Florida

"PALM TREEEEE!"

I am back from Florida! And I had a really amazing time.
On Tuesday, March 18, Courtney and I did not go to play practise (did I tell you that she's now in the play, too?) but went right home on the bus. At home, we had five minutes to clean up some left stuff in our rooms and change into comfy clothes for the 17-hour-ride. Then we got in the car with Sheila and Doug and headed out to St. Thecla to pick up the little ones from school. Sitting in the car for 17 hours was fine in the beginning but late in the night, when I just couldn't fall asleep because I couldn't find a position to get comfortable in the very backseat anymore, it did get pretty hard. When I finally switched with Courtney a little while before dawn and sat in the middle seat, I finally got a little sleep for about 2 hours.
I woke up around seven and the first thing I saw was a group of palm trees by the roadside going past my window. I felt like jumping, dancing and screaming "PALM TREEEEE!" (a feeling that occured every time I saw a palm tree during the entire vacation). After two more hours we arrived in Daytona at our hotel for the first night. It was a Holiday Inn right at the beach. After checking in, we put our bathing suits on and went down to the outside pool area that was connected to the beach by a set of stairs. It was so cool. I hadn't realized before how much I had missed the beach and the sea. I didn't swim in the ocean because they have sharks and nasty stuff like that down there, but I walked in the water which felt really nice. Later, I went in the pool for a little while and then we just lay in the sun on our chairs and I finally got some sleep. I got sunburned - I didn't think about putting sunscreen on.
The entire day was very calm and relaxing. In the afternoon, the college kids that were still on Spring Break started coming out of the hotels and filled the pool areas and the beach... Uuuuh there were some hotties out there! ^^ We had dinner in the hotel's restaurant and as we were sitting outside next to the pool area, eating, I see these three guys sitting down by the pool (mid-twenties, I'd say) and they have Jaegermeister towels and German stuff written on them and I felt like I heard them talk German although I wasn't sure. I told Sheila, and, open as she is, she got up and asked them whether they were German ^^ So I talked with one of the guys for a while - in German - and found out that they came from southern Germany and Austria and were on a vacation trip around the South of the US and Mexico. It was pretty funny.
The next day, we got up early and checked out to go to Disneyworld in Daytona. We planned to be there by 9, but the traffic was unexpectedly bad so it took us longer to get down there. We went to Epcot, which is one part of the humongous park. Although it was raining on our way there, it became a beautiful day - it was sunny and actually pretty hot. Unfortunately, the waiting lines for the two biggest attractions - the test track and "Soarin'" were always around 2 hours long, so we didn't do those, but we did do a lot of other fun stuff. The coolest thing was that they had a world showcase around a little lake - several countries were represented in miniature-villages, and Germany was there too! It looked very Southern, and everything was in German, even the employees in that area were German! They had a shop with German chocolate and candy, and we bought a lot there...
After a fun day in the park, we went back up to St. Augustine, where we stayed in another Holiday Inn for one night because we couldn't check in to our condo until the next day. When we had breakfast in the hotel in the morning, I thought I heard the people on the table next to ours speak German (I swear that one girl said "Wo sind die grossen Teller?") but I thought I was paranoid by now, so I didn't tell Sheila about it.
Our condo was very close to the beach (5-minute walk) and from the backdoor, you could see the pool area in the middle of the apartment buildings. It was furnitured in light colors - really pretty - and had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. One bedroom and bathroom for Sheila and Doug, the other set for us kids. Courtney and I got the two beds - hehe - and the little ones shared a big air mattress. From pretty much every window, you could see palm trees somewhere - PALM TREEEEEEEEEES!!
The first day after checking into our condo we spent unpacking and getting settled and while Sheila and Doug went grocery shopping a little later, Courtney and I took the kids to the pool.
On the second day, we went to two humongous outlet malls - one was an inside mall, the other one, which was also the bigger one, an outside mall. We didn't get to finish our way through the outside mall, but I still made a lot of really good deals and spent a lot of the money I got from my mom a while ago. I got some underwear, a pair of plaid shorts, a pair of short grey sweats that say "Lucky" on them, a green top, a Pirates of the Carribbean shirt at the Disney store, two pairs of Vans slippers (sorry Oliver, I didn't know your size so I didn't get you a pair - just let me know your size and I'll get you a pair of Vans or Chuck Taylors somewhere before I come back in June), finally THE perfect purse (it's ORGANIZED! I can find stuff in it!), and an outfit for Easter Sunday (a very cute white dress with light green and light purple stripes and white, matching flip flops). And everything was pretty cheap.
On Easter Sunday, we went to 7 am mass (because 9 am mass is way too packed) and afterwards, the little ones went on their Easter egg hunt around the condo. We had breakfast, and then all of us kids had a silly string fight (because everybody got a can of silly string in their Easter baggies). It was a lot of fun, we emptied it all and got it all over each other. The rest of the day we kind of just relaxed out by the pool in the sun.
On Monday, we finished our tour through the outlet mall, and I got another pair of shorts (brown) and a new bikini (brown with white dots, the top is reversible and has brown and white stripes on the other side) at Aeropostale, again, pretty good deals.
One day, I don't exactly remember which, we went downtown to visit the old Spanish fort of St. Augustine (it was a military base centuries ago). Later, we had lunch downtown. I had some reaaaally good shrimp. I also bought a shell ring in one of the little stores downtown.
On Wednesday, a couple that is friends with my parents and has two adorable little twin girls arrived in St. Augustine and visited us. We spent the day at the pool and had dinner together in the condo later.
On Thursday, they joined us again for a boat ride in the bay by St. Augustine (or was it a river?? I don't even know but it opened to the ocean). We even saw dolphins in the water! In the afternoon, we went to the beach for a while and at night, we went out to dinner at a seafood place. Again, I got shrimp - I just love shrimp. It was sooooo good.
On Friday, we had to leave again -unfortunately. The ride was hard, again, and again, I couldn't really sleep.
We got back home around 2.30 in the morning and the first thing we saw when stepping out of the car was snow - awwww.
Yesterday, we unpacked and re-adjusted a little bit to Michigan, all in all a calm day. We went to Grandma Tina's for dinner with her and GG, it was yummmmmy. Today, we went to church for noon mass and afterwards, we went to Gino's for brunch. Their buffett is really good.
Later, Sheila, Courtney and I went grocery shopping, and back home, Courtney and I spent about one hour doing Pilates with the help of Sheila's Pilates DVD. It was a really good workout, and we have plans to do that every day from now on.
Oh, by the way, the ACT stuff went pretty good. It was kinda cool with only the Juniors in the school too, I spent the time between tests with Heather and sometimes Amy. It's gonna take a while until I get the testing results. I think I did good though.

Pilates rocks!

Festival, the Last Snow Day, and Maunz's Visit

Ooops, no post in a long time again. I'm sorry. I'm busy.

So on Friday, February 29th, I went home after school to change and then get back to school for the band festival thing. At home, I realized that nobody was there to give me a ride back to the school, so I made Gary drive me (again). At the school, we had to wait a while and then we boarded the buses and went to some Junior High School about an hour away I think. There, we were introduced to "our" room (the workshop). After a little more waiting and vocal run-throughs, we finally went to the warm-up room, warmed up, and went out on the stage afterwards to perform our 3 pieces. Right after that, we went to the sightreading room. Sightreading means that we get 2 pieces of music that we've never seen before, Mr Hilton has a few minutes to explain them to us very fast, we have to remember everything he tells us, and then we play. Sounds hard, isn't actually that bad.
We got an overall 1, which is the best score. It was really a fun night.
Gary picked Claudia and me up from the school later with his friend Matt (a hottie :D) and on our way to my house, we stopped at McDonald's and got fries and delicious greenshakes.
Saturday night, I babysitted Jake and Grayson while Courtney babysitted somewhere else. On Sunday, I didn't really do anything.
The following week was rather unexciting. Wednesday, we had another snow day. Technically, this one was the last one because L'Anse Creuse only gets 4 per school year. So, if there has to be another one, we'll have to go to school one more day in summer. That'd really suck. So the snow better stops now.
On Thursday, I went bowling with Kyle, Heather, and Aimee again. This time, Adam, who turned out to be one of my Precalc classmates, went too. It was, again, a looooot of fun.
Friday was a very awesome day. We only had a half day, and when we got home, Courtney and mom had to go to Courtney's eye doctor appointment right away. So I was home alone, and I decided to clean the house while they were gone to make mom happy and to thank her for everything she's always doing for me :) It worked, she was very happy.
Around 5, Maunz and her family got here! Her parents and brother are in Michigan right now, visiting her, so they came on Friday to visit me. We went out for dinner and then, Maunz's family went to their hotel while she stayed here. We watched a movie with my family and later, we went to Taco Bell with Gary which was hilarious. The two of them had to meet, they're 2 of my very best friends! It was very awesome.
Maunz and I spent the rest of the night watching TV in the basement until we fell asleep.
The next day, the Hullmanns picked us up and we went to Detroit to visit the Detroit Science Center. It was kinda cool. In the afternoon, we came back to Harrison Township and had dinner at the Old Country Buffet - very yummy. Then, unfortunately, they had to leave and go back to Jackson again.
Sunday was rather unexciting again, and so was today. Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday I will have to take the ACT.

I'm kinda nervous about that.

What Happend During the Past Week

Yea I'm getting a little lazy about my blog... I apologize... again...

So, what happened within the last 7 days?
I don't even remember what I did on Friday. On Saturday, I had a band rehearsal from... I think 4 pm to 6.30. It was the rehearsal with Dr Holsinger who is the composer of one of the pieces we're playing. He's so awesome! He kinda looks like a little Santa Clause and is soooo energetic and nice and kind and funny... We thought he'd be scary since he's so famous in the band world but he never yelled at us and really gave us some awesome tips on how to improve certain passages in the song. The entire flute section loves him. He's so cute.
After rehearsal, Gary gave me a ride home and mentioned that he was going to Autumn's house. I had to check with my parents whether I could go first so I went home first, had dinner, and then Gary picked me up again. Since he and Autumn were hungry, we went to Taco Bell first where we had a lot of fun watching a really weird candy-selling guy who kept talking to himself or his candy or who knows what imaginary person. Twizzlers were also involved, bought from the candy man, and real life pacman. Too hard to explain, you'd have to have been there. After a while we got the amazing idea to go to a dollar store and called a bunch of people to get them come with us but nobody understood why a dollar store is so amazing. Come on, what can be MORE amazing than a dollar store??? So we went to one and bought very ridiculous presents for several people (bunny ears for Eric - that is related to a story -, fish nets for Ross, glow-in-the-dark footprint stickers for Justin, a ladybug I don't even know what it was thingy for Mr Curtis, ...). It was hilarious. We dropped the bunny ears off at Eric's house (he wasn't there because he was at his dad's over the weekend) and then we went to Autumn's house. A couple minutes later Justin, Ross and Eric got there too, they had been at the movie theatre before. Justin and Ross received their presents and Ross managed to rip the fish nets right away when he put them on... yea you can probably tell that we had a LOT of fun.
On Saturday, I had to be at JAPAC (John Armstrong Performing Arts Center, where the stage of our school is and where we have all kinds of school performances) at 4 pm and we rehearsed again and got ready for the concert. It went okay and was a lot of fun with Dr Holsinger. He actually wrote an entire new song for our Wind Symphony and Sunday was the premier night. "The Maelstrom" is an amazing piece. We were all very impressed.
I don't think anything too exciting happened on Monday or Tuesday.
Then yesterday, we had flute sectionals for the last time. I got home afterwards around 5.30, had dinner with my family and grandma, who was there, and then around 7.30 I left again when Kyle, Heather and Aimee picked me up to go bowling. It was such a fun night. I also had my first Coney Hot Dog ;)
There's another new development recently. I might have mentioned that the ACT, a standardized test that every Junior at my school has to take, is coming up in the second week of March. I didn't really plan on doing extra practice stuff for that but then Sheila told me that you can actually put four colleges on the test form and then your score is sent to those colleges, and if it is really good, they might even offer you a scholarship. That definitely gave me huge motivation to practise for the test and I'll have an appointment with my counselor soon where I'll ask her about the SAT, another test that you can take and that the colleges look at even more. This week the Juniors had gridding which means filling out the information sheets for the test (name, birth date, adress, interests, future plans, ... so many questions and hundreds of bubbles to fill in). On there, we also had to put 4 colleges that we want to get our scores sent to. I put 4 colleges with very good engineering on there. My 1st and 3rd choice are in California, which is where all the good engineering schools are, my 2nd choice is Michigan Tech, and my 4th choice is in Chicago I believe, another Technology institute. I'm not planning or relaying on this in any way yet, don't worry... but it might be a chance and you know me - I take the chances I get.

Who knows what's gonna happen, you can always try...

My Day Off

It was pretty cool. And funny.

So Wednesday, I got up pretty early (considering I didn't have school). I was done with showering and everything around 10 am, cleaned my room, practised my flute and all that...
Around... 11, I think, I called Gary to see whether he wanted to hang out. So we ended up with the plan that he would pick me up and we'd go to Eric's house as soon as Eric had gone out and got Dynasty Warrior 6, a Play Station 3 game that just came out yesterday and that, according to Gary, the two of them had been waiting for for several years. A couple doubts about the plan appeared about an hour later when Eric locked himself out of his own house. Fortunately, he found his window to be unlocked after 30 minutes and got in.
I waited until Sheila got home shortly after 1 pm (she had asked me to not leave while she was gone because Courtney's boyfriend Jake was going to come over and she didn't want she two of them to be home alone) and then I called Gary who had just arrived at Eric's house and now turned around again to come and get me. Yea, he drives me around way too much. But he hates it when I say that. He says it doesn't matter. Gary's awesome.
So we hung out at Eric's house for a while with Eric and Justin, playing Dynasty Warrior 6 (I did one attempt after being persuaded by the guys that even if I sucked as much at video games as I said, I couldn't do anything wrong if I just permanently pressed the square button. I actually survived through almost the entire level I think, which was not bad).
We left around 3.30 or 4 and after driving around aimlessly for a little while, Gary and I ended up at McDonald's to get some food for Gary and a diet coke for me. A little later we went to my house to play some Wii which was a lot of fun because little 5-year-old Grayson beat the very video game experienced Gary in Wii bowling. Then after dinner, Gary regained his self confidence by beating Jake in PS2 Need For Speed. Hehe.
Overall, a fun day.
Starting today, Gary's driving Courtney and me to school. Awesome - we can actually sleep a little bit longer and we don't have to endure the long, annoying bus ride with about a million stops.

Concert weekend coming up. Lots of rehearsals. And I don't think we're ready yet.

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!

ALL THAT REMAINS!

Friday night was EPIC.

Wow, I haven't posted anything in a week... I'm sorry, time flies I guess!
So, nothing really interesting happened during the week. I had sectionals on Wednesday, we had our first AP Chemistry quiz that I got a 100% on - yay - and we also had a Precalc quiz that I did rather bad on ^^ (I got like, an 80 or something) but, oh well. It's still a B, and not that it matters anyways.
On Thursday, we had a snowday. So while Doug and the little ones went sledding, Sheila took Courtney and me to Macomb Mall. It was like heaven, everywhere they had so much on sale! I got a plaid blazer (mainly black, grey and brown with a little pink) at DEB for about $7, a reversible zip-up hoodie at Pac Sun for $30, two shirts at Max Rave for $10 each and two more shirts and two... well kinda French looking mini-jacket thingies for each $3 at Max Rave as well. Yay. The hoodie is white with black flower-print on one side and black with white print on the other. I got one black shirt that's kinda wide and flowing, one black, shiny satin blouse, one brown shirt and another brown and beige striped shirt. One of the Frenchy jackets has short sleeves, is rather short itself, has these two amazing big buttons and is dark grey. The other one is beige, has four of those big buttons and its sleeves go down to my ellbows.
The most amazing day of the week was definitely Friday. Right after school, I went to Gary's house with him and Chad. While Chad and I were waiting inside, he did something about the oil in his car. A little later, we took off to drop off Chad's and my school stuff at our houses and then we picked up Gary's friend Nick who, as I realized, is in my AP Chem and Precalc classes. Next, we went to Autumn's house where we also met her cousin Elizabeth, Eric and his girlfriend Ashlynn, a kid who's name was Chris I think and who knows who else was there. Later Justin got there and brought pizza and crazy bread so we ate and when Julian finally arrived, we got in the cars to go to the Majestic Theatre in Detroit. When we got there, the doors weren't open yet, so we had to stand outside in the cold for a little while. It was freezing but then they finally let us in.
The opening band was okay and Autumn started the first mosh pit :D but the really good time started when All That Remains came on stage. Those guys are just awesome. I had an amazing night, got a water shower and two beer showers and a couple bruises. EPIC. The singer was really hot... he took his shirt off which delighted us girls :D
The concert was over way too fast I think although it was actually pretty long. I think we left there somewhen around midnight. Again, I was in Gary's car with him, Nick, Chad and Julian. When we got to Harrison Township, we first dropped Julian off, then Chad, and then Gary took me home. It felt good to get out of those beer soaked clothes ;)
Yesterday wasn't as eventful but cool, too. Gary picked me up around 5.45pm and we went to Autumn's house for Garrett's birthday party. Eric, Ross, Elizabeth and Justin were there, too. We ate the cake Autumn made (it was really good), hung out doing random stuff, and around 9.30 or so we decided to go to Paco's for some Mexican food (Eric had left and when he passed Paco's and saw that it was still open, he called us to let us know.). Unfortunately they closed by the time we got there so we ended up going to Taco Bell where Ross ordered like a ton of food for all of us. We still almost finished it.
I had to leave around 10 so Gary took me home. I thought we'd go to chruch at 10am today but we ended up going to noon mass and afterwards, Sheila, Courtney, Michaela and I went to Grayson's basketball practise while Doug took Jake to his basketball game. Back at home, I talked to Chrissi on the phone :) The rest of the day was rather unexciting. Homework, dinner... you know how that works.
It's frickin cold outside. 5 degrees Fahrenheit, -20 if you add the wind. Tomorrow it's supposed to be -10, so I don't even want to think about wind.

Well, I gotta go to bed. Good night!

Wipe The Car Off My Snow

I had SO much fun last night.

So, I tried to change my schedule to not have Composition anymore and to hopefully get into C-Lunch, but the only classes that were still open for 4th Hour were classes like Design (okay, that might've been cool, but that means A-Lunch and A-Lunch was always way to early for eating) and... I don't even remember. Well, so I just kept my schedule the way it was. Gary tried to get into my 5th Hour Real Life Literature. He got into Real Life Lit, but he's with another teacher. That's just dumb. And Justin dropped out of my 5th Hour, so now I don't know anyone in that class except for those ex-Writing Workshop mates whom I don't really want to be with anymore. Well, it's gonna be fine. I'll meet people. Think positive, be a good exchange student.
B-Lunch turned out to actually be not so bad. When they realized on Monday that they messed up the lunches (C-Lunch was packed while B-Lunch was half empty), they changed some of them on Tuesday. So now, there are more band people in B-Lunch and so I'm sitting with Mary, Breanna, Chelsea and Nicole now. It's a cool table, we're having fun :)
Tuesday was Jake's birthday, he turned 10. We had brownies after dinner. He got a snowboard and a birthday party that he had yesterday from his parents. I gave him a Scooby Doo DVD. Tomorrow, we're going to celebrate with Grandma Tina, Uncle Bubba and Aunt Bridget I think. Tomorrow's also the Super Bowl, so we might watch that all together.
On Wednesday, I had my first flute sectionals. Sectionals are one hour practises with only the people of one section (e.g. trumpet section, percussion, flute section,...) and we have them once a week starting this week until... I don't even know. I think up until the concert on February 24th. It was pretty cool. I learned the fingering for the high G flat. Yay.
Gary gave me a ride home after sectionals (he had to pick up Claudia, she's in the flute section too) and in his car, he had a humongous Sweeney Todd movie poster that Randy had got me from the MJR theatre where he works and where whe watche Sweeney Todd. I love Randy :) that poster's frickin awesome.
All week, the weather channels and teachers told us about a big snow storm that was coming up and supposed to hit us Thursday night. The teacher's predicted we wouldn't have school on Friday. Unfortunately, we only got about 3-5 inches, so we didn't get a snow day. That was a little disappointing, but not too bad at first. When I got to the school though and realized that a lot of people just didn't come to school which meant that we didn't really do anything in any of my classes, I just really didn't want to be there anymore. I was so tired. People kept leaving the school just because it didn't make a lot of sense to stay but well, I can't just leave because YFU checks my attendance. And everybody who left unexcused got marked absent for a full day.
So I just sat in school the whole day doing nothing and then after school, I stayed for Jazz Band but ended up still sitting around doing nothing because instead of doing Jazz Band, Mr Conaton told us to practise Solo and Ensemble stuff. I don't do that, so I just hung out with people and had to wait until 4 when Doug came to pick me up. It wasn't as bad as the rest of the school day though because there were many band people around to talk to.
When I got home, I did Michaela's hair for her Daddy Daughter Dance which was last night. Since Courtney was at cheerleading and Sheila at Jake's birthday party (it was at a pool), I was the only one to do her hair. I love her hair :) I wish I had hair like hers.
While I was curling hair and talking to Michaela, Gary called me telling me that he was about to leave his Grandma's house (which is like right around the corner, almost) to go up to his parents' house for the weekend and asking whether I wanted to go with him to hang out at his house. Since my mom wasn't home yet and my dad was about to leave with Michaela, I had to stay with Grayson though. So I watched TV with him for a while and then Sheila came home with some pizza for dinner. After dinner, I asked her whether I could go to Gary's house and when she agreed, I called him and he drove all the way back here to pick me up ^^ He's awesome. I love him :)
So we hung out at Gary's last night, "we" meaning Autumn, Eric, Justin, Ross, Gary's cousin Tim, Gary of course and me. Most of the time, Gary's sister was with us, too. Not Claudia. The other one. I'm so bad at names. What we did was basically talking, doing crazy stuff and playing video games. And Uno.
I had an amazing night, it was so hilarious. When they shovelled the drive way before I came, they put all the snow on Eric's car and he was rather pissed about that :D while everybody else thought it was pretty funny. When later Autumn said "I'm really hungry right now" and somebody suggested that someone should go and fetch some food, Eric went (pretty annoyed) "If you wipe the car off my snow, I'll do it!" It took him a little while to realzise what we were laughing about :D
Someone found the head of a black baby doll in Gary's room, so we gave Justin some sharpies (permanent markers) and he made it the creepiest baby head ever. He's so frickin artistic. It's not even fair ^^
Eric got everyone laughing again with a very... SPECIAL... way of throwing an empty water bottle in a water bottle fight. And jumping for cover afterwards.
A little while before I head to leave, we started playing Uno ("Autumn, you don't know how to play UNO?? What kind of child hood did you have!" - Don't remember who said that. Eric, I think.). You won't believe me, but Uno can be HILARIOUS. If you leave the blank cards in a new and just opened deck.
Yea, those people are all pretty awesome.

Can't wait til the concert next Friday :)

New Start in a New Semester

First day of second semester. Not so sure about it... definitely had some hiiigh ups and some looow downs.

So first thing this morning in school, I had to go to my homeroom like on the first day of last semester. I got my schedule which I already knew (only new thing that I found out today was that I'm in B Lunch) and Mr Rhoda announced some of the boring general stuff. After the homeroom period, I went to AP Chemistry. I'm sure that's going to be a fun class. Mrs Garmo is fun, the people in there are fun (I actually know pretty many... Eboni, Allison, those 2 guys from Precalc...). I had fun :)
My second hour is still US History, still with Mr Tatum, but the cool part is that Finja is in my 2nd hour now! That is really cool. It'll definitely make this class more standable.
3rd Hour is Precalc. So I came in and, as planned before, sat down in the very last seat in the very left row (total opposite of the number 1 seat that Mr Curtis made me sit in almost the whole first semester), behind Randy. I really liked that seat. But, OF COURSE, Mr Curtis surprises us with assigning our seats on the very first day of the semester. He didn't do that in first semester. Gah. So I didn't sit with Randy anymore. Well, instead I sat surrounded by Eboni, Marina and Ben which is pretty cool, too. But still. It's just the principle. He can't do that on the first day. GAH.
When my 4th Hour, Composition with Mr Dakmak, started, I was really disappointed first. He doesn't seem to have any kind of humor at all. And when he told us what assignments we're going to be doing this semester, I realized that I'd done all of them except for a big one at the end of the semester in Writing Workshop already. Oh well. Hope we're just going to go deeper into it. The only two persons in that class that I know are Sarah and Brandon. They're both in band.
Then, the worst part of the day came. B-LUNCH. Seriously...

NO
SINGLE
PERSON
I
ASKED
WAS
IN
B-LUNCH.

EVERYBODY's in C-Lunch.
Luckily, I met Amy and the twins right by the cafeteria door and so I sat down with them. Brandon, who couldn't find anybody to sit with, joined us later, too. B-Lunch is half empty while C-Lunch is PACKED. It is just ridiculous and stupid. They should transfer Gary, Autumn, Garett, Randy, Katie, Keith and all those cool people to B-Lunch. Seriously. Wouldn't that be an amazing solution to this big problem? C-Lunch isn't packed anymore, B-Lunch is filled. Tadaaa. Maria is happy. Haha. Stupid.
The second half of 4th Hour (B-Lunch divides 4th hour) was better. We started an assignment and it actually does seem a little more demanding than the Writing Workshop stuff.
My 5th Hour this semester is Real Life Literature. When I first came into that class, I realized two of the guys I was in Writing Workshop with were in it. I thought I'd NEVER meet those guys again. Well, hoped, actually. But then Justin's also in that class which is cool, and the teacher, Mrs Purrett, seems to be pretty awesome. It's going to be fine.
I still have Band in 6th hour. Some people switched to 5th, some came in from 5th. Not that I mind. All band people are awesome.
Yea... so I really still don't know what to think about my schedule. The longer I think about it, the more unsatisfied am I. Although I also had good times today. I'll give it a try, for a couple days. If I still don't feel comfortable with it, I'll go talk to my counselor again.
After school, I had drama rehearsal. We did the prologue and the first act. I love the prologue :) it's all scary and dramatic and we all get captured by evil henchmen. I get tackled and thrown on the ground and then I get half-dragged off the stage :D It is so much fun.

Tomorrow's Jake's 10th birthday. Yay!

Finals

That was an easy week.

So from Tuesday to today, we only had school from 7.11am to 11am. NICE! Each day, we had two exams: 1st and 2nd hour on Tuesday, 3rd and 4th hour yesterday and 5th and 6th hour today.
I already got the grade from my Chemistry exam, it was something like a 96%. My final semester grade in Chemistry is going to be... I think it was 97%. Well, can't complain about that ;) and that'll get me into AP Chemistry.
US History was pretty much a joke :D Mr Tatum had given us this study guide after winter break and it had 81 questions on it, so somebody asked "So how many questions are gonna be on the final?" Mr Tatum goes "81." "So, are these the same questions??" And Mr Tatum just gave us a funny look. It WAS the same questions, even in the same order. Haha. How easy.
Drafting was stupid. Mr Caldwell gave us computer people one easy and one ridiculous assignment. I don't think any of us finished the 2nd one. Oh well, maybe Mike Clark did because he's a genius. Or because Gary told him how to do it. I handed in what I got so far, who cares, it's just Drafting. And I had an A during the entire semester.
Writing Workshop - easy. Some vocab, some multiple choice, a 10 sentence essay.
Precalculus was the only exam I was kind of excited for because it was the only at least partially challenging thing (well let's not say challenging, but at least this one required concentrated thinking). Wasn't too hard though either because it was all multiple choice. Hope I did good on that. It's the only grade I actually care about right now.
Band finals were tiring. It was hot in the band room, I was tired anyways, and it was my last exam before I could go home. We did all the major scales and then we did our one song over and over and over again. When we did the scales, Mr Hilton picked on several people and they had to play the scale we were on alone. Luckily, he didn't pick on me... probably because I was looking right at him and wasn't hiding behind my stand like some other people :D well or just because he was just nice and didn't want to embarrass me in front of the class ^^ I'm really not good yet. I'm working on it though.

Tomorrow, we have another day off, so I can get some GOOD sleep. I need it. Again.

Long Weekend.

Which means I finally got some good sleep :D

Yea so on Friday and Saturday, I just kinda studied a little and stuff, pretty lazy days...
Yesterday, Gary and Autumn came to pick me up around 4.30 and we went to Gary's house where we played Guitar Hero, other video games and GameBoy... later Garrett came over, we had spaghetti for dinner and then we left to go see Cloverfield at the movie theatre. The movie was good, but not as amazing as I had expected it to be. And it was really short.
Afterwards, we hung out at Gary's some more and later Eric came over, another one of Gary's friends, but that was when I had to leave and Gary brought me home.
It was a pretty awesome night with awesome people :)
Autumn had fun with crayons and her agenda :D and now we all have Myspace defaults drawn by her ;) (yeeea now you're all jealous that YOU don't have a Autumn-Myspace default!)
Today we didn't have school, it's Martin Luther King Junior Day. Tomorrow to Thursday, we're gonna have our Finals. I'm not too excited about it, it's gonna be boring.
Then after that, our 2nd semester begins... I finally got to change my schedule on Friday :) I will most likely have AP Chemistry, I will have US History, Precalculus, Composition, Real Life Literature and Symphony Band. Sounds harder than this semster which is GOOD. Bad thing is that I won't be in any classes with Gary anymore, he has a different Precalc hour. I hope I'll be in C lunch because pretty much all the people I know think that they're gonna be in C lunch.
Oh, and on February 8th, I'll go to an All That Remains concert with Gary, Autumn, Garrett, and more friends of Gary's in Detroit :) (I don't think any of you except for maybe Matthi who doesn't read this blog knows that band.)

Talk to you guys later, it's dinner time.

Last Week Before Finals

Not that it's really gonna be hard or anything...

So, Sunday was okay. First, I got up too early because I didn't know we were going to noon mass. Oh well. So then we went to mass (except for Courtney, she had to babysit), and afterwards mom and Grayson stayed at St. Thecla because Grayson had his basketball practice (he looks so cute in his wayyy over sized shirt ^^). Doug, Jake, Michaela and I went to another Catholic school where Jake had a basketball game. On the way there, we stopped for some food and I finally had my first Tim Horton's coffee! Yum... that's really one of the best coffees I ever had.
I had fun watching Jake's game, mom and Grayson joined us later, too. Edward, the South Korean exchange student friends of Sheila and Doug have right now, was there too and so was Daniella, another South Korean exchange student.
The week didn't start too well because I was already incredibly tired on Monday (I'm always tired, but I usually don't get THAT tired before Wednesday...) and so far, I didn't feel like catching up with my sleep so it gets worse every day.
This week we'll be reviewing in most classes for the finals next week. In Chemistry, Ms Potter gives me time to catch up with the AP stuff so I'll hopefully be able to get into AP for next semester. I showed her the German chemistry curriculum for 11th grade on Monday, and she started laughing and said, "We don't do that in high school. We don't do that until college." Oh well. Guess I'll have to review a lot in summer.
Jazz Band and Drama rehearsal are going on... it's a lot of fun. The play is gonna be awesome. And I get to hang out with Keith more :)
Yesterday was mom's birthday. Courtney and I gave her dark chocolate, tea, a scented candle and a coupon for a night off (meaning we will cook dinner for her and Doug and babysit the kids in the basement all night). She was happy :)
I signed up for a counselor appointment today, but there were so many people on that list that I probably won't get one until the end of the week. Dang it. I really need to figure out the whole stupid schedule thing. I wanna try to have her put me in Precalc 5th Hour, too... I know so many awesome people in there, I don't wanna be in 3rd or 4th like my schedule for 2nd semester says...

Well, I'll figure something out. And my counselor's pretty awesome.

Ups and Downs

More Ups though.

The week went on with drama rehearsals and Jazz Band. In Chemistry, I talked to Miss Potter about how I don't really learn anything new in CP Chemistry, and she talked to the teacher that teaches AP Chemistry and found out that I'd be able to switch to AP next semester. She's awesome, she said she'll give me next week to work on the stuff they're doing in AP right now while she's reviewing with the class for finals. That way I'll be able to hopefully get right in.
I wanted to change my schedule anyways... in my original schedule for 2nd semester I have CP Chemistry, US History, Precalculus, Symphony Band, Drawing and Composition which is an English class. Not sure about the order. I want to change CP Chemistry to AP Chemistry, unfortunately I'll have to keep US History because YFU wants me to, I'll keep Precalc, same for Symphony Band, I don't want Drawing anymore but a class instead in that I actually learn something (hopefully) and I might want a reading class as my English class instead of Composition which is writing. And I've had a writing class this semester. Although it was a dumb one.
I just need more school work so that I actually learn stuff and am prepared when I go back to Germany in summer. I'll have to review a lot anyways though...
On Thursday, I got an email from my dad. He's received a letter from YFU. With my flight date in it. I really didn't want to know it. I mean, of course I knew all the time that I'd have to go back at the end of June, but without a concrete date it seemed soooo far away... now I know that it's gonna be June 27th. That is pretty concrete. And scary. And makes me really really sad.
Today was my YFU mid winter meeting. It was okay and went by faster than the first meeting in the beginning of the year. One of the two area reps who led my group was Dawn who's the mother of Midori, the one Japanese girl I shared a room with in Chicago, and Karese, one of the girls that went to see Sweeney Todd with us. Finding that out was kinda funny. We talked about our expierences in the first half of the exchange year, talked about what to do better in the second half and all that. We also got to write a letter telling about our exchange experience, thanking the people that have become important to us here and kinda advertising a little for YFU. They are gonna send some of the best letters to local newspapers and they might get published. Well, let's see if mine gets published.
Maaaan now I got June 27th stuck in my head all the time :(

I don't want to leave. Not that I never want to go back. I just don't want to LEAVE.

Oh, note that there's a new extra on the right on the very bottom... for the Germans only, pretty much, cause it is in German.

Jackson!

... which is where I went last weekend.

School started again last Thursday and I'm already totally back into it. And already tired again.
On Friday, right after I got home from band, A.J. and Maunz arrived after some difficulties in finding my house. I showed them my awesome home here :) and then we left for Jackson.
First, we stopped at a gas station to get snacks and energy drinks. Then, we drove around in Harrison Township for a good half an hour looking for the high way... yeaaah I know by now I should really know how to get to the high way ^^ my bad...
We finally arrived in Jackson around 8 pm and went right to one of A.J.'s classmates' house. She's so funny, she's like 35 or so, married and has 3 kids and a super cute dog. We watched "Four Brothers" first and then "The Ring". All in all, a fun night.
Then we went to A.J.'s, went to bed and Maunz and I stayed up talking half the night.
The next day, we started getting ready around 10/10.30, Anne made us yummmmmy pancakes for breakfast and then we went to the library to rent some DVDs. Back at A.J.'s, Maunz and I watched "Marie Antoinette". Around 4.30 pm, we finally left to go to Stephen's house. It was amazing to get there, to see the house which still looks so familiar to me, and then Stephen's mom came out of the back door... :)
Inside the house, everything still seemed to be the same, except for a new sofa in the living-room. I even remembered in which kitchen cupboard the cups where!
Of course, typically him, Stephen wasn't there although A.J. had told him we'd be there by 5 :D He was still in Lansing, thinking about whether to buy a Banjo or not. Danielle and her fiance Darren weren't there, either. They all said they'd be there in about an hour so, after saying hi to Stephen's dad, we left again to get some stuff for making nachos and some pop. Back at Stephen's, I met Danielle and Darren for the first time. They are just as awesome as the rest of the family :) We talked and watched TV for a while and then, finally and somehow suddenly, Stephen stood there in the hallway, still in his coat. He doesn't seem to have changed a lot, I think he got a little taller and skinnier but he's still just as awesome and funny as he was more than 2 years ago. Like his parents, he was surprised about my change in looks though :D yea... I have to admit that I changed quite a lot.
We ate nachos, talked, watched "Back to the Future"... I enjoyed that night so much. Unfortunately, we had to leave around 10pm already because A.J. was tired and Stephen had to pack (he went back up to Canada on Sunday). But I'm definitely gonna see him again in summer, before I leave!!
We went back to A.J.'s where we watched "Corpse Bride" and then went to bed.
On Sunday, we left Jackson around 1 pm and I was home around 3. The weekend was definitely too short but I hope Maunz's gonna visit me soon - maybe in or after spring break, whatever works out.
The only bad thing about the weekend was that A.J. made me speak German all the time - that was difficult sometimes :D
Yesterday and today I had my first drama rehearsals, it was a lot of fun. The play's gonna be a lot of fun too!

8 more days til finals. People start studying. I haven't started yet... I'm not really scared or worried about it.

2008

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve was fun. During the day, we cleaned a lot, then we got ready and went to church for the 4 o'clock mass. It was packed. After church, Courtney's friend Emily came home with us - she spent the night. A little later, Ms Amber and her family came over. They have an exchange student now, too - Daniella from South Korea. All of us kids had pizza for dinner down in the basement. We spent most of the night playing Wii and keeping Baby Vito busy. I helped Grayson make all of his puzzles and had so much fun playing soccer with Vito :D it's so cute, he's running after the ball and kicks it pretty well already. "Bamla" or something like that means ball ;)
At about 10 to midnight we watched the New Year's Eve celebration at Times Square in New York on TV (pretty much like those New Year's Eve concerts in Germany) and when the countdown started, we ran upstairs to wish everybody a Happy New Year.
We kids got some anti-alcoholic champagne ;) everybody hugged everybody and we continued watching the show for a while. They don't really do fireworks here because a lot of it is forbidden. After another hour or so, Ms Amber and her family left and we all went to bed.
I had a lot of fun... although it definitely was kinda weird to not have my family or friends from Germany with me during the countdown.

2008! Oh my god, I can't really believe it...

Winter Break

Nice and lazy...

So I basically spent my winter break being reaaally lazy so far. Kinda nice sometimes but I'm definitely ready to go back to school and be busy again (and I know that then I'll miss these quiet times again :D).
On Friday night I went to the movies with Gary, his friend Garrett, Randy (he's in my Precalc class) and Randy's friends Alex and... oh man, just can't remember her name. It was a difficult name. Had never heard it before.
We watched Sweeney Todd, the new Tim Burton movie.
GO SEE IT!
It is so awesome... It's a cool story and Tim Burton definitely made a masterpiece out of it. He's amazing.
Basically, the movie is about this barber in London a long time ago who had a beautiful wife and a little baby girl, then the powerful judge of the city fell in love with his wife, banned the barber into a different country or something and takes the wife and the daughter. Years later, the barber comes back to London with the fake name Sweeney Todd to have his revenge... muaaaahaha. Not telling you anything else, you have to go see it. It's scary. And creepy. And partially funny. I LOVE it. It's my new favourite movie.
Today was a lot of fun. After I had come back from church with Sheila (everybody else went to church yesterday for the 4 o'clock mass), we got ready and then we went ice-skating on one of those public ice things. I haven't been ice-skating for more then a decade ^^ so I was figuring out how to do it most of the time but still it was just a lot of fun. Later, we had a hot chocolate there and then we went back home (watching Aquamarine in the car for the 1000000000th time... well, okay, the 3rd).
Tomorrow's New Year's Eve already... that's hard to believe. Another exciting, awesome year with so many important experiences is over. Mostly, I'm looking forward to 2008 though:

I'm gonna be in the school play, have 6 more wonderful months in the US, I'll have another concert with band, we're going to Florida during spring break, I'm gonna have lots and lots of more fun experiences here, after an extremely hard saying Goodbye here I'll meet a lot of people that I miss again, I'm gonna turn 18, I'll hopefully start driver's training and get my licence back in Germany, and who knows what other surprises God will have for me in the upcoming year!

Adventskalender

Zur Feier des schoensten Weihnachtsgeschenks ein Eintrag auf Deutsch! :)

Jaaa heute ist doch tatsaechlich der Adventskalender angekommen, den meine Mama schon Ende November abgeschickt hatte. Dass es ein Adventskalender war, wusste ich schon, das hatte ich mir so erraten. Dass es ein ganz besonderer ist, weil so viele Leute daran beteiligt waren, wusste ich auch schon, denn nachdem es schon so aussah, als wenn das Paeckchen verloren gegangen ist und nicht mehr ankommt, hat mir meine Mama ein bisschen was verraten.
DAMIT hatte ich aber ja nun gar nicht gerechnet!! :) Ich war davon ausgegangen, dass wohl hauptsaechlich meine Familie beteiligt ist und Chrissi, weil sie mal meinte, sie wuesste, was in dem Paket ist. Also mache ich den ersten Umschlag auf (da Advent ja nun schon vorbei ist, hab ich das ganze einfach als Weihnachtsgeschenk angesehen und alle auf einmal aufgemacht) und finde eine Karte von meinem Bruder und einen Brief von Guenter und Heike, worueber ich mich sehr gefreut habe. Als ich dann aber den zweiten Brief aufmachte und darin eine Karte von Fri fand, war ich natuerlich erstmal baff - wie hat Mama es geschafft Kontakt mit Fri aufzunehmen?? Sie kennt sie doch kaum, wenn ueberhaupt ^^ (spaeter wurde mir dann klar, dass Chrissi ihre Finger tuechtig mit ihm Spiel hatte :D wie Mama mir dann auch im 24. Brief erklaerte) Ich hab mich also tuechtig gefreut und dann den naechsten Umschlag aufgemacht, in dem ich ein suuupersuesses Foto von Nils und eine Karte von Nicole und Andre fand. Beim Aufmachen des vierten Briefs erkannte ich schon an der Schrift, dass die Karte von Simon kam, bestaetigt von dem "Hey Mary :P"... Wow, ich war echt ueberrascht und hab mich soooo gefreut und es nahm einfach kein Ende ^^
So viel von meiner Familie, meine Oma, Walter und Renate, Jochen, all meine Brueder...
Und dann Sabine, meine Reitlehrerin, und Traute, meine "2. Mama" ;)
Am meisten ueberrascht war ich vermutlich ueber die grosse Teilnahme meiner Freunde :) Da waren natuerlich Chrissi, Swenny und Eileen, Jana, Hoppi, Lisa und Lea, Freddyyyyyy :) und Theis, sogar Jens, Christian und Colja! Uuuuund Christopher!! Mensch, ich stand echt nur noch mit offenem Mund da und hab gelesen und gelesen...
Jetzt hab ich bestimmt irgendwen vergessen ^^ hab das ja alles erst einmal durchgelesen... wer immer es ist, sags mir sofort und du bekommst einen extra eigenen Eintrag :D
Chrissi, danke fuer die Fotos :))) ich hab schon einige Male in letzter Zeit gedacht Mensch, sie sieht schon wieder anders aus bei SchuelerVZ und ich sehs gar nicht wirklich... :) Hab mich sooo doll gefreut :-* Lieb dich so sehr Suesse!
Mensch Swenny :D immer so ein Aufwand... da musst du gleich ein Winterbild aus Finnland anschiffen lassen ^^ :-*
Und die Eileen hat auch wieder so fleissig gebastelt :) Ich find die Karte so suess... wow wie haeng ich die nur alle auf ^^ :-*
Euch dreien auch nochmal ein gaaaaaaaaaaaanz dickes fettes Dankeschoen und 1000000 Kuesse fuer das tolle tolle Weihnachtsgeschenk :) das Foto hat einen Ehrenplatz auf meinem Nachtschrank bekommen ;)
Hoppi, du hast auch sehr schoen gebastelt :) Irgendwie wusste ich allein von der Karte schon von wem sie ist :D
Genauso mit Jana, als ich zuerst das Kleeblatt entdeckt hatte... :)
Lisa und Lea, ich besuche bald endlich die Jackson-er! Ich fahre vom 4. bis 6. Januar dahin, A.J. holt mich sogar ab :)
Fri, deine Karte hat mich daran erinnert, dass ich deinem Daddy ja noch die versprochene Postkarte schicken muss :D Sag ihm ich habs nicht vergessen, die kommt noch ^^
Christopher, das Gitarrespielen hat leider in letzter Zeit ein wenig unter Klavier und der neu errungenen Querfloete fuer die Marching Band gelitten, aber es wird wieder :) Hab jetzt auch suuupercoole original Hard Rock Cafe Plektren aus dem Hard Rock Cafe Chicago!
Freddy, ueber deine Karte musste ich einfach nur ganz breit Grinsen ^^
Jens, fuehl dich geehrt, dir habe ich jetzt extra ein Gaestebuch eingerichtet :D Du hast Recht, man kann zwar Kommentare schreiben, aber das fehlte ein wenig. Also, leg los :P
Colja, ueber deine Karte hab ich Traenen gelacht :D:D:D meine Hostmom haelt mich jezt bestimmt fuer verrueckt... "... in Latein habe ich das Ruder uebernommen und werde sicher dafuer sorgen, dass das Boot mit alle Mann kentert."
Mensch, Mensch, mir fehlen echt die richtigen Worte. Obwohl ich wusste was in dem Paket war, mit sowas unglaublich tollem hatte ich ja nun gar nicht gerechnet :)
Ich bin einfach nur ueberwaeltigt und total geruehrt, Mann Mann, ihr alle habt mich echt fast zum Heulen gebracht ^^ (Colja hats geschafft, allerdings weil ich nicht mehr konnte vor Lachen xD)

Ich hab euch alle sooooo lieb :) und vermiss euch ganz doll... obwohl ich meeeega traurig sein werde, wenn ich alle meine Lieben hier drueben im Juni verlassen muss, werde ich mich aber mindestens genauso meeeega darauf freuen, euch alle wiederzusehen :) Ihr fehlt mir wirklich!!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays to all of you!


On Sunday, Keith's 16th birthday by the way, we went to church for noon mass and in the early afternoon, we went to Sheila's dad's new house (it's so beautiful, it's kinda in the woods and has this big, stone fireplace) to celebrate with some family. It was very nice, we had veeery yummy food and we already got some presents (I got a Yatzee game and a pair of golden earrings from Grandpa and Grandma and another pair of earrings from Uncle Mike and Aunt... Shelby? Man I'm so bad at names...). Later, we played a form of poker, it was so much fun... I just learned it but in the end, I actually wasn't that bad.
Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, we went to church with Grandma and GG for the 6 o'clock mass where Jacob was singing in the choir. He even had a solo in the Hallelujah part, he was so good! I was really proud of my little brother :)
After church, we all went right to Uncle Bubba's house where we celebrated christmas with Doug's family. The people I had gotten to know at Thanksgiving were there, Grandpa was there and another brother of Doug and his wife whom I hadn't known yet. It was a really nice night, again we had yummy food, I met their cute dog and Courtney and I played with the kitten they had just got 2 days ago. Again, we all got some presents... I got a drawing kit, a drawing pad, graphite pencils and charcoal - from Santa ;) We left late and got home past 11. We kids all got into bed then, of course, so that Santa Claus could come and do his job...
Then, this morning around 8, the little ones came in my room, all excited, "Maria, wake up! It's christmas morning! Santa Claus was here!" It was so cute... So I went downstairs into the living-room, everybody was getting settled, Sheila made coffee, and when we were all there, including Grandma and GG who had stayed over night, we started opening our presents - one at a time.
We had sooooo many present to open - and, oh my God, I got so many!! I'll try to list it, I really hope I don't forget anything... I probably will.
a Michigan State sweater
socks, a pair of fuzzy socks, a scarf, a hat, gloves
AVON body wash, hand lotion and peach body lotion
2 cases of AVON eyeshadow
AVON nail polish dryer spray
an AVON goodie bag with all kinds of foot care stuff in it
AVON birthstone earrings
a purple toothbrush
two bags - an H&M bag that u can flip over, one side is black with red H&M logo and the other is red with a black logo... the 2nd bag is a Michigan bag with all kinds of Michigan stuff on it
an international calling card
cell phone stickers and a cell phone case
a beautiful little snow man ornament that has a picture of Doug and Sheila in it and says "2007 daughter"
flip flops
hair stuff
popcorn
a Michigan pen
CDs from my mom
leg warmers from my mom
selfknitted socks from my mom and a selfknitted cellphone sock from my mom :)
lots of earrings from my mom and from Nicole
a really warm hand warmer thing from my dad and Ulli
a supercute yellow top with a black short sleeve sweater and another striped sweater from Grandma and GG
a sugar cookie scented and really yummy like vanilla smelling candle from Grandma and GG
a book series containing of 3 books from Grandma and GG
Okay, I really hope I didn't forget anything.
Then we had the German pancakes for breakfast (not like I know them, but really yummy!) and cleaned up. Later, Grandpa (Doug's dad) came over. Sometime in the early afternoon, I took a shower and later, I had a really nice conversation with Doug, Sheila and Grandpa about college. Grandpa has those neighbors or something... they're from Germany, and the first time the husband came here was during high school as an exchange student, like me, and then he came back for college, and now he lives there up North with his family. And so we talked about the fact that I'm thinking of maybe doing a semester or 2 over here in college... well, I have those conversations with people a lot and it really makes me think that I gotta get my butt up and get my future planned.

I'll soon be 18, man. Oh my goodness, that's just scary.

Snow Day, Holiday Concert, Last Day of School and Joe Dumar's

All in all, a fun week.


So, on Monday when we had no school because of the snow, all of us kids went to this big sledding hill with Doug. It was so much fun - the hill was really steep on the side we went down and Courtney and I had a sled together so we were even faster... my butt hurt a couple days after that though coz there were some really mean bumps in the ground.
Tuesday was one of my best days ever. Not because we had school again... the snow day was very nice of course ;) ... but it was the day of our holiday concert in which I was going to play with Symphony Band as a flutist and with Jazz Band as the piano player. Since the Symphony Band is split (one half in 5th hour, one half in 6th) we were supposed to have a combined rehearsal in 5th and 6th hour on Monday - which didn't happen because of the snow day. So we had a shorter combined rehearsal on Tuesday in 6th hour. In the beginning of the hour, I had just put my flute together, one of the teacher aids came over to me and told me that Mr Conaton wanted me in the office. So I went there, expecting something about Jazz Band (I was right about that) and when I entered the office, Mr Conatan goes "Maria! I have some music for you!" And I was like "... Music?" "Yes, for tonight!" "Oh..." "You think you can learn it by then?" "I really don't know..." "You know what, why don't you just take this hour to practise in one of the practise rooms and I'll come and help you so then you'll be fine for tonight." "... This hour." "Yes, this hour. What are you doing right know?" "Erm, playing the flute?" "Aaaah right. Well, anyways, just take this hour to practise this." Oookay. This one big American thing: spontaneity. So I did as I was told, practised that piece full of chords (I always hated chords... they make me mess up), didn't get to practise with the whole Symphony Band, went home after school, got home at like, 2.40, ate, packed my stuff and had to be back at the school at 3.30 to pick up my uniform. After that, I went back home (Doug gave me rides all day, I felt bad for kinda surprising him with that), changed into my concert uniform and shortly after that, we had to leave again because I had to be at JAPAC (John Armstrong Perfoming Arts Center, belongs to the Pankow, a building that belongs to L'Anse Creuse and has some of its classes in there, it's about a 15 to 20 minutes drive from L'Anse Creuse I think) at 4.30. At JAPAC, we (meaning the members of Jazz Blue - the Jazz Band I'm in - who had to be there first) set up everything first and then we rehearsed a little - that's when I actually finally got that new piece although it still was far away from perfect. After that, we kinda hung out and watched Jazz White and the Hand Bell Choir rehearse. The concert started at 7 and Jazz Blue were second to perform after the Hand Bell Choir. I was really nervous, but then when we started playing, I just had so much fun that I calmed down and everything went really good, even that piece I had only known for one day. We played "Silent Night", "What a Wonderful World" and "Feliz Navidad". After our perfomance, we had to get right back to the back room were we kept our stuff and were the Symphony Band had already set up for tuning and a last rehearsal before our performance. Then after the intermission, we got out on the stage to perform "Christmas Calypso", "Nimrod" and "Hallelujah Chorus". It was awesome.
After this perfomance which was my last for the night, we kinda just hung out in the lobby of the JAPAC, talking, messing around, having fun and all that. Gary was their, too, to drive his sister home later I guess. The whole night was just amazing. I don't like the uniforms for the girls though - they kinda look like dresses but are actually pants which is comfy and sweat-pants-like but it looks kinda weird. And they make every single girl, no matter how skinny, look pregnant.
Oh, and I also got my christmas gift from Sam on Tuesday :) it was a USA flag and a baseball - so cool! I'm gonna put that up in my room in Germany somewhere.
Wednesday was our last day of school. I had a Chemistry quiz and a Precalc test and because of the concert, I didn't really study for any of those... but I think it still went pretty well. Later that day, I talked to my mom on the phone.
I don't think anything exciting happened on Thursday...
Yesterday, Courtney and I did the rest of our christmas shopping. Sheila gave us a ride to a new mall around here - I love that mall, it's kinda like an outside mall and really pretty. And they have an H&M store, and a Claire's, and a reaaaaally really cool store called Love Clture (yup, without the first u) which has incredibly cute clothes. I didn't buy clothes though because we spent all our time on christmas presents... but next time I need clothes, I'd like to go back there again. Oh, and they also have a Levi's store.
Sheila met us in the mall when she came back from taking Michaela to a birthday party and we finished our shopping. When we went out to the parking lot, we suddenly saw the van moving as if it had been hit by something really hard - and yes, a girl, probably younger than me, had hit Sheila's van. Her dad just arrived on the scene that moment, too and so Sheila and he figured everything out... that girl left a big dent in the van, though.
The car still worked though, and on our way back home we stopped at Walmart for some last christmas gifts and groceries.
After dinner, Courtney and I went to bed right away because last night, we had our Youth Group Lock-in at Joe Dumars, some kind of sports and activities center. I got up at 9pm, and around 9.30, Sheila drove us to Ashley's house (that's where we had that pool/hot tub party in summer where I met Meaghan). Some of Ashley's friends, including Meaghan, were already there. Later, Ashley's mom took us all to Joe Dumars where we were locked in with our Youth Group and a couple other groups from 12 midnight to 5.30am. It was okay, there was a lot to do but unfortunately, Meaghan and I were kinda the only ones our age there. Well, except for the employees maybe. So we just hung out together, talked a lot, spent some time DDRing, kinda non-seriously played volleyball with the others in between, did the minigolf course and played lasertag with the other girls. Oh my god. That is definitely one of the most FUN games ever! We probably have it in Germany but I never noticed it. I thought I'd probably be really bad, and there were some guys playing who were showing off and telling us that they were going to shoot all of us, and then I ended up getting 2nd place ;) hehe... not bad for my first lasertag game ever!
About an hour before the end of the whole thing, when everyone was pretty tired, we found some of the ex-Thecla girls (who had been at Ashley's house earlier) talking to those 3 black guys in the volleyball area, so we joined them and had a pretty funny conversation because Meaghan's sister Sarah was talking a looot because she was so tired and everyone was making fun of her.
Doug picked us up in the morning, we arrived home around 6. I ate something because I was really hungry and then I went to bed and slept until about 1.15 pm.
In the afternoon, we cleaned the house and I helped Sheila with some cooking for the next days (all the christmas celebrations). Later, I wrapped christmas presents with Courtney. Now they're all under the tree already :)
Tonight, we watched Pirates 3 all together. I LOOOOOVE that movie. Although the first 2 are better. But this one's pretty awesome, too.
And nooow I gotta go to bed.

Happy Birthday, Ronja! Hope you had a wonderful 8th birthday :) :-*

SNOW!

We got a loooot today...

So, we knew a snow storm was coming last night, so we went to church yesterday for the 4 o'clock mass (we weren't the only ones with that bright idea, the church was PACKED). And at night, while we were all watching Hairspray together (awesome movie, go watch it as soon as you get it!), it started snowing.
So now, we have a couple inches snow outside, it was snowing most of the day, and then we got the amazing news after dinner - school's cancelled tomorrow! Yay!

So, you guys... have fun in school and at work tomorrow :P

I Was Sick.

But I'm well again.

The last two days were pretty unexciting. Monday morning, when I woke up, my throat hurt and I felt kinda dizzy. It got better under the shower but afterwards, I felt even worse. So I took my temperature, realized that 100.2 Fahrenheit doesn't really tell me anything because I'm pretty much still thinking in Celsius and so I waited for Courtney to come down who then told me that the usual body temperature is like 98.6 or something like that, that I had a fever and that I should stay home. I fell asleep on the couch just were I sat and didn't wake up until Sheila woke me up to tell me she was taking the kids to school and wouldn't be home all morning but that I could call her whenever I needed anything.
I somehow managed to make some breakfast and eat it, then I fell back on the couch and slept some more. Later, I watched a movie (Marie Antoinette, it is really good), then I slept some more, then I watched Joyeux Noel (a movie about a true story in World War I where German, French and Scottish soldiers made an armistice over the holidays to celebrate christmas together, it was cool because there were actually German actors like Daniel Bruehl in it and they spoke German most of the time) and slept more. Everytime I got up to go to the bathroom or get something to drink, I couldn't really stay up long because I was so dizzy. At night after dinner, I fell asleep on the couch again and before I went to bed later, Sheila told me I should stay home the next day as well.
I didn't want to, but when I got up on Tuesday morning at 5.10 like usually, I still had problems standing and walking, so I just went back to bed. Again, I spent most of the morning sleeping, in between I watched A Nightmare Before Christmas (amazing movie, but, oh well, it's by Tim Burton so it has to be) and later Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (not that I don't know that one by heart already...)
Wednesday, I was finally ready to go back to school although I still had a headache. The day started pretty awesome: Before 1st hour, I met Keith and Katie by my locker, and Keith told me that I am in the school play! I have a small part as one of the forest Lords, that means I have about 2 or 3 lines maybe but I think I'll be on the stage a couple more times. And Mrs Ethridge is using the Lords and other small roles when she needs crowds. In Precalc I realized that I'd missed a lot in only 2 days and I didn't get what they were doing at all.
On Thursday, I wasn't in my classes again because Mr Bilen, the German teacher, had invited the two other German exchange students, Eileen (I met her for the first time yesterday) and Finja, and me to be in his classes all day to talk to his German students. It was alright, although it got really boring after a while because he gave the same sheet of questions to all of his classes. But there where a lot of fun moments, too.
After school, I went to the first drama read through. It was so much fun! The group, maybe 15 or 20 people, so not many, is just awesome. It's gonna be an amazing time until the play in April. And Keith is in the play, too! I had to skip Jazz Band for that... that made me feel really bad since I had already missed it on Monday and Tuesday but Mr Conaton was okay with it. Thursday night was also pretty cool... While Sheila, Doug and the little ones where at St Thecla for the school's christmas show and Courtney was babysitting, I stayed home to get my Precalc stuff done and after reading it again and just trying the problems, I finally got it. Actually, it's easy. I've just never done it before... but, oh well, now we started the easiest stuff ever, for some reason we're doing the first chapter of the book now. Prime numbers and sequences and stuff like that.
Today wasn't too exciting. I finally went to Jazz Band again, that was fun. I'll have to practise all my flute and piano and whatever else music this weekend a lot.

Our christmas concert is on Tuesday already!!