I have finally finished my history project (a major reason why I haven't been updating my blog) so now I'm back..
In the next couple days I'll try to update about Prom and graduation and all the other happenings that I've been up to..
Here's my history project if you're interested though.. We had to create (in a group) a 10 minute documentary on the Free Speech Movement of the sixties.. A LOT of work, but I learned a lot too :)
I'm still a terrible blogger.. Weird, who would've guessed.. It's nearly been a month since prom and I haven't written anything yet.. I'm sorry! I've been swamped with homework! This weekend we've had the Pops concert which is about 3 1/2 hours of music put on by the school.. I'm in concert choir, girls chorus, and two ensembles. Bellow you can see one of our songs where I have a one line solo. It was a lot of fun, last night was the first night and tonight is closing night..
The seniors are graduating next weekend and before long school will be out. Time is going so fast!
I have my flights now and I'm leaving here on the 31st and arriving in New Zealand on the 2nd of May, but I will write more about that later when I have some time. For now I have an hour before I have to be at the concert and another page to write of a sociology paper due tomorrow with an accompanying presentation I haven't finished yet.. Last minute cramming, argh.
But do not worry, I am still having a wonderful time and I will update you soon! I haven't forgotten about you.
As I was looking at my cellphone at the date after I thought I'd better update my blog, it struck me. I have been in the United States for 9 months today. It's crazy how fast time has gone. Nine months ago I was standing in Auckland airport with Mum, Dad, Nana, Bridgette and 7 of my closest friends, excitingly awaiting the unknown. Today I watch the Seniors count down 18 school days until they have finished high school, and the rest of the school count 24 school days until summer vacation.
Look at me, updating my blog in under a month.. I think it's a miracle!
It is now April and the weather is getting better. This is good seeing as I'll be going back to winter when I return to New Zealand.
Natalie & I at NHS, see previous post
This week soccer started, yes Brittany and I are out for soccer in the community team. It's high school (grade 9 - 12) plus one middle schooler. It's mixed, so boys and girls, and Brittany and I are the only girls on the team.. Brittany had never played before and I played for a couple of years a while back so we're not the next Christiano Ronaldos, to say the least. I'm really enjoying it so far though. Because it's community soccer we don't practice nearly as much as the other sports, like we practiced for cheerleading. We practice three times a week and have games on Sunday afternoons. The first practice was on Thursday, we had one today (Sunday) and then we have one Tuesday, possibly Thursday too, and then our first two games are on Sunday which will be fun.
Apart from that, nothing else has really happened since my last post, except that I got to Skype my wonderful sister Veronika after church today for the second time since she left. That made my day :)
Just keeping it short and sweet for now, Have a fantastic day.
I'm very terrible at blogging. Not gonna lie, for a couple of weeks I didn't even think about blogging.
Last weekend was St Patricks Day, which is really big in Emmetsburg.. Everyone becomes Irish.. It was fun though, there was a parade and a "Miss Shamrock Pageant". Everyone was happy and the weather was pretty nice, by that I mean it wasn't in the negative Celsius.
This weekend was the last weekend for show choir, which I've been helping backstage with. It was lots of fun, think Glee, but much better choreography and not professional singers. Bellow is the introduction to one of their songs. There are 44 performers (singers and dancers) and 11 band members. The group has learned and performs five songs; Beautiful Day / I Can See Clearly Now, Love Goes On, If You Believe, Never Been Any Reason and New Divide.
My subjects this semester are all going really well, I enjoy them all and I've got either an A or an A- in them which makes me feel accomplished..
Dan, Myself and Brian at the NHS evening
In other news, Brittany and I have signed up for the mixed community soccer team which starts in April which will be fun.
The third weekend of April is also our prom which is coming up rapidly.
In the past month I've entered the Individual Speech contest where I competed in Districts and State.. I got a I (highest score) at Districts which meant I went to State where I got split Is (Two Is and one II), which means overall I got a I. I wrote my own speech on Organ Donation which had to be under 8 minutes, it was 7 minutes or just over.
BriAna and I at the Miss Shamrock Pageant
Tonight we had the honor society dinner which I did my individual speech for.. It went well. It was a supper recognizing students that maintained a high (3.20+) GPA (grade point average) for three consecutive semesters. I couldn't qualify because I've only been at Emmetsburg for 1.5 semesters.
Apart from the above, I don't think anything super exciting has happened in the past month.. But I will try my very hardest to blog more, even if I consider the things less exciting..
Oh, I did find out today who was chosen to be camp returnees. Unfortunately I wasn't chosen but Bryce, from New Zealand, and Camilla, from the Netherlands, were! I know they'll be great mentors.
Myself, Natalie and Mara at the NHS Banquet
That's all for now though, if I keep trying to think of more to write I'll just continue to put this off and it won't be posted for another three weeks..
Just a short post to hope that you all had a happy valentines day, even if I do think it's a bunch of over advertised nonsense to spend extra money on flowers, chocolate and things that are red. You shouldn't need a specific day to tell the people you love that you love them, you should do it any day and everyday.
We had Wrestling Sectionals in the weekend and four of our five wrestlers came either 1st or 2nd so that means they are going to State Wrestling this week : )
We leave Wed at 7.30am and get back Sat / Sun depending if we make the finals. I'm excited.
Today we had Wrestling Sectionals. So the Emmetsburg Varsity Wrestling team and cheerleaders went out to Okoboji for the day in hope of progressing to Districts next week and State the following week.
The day went really well, as a team Emmetsburg got second (out of six or seven schools) which means on Tuesday we will compete in team district duals. Apparently we'll have no chance though because even though we have a few really good wrestlers, we don't have a large team and so will give points away for when we have byes. For duals every wrestlers points count towards the team points, you get a certain amount for a win and if you win before the time is up you get more. If you have no one to wrestle the other team (all wrestlers are in a certain weight bracket) then the other team gets three points for a bye. That's the basics anyway that I know.
Five of our wrestlers got either first or second in their weight class and that means they'll go on to districts next weekend to compete to go to State.
Autumn and I at Sectionals :)
For us cheerleaders it was a nicer day because the gym wasn't too hot (our uniforms get really hot and your bums and legs get sweaty if you cheer lots of matches in a row if it's hot). Unfortunately the refs were real weird and told us we couldn't cheer on the mats. No one had heard this "rule" before. Usually we hit the side of the mat that the wrestler is wrestling on and it's no where near as hard as the wooden floor, not only does this help our hands but it makes a much louder sound.. Not today. Today we hit the wooden floor and boy did that hurt. Trying to hit the floor as hard as I usually hit the mat sent shocks up my arm and made about 1/4th of the sound. It sucked big time. And now my hands are extra sore, usually they only hurt a little bit. Now they're gross and puffy and they have bruises and they get dry and coarse every five minutes so I'm going through lotion like crazy. Stupid refs.
Bridgette, Mum and I
If Mum was here right now I think she'd offer to give my poor, puffy, bruised hands a massage. How do I know this? Because some days after working 10 - 12 hours she would give me a foot massage. I could really use a hand massage right now and so I find myself giving myself one while doing my history homework.
The moral of this story?
I didn't appreciate all the little things Mum did for me while I was home, but not having her around has really made me thankful to have such a great Mum. (Not that my host mom isn't great, but Mum really knows how to help my tired ligaments).
I suppose I should update my blog, since I said I'd update more often. Though I haven't really got anything super exciting to write about. I guess that everything just seems kinda normal, as if all of this has become normal. It's a weird feeling. I'm not bored with anything, everything's still great, but it's just kind of a weird feeling.
Hannah and I baked cupcakes on one of our snow days.
Last week I received my flight confirmation pack from EF which says I'm on wave two, which means I'll leave here between May 31st and June 2nd. It seems so close and my time here seems to have gone so fast. But then I remember that it's still four months away and back in New Zealand before I had left, four months was such a long time.
I probably should have used sometime during my mid-week weekend to update, but I guess blogging has slipped my mind. And about my mid-week weekend, well it was great. Tuesday and Wednesday were both snow days because it was so cold and on Monday after noon and Tuesday we got a lot of snow! With the amount of wind we had (up to 35m/hour) it blew everywhere and created some cool looking snow drifts on the roads and on top of what would be sidewalk.
The snow day earlier this semester was spent playing in the snow.
The roads weren't absolutely terrible, the school was more closed because of the country roads. The roads in town are generally scooped before 8am but a lot of the country roads when it's really bad don't get scooped before midday. We have to make up the days at the end of the term which I don't mind because I do quite enjoy my mid-week weekends. Hannah and I always spend a part of our snow days together, it's become somewhat of a ritual. The four we've had this semester have not been without a bit of Hannah time. The ones in January were both spent actually playing in the snow and this week we baked cupcakes and drew some pretty pictures.
School so far this semester is going well, I enjoy all of my subjects a lot and even though I have quite a bit of homework each night I've gotten really good at managing my time which is nice.
The past week I've been sick, I have a cold, and it's gotten a lot better now but last Thursday and Friday it was quite bad. Apparently during the BCIG two day wrestling tournament the weekend earlier there was a lot of bugs going round and that's why my cheerleading coach got influenza a and b and strep, and in the past two weeks five of six cheerleaders have had a cold. It wasn't much fun and I've still got a runny nose, but I don't have a sore throat or temperature anymore which is nice.
Hannah makes lovely cupcakes.
We have regional wrestling this Saturday in Okoboji, the following weekend we have sectionals and then the week after we have State Wrestling. By the sounds of things we will get a couple of wrestlers to State because we are a 1A school (the smallest category of school, larger schools wrestle 2A and 3A because they have more wrestlers or more funding or for some other reason are more superior than little 1A schools with under 170 people.) State wrestling goes from Tuesday the 15th to Saturday and so I will have a lot of school and homework to be catching up on! It's in Des Moines and all of the cheerleaders and wrestlers are staying down there for the week. That's about all I know right now about it, but it's the highlight of the season apparently.
I guess that's about all right at the moment, Enjoy your 75 (24 Celcius) Fahrenheit weather Auckland while I enjoy my 15 (-9 Celcius) Fahrenheit weather. Send me a little sun? :)
[This part's old, typed a while back but I never got round to posting it or finishing it.]
Yes, I'm very lazy and very bad at this posting on this thing. Especially during my winter break.. But winter break is coming to an end now so I'll stop being lazy and update.
Our Christmas tree
I would like to post an impersonal thank you for all the amazing Christmas and birthday cards and gifts I received. I love getting mail and each and every one made me feel so special. Thank you :)
Firstly, Christmas was very white and wonderful. On the actual weekend of Christmas Linda's family was here, her two daughters, her son, his wife and their daughter. Lee, Linda's son, arrived on Friday night, and Heather and Monica, Linda's daughters arrived early afternoon on Christmas day because the roads were very icy. We had a huge Christmas lunch / dinner and exchanged presents and played some card games. It was very nice and very relaxing.
The weekend of the New Year was like a second Christmas where David's family came round.
Anna came home from college and is staying 'till the 10th
and David's two other daughters came up with their husbands for the weekend.
Veronika's last day of school :(
For my birthday I went out to eat with some of my friends and then they came round after and we played a few card games and had fun. It was nice. Just thought I'd add this and it makes me realize I haven't posted in over a month. Goodness.
For school we had finals and they weren't as bad as I thought they would be. They were exams, in certain classes, over topics from the whole semester and it goes on a separate grade on our report card. I didn't do as well as I liked, score wise, but I didn't do badly.
[less old, still a while ago but thought you should know]
Side note: So I did get distracted with the post because the last few days of winter break went so fast and all of a sudden I was back at school and now I'm overloaded with homework.. But do not fear, I am still alive! I pinkie promise to write interesting things soon but right now life is jam packed.
The three of us sisters at the airport for a final photo
Veronika left on the forth of January to go home to Austria and it was extremely sad seeing her leave. She's home safe and sound now and is back at school and speaking German again.
I started school the day after so I didn't have time to get lonely really, but the house is a lot more quiet without her here.
School this semester is going well so far, even though I am getting a lot of homework.. My subjects are English, Sociology, Computer Applications Development, Economics, U.S History plus P.E and Choir.
This weekend I have a two day wrestling tournament at BCIG so we stay at a motel Friday night, cheer Friday and Saturday. Cheerleading's going really well, but it'll all be over soon and I'll be sad.
Cheerleading, my newest favorite passion :)
I'd love to write more but I really have to get back to my homework, promise to write soon and more often.
