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

Lost

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'

Last Time

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

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

Pictures of you

Today we had our homecoming (football) game at Apollo were I played in Pep Band and helped out with Concessions during the 3rd quarter. I was home at about 4 or 5 pm and we left to take some family pictures in St. Johns. Here are some pictures I took (not just of family :)

Micah and Tirzah on their way to the photo shooting :)

Second place where we took the family pictures

The forest next to the lake

Eden (I like this picture a lot!)

Micah and Caleb joking around ;)

Caleb and Eden joking around :D

Mitch, Steph and Tirzah

Malachi (so cute!)

Joshua ^^

A very cool inscription for a figure of an Indian woman

Here she is

The sunset

... from a different position

Steph taking some picture of the sunset :)

The trees "bursting into flames"

And another point of view on the beautiful sunset

By the way, our homecoming dance was yesterday. I wanted to take pictures and when I took my second one it said 'No memory'. 

I forgot to put the memory card from my laptop back into the camera :(

Pictures of you

How he loves us

Small and Youth Group was so awesome yesterday!

We watched this video (our version was just one) and I really, really want to share this with you, so here we go:

Please, please take some time and watch this!
It's amazing!

How he loves us

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  :)