Boringness + Cars, Drivers Ed, Buckleys Farm and what I miss about Germany :D

Only 8 days of school till spring break !!!!!!!!!!! :) (Father Quantz (principal of AHS), added Thursday to spring break, so thank him for one more day off :D)

So another week has passed (it seems to go really fast :O), so what was special about it?!
School is still easy and there's no problems, I don't know why I even care to write it, it's not really going to change anyways I think :D. There was something special this week though: "Retreat" on Wednesday: A church kinda thing, you have no classes, but go in a small group (it's only a part of each grade that goes together) to learn about god and get to think about yourself, have mass in the Sister's chapel (Sisters of St. Paul) and play some games like: You all run around in a circle, then one of the teachers calls a number and you need to form groups with as many people as the number. Whoever isn't in a group is out... It's actually fun, even if my explanation may not seem that way :D

I also had 3 drivers ed' lessons this week and those are good to, I now know some signs, the two second rule and stuff like: 70 % of rear-end collisoins happen with a stationary vehicle involved :D Drivers Ed takes place on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6-8 PM and on Saturdays from 10-Noon. Driving lessons I need to schedule myself with the instructors and I'll start doing that next week I think :)

Now the part with pictures :) WEEEEKKKKEEEENNND!! :D

Friday:

WHAT'S THAT?!? Bryan's cool house :D

Yes, Bryan took me to see his house on Fridays late afternoon. And he has a awesome collection of NASCAR stuff :)

From a real used NASCAR car, signed by the whole crew!
Stuff ! :D

He said all the stuff he's got is worth about 120 k $ O:O He also has a huge TV (ofc ;D) and an awesome stereo :) Zac told me his collection is one of the Top 5 of the US... He has like a thousand of the model cars, many signed, and any merchandise you can imagine :O

CARS!!!! :D

He was kinda sick though, so he decided not to come back to the garage that night, which was really bad since seriously NOBODY was there that night besides Sol,me and Lou...

This song, which was on like 3 times that night on the radio station we were listening to describes how I felt (Not really, I wasn't depressed I'm just kidding ;D I was pretty bored though :D)

Saturday: I had drivers ed in the morning and after that Sandy took me to see "Buckleys Farm" a old place from 1910 where you could see the actual barn and the farm house as well as a Indian camp and a "Pioneers Farm" :)A Man dressed like on of the early pioneers (I think ;))

It was really cool and interesthing, but as you can see from the thick jacket I'm wearing it was really cool again this weekend :/ Especially the Indian camp was interesting, because there were some native Indians there, that told you about how they used to live there

A tent in the Indian camp

Now we come to the point where I actually missed something from Germany (doesn't happen to often ;P), I had some very good gyros in the restaurant we went for lunch, and it reminded me of good old turkish DÖNER Kebap! :D I really want some now, but you can't get it anywhere here ... :/

Saturday night was not as boring too: Erin and her parents, Jeff, his dad and Katrina as well as Jun Hi (n/c on how he looked that night, "gay" probably wouldn't fit it anymore ;P) showed up, so I had some fun :) (For those who were asking themselves who everybody else was this weekend: I only know Lauren was out of town somewhere, Zac was at his dads again(he has to go there till after spring break every weekend :/) and Andre was in Gary, no Idea why none of the "older" people like Little Lou showed up...) Also this weekend was the first Formula One race of the season, which was one at 1 in the morning which I then watched before I went to bed :D (Really interesting race too btw, because of all the new regulations that came this season :D)...

Sunday: Just a day spent hangin' around the house not really doing anything useful, because it was SNOWING and too cold to ride the bike :/ The weather was really crazy though, since in the afternoon the snow had melted again... Tonight I played some pool with Zac after he came back from his dads, but it really wasn't very warm in the garage :/

So this weekend wasn't the best I had over here, but it wasn't really bad either, got to see Buckleys, a small crowd on saturday night and learned some stuff for driving :D Next week you can look forward to some pictures of friends of mine in AHS, I'm planning to invite some of them (but you never know if they actually show up, since they all live kinda far from here and even though the Juniors I know mostly drive, they don't all have cars and don't get rides all the time, but we will see :D)

THE END

Birthday on Friday, Biking on Saturday with Poker and an empty garage and a short Sunday! Also feat. DRIVERS ED!!!! GOGOGOGO REEEADD NOWW!!! :P

Oh yeah, two weeks till Spring Break :) A week in Virginia :) That's gonna be AWESOME! :D The only thing that kinda bugs me is, that my Hostdad's son has changed his wedding to April 11th (spring break :/), since one of his friends is being deployed to afghanistan, so I again won't be able to attend (it was supposed to be sometime in october), but hey I can see pictures at least, and overall I heard weddings aren't in particular the most interesting stuff you can go to as long you're not one of the marrying persons :D

Yep, you heard right, I'll fly to see my grandparents in Spring Break and have some vacation from all the stuff going on here :)

So how am I? GOOOD ;D Still having an awesome time, and alot of fun! I'm gonna start off with school again: Going smooth and easy, I must say though, that my dedication to school has kinda drifted away in some classes a little bit, but hey I'm still getting perfect grades everywhere so there's no problem at all :) I'm also actually fully understanding the topic we're doing right now in physisc, so I'm doing fine there too :) The most fun class I have is probably Math, since I just like Math, and since it's a honor class it's not that easy (though I probably could still sleep through most of the class, but that's okay :P), so it's quite interesting. For anyone that cares about the topic we're at at the moment: equalities/inequalities of which the graphs turn out to be circles :D It's kinda weird, but easy and fun, so look forward to that Germans :D. My physics class of course is also fun, just because the teacher's good and I'm getting the current topic about electrostatics it's not that hard anymore :D. Besides that my other classes are good, but pretty much too easy mostly, but that's ok it's still fun, and my teachers are all good...

WEEKEND: Friday: My hostdads birthday! I got him a Miller-High Life Cap (his favourite beer) and a "Have a Crummy Day!" T-shirt :D Actually I thought my card was awesome too ;P: "Happy birthday from Both of us: The Smart one and the Beautiful one!" Inside: "Oh wait that's both me ! Happy Birthday from both of us anyways!" :D I really liked that one ;)
So to the "surprise" (It was supposed to be one, but Lou kinda was figuring it outafter Sandy had brought in the cake and a lot of chicken fingers ;P) Party:

I'm guessing there were about 15-20 people there, so it was a pretty big crowd :D Some of the already mentioned person's being there were: Bryan (Big guy--->picture?!? ;D), Lauren, Erin, Little Lou, Missy (I guess her real name is Melissa, but she doesn't like that one :)), Matt, Jeff and Katrina...

Lauren! OMG NO BRACES!!!! :D (she was really happy to get them off :D)

Just to explain the bad picture quality: About 2 weeks ago (I guess I never told you...), I managed to mess up the display of the camera somehow, I must have hit it with something while it was in my Pocket, and when it's dark it's really hard to see if a picture's gonna be good ;)

That's pretty much all that's to say about Friday, I had fun and everybody else too (I hope :O ;))...

Saturday: Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong Bike Ride :D Sandy told me about a bike trail so I went there and apparently made a good long ride of 12 miles, seriously it didn't feel that long at all, but I checked it with Google maps (I knew where I was at the end, a gas station named "Highland gas station", ads about Highland and a free wi-fi connection named "rediscoverhigland" made it fairly obvious :D), for all of you that don't believe me, put in 9330 Hayes St, 46307 Crown point to Ridge Rd, Highland, IN... It took me about 2 h overall getting there and back (with a short drinking break at the gas station :D), so I guess I didn't go that fast, thinking about it, 20 km isn't that far either, hmm, but my host parents were impressed xD

After that I took off for some more poker, this time being very close to winning, 3rd Place, and I lost with a FRICKIN' ACE TRIPLET (AGAINST A WOMAN (:P ;)), but that's ok it was fun :D

The evening was very boring though, only Lou, Sol, me, Andrew (just look it up in the other entries shouldn't be TOO hard to find^^) and later Jun Hi (... n/c ;D). Also Sol, Lou and Andrew just watched some Baseball (I somehow really don't like that sport sorry, seems very boring to me ;)), so I was just kinda bored and doing nothing :D

SUNDAY: Not much, slept 12 h till 1:45 PM, took the bike for a little bit (just a bit this time ...), barbecue for dinner and then Pool with Zac :) I'm getting pretty decent at pool too, I actually was VERY good that day but Zac had a good day too, so he's now up by 9 games on the scoreboard -.-".

TODAY: Drivers Ed: Actually being one out of 2 Germans in the class it was fun, there also was someone from my english class (only one from Andrean though :/), I had my first theory lesson, which actually wasn't that easy since it was just, take this work sheet and do it, If you're new, that's what you need to know when you're done, if you're old, you yould be able to do it without a mistake :D But the Instructor is fun. What I need to take: 30 hours of Theory (3 times a week), 6 hours of driving (scheduled individually), and then a 50 quesion multiple choice/fill in the blanks test and a 15 minutes driving test :D If my exchange programm wouldn't be set up like this, that I can't drive at all (I'll be able to though when I go to Virginia after my school ends (no exchange anymore) :)), I could drive with a person over 21 with a license too, since I got my permit now...

THAT's IT! Sorry I didn't take many pictures this week, more next week (though I'll have to do some papers that weekend, but a party in the garage should be there anyways :D)....

A Interesting site I found earlier last week when biking :D In the middle of Crown Point...

THE END

More Tomorrow!

Hmm, I really don't want to write anything today, so you will have to wait for tomorrow for more stuff :D Just some things that I'll include : Lou's Birthday, Biking, Baseball (I don't want to say it's boring, but I just don't like it very much :P), Poker and 12 h of sleeping :D

More tomorrow also with a report on my first drivers ed class :)

Good Night! :D

(Really quick though for anybody that's scared, because this is something new and special: I'm still having a lot of fun and doing good and I'll continue my blog from next week on, I just don't feel like writing anything today :D)

Boring Fridays, ok Saturdays, awesome Sundays and Mondays without school :)

Ladies and Gentleman, please fully turn up the volume and then play the video...










I hope you're awake now and paying attention :D I didn't write my Blog yesterday, because I was pretty tired from the day, but in exchange: something new: videos I took with my camera, sorry about the quality though :D

So how was my week?! Fun! :D Since Art left last week, Zac started coming over each night, so we had a lot of fun playing pool :)
School also is still same old: everything good, having fun most time and my grades are still doing good :) That's pretty much all there is to say about school... :D

The weekend, this time 3 days long, because we had today off, it was "Quarter Break" was the interesting part again :)

Friday: Was really really boring ): Almoust nobody showed up, it was pretty much only Lou, Sol, Jeff, me and two friends of Sol: A German exchange student living in Michigan, Sina, and a girl from AHS, Brionna (I think^^). But hey, it was ok and I talked to Lou about music and Jazz alot so it wasn't that bad :D

Saturday: Nice :D In the morning I had to ge up rather early (9 AM :/) to get me signed up for drivers ed', which I'm starting on next Monday :) I'm really looking forward to that, since I want to have a license, and drive in Germany with 16 :O :) Yes, I'll be able to drive german cars with 16 for a half year, before I need to change it to a German License (no test :)) and American cars I can drive as soon as I get a formula filled out ! Driving !!!! :) :D We also got a new Internet/Phone/TV conncection that day, which made the internet faster, so I can upload videos and photos faster now :).

In the evening at first not many people seemed to come, but slowly they dropped in and it was fun :) Sina stayed for the whole weekend:

Sina and me Saturday night

Overall there were about 10 people that night, which isn't the biggest possible crowd but it was fun :D People there: Sol, me, Lou, Little Lou and his girlfriend Missy, Matt (Little Lou's friend) and his girlfriend, Jeff, Sina, Jun Hi, Lauren, Erin (only for 10 minutes though, she is in some kind of trouble ;P) and the big guy Bryan :)

Bryan and me

The night was really fun, especially, as you can see in the picture, as I had fun with Bryan :) I also played some pool, didn't do that good though, but hey you can't always win :D I also talked to Sina about Germany and weboth told the older people what we thought of the US and other exchange students speaking their own language all the time (That's just rude :O), so we came to the conclusion, that Germans are just the most polite exchange students, cause we don't do that ;) :P . If you have been wondering where Zac was all weekend by now, he was at his dads again :/

Missy (Little Loud's Girlfriend (they're engaged btw and having their wedding in october)), Sol and Little Lou. Oh and the dog's their dog it's actually Kelc son :D

The most fun: Sunday: Bryan texted me at 7:30 approx. 2139491230 times to wake me up ;) But besides that sunday really was fun :D We went to see the Southside St. Patricks Day parade in Chicago and it was really awesome :)

This was one of the many marching bands in the parade :) Sorry the sound quality didn't turn out too good :/

Since I don't know which pictures were good that day I'm just gonna pick 5 random ones: :D

No, this isn't a T-shirt, he actually painted his body green :D

That should be enough to give you a impression of what it was like :D

After the parade, we did a little round trip around chicago were Lou and Sandy showed us some of the big sites from the car, because Sina had to leave from a train station in Downtown. We had something to eat in a really funny restaurant, where the waiters were supposed to act rude and be snippy. That was really fun.

The last thing we did before we dropped Sina off and headed home, was to see the bean, which is this big shiny metal "thing" in the middle of millenium park, were you get really nice reflections when you walk underneath it.Shiny :D

Monday: Last day off :/ I slept 12 hours and was really awake, so I decided to take a bike ride, on the bike our neighbors are borrowing me for my stay (they gave it to me at sunday evening). I found some interesting stores, and a "European Food" store, where I bought some "Kinderschokolade" :D Later today I also rode the bike to the Social Security Office, to get a letter of verification for my Social Security number, since my card's still in Germany, which I need to get my Learner's Permit, which I need to get my License :D. After Zac got off school (haha MHS had school ;P), we hang out and texted a stupid Txting service, which answers all your questions, called ChaCha :D That was really fun :D


Hmm, somehow it seems like I'm writing less and less every week :D But hey more pictures AND some videos :D

The End

Happy Birthday Art, good bye Art and why riding your bike is fun!!

Happy Birthday!

Good Bye!

Yes, everybody wish a Happy Birthday to Artturi(I learned how to spell his name ;D), and say good bye! He left yesterday, after only beeing able to stay two weeks overhere ): . He's going to some family friends in Illinois before he takes the first plane back to Finland. His parents just want him out of this area and back home after what has happened with the chasing by the gang I told you about. His 18th Birthday was on Friday, so we kinda did a little Birthday/Good-Bye Party in the garage, but more later.

Again the update on how my school's going: Perfect! :D I'm still having a lot of fun, though it's school overall, so it's not that much fun ;P. My grades didn't really change since last week, only in Math I managed a 125 % (Extra credit problem...) on the last test, so I'm on a B now and I just checked Edline (you can check your grades online there), and somehow I managed to get a B in Physics, too (I don't know how though, because I failed the last two tests (one with 60 % ( You pass above 60 -.-) and the other one miserably , but apparently he curved them very much :D)). So now I have 5 A's and 2 B's, and since this is the last week of the quarter I don't really think it's gonna change alot anymore before the quarter ends. I'm really happy with that :)


Nothing really interesting happened over the week, besides Art coming every single day (for the two weeks he had been here he was in the garage every single night ! :D) to play pool with me. That's the reason why I will miss him, nobody to train with, so i won't get better as fast :O
So about the party :D It was fun and about 15 people showed up, even the language coordinator of the organisation, Anthony, showed up with his wife and kids. We kinda just played pool and ate the pizza they ordered no dancing or anything like at the Valentines party :D

Art's birthday cake

Some of the people there

But again, it was mostly exchange students that showed up and even if they didn't all speak in their languages I always seem kinda awkward if it's just other exchange students, just because (this may seem stupid and rude but ok ^^) I personally think I'm here to experience the American culture not the korean/spanish/brazilian/... one, though it's interesting hearing about them and so on, but I would like more american people at the parties ;D So I mostly kinda talked to Art (well he was the one the party was about ;D) and the two Americans Lauren and Andre, that were there. It was fun though and I played alot of pool again :D (The score me and Art ended: 25 games for him/23 for me). The party pretty much ended at 1 when everybody had left besides Art himself :) .

Saturday: Road Trip ! YAY! :D

On Saturday we left Crown point and went down to Indianapolis for a birthday of two of Sandy's relatives. The ride was about 2 h each way, but the temperature difference from here to there was incredible it was in the forties (about 5 ° C) an raining in Crown Point when we leaft:

Where we came from...

Butwhen we reached Indianapolis it was sunny and up in the seventies (~ 25 °C), so it really felt like summer:

Where we went...

Since it was such a good weather I decided to borrow one of the relatives' bikes and went off for a bike ride most of the afternoon. It was really good to ride a bike againa after such a long time, but the neighborhood was kinda boring, the only interesting I found was a River and later a Burger King, where I bought a milk shake :D

The fartest point from the house I biked too, a place called "Dirtworks LLC" :D

It was really fun though and after that we had dinner there (Barbecue :) ) and watched the kids open their gifts before we left for crown point at about 5:45. We came here at 8:00, but the night was far from over.

First it seemed like nobody would show up and it would be a very "boring" night, but after I had told Lou I was bored because there was nobody there suddenly the garage got crowded in a blink :O About 15-20 people, all in Little Lou's age, showed up so we had another big crowd there with more pool (Me and little Loud managed to win 3 team games in a row, YAY! :D). I went to bed at about 3 o'clock (4 o'clock new time, daylight saving started here yesterday :)).


A rather short blog entry's end.

Fat "Mardi Gras" Tuesday, Poker and more Pool than you can imagine!!

Happy March! :D I really couldn't think of a fitting beginning this time really so I decided to start with the new month, since with March I'm always 3 months here already :O


Update on school in the beginning, like always ;D: I'm doing very fine my grades for the third quarter will be: 5 A's (W. Hist/Eng 10/Morality/MusicTheory/Latin III) and 2 C's ( H. Alg 2 + Trig (yeah, unfortunately I wasn't too good in the first and third test, and the math teacher is the only one that doesn't give any grades besides the tests) + H. Physics (Yeah well, I told you so often it's that hard, but for the 4th quarter I should be able to get it up to a B at least, since I'm constantly getting better (though the topic at the moment is very hard again :/))). I think that's pretty good, since both classes I got a C are Honors (you are considered to be one grade better in normal classes) and aren't really supposed to be taken by sophomores (3 sophs in my math class and I'm the only one in my Physics class), so I'm totally happy with my grades, even more 'cause I'm not really working too hard at all ;).


Let's get to the more interesting part again, this time though it's not all on the weekend:

Art!!! ;D

Art (the new finnish exchange student now living across the street I told you last week about (actually his name is something like "artturi" (or sth. like that ;P), but it's pronounced so complicated, that nobody's able to do it, so everybody calls him Art :D)), is definately the most addicted Pool player ever :D. Beginning on Monday night, he came over every single night (besides Tuesday (look at the title to know why, or scroll down ;P)), and played Pool for at least 2 hours, so I got alot of practise this week, since he's pretty good! I even managed a combo cut bank shot (explanation : cue--->one ball--->cuts other ball(combo)--->bank--->long way --->pocket :D), I called :O. He's a very nice guy too, and he told us the temperature we're having right now (about 25-35 F (-5 - 3 ° C (approx. not calculated ;D))) is like june in Finnland :O.


So why didn't he come over on Tuesday?! We went with Sandy to her church to a Mardi Gras, also called Fat Tuesday "party" :D. If you're thinking what the heck is Mardi Gras, you're the same as I was ;D It's kinda like the "last day of karnival", since you also can dress up, but actually it's just having alot of (in this case very good ;)) food, because it's the last day before the 40 day lent before easter (I hope Germans now also know what I'm taking about, since led isn't the most common word ;D). There was alot of food and especially the dessert was very good :D. It wasn't really a party though, since it just ended up that all these more or less old people sat together and talked ;D But hey I had fun, good food and texted too much that night (50 (or more I don't know^^) texts in 2 hours are too much in my oppinion but hey I didn't text that much this week anymore so I'm doing fine ;D). But hey, I learned a lot of funny stuff (I texted like 5 or 6 people to tell me something funny ;D) in those texts, e.g: (which (I don't remember who thought me that in Germany, but some english teacher did i think ;D) btw not means example given, but comes from the latin 'exempli grati' ;P): stupid pickup lines like: "If you would be a burger at McDonalds you would be the McGorgeous" :D.

Erin and Monica (a friend of Katherine (a friend of Erin ;D))

Enough of that let's get to the weekend again :P : Friday I spent in the garage again (ofc, why do I even tell you?! ;P) and it was again a very crowded day with about 15 people! That always makes it more fun than with just the normal ones ;D. A full overview followes now:
My age: Sol, Me, Art (scroll up to read more ;P), Erin(you should know her by now^^), Andre (black guy, was in the blog last week...), Zac( n/c), Monica (friend of Katherine), Katherine(friend of Erin's ;D), Jun Hi(n/c), Lauren (in enough pictures already so no more explanations ;D ;P)!

Katherine, Me and Erin

Lauren!!!!!! :D

Older: Little Lou (Lou's son for those who forgot ;P), his friend Matt (he's in the army), Lou himself, Jeff (Drums?! :P), Andrew (a 21 year old I talked to alot, since his grandparents are from Germany so he speaks German (no we didn't talk German like Koreans would have talked Korean ;P) and wanted to know alot about Germany), and 2 guys I don't remember the names even if they bet me and Art in team game of pool ;P.

The partly German, Andrew, who also played poker on Saturday

In the front Matt, behin him Little Lou, and Zac's the one who's got the funny light thing in his face ;D (It's a straw, I don't know who did it though ;P)

The night ended at about 2 for me (I went to bed ;P), after too much Pop (Diet Mr. Thunder is nothing like real Dr. pepper btw ;D) and alot of Pool.

Saturday: Sometime in the morning we picked up Dae Sang, a Korean exchange student at Andrean (yeah but he doesn't speak Korean with koreans all the time, so he's cool ;P), who also then spent the night. The day of the big poker game I announced last time! I can just tell you at the beginning I didn't make it :P. It really was fun though and I lost with a 50/50 chance so not too much my fault ;D. We were 11 people there, I don't know all the names though the ones I know: Zac, Me, Art, Bill (Zac's stepdad), Chase (Bill's cousin), Andrew and the rest doesn't matter ;P The first place was Chase, who took 175 $, second one was Bill himself, the host, who took 75 $ and the third one just got his 25 bucks buy-in back. The game started with 2 tables and lasted from 4:30 to 10 :O. I was out at about 7:30 though ): .

After that we again went over to the garage, but that night there weren't really a lor of people, just Sol, Me, Lou, Andrew, Erin(came late), Andre(came late), Dae Sang, Jun Hi, Art and Zac and Jeff. (Yeah I know, alot of names, but I explained every single one somewhere in this post, just search for that ;P) Since Dae Sang and Zac were staying over night we stayed up till about 4 before we went to bed, but it was ok I surprisingly didn't feel tired at all today, even if I was woken at 10 o' clock.

Sunday was rather boring and since I wrote so much confusing stuff already I won't tell you anything more ;P just a random picture of the Pop /Alcohol (not by the young people, all done by the older ones :O) finished on Friday, not even all of the pops though, Lou threw half of the cans away that night :D:

The End

P.S: Everybody gogogo ask questions, since this blog is probably even more confussing than the one with the Valentines party ;D