Four Month Anniversary

Veronika and I today after church.

Today I have been in the United States for four months. Even though I have a little homework to complete, I decided this was worth a short blog update..


At the moment I'm very busy with Cheerleading practice and multiple assignments so this isn't going to be a long post at all sorry.. 

The original photo.

This week is Thanksgiving which I'm excited for. We get Thursday and Friday off school, Thanksgiving is on the Thursday, and Friday is Black Friday where shops have extremely huge sales.

A photo I edited for my ABT Project

Monday the 29th is our first wrestling meet which is exciting. But due to Thanksgiving we only have two practices before the meet! It's a double dual also, which means two people wrestle at once. This means three cheerleaders are cheering for one match which the other three cheer for the other which is a little scary because people notice if you make mistakes a lot more since there are only three people!


That's all for now because my feet are cold so I'm going to put socks on and go to sleep. The temperature has been cold in the past week, it was 18 Fahrenheit all day yesterday! 
(I'm working at putting a fahrenheit to degrees convertor on my blog for everywhere else in the world that speaks in celsius)




Update more later :)

Day 7 in Iowa

Almost the view from our house

After arriving on Saturday last week, I have been in Iowa for seven days now, and I love it!


On Saturday evening, Linda (my host Mom) picked me up from Mason City Airport which is about one and a half hours drive from our house in Emmetsburg.


At 8:30pm, David (my host Dad) picked up Veronika (my exchange sister) from another airport, about 270 miles from Mason City. So by the time they got home I had unpacked and fallen asleep. 


On Sunday, after David and Linda had come home from church and Veronika and I had slept in, we went for a tour of the neighborhood. It's larger than I thought it would be, with 3000 residents and many nice sights and shops. No clothing shops though, as Linda had said.

Emmetsburg, the middle of town.

From our house you can walk down a path (kind of Alleyway) and you're at the Lake. (Refer to photo 'Almost the view from our house') We're also pretty much directly behind the Movie Theatre on Main Street, so a lot of things are within walking distance.


On Wednesday afternoon, Linda took Veronika and I into Fort Dodge to do some shopping before meeting another exchange student at the airport. We went into Target where I bought a black Mossimo Cardigan for under $20 (the exact price I can't remember). We went into a Mall but I didn't find anything in there, except a travel clock. 


After visiting the mall we went to an Italian place for dinner which was very yummy, but hugggeeee servings, I didn't expect anything less though. Then we went to Wal-Mart which was a lot larger than than the Wal-Mart in Newport. I managed to excite Veronika with the idea that there might be a Nirvana t-shirt cause I saw one at the Newport Wal-Mart but after a dash to the Mens clothing we were only but disappointed.



Yesterday, Veronika and I decided to walk to the library cause even though it's across town, 2 miles isn't that long, right? Not if you don't have footpaths over half the way. 


After getting instructions off Linda and David we were all set, once we turned off 8th Street we realised why they warned us there might not be footpaths on the side of the street we want to walk on. It was pretty terrible. Not only was there only ever a footpath on one side of the street, but it'd randomly stop in between houses. Sometimes there was no footpath at all. We quickly began to regret our decision. 


Eventually we reached the library, and it was as quiet as anything, there had to be two other people in there except us. I wanted to get out a book to start learning some more German, but nothing. Then I thought about learning some more Piano, cause there's a piano in the lounge. But nothing. So after a while I gave up and got out a book on Woodstock and a novel. Nothing too exciting.

Veronika outside my our school

On the way back we decided to take what we thought was a shortcut, while going past our school at the same time. After passing the school we couldn't believe that we saw 8th street, it was so much closer than the way we came. But after one block it stopped. Luckily we found our way back home through wandering in right direction. 


In the past seven days, I have been no-where near as busy as I was on ONE day at camp, but it's nice to relax. I don't start school until the 25th of August which means I still have a lot more time to relax and settle in, although I'm pretty well settled in now. I still have to decide my school subjects, get registered for school and buy an american cellphone / number. But more about that in the next post.

David, Linda and Gizmo, one of the cats at home

On an unrelated note, I am so lucky to be a New Zealander, just for the fact that our money is so much nicer than American money. I don't want my one cent change if I buy something for 99 cents! Seriously, who thought it'd be cool to have a one cent coin cause I dislike them greatly.


That's all for now, maybe one day I'll learn to post more often so it means I have to write less. 'Till then, sorry about the enormous posts. 

Flights to Iowa

Countless travelators and in airport train systems... What a day.

"The Cheeseburger Gang" (Minus Amy) nearly leaving EF Culture Camp

The past ten days have gone so fast and I had such an amazing time at camp. But of course, all good things come to an end and this morning all of us students left camp. First to go was Amy, who’s off to Minnesota for six months, who left at 1am on the very first bus with Cille, my amazing Dutch room-mate who’s going to Nevada for a year. Then we said goodbye to the Sarahs at 2am, Sarah Tilley who’s off to Idaho for 6 months and Sarah Palmer who’s off to Minnesota. Then there was just the five of us left, all departing from camp at the same time but on two buses going to two different airports. At 3am Grace who’s off to Oklahoma, Kim who’s off to Preston and Alanna who’s going to Iowa, hopped on the bus to Boston airport and Ashleigh and I go on the bus to Providence airport.

After a small nap in the bus to Providence Airport we were at the airport checking into our separate flights, and who did we see but Sarah Palmer who was leaving the airport around 6am like Ashleigh. We checked in and my luggage was an amazing 47 pounds (only because I have two super heavy carry on bags, but the airport doesn’t weigh those). Then we had to wait, oh the joy. Everyone was so tired and by the time Starbucks had finally opened I had already had a Red Bull in hope of staying awake until my 9:10am flight. That didn’t happen.

Sarah and Ashleigh around 5am at Providence airport.

I saw Ashleigh and Sarah off their separate ways and we wished each other the best of luck. No less than half an hour later I was asleep next to other EF students sitting at one of the tables in the food court until it was time to say goodbye to another small group at 7.30am. There was only three of us remaining after that; a German boy, Sarah a Swiss girl who I was talking to for a while and myself. When 8.45am finally rolled around I couldn’t be more relieved to board my plane, so I said goodbye to the other two and went my own way.

First I flew from Providence to Detroit which took two hours. Then from Detroit to Minnesota which was another two hour flight, luckily I met an Austrian girl from Norwich camp called Camilla who I talked to for a while. Now I’ll be waiting three hours to fly for an hour to Mason City in Iowa with Veronika who should be arriving soon. I really hope she doesn’t get lost, I didn’t even think to ask what flight she’d be on.

Update: Veronika's first flight was cancelled so I didn't end up meeting her 'till this morning cause she got into Emmetsburg around midnight!

That’s all the excitement of my sleep deprived travels for today; luckily I won’t have to do it again until I leave for Germany.

I hope wherever you are you’re having an amazing day (: