Marquette

"Maria the coldest she's ever been!"

Oops, I made you wait a week again. I apologize. Got a lot to do.
Last week started pretty awesome. Courtney and I got up on Monday, got ready for school and were almost about to go out and wait for the bus when Courtney asked Sheila, rather joking than being serious "Mom, would they cancel school if it's too cold outside?" So Sheila said "Well, you know what, actually..." and turned the TV on. And, oh glory, there it was - pretty much every school around here was canceled! Well, it was understandable, because it WAS freezingly cold outside. Including the wind shield, there were temperatures below zero. Fahrenheit. I don't even want to convert that into degrees Celcius.
Wednesday probably contained the highlights of the entire week. When 4th Hour started, Mr Dakmak told us that we'd have to go down to the Media Center for some ACT preparation stuff online. He also apologized because since that preparation stuff was timed, we wouldn't be able to go to B-Lunch but would have to go to C-Lunch instead. I was SO happy, I almost jumped out of my seat screaming :D So we did that stupid preparation stuff (practising the ACT essay part, and a computer scores it... how can a computer score an essay?? I got a stupid 3, so if it was the realy ACT, I would have just failed the essay part. Oh well. Stupid computer.) and then, we went off to C-Lunch. I found Gary, Autumn, Randy and Eric right away and we were soon joined by Ashlynn and Garrett (whose seat I had stolen). Kyle sat close to them, too. It was the most fun lunch period I ever had. I can't even say why. It just was.
Then, after school, I stayed because I had flute sectionals at 4. Unfortunately, I hadn't eaten much at lunch because I wasn't hungry (and so I gave my lunch to Randy who was desperately hungry) so by now, I was veeery hungry. So I decided to call Gary who turned out to be hanging out at his grandma's house with Autumn and they came to pick me up and go to some place to eat. Well, they didn't really eat much. I did. Sooo hungry.
We ended up at some McDonald's and it was fun. Just like it is always fun and totally amazing to hang out with them.
Courtney and I had Friday off, I don't exactly know why. Maybe because it was President's Day on... Monday? Oh well. So Sheila took the little ones out of school on Friday and we left early for our trip up to Marquette on the Upper Peninsula (UP) to where Doug works every now and then in winter and had been working during the last week, so he was already up there. After a 7-hour drive through more and more snow the further north we got and after passing the Mackinaw bridge over the partially frozen Lake Michigan somewhere in between, we arrived up there at Doug's working place. Over the weekend, we stayed at a vacation apartment. It was a two story apartment with 3 bedrooms. I shared one with Michaela and Grayson, Courtney shared with Jake. Friday night, we went to a place where we watched the start of a dog sled race, that was pretty cool but really cold as well. Sheila took a picture of me with the comment "This is Maria the coldest she's ever been!" That was probably true. Later, we went to a very nice and cosy place to have dinner.
On Saturday, we went back to Doug's working place and he showed us the building, the garage and even the test track. He drove us around on it in one of the test cars. It was fun to ride around on a huge ice field and through the snow :) (Mom, you wouldn't have liked it). After that, we went to the Northern Michigan University where they had some event going on in the stadium with lots of activities for the little ones to do. That was nice. And WARM ^^. The last thing we did that day was to go out to a place where we walked about a mile through a forest to some ice caves. It seriously looked like a frozen waterfall. That was so cool. And the walking kept us all very warm.
On Sunday, we went tubing - God, that was awesome. The Germans probably all know it from the American movies we get over there... you know, when they sled down hills in those big black ring thingies? It is sooooo much fun. And the guy at the bottom of the hill who hooked the tubes up to the lift when we went back up was pretty hot :P

On Monday, which was yesterday, we left the apartment and went back to the Lower Peninsula but stayed pretty far up North at the cottage of friends. Actually, I wouldn't call it a cottage. It was huge. It had a huge basement, 2 stories and biiig rooms. It is such a beautiful house. We stayed there overnight, Courtney and I sleeping on a very comfy sleeping couch in the basement, and today we left to do the last part of the journey.
So now, I'm back home again, and I still got one more day off tomorrow.

And in only a month, I will be in nice, HOT Florida!