New Year, New Post, Terrible Reliability

[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.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Merry Christmas New Zealand,
and Merry Christmas for tomorrow everyone in America :)


I'm sorry for being so slack lately but I've been extremely busy with finals and the end of semester so I'll update when I get a chance, which is not right now unfortunately.. 
I just stopped by to post that I'm thinking of you.


Here's my last ABT assignment, one of my finals for school. It had to be the meaning of Christmas using stykz (a program that's much harder to use than it looks).

Whatever your interpretation of Christmas is, I hope that your day is more amazing than imaginable. 
:)

All things Wintery and Cheer-full.

Veronika and I in our cheerleading uniform

So, just to start off, Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. Yesna, a past exchange student now going to college in America, came around and spent it with us and the two days off school were long awaited. Linda and David cooked a turkey and a lot of other food which was delicious and we spent the day thinking specifically about everything that we're thankful for. 


As I think I'd mentioned last week we had our first cheerleading tournament. To say the least, it was interesting. I'm not so sure about the whole manliness of wrestling because the guys wear "singlets" which are tight short bodysuits and then they grope each other inappropriately trying to throw or somewhat twist the other to the floor. I don't really understand the scoring but it looks a lot easier than football because it's one on one. As for us cheerleaders, we went alright, a lot of the cheers were out of time but we survived and hey, it was our first meet.

The past weekend we had the EF Christmas party. All the exchange students that Linda takes care of came around and brought with them a dish of food from their home country. I'll admit, I'm not a cook, and the thought of having to cook something purely New Zealand kinda scared me a bit, but nevertheless I took a stab at making a pavlova. Except these pavlovas were more like meringues because in a group situation they're much easier to share. Mum and NP Nana would be extremely proud of me because surprisingly, it didn't go flat, it didn't burn and apart from having a little too much vanilla essence in it which is practically unnoticeable I made some perfect mini pavlovas. Others seemed to like them too which made me happy. But did I think to take a photo of my master piece? Of course not.

After a concert choir performance,

wearing the gear and looking pretty professional.

Also this weekend, like every Saturday for the next couple of months, I had a wrestling tournament. This is different from a wrestling match because there are a lot more schools there and matches going on at once. We left EHS at 8:30 and got home around 8pm so it was a full day which was filled to the top of cheering. 

In the weekend we had the second concert choir performance of the year, which was our first Christmas concert, we have another in a couple of weeks. I'm not really a huge fan of Christmas songs so it went okay, but I always enjoy watching everyone dress up in their fancy outfits. It's good fun being in choir cause we get to hang out before and afterwards and the teacher is extremely good.

In other news, after finally handing in our history group project, we took a history test last week. It went extremely well and I got 93/88 (109%) which is sooo good for one of my hardest classes. I was extremely proud of myself, hence sharing on here. This, along with other good work recently, has helped me keep my grade at a solid A, overall total of 93% or above. As a side note, today, after i'd finished writing this, my group got our grade back for the project we did. Firstly Ms Strube, the teacher, warned us that most of the projects were low grades because groups didn't follow the marking schedule, so I kinda prepared myself for a B at the highest, but we got an A+! With 105% we got the second highest grade in the whole junior class, the highest having one point more than us! All that hard work definitely paid off. My group and I couldn't be more pleased.

Brittany and Veronika with our over 5 foot project

I also had a psychology test where I got 77%, or a C+ which I was proud of too. This is because I really dislike psychology and just want to pass and hurry up and get out of the class, I'm not interested and it bores me. The teacher's the same as in history so it's not only boring but hard. Though we did talk a little bit about Sociology which is offered next semester and it's meant to be completely different from Psych so I may decided to take that because we'll study other cultures which could be interesting.

My other subjects are going well too.. In Critical Thinking (an English class) which I'm writing a six page persuasive essay in at the moment, I have an A.. In ABT I have an A- because in two group projects I got a B and a B+, which is bad considering we get hardly any assignments. I mean we get big assignments but it's hard to bring your grade up cause there are no little assignments.. In Human Relations I have a solid A, it's a really easy class and all quarter I've missed two points I think, so I've got a 98%.. In Government I also have an A, which is admittedly also decently easy, even though it's a Senior only class. (Only grade 12 students can take it, and exchange students who have special privileges.)

Mara, Hannah and I after the choir Christmas concert

Unfortunately next semester ABT and Concert Choir have been scheduled at the same time and thats the only period they're both offered. After long consideration I decided to stay in Concert Choir. Not only because I enjoy it, I have friends in it who I get to hang out with when we do performances and such, but about every second day I get to use it as a study hall which is handy for me to do my other homework in, other wise I would just have one every second day opposite p.e. This way I'll have one everyday, except when we're practicing for a concert when I'll have choir everyday.

Anna and I in our cheerleading uniform.

The other subjects that I'm taking next semester are U.S History, Junior English (normal english class), American Lit 2 (more advanced than the normal one), Economics, Art, Food Fitness and P.E. Although I'm looking at changing art / food fitness to something, I just chose them to fill up a spot. Except in Art we're meant to be doing clay modeling and stuff so maybe that would be different, and I haven't taken an art class for years it could be fun. I'll see if I can find a better class if not that's how it'll stick.


Other than that, I had a home wrestling match tonight which was a lot of fun, we've definitly improved from last week! 


That's all for now, 
Chat later :)

Briefly Stopping By

So this weekend was thanksgiving and it was soooo good :)
But I will update about that in my next post.. I'm very tired tonight but just thought I'd leave you with a cute picture.. The one above is my host family and I and bellow is a project I have been working on for ABT.. Click to enlarge. We had to make a photo collage on a theme, and the teacher's getting them professionally printed on 28" by 22" photo paper!


Chat soon :)

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 :)

After the Storm

My house with 7" of snow!

Just a quick update, mainly to post some photos of my weekend. The Mall of America was absolutely amazing, and on Friday / Saturday we had the first snow storm! There was snow everywhere by Saturday morning, it took us nearly an hour longer to get to the Mall from our hotel than it would've usually. 


So on Friday after school, Linda drove Veronika, Pete and I to Minnesota. It was about a 2 and a 1/2 hour drive and we grabbed Subway for supper and had a look at the outlet shops. There was a Nike store and they were selling Nike kicks for $30! I didn't buy any though cause I'm buying new shoes for cheerleading, and I'm a Converse person, I'd hate to betray my Chuck Taylors.

I couldn't resist drawing on someones car.

By the time we'd settled into our room the snow outside had built up a decent amount that there was snow on the ground. (The first time it snowed the ground was too warm so it didn't look like it snowed) It was so cool to stand outside and just let the snow fall on you, it felt kinda magical. Of course, Veronika and I couldn't wait to run outside and take photos. There's nothing like being a tourist. 

Inside the Mall of America, near the full sized Ferris Wheel!

Come Saturday morning and it had snowed nearly all night and so the roads were very slippery, and it continued to snow! We finally got to the Mall of America just before 11am but Linda had told us to be prepared to leave early because she didn't want to drive home in bad conditions, and I could totally see her point, if the wind picked up it would be so dangerous! Veronika and I knew this would mean speed shopping, we knew which shops we wanted to visit, we checked out the website before hand, with 500 shops it pays to be prepared. In the end we didn't end up leaving until after 4pm but with our speed shopping early on in the day it was plenty of time. Inside was unbelievable, there were people everywhere despite the snow outside. We'd been told there was a built in amusement park but I thought it was just a small one, so they could say they had an amusement park but this was full sized and huge! They had a ferris wheel, a mini roller coaster and other rides, Veronika and I didn't stop there though, we were too busy shopping. The drive home was long and fortunately the snow and wind died down a bit but it still took us an hour longer. 

Snowman building. 

Today it snowed a little bit this morning but it was warm the rest of the day. Linda and David told Veronika and I that the snow would be perfect to build a snowman, and pretty much before anything else could be said, Veronika and I were outside building a snowman. 


Just a side note here, with it being the first snowman I'd ever built I didn't really know what to expect. 


Building a snowman fitted well because I have to do a photo essay for ABT and so I took lots of photos of the snowman being constructed and boy is it a lot harder than they make it look on T.V. The bottom was so big we couldn't physically roll it any more because it was so heavy and I commend Veronika for lifting the second ball on top because I was struggling with the head. But it was so much fun, and before we knew it we had our very on snowman! A little under 5 feet tall and a bit of a funny shaped bum from one angle, but he's ours and he's even rocking the New Zealand Four Square National Logo :)

My first snow man, equipped with a New Zealand 4 Square Apron!

That's all for now,

Update a bit more later.

Happy Veterans Day for last week too!

I was thinking of you, Pop x

Before going to the Mall of America, some excited EF-ers.

Mall of America sign from outside, with a little snow here and there.

Pre-Four Square Apron. Our November Snowman.

November is here.

BriAna, Jenna and I in our beautiful stage make-up.

It's been a bit since I've written anything substantial on here, so I thought I'd post another big update.. And just a side note is that I went to start this last weekend, but I got sidetracked by homework and other distractions. Nevertheless, it's here now! (Finally)


Tonight is the last night of the play which is sad but it's been so much fun and I can't wait to watch it on DVD! I'll send Mum a copy for those of you in New Zealand and hopefully she'll show you. It's been a really great experience.. I can't remember if I'd explained it but there are around 60 kids in the show, not including the band or backstage lighting and sound which is astounding. The vocal teacher is amazing, he's also a football coach which is why we have a generally even amount of guys and girls in the musical. There are ten main characters and the stories based in the fifties, Elvis era, where everyone is falling in love with everyone. It's set in Emmetsburg, which is a small town naturally, which is very plain and boring because the mayor is very strict, she even has laws against "public necking" (kissing) and loud music. But everything changes when Chad (very Elvis-like) arrives in town, everything gets "All Shook Up" and all the towns people are bitten by the love and music bug. 

The EF Halloween Party. Yes I was cheap and wore my musical costume.

This week Wrestling Cheerleading practice started and it's so much fun! We have practice everyday after school (except if we have a meet that day of course) and it goes 'till 5.30 (at the earliest). We practice with the Basketball Cheerleaders firstly when we warm up, stretch and "build muscles" which is usually between forty minutes and an hour long and then we split up to learn our separate cheers. Personally, and I'm thinking it's thanks to all my years dancing, I find it super easy to learn the cheers cause they're all to a rhythm. But Wrestling Cheerleading is a bit different than normal cheerleading, instead of standing up and cheering we sit on the corner of the wrestling mat and hit the mat and cheer to different rhythms. (See example bellow, this is from 2008 and unfortunately my school isn't in it, but we'll be going here (to State, a four day wrestling competition) if our wrestlers are good enough)

Natalie and I at the last home football game of the season.

Other than that it's getting a bit cooler here, the temperature still ranges but in Celsius it's usually zero degrees in the morning going to school, at eight o'clock and it can get up to ten in the afternoon. Next weekend most of the exchange students in North East Iowa are going to the Mall of America in Minnesota, there are 500 shops and a built in amusement park! Then the weekend after that is Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving we're going to Fort Dodge again to go shopping for all the Thanksgiving sales. Football is nearly finished but our team hasn't lost a game yet! On Monday night we have a play-off game and if we win we'll be in the Semi-Finals for all of Iowa (in our school size) which is so cool! 

I'll update more soon when I think about it, 

'Till then keep smiling :)

I hope you all in New Zealand are enjoying the sun! 

E-Hawk Football :)