions

Well, not really but that's how we felt yesterday in Fergus Falls where we won our first volleyball match ever  :)

We were sooo super happy the feeling was unbelievable. Unfortunately JV1 and Varsity didn't win, but both of the Freshman teams did.

Here are some picture of the game we had last Thursday in our gym (vs. Technical High School, Saint Cloud). They are not very good because I didn't want to change any settings and just shot snapshots but I think they are okay to show you what our gym and Varsity-team looks like :)

Time-out

Part of the Tech-fans

Apollo-fans

During the second period :)

School is so much fun, even if I have a lot of homework to do. Because of volleyball I'm home at about 5.45 pm every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then I always eat, take a shower, do my homework and go to bed because I'm so super tired. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm usually home at 3.30 pm where I eat, change and go to Apollo again for the home games (if we have an away game I'm not even home at all). JV1, Freshman, and our team stars playing at 5.45 pm and Varsity at about 7 pm, but we always have to stay there so I do my homework in the gym :)

I plan to go shopping tomorrow because I still need some stuff. It starts getting cold here and I don't really have a lot of warm clothes and shoes and since Saturday is my only free day in the week I try to get it done this weekend :)

I'm so excited about Sunday :) It always keeps me through the week. We will go to church from 9 am to about noon and than I go back from 5 to 9 pm for Small Group and Youth Group. I have to bring an item that represents myself for Small Group but I have no clue what I should bring with me :D So if you have ideas I would like to get messages (no comments pleas  in case my Small Group members read this because they shouldn't know what I chose).

Alright I gotta go to bed now, I get home at 5 pm today, ate, took a shower and went back to Apollo for Pep Band at the football game and I get back at 9 pm.. It was freeeezing

...and I'm tired - again .. :)

We are the champions

Airplanes

Yesterday I went to Youth Group again. 

It was 'Back 2 School Bash' and we had to take pictures all over the town. 

We got a sheet with the different explanations for the pictures we should take (e.g.: most scary picture, your group in the smallest place, best nature picture, picture of an outdoor sculpture,...)

When we were back in the Youth Group room I noticed that one of my (Thomas Sabo) bracelet charms were missing: the little airplane that Theresa gave me to my birthday/goodbye party :( 

I checked if I put it on my necklace, but I didn't. 

I was so super sad and went straight in my room to check if I put it in my jewelry box (I doubted it because I usually wear all my charms) and to my own surprise: I found it ^^

After I had to go to see the counselor on four different days, I finally get my homeroom, locker and schedule.

Homeroom: C717 (it's in the science section)

Locker: 2419

Schedule:

Period 1: US History

Period 2: Anatomy&Physiology

Period 3: College Prep Algebra

Period 4: Concert Band

Period 5: Women's Choir

Period 6: Language Arts 11

Period 7: Health II

Volleyball practice gets easier every day (my blisters bigger and my muscles ache more every day :D) and we had fire alarm today...( so a little break ). My first game is going to be next week on Thursday and from Monday on we only have 2 hours practice every day.

Tomorrow is no practice ;)

Airplanes

P.S.: To all people in Germany, I just heard that you can't open the link so here is one, where you could hear the song:  

Airplanes

We are Family

So now I already have four different families :)

One family is probably asleep right now and lives in Germany :)

My second family and I are just back from a dinner at Bonanza.

The third family is the church and the Youth Group.

And I just joined a fourth family that stands of three girls of my volleyball team at Apollo and me. In the team we were separate in groups of three to five girls. In a group the other girls are your 'sisters' and you are supposed to encourage them before the games and give them little presents. I think that is awesome!

So speaking of volleyball: It was veeeery hard and exhausting ;)

Here is the development of the 4-hour-practice:

1. Run a mile

2. Stations (Sit-ups, Push-ups, squats, box-stepping, sprinting, blocking,...)

3. Warm up for volleyball (Building three groups: serve, pass and  setter. The serve brings the ball over the net, runs over to the other side of the net, pass the ball of the next server to the setter and is then setter himself and has to go with the ball back to the serve line...)

4. Separate in the 'sister-groups'

5. Getting jerseys

6. Workout

7. Practice serving

8. Play a couple of games of volleyball

I was super tired afterward. I brought my report card from my last school year in Germany to the counselor and talked to her again. I was a bit confused because the letter with my schedule, grade, locker number and home room didn't really fit to what we have talked about during our first appointment. I have to go there again tomorrow and I will get my new schedule and stuff :)

So after I saw the counselor a girl of my team gave me a ride home and I took a shower immediately and go right to bed then to take a nap :D

But I'm excited to go there again tomorrow!

We are Family

Fashion

Yesterday I went shopping with Kari and Alex, two girls from Youth Group.
After some problems with my bank card we had a lot of fun!
We ate Chinese in the Food Court of Crossroad Center here in Saint Cloud. Afterward we tried to get some money out of a ATM but it wasn't working ;(
What a bummer! It's now working by the way, we went to a bank and tried it there after church today and... voila: it's working :)
Anyway I bought white t-shirts and knee pads for volleyball practice at Target's, volleyball shoes at Foot Locker's and shorts for volleyball at Scheels' :)

When I went shopping with Holly and Eva on Thursday (or was it Wednesday?!) we went shopping at Crossroad Center as well and had a look at all the clothes at Deb's, Aeropostale, American Outfitters and a shoe shop of which I can't remember the name ;)

The Center is awesome! I had sooo much fun and I can't wait to go there again ^^

Fashion