Paradise

School started :)

Actually it did about 3 weeks ago already (September 7th), but I didn't find the time yet to write a post about it!
Since our school system is a little different, we don't have the same schedule every day, so this is mine:

Monday:

1. Geography
2. Geography
3. Social Science/Economics
4. Social Science/Economics
5. Biology
6. Biology
7. - LUNCH BREAK -
8. PE
9. Religion

Tuesday:

1. English
2. English
3. - OPEN -
4. - OPEN -
5. Social Science/Economics
6. Biology
7. - LUNCH BREAK -
8. - OPEN -
9. Math

Wednesday:

1. English
2. Art
3. - OPEN -
4. - OPEN -
5. History
6. History

Thursday:

1. German
2. German
3. Religion
4. Religion
5. PE
6. PE
7. - LUNCH BREAK -
8. Math (extra lesson because I just don't get it xD)
9. Chemistry

Friday:

1. Art
2. Art
3. Math
4. Math
5. Chemistry
6. Chemistry
7. - LUNCH BREAK -
8. History
9. Geography
10. German

We start school at 7.45am and our breaks between class aren't all 5 minutes long, so here are the times to my schedule:

1. Period: 7.45-8.30
2. Period: 8.35-9.20
3. Period: 9.40-10.25
4. Period: 10.30-11.15
5. Period: 11.25-12.10
6. Period: 12.15- 1.00
7. LUNCH BREAK for 1 hour
8. Period: 2.00-2.45
9. Period: 2.55-3.40
10. Period: 3.45-4.30

My school - Niklas-Luhmann-Gymnasium

That means I get out of school at 3.40pm on Monday, technically 3.40pm too on Tuesday but I have saxophone lesson right after so I'm not home before 4.45pm. On Wednesday school ends at 1pm for every student because the teachers have conferences and on Thursday I'm out at 3.40 again and Friday it's 4.30pm...
School days are sooo long, but occasionally we get some periods off when teachers aren't in school because they are sick or on a class trip. Because my English teacher was gone last week I didn't have to go to school till 11.25am :) That was nice. I miss being able to sleep long in the morning because school doesn't start until 8.20 - I miss Apollo!

Well anyway it feels good to be back in school after my super long vacation this year (from May 26-September 7... my classmates only had from end of July to September :D).

I'm also repeating my year that I 'missed' in school here while I stayed in Minnesota. Turns out to be a really good decision, because a lot of other exchange students I know that are continuing in their old grade are struggling already! My new grade is awesome even if a lot of my classmates are about 2 years younger than I am - I got into 1st grade with 7yrs., most kids are 6 :)

I talked to 8th and 9th graders and their parents about doing an exchange year on our annual information night about exchange programs and it was sooo much fun sharing a couple stories.

Well anyway I'm a little busy too now with getting my driver's license so I don't know when I'll be able to post again...
Hope it'll be soon though!

Paradise

The hardest part

So now that I got the Family Trip post out of the way I still have a lot more to catch up on!
At first I really had a lot of stuff to do so that I didn't get the chance to blog more but then I also didn't really want to finish the post, because it made me a little sad thinking about everything again!

I had so much fun on our trip and the whole rest of the year so that it's really hard to just finish it up like that.

Anyway. 'The hardest part' was going back to Germany, not knowing when I come back to America (it's definitely a 'when' and not an 'if' though!).

I was pretty busy with packing my 3 suitcases - which I started doing about a week before I left. And even though there were 3 suitcases with lots of room I still had tons of clothes I gave to Holly and Hope because I just couldn't take them with me :)

My last Sunday at church and Youth Group made me pretty sad. I asked Josh if I could come up front during Youth Group to thank everybody and say goodbye. When I did that everybody gathered around me and prayed for me and that already made me cry :(
Thinking about it again right now makes me wanna go back right now - especially with school starting tomorrow :D

On Wednesday we had a Goodbye Party for me which was pretty amazing! I have no clue how many people came to say goodbye but there were a lot and it was so nice to see everyone ones more before I left!

That night I finished up packing everything while Mitch was playing XBOX 360. I asked him when we will leave and he really freaked me out when he said 8 AM. We ended up leaving at 7 and that was totally enough time but still made me worry a little that I might miss my plane which took of at 10:56AM (you now being there 2 hours earlier made it 8:56 plus driving for about 1 1/2 hours is 7:26 and then usually you should plan with traffic so I would have left at 6 xD) Anyhow we were just fine and not that I would have complained if I missed it and would have had to stay in America a little more :)

I felt a little sick that morning and like I would throw up every moment (probably because of all the emotions...) so I decided to sleep on the way to Minneapolis.

Arriving at the airport I checked in my suitcases and then we still had some time to take pictures - which you can see on Steph's blog :) Then it was time to say goodbye which was definitely the 'hardest part' of the day and the worst goodbye I ever had! Not knowing when you see your family again really isn't fun at all!

When I walked down to my gate I was crying pretty bad and a airport person even asked me if he could help me somehow. I was so messed-up I forgot to go through the security check correctly: I left my shoes and belt on, didn't take my laptop out of my bag at first, didn't empty out my pockets...
Oh dear I made some people mad :)

I bought an 6-hour-energy-shot because I forgot to buy one earlier. It's good to have when you have such a long way to go and don't want to be sleepy when you arrive :)

Then I went to my gate (E6) and waited till it was boarding time. I sat next to a woman who was really nice and we talked a lot about being an exchange student etc. It was nice talking to her and it kept me from being to sad. She had EarPlanes and said she would give me her extra pair if I wanted it. It helped so much and I was really glad she gave them to me.

In Chicago I went straight to my gate because I was afraid to miss my flight like I almost did coming to the US. I met another exchange student from Germany who was there with Rotary and a missions group who went to Ukraine for 3 weeks.
In the airplane I was sitting right in front of the 'wall' between the business and economy class so I had a lot of room for my legs :D I wasn't able to watch the movies or anything because we didn't have a screen in front of us but I just watched a couple movies on my iPod :)

Arriving in Germany I had to wait a little long to get all my suitcases and my saxophone but once I had it I got to my family really quick! My parents, my brother and my aunt and uncle picked me up and it was a fun way back home!

Well now I'm home for over a month already and it's weird thinking about heading back to my German school tomorrow. I also started having driver's lessons so I can get my license as soon as possible. Fun times!

Again I will recommend Steph's blog post about me leaving on July 28th! 

The hardest part

On the road again

Our trip was awesome!

The first stop was visiting Mitch's grandma in Yuma, Colorado. It was really cool with all the open area around. Steph said: 'When anybody tells you again the world is too populated tell them to go to Colorado.'
I won't write really detailed in general just because I have so much to post about otherwise and I don't want to sit here for four hours and write everything down. Steph did a really good job describing what we did during our trip so I will just link her post. So this is her blog post about Yuma.

Eden's and my room at Grandma Lungwitz' house

So much wide open space in Colorado :)

After Yuma we drove to Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains (still Colorado). There we had the Theis family reunion with about people. It was the family from Mitch's grandparents (his dad's parents) and down. Steph's post
It was really cool to meet everybody and get to know 'my whole family'. I'm so glad I decided to extend my stay for a month because otherwise I would have left on June 23 and wouldn't have been able to meet all of them.

After the family reunion we left to go to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. It was incredible! Here are Steph's Blogposts: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

Well okay originally I wanted to also upload my pictures from the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone, but I don't have enough room on my laptop to even have a preview of my pictures when I double click on them so it's really hard to post them... sorry. Maybe I will eventually when my laptop is fixed but I can't promise that... we'll see I guess :)

Anyway the song was Mitch's idea. He told me about it while we were driving to Yellowstone and I like it a lot!

On the road again

The Little Things

...that will happen soon!

Tomorrow at 4am we will leave to go on our big family trip to Colorado where we have a Family Reunion! We will also travel around after that (Yellowstone, etc.). I am so excited to be able to see more of the US before I leave!

Three days after we come back I will leave for Sonshine (July 13-16), a christian music festival where Skillet, Switchfoot and lots of other cool bands - all in all there are 100 I think...

I'm very excited for all that!

Alright I have to pack the rest of my stuff for tomorrow now!
"See" you in July.

The Little Things 

Give me your eyes

Operation St. Cloud was great!

I'm really sorry that I didn't post about it earlier, but I just never felt very motivated to write everything down. If you read Steph's Blog you already know that it was a really great idea. It was basically a missions trip but we did all the ministry work in St. Cloud. We stayed about 20 minutes from town in the Riverside Resort in Richmond, Minnesota.
The five girls of our team, Kenna, Kaitlin, Katie, Rachel and I, stayed in Cabin 14 and the 7 boys, Jordan, Will, Darris, Colton, Trey, Caleb and Josh stayed in Cabin 10.

We left on Monday at 11am from Calvary... well actually that's when we met there to pack everything up so we probably didn't left until 11.45. We head out to go on a Prayer Drive - we stopped at the Dream Center, Downtown in front of the Court House , Federal Building and Catholic Church; St. Cloud Hospital, Place of Hope, and at Southside Park where we did the VBS. We then also walked around and handed out flyers to kids for our Vacation Bible School. We then went to our Cabins where we unloaded everything, played volleyball (lots of fun!), ate, took showers, talked about the next day: what we would do for VBS etc., and we had Devotional Time and a Camp Fire.

A 'normal' day looked kind of like this:

  7.30am Getting up and ready
  8.30am Breakfast
  9.00am Devotional Time
10.00am Prepare Lunch Bags
10.30am Leave the Resort and drive to St. Cloud
11.00am Set up for VBS
11.30am Go out and ask kids to come
12.00pm Start playing with the kids
12.30pm Do the craft and snack after that the drama and lesson
  1.00pm Pack everything up and drive to Lake George for Lunch
  2.30pm Leaving the Park and going to the Dream Center
  6.30pm Heading back to the cabins

What we did at the cabins kind of changed in time every day but we basically discussed what we did so far and what we wanted to do the next days.

I really enjoyed the whole 'Operation' :)

Give me your eyes

Everything Burns

First of all the lyrics don't really fit, but the title totally does!

I have a huge, very bad sunburn on my legs and arms :(
I decided to go outside to read my book Wuthering Heights (thanks Laura for borrowing it to me), because it was only about 75°F - compared to the 100°F from Tuesday - I thought it wouldn't be so super warm that I would get a sunburn... well bad thinking.

I think I had about 2 hours total of sleep last night because I can't sleep on my tummy, but my sunburn is mostly on the back of my legs so sleeping on my back wasn't really comfortable either.

It's burning a lot and it's really, really, really red :(

I tried taking pictures, but they don't look anything like it really is. I also wasn't really motivated to keep taking pictures until I have a "real" one :D

Everything Burns

Glorious Day

Last Friday and Saturday - so two glorious days actually - I stayed at Laura's house.
Mitch took me over there at around 5 or 6pm and pretty soon we walked to Dairy Queen because it was so hot outside! It was great!

When we were home we started watching Mamma Mia! and later on The Lake House. We had so much fun and I think we finally fell asleep at around 1.30am :D

The next morning she had a hard time waking me up ^^ She said she let her alarm ring, put it on music, she played music on her phone and hold it next to my head, and then she eventually poked me and I woke up. It was funny because I just put all her other waking-kathi-up-attempts in my dream. So when she played music, I was listening to it in my dream and when the alarm clock went of I just dreamed that some random alarm clock went off - but definitely not mine :) I told that next time she should just start playing songs from my cell phone because those are the ones that I use as an alarm and I will be up right away.

Anyway, we had breakfast (outside!) and we then started to work in her garden. It was fun! I watered all her flowers and sprayed water on her too :)

It is so incredibly hot lately and there are way too many Minnesota State Birds around! It's always somewhere between 70°F-95°F (21°C-35°C).

At about 12.30 we stopped and took showers and got ready to leave and go downtown. We rode the bus which took us about 4 minutes. We walked around and stopped at a couple antique stores - I just love them they always have so much fun stuff!

Anyways at 2 o'clock I had an appointment with Jodi to get my hair cut. It just got to annoying - to long, so super warm around my neck now since it's so warm, but still to short to be able to put it all up in a pony tail!
I told Jodi that I want it short and she asked me 'How short?'. I told her to just cut it really short :D She said 'Okay, I like that that's so much fun.' (just cutting, she said it's more art that way.) She is so funny.

I really like this new haircut! My last one was exactly 3 months ago (March 4) on Saturday.

I tried to take pictures of the new haircut but I really don't like them so you'll have to wait until there is a good picture :D

Glorious Day

Inner Peace

Okay Sally, since you decided not to pick up your phone and didn't let me talk to you, I will have to write this blog post for your birthday!

Happy Birthday Japaner!

I enjoyed our time together at Apollo sooo much. It is just so funny to be around you. You are one of the best friends I've ever had and I want to thank you for being such a great person :)

I will never forget the time that we spent together:

• all the Pep-Band events
• going out to eat with Tony
• concerts
• band rehearsals
• A-lunch during Trimester 2
• the car ride to the school and home
• Graduation
• the Graduation Party
• the different dances
• Kung Fu Panda 2
• and all the time that we will hopefully spend together before I leave :)

I'm so glad I got to teach you some German and I just love listening to your German talking! I'm proud of you for learning sooooo quickly it was just crazy how fast you picked everything up and started talking to me in German so that I couldn't answer because I already forgot my German :D
I hope you'll have fun with my German dictionary!

Deutsche and Japanerin :)

Stay as awesome as you are my little Panda!
I know I will miss you a lot so don't you EVER forget me - you promised to come visit me in 3 years!

Ich liebe dich :)

Inner Peace

P.S.: I promise you, you are good enough to sit in THAT classroom, you won't have to watch everybody through the windows and wait to go to the dummy classes with the scary special teacher ;)

P.P.S.: I love the way you pronounce the German 'ch'!

Hope Always

The pictures that the photographers took at our graduation are finally online.

I wanted to order the plaque and put a Bible verse on it. Now I have a maximum of 60 characters that I can use, so a lot of my favorite ones are already out. I try to only take part of the verse, but it's not really working.

For example, I really like Psalm 32:10:

Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.

For that one I would be able to put "But steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD" on the plaque.

Or Hebrews 13:6

The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?

For that one "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what can man do to me", would be what I can put on it...

Well there are a couple of others and I thought it would be fun to make a poll about it :)
So I will do that and in case you have any other ideas, PLEASE comment on this post!

Thanks!

Hope Always

On my way

Graduation was awesome!
In case you couldn't watch it and you really want to you can click on 'alt play' on this page :)

I can't believe I'm done with my high school year now! It was so much fun getting to know all these people and to see what school in America is like.
It's also really weird to already have summer vacation now since they start in 2 months in Germany and I'm really not used to getting out of school this early :D

Anyway, the graduation ceremony was great and I totally love the speeches!

The senior speaker Adam Logeman

On Thursday morning we all met at Apollo at 8:20 for the senior breakfast and the slideshow and we then went to the Civic Center to rehears the ceremony - how we were supposed to walk, what order, what to do at what point of time, stuff like that. When we were done it was about noon and Tony, Sally and I went to have lunch together at an Asian restaurant. It was so much fun! Since Tony is an exchange student from Japan and Sally's mom is Japanese, Sally and Tony usually talk Japanese to each other and it's just so funny to guess what they are talking about :D

We then went back home and at 7pm we had to meet at the Civic Center again to line up. The ceremony actually started a little late I think and lasted about two hours. Each person had a card with their name on that we handed the teacher that was supposed to read our name. I crossed my real name out and spelled it KAH-TA-RINA BOH-NEN-CAHMP (instead of Katharina Bohnenkamp) so that she knows how to pronounce it :)

Giving her my name card

Receiving my certificate (instead of a diploma)

Since I am an exchange student and by far didn't get enough credits to really graduate I got a certificate instead of a High School Diploma :)
After that we all met outside in a different hall (were we lined up alphabetically before the ceremony) to congratulate everybody and to take pictures.

Caleb and I after the ceremony

My certificate

And again!

We got a very pretty case for the diploma and certificates with "St. Cloud Apollo High School" on the front, then when you open it Apollo on the top and the certificate/diploma on the bottom. My certificate says:

This certifies that

Katharina Bohnenkamp
has earned a total of twelve Senior High School Credits as prescribed 
by the Board of Education, and in recognition thereof is awarded this 
Certificate
In Witness whereof, our signatures are hereunto affixed.
Given at St. Cloud, in the State of Minnesota,

This month of May, 2011

Elle and Kim came :) SO nice to see them there

Jillayne :)

Sally - my funny half-japanese friend :)

Tony - my full-japanese friend :D

Tony, me and Sally

Melissa, Jillayne and Allison

Savannah and me

Kenzie and me

And my choir teacher :)

After that we drove back home so I could change clothes and Mitch then took me to Apollo for the Senior Lock in. It was soooo much fun! When you arrived they gave you 10 tickets and 10 'Eagle Bucks' (our school mascot is Eagle...). With every ticket you could play games to win more 'Eagle Bucks'. Every 'Eagle Buck' brings you 10 tickets but you also could buy a raffle ticket for 10 ' Eagle Bucks' or prices. I bought about 22 different raffle tickets and a $5 gift certificate for Crafts Direct (that was 10 'Eagle Bucks'), a bracelet (20 'Eagle Bucks') and 2 "Free Pancake Dinner with Beverages" gift certificates for Perkins (20 'Eagle Bucks').

At 2:30am the games and karaoke stopped and they gave away all the prizes, we played Deal-or-No-Deal and there was a Hypnotist Show. At 5am it was over and Sally gave me a ride back home. So I was home at 5.30am and I eventually fell asleep at 6.20. It was crazy but lots of fun :)

On my Way