Happy Valentines Day

Hannah and I when we went bowling

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.

Hope you're well and everything's great : )

Okoboji Wrestling Sectionals.

Aleysha and I at Sectionals :)

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).


Also, don't hit the wooden floor hard. It hurts. 

New Month. New Post.

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?
:)

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 :)