It is coming to an end..

It has been a long time, like always, since I added a new post on my blog. I am sorry for that and I hope you were able to be patient! I do not even know where to start. It has been two months since Hawaii and a lot has happened.

Ok first of all the biggest event. PROM! Yes, I was lucky to experience an american prom with limos, tuxes and harleys. Yes, harleys. Our prom this year was at the harley davidsson factory. It was kind of disappointing, because it is kind of like a big store with bikes and bike accessoires in it. Of course it was cool to take pictures on a harley, but for all of us it did not quiet fit. It was still fun though!! The limo ride over there was exciting, taking pictures all dressed up was fun and afterwards we spent the night at my friends house and just hung out in the hot tub and had a good time. I was sorry for the seniors though, cause this prom was their last one and I had the feeling that everybody was kind of disappointed. It was not as bad as it may seem, but it was not like I expected Prom to be.

Overall I am still really enjoying my exchange year! I have about 5 weeks left until my parents are coming to Orlando and its hard, I can tell you. Right now I am really happy here and I do not really want to leave. Of course I miss my family and my friends and I can not wait to be back HOME.. But its hard to leave the friends you made here and just leaving a place you could call “second home”. I am not home here, I still kind of feel like a visitor and I am more comfortable at home in Germany, but i like the american life style. Its the “not caring so much”. It is kind of hard to explain but I feel like I am less trying to be better and I am more natural and more myself. This may be not feel like it to other people but that is what I am feeling right now. I like this “easy going” life I built here and having people (or dogs, sigh..) around me most of the time. So I guess you could say I am sad I am going home, but I am also glad I am going home.

I am definitely planning on visiting my friends and my hostfamily here. Most of the people want me to stay here for my senior year, then graduate and go to college here. Right now it sounds like a good idea, but there is no way I could do this. So do not worry 10 000 km over there, I will not stay here, I will come home and stay there for sure but part of me will still be here I guess. How poetic My hostfamily is really cute and we are talking a lot about my departure. I talked to my hostmom and she said we will keep in touch for sure and I will have to send her pictures from my husband and my kids and me when I am older. I think she is pre-planning for a long time but it is touching! She said she will send me packets from Florida will all the stuff we do not have in Germany. Like ranch dressing, reese’s peanut butter cups, Skittles, Secret Deodorant and more… All those good things I will miss!!

Videos

My norwegian friend Lene recorded a lot of videos in Hawaii. I thought it would be fun to watch those, since she uploaded them on YouTube.

Our song, last night at Planet Hollywood (every room had to come up with their own lines)

Gold covered man, we were REALLY scared when he moved

At the beach, my favorite norwegian song

Me saying some stuff in norwegian

I hope you had fun watching them!

Hawaii..

Okay, after a full work of make-up work and missed tests and quizzes I finally have time to write about Hawaii. Three words: IT WAS AMAZING!.. I absolutely loved the week we spent there and I love Hawaii. The trip was organized by “Explore America” (for other exchange students: I can just recommend them!!) and we were about 96 exchange students from different countries.

Norway, Germany, China, Japan, Italy, France, Spain, Jaman, Thailand, Russia, Czech Republic, … most of them were from Norway, so I was with 3 norwegian girls in the hotel room. Although we sometimes had little fights when two were trying to sleep and two could not stop laughing, it was a lot of fun!

The whole time we drove around with two big busses and visited basically the whole Island. We went to the north shore, where the big piplines are ( waves can get up to 40 feet ~ 13 meters high), we went snorkeling at the most beautiful beach I have ever seen (Hanauma Bay), we went surfing at Waikiki Beach, we went hiking on Diamond Head (760 feet ~ 232 m high), we visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial, which was really impressing or we just hung out at the beach or went shopping in Honolulu.

It was always hot, although I thought, it was kind a cold at night and in the morning and a lot of us got sunburned. Hawaii is really expensive though and we all spent a lot of money on souvenirs, clothes and food. We also learned a little bit hawaiian! “Aloha” means “Hello”, “Goodbye” and “Love”. “Mahalo” means” Thank you”. “Ohana” means “family” and “humuhumunukunukuapuaa” is the name of the state fish and I have to say that it took us a little bit until we could say the name.

Every night we went to a different place to have dinner. It was either a picnic with pizza, Senior Frogs, Planet Hollywood, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., Hard Rock Café or other cool places. It was so much fun being with all these exchange student in Hawaii and just hang out there and have a good time.
Everybody is “hanging loose” and time just flies by. It was an amazing week and it was really hard to say “goodbye” in the end, but we all promised each other to visit soon! The song we had to learn in the beginning of the trip was like this:

Just hang loose just have fun,
Sipping on a drink lying in the sun,
don’t try to fight it there ain’t no use,
’cause when you’re in Hawaii you should just hang loose.

ALOHA!

(most of the pictures are either on facebook or schuelervz)

Excited!

The next 2-3 weeks are going to be super exciting!
This weekend, friday through sunday, my brother is coming to Orlando to visit me. He is in Dallas, Texas right now and is flying to Florida for this weekend. I am super excited to see him and I can’t wait to spend time with him.

While he is here, we planned on going to the movies, out for dinner, Busch Gardens ( where I have been before, but this time, he wants to make sure I ride EVERY rollercoaster.. I am so scared and my hands are sweating everytime I think about it, but I guess you gotta do watcha gotta do..;) ) and we are going to Daytona beach. It is gonna be a lot of fun and I am glad he is visiting me.

The following Tuesday I am leaving for Hawaii. I will be flying to Arizona first, where I am staying with Maren and the Zwieners from Arizona ( my hostdad’s brother’s family) who were visiting us in december. The next day we are flying together to Hawaii and we both can’t wait! We will be there for 8 days and they organized this week well with a lot of activities for all the exchange students from all around the world. I am so excited to meet them and get to know Hawaii!!

Halftime..

A new semester has started, the second half of my ten month long exchange year is coming up.. You start to think a lot of about yourself and the past five months if you know that you only have five months left. You think about the time you spent here and the things you experienced.. I have really enjoyed the last five months here and I am glad I still have five left. It would be hard if I would have to leave now, because I actually really settled down..

I got to know a lot of people, I like going to my american high school and I enjoyed Florida a lot. I LOVE the weather. It is almost sunny everyday and it doesn’t rain as much as in Germany. Of course here are people I don’t like and things that were or still are difficult for me. Sometimes it is really hard and you wish you could just go back home, where everything is “normal” and easy for you, because you are used to it.

I would say I improved my english, especially my accent and my pronounciation, although I still make mistakes and there are still people who laugh about it, but I can laugh about it, finally. I don’t know if I changed a lot, but I think if you are “alone” ( you know what I mean) and you HAVE to handle things all by yourself and you HAVE to talk to people to get information, then you get used to talking to new people. It was really hard to make friends in the beginning, although I thought it would be easy for me, because I never had a problem with that.

Everybody here has their own friends, most of them since kindergarden or middle school and they are so close, that they don’t want to make new friends. Not everybody is like this, thank god! And then you meet a new people who actually want to get to know you and want to hang out with you and it is great! It is not always easy and you do compare them with your friends from home, but it is really fun and you feel more comfortable and get to know more people.

Since it is a new semester, I have new classes. Instead of government I have economics, which is interesting and I like my teacher. Instead of psychology ( which I kind a miss, especially the people from that class), I have driver education now.
It is really funny, because we drive on simulators and I have to say, I am a bad driver, depending on those machines. I mean, I am getting better, but everytime you do something wrong ( so all the time) a person tells you through your earphones:”Please stay in your lane”, “You are too close to the stop sign” or “You have to look in both directions before you pass an intersection”. It is really frustrating and I did a lot of things wrong, including killing people or driving through a red light, so I am glad this is just a simulator, which shuts down, everytime you do something really dangerous.

So I basically like my new classes and I am looking forward to the next five months. I really miss my family and my friends and german bread and “Döner”, but I prefer staying here for this time, although it is not easy all the time.

Christmas, New Year’s Eve and special visit…

It’s been, as always, a long time ago, since I wrote the last post. Sorry again, but if you experience things and time passes you don’t really feel like writing about it. But I know how much I enjoy reading posts from other exchange students, so I guess, I have to write, too.

So, this was my first american Christmas. On the 24th I talked to my family in germany and I could watch them opening their presents over “skype”. It was really nice and I kind a felt like I was sitting there next to them. On christmas eve, here in Florida, we had a little christmas party with our family, including grandma, aunt and uncle. We had really good food and played some games.

On christmas morning everyone got up at 8 a.m. and we sat down next to our christmas tree with the presents. My hostdad played “Santa” and gave everyone each present and we startet opening them. It was weird to open presents in the morning and it didn’t really feel like christmas, but it was still really nice and something special. We had a big breakfast afterwards with bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs, coffee and juice.

Later the day we went to our aunts and uncles house and had a big lunch/dinner and everybody got more presents. We played some more games and just sat together and I really enjoyed it, I just like being around their family, they’re so nice!

Saturday came our family (my hostdad’s brother with his family and his exchange student from norway, Maren). They stayed for a week and we did a lot of fun stuff togheter. We went canooing for 4 hours which was kind a exhausting and our muscles hurt so bad. They went to disney for 2 days, we went shopping at “Millenia mall” which is probably the coolest and biggest mall, I’ve ever seen, we went out for dinner, played “Wii” (which we got for christmas) and had a good time.

Wednesday the 31st was New year’s Eve. Maren, I and my american friend Christine went to our friends concert, who play reggae in a band and there were a lot of people from our school and it was fun, I really like their music. Afterwards we went home and celebrated with our familys and some neighbours the new year. The whole night was different from the things we do in Germany at New Year’s, but it was still fun and I had a good time.

Thanksgiving…

Yeah, finally Thanksgiving was there. I woke up at 9 o’clock to help my hostmom with the preparations and I already had almost 20 messages from friends saying “Happy Thanksgiving”..

I helped her chopping, stuffing the turkey and all other things.. It was fun to stuff the turkey and but herbs under the turkey skin. The turkey had to stay in the oven almost 4 hours and around 2 o’clock, my hostuncle, aunt and grandma came.

I thought we would have a dinner, not a thanksgiving lunch, but they said you have to start early with all this food or you will never be able to eat everything. We had SO much food, we didn’t even eat half of it.. but it was delicious!!! We had a lot of traditional food, like the turkey, corn bred filling and sweet potatoe casserole. After we ate, everyone was so sleepy, because there are certain ingridients in the turkey that makes you tired. So we walked 5 minutes outside, came back and ate pie. We had pumpkin, cherry and pecan pie – awesome!!

We watched some typical christmas movies and then we went to bed. Friday morning after thanksgiving is a special day for americans. Some stores open at 4, 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning and have a lot of sales and cheaper stuff. Some people even waited in front of one store for 3 days, because some TVs were so cheap.

My hostmom and I got up at 5 and went to 4 different stores, the lines were amazing! We bought boots ( very popular here) for her, me and my hostsister and she bought some christmas presents. It was funny to go shopping so early, although we were really tired! We got home and they weren’t even awake yet! And we already went shopping for 3 hours! But it was fun.. another thing we should have in Germany!!

Time passes way too quick!

It happended so much since I wrote the last post, so I thought it would be time to write again. It got really cold after Halloween and I thought it would never get cold in Florida, since it’s called the sunshine state. We can still wear shirts outside during the afternoon, although it’s November.

I think that’s amazing and I just love the weather in Florida. The people here thought they’re gonna die and just looked so weird at me when I said I AM freezing. They were like: What the hack Kim, you’re from Germany, this should be nothing to you! But I must say I got so used to the sun, so I didn’t like the cold at all.

The biggest thing would have been the presidential election. Everyone was so excited and I was soo glad to be here in Florida so I could experience such an historical thing. Everyone thought it would be really close, but in the end it wasn’t. I must say I prefered Obama, because the way he talks just fascinates me and I was scared, that Senator Palin could be our president, because McCain is really old and I think I don’t have to explain why I wouldn’t want her to be president of the united states, hahaha.

I started to go out more, meet new people, do more stuff and just be active. I started with tennis lessons in red bug, which is fun, because I’m playing with three 11-year old kids and compared to them, I am really good!! I wanna make the tennis team at my high school and it is really hard to get in this team, because they got a lot of good tennis players and this school and the coach ( who is also my government teacher) only takes 12 girls into the team. I hope really bad I can make the team, to play tennis, get to know more people and just be part of a sports team, since sport is a really big thing in america.

Right now we are on our thanksgiving break which is great!!! We’re gonna have a big dinner tomorrow with everyone, including aunt, uncle and grandma and I’m really looking forward to it, because I like having big family dinner and I never celebrated Thanksgiving before. I’m gonna take a lot of pictures, especially from the turkey, because I will get up early and help my hostmom stuffing the turkey!

Last weekend was our last football game. Football game is over. OMG. I am gonna miss the football games friday night! Me and some friends took the “Spirit Bus” ( which was a normal school bus, although they told us, we’re gonna be on a charter bus) to Clermont, which is about an hour west. It was fun, but it was FREEEEEEZING! Even the cheerleaders and football players were freezing. It was the quarter final ( I guess?) and we lost !!! But they played very hard and it didn’t really matter that they lost, but of course it would have been awesome if we won!!!

Right now, “Twilight” is in the movie theatres and almost everyone is going. I went with 3 friends, they invited me to come with them, I was really happy! We went to a sushi restaurant before and oh my god, it was delicious!!! I tried sushi before, but I never liked it, but since I really tried it, I love it! So we had dinner and then we went to the movies. This guy is just so gorgeous, all the girls were screaming during the movie and if you are a girl, you should really watch it. It is called “Biss zum Morgengrauen” in german.

I think some of you know it, but I still want to talk about it, because I am SO excited. I AM GOING TO HAWAII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In february! Isn’t that awesome?!??! I’m travelling with explore america and I will travel with other exchange students in Hawaii. My awesome family (including mom, dad, grandma and grandpa) made this dream come true and I’m so thankful I am able to go!!! THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU!!!

Soon there will be Christmas and then almost half of my exchange year is over. I really do miss my friends and my family and my home, but if I could go home now, I don’t think I would like to leave. I really start now to make closer friends and feel comfortable in my new home. I really enjoy living in florida and experiencing the american way of life. Sorry to my german friends and family, but I guess you have to go without me quiet a bit See you in almost 7 months, hahaha.

Party, Party, Halloween..

Ok I finally had time to write something. First of all we had party at our house. My hostmum Sandy always wanted Damon’s ( my hostbrother) friends over here so they could hang out and stuff.. Damon never invited anybody.. Then Sandy and Paul were invited to a costume Party and Damon’s friends and I thought about having a party over here..

Actually it was a good party!! And we cleaned very well afterwards.. There were about 30 people, well Sandy said 15, but she also said she knows that there will be more than 15.. So many people just came through the door, people I didn’t even know.. They just walked in and felt home, haha.. Well we had a lot of fun.. Lonnie and Greg ( two guys from my school) thought it would be funny to throw my in the pool.. with my clothes!!

Well it was kind a funny and then I threw Lonnie in the pool.. All the people left around 12 and we had enough time to clean up and spray Windex, hahaha.. After we had Omletts as a midnightsnack we just hung out and watched some videos.. We all went to bed around 5 and I was soo tired the other day.. The next partys were a week later..

Damon’s friends created a Hunted House for Halloween.. It was around their pool and they did a great job, it was really scary!! One guy was flying over you from a tree.. They had these flashlights the cops usually use.. They had so many guys jumping out and scare you.. And there was one guy he had a real chainsaw and was just following you.. SCARY!! Some smaller kids ran out crying..

Then we had a Halloween party Saturday.. That girl has a really big house and the partys are always in her guesthouse and her mother doesn’t know anything about what they’re doing over there.. There were so many people drinking and playing beer pong and stuff, but it was fun.. Until her mom called the cops! I was really scared, because my exchange agency told me that if I go to a alcoholic party and they catch me, they send me back home to germany.. and I don’t really wanna leave!?

But the cops just gave one of my friends a ticket for parking on the sidewalk – he was pissed!!! Except the part with the cops, the party was really fun..

BIG SORRY

Okay first of all I’m really sorry that I didn’t write anything for like 3 weeks..There wasn’t anything really exciting after homecoming I could talk about.. We had normal school weeks, kind a boring and thats it. We had a party at my house, my first american party!!, and next saturday is a halloween (costume) party at a friends house.. I will tell you about those two partys when they’re over and I will take some pictures. That’s all I can say now… You’ll hear from me Sunday!!