More Guest writers!! YAY! A round of applause for zac and erin :D.Oh and me cause I'm having A BLAST here! :>

I LOVE DANIEL AND ZACH AND DANIEL'S MOM!!!!!!
these people are just sooo amazing
but what am I supposed to say?
Oh I just hit daniel in the stomach!!!
no jk but that's okay
so but seriously, these people are awesome!
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
only on Tuesdays <3

~Erin Lee Weiss

Okay, I don't wanna sound nerdy, but I'm sorry, I'm new at this. This kid *points at dan* is the coolest and best exchange student I've ever met, heck he's probably cooler than most americans! He LOVES Dr. Pepper, and he is okay at Pool, getting better tho. Yeah, that's pretty much it...

-Zac "the lunchbox" Fidler

Okay here we go AGAIN, since blogspot somehow managed to delete two of the paragraphs I had written already I need to put them down again! -.-" The Guest writers thing is fun, even though even I don't get what Erin's writing is supposed to mean this time :P but that's okay haha I really am gonna miss all this people ): AWWWW!

Anyways my week: It was pretty much the same old, school still is easy and boring, but hey we at least don't have any full week of school anymore :D Next week's friday there's a field day kinda thing, the week after that we get friday off for prom, after that there's memorial day and then the finals are there already :O That's pretty cool I guess, but on the other side it's only such a short time till I leave ): ): But I don't wanna bore you anymore w/ Stuff nobody even cares about so here we go:

The awesome weekend!

So the weekend :) here we go :D be prepared ;D

FRIDAY

GARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGEEE! ;D awesomeness ! alot of people, more or less, my age were there and we had alot of fun :) We really just hang out, and my pool skills are starting to devolve again, since Zac wasn't there this weekend and we don't play pool as much anymore in the week :O but that's okay :) we had TONS of fun and not only were there the usual people from around the neighborhood, no actually somebody from Andrean showed up! SURPRISE! :D My buddy Paul K (not Paul C...) and his friend Brian (not big brian :P) showed up :) Paul was kinda weird that night though, since he normally isn't even allowed to leave his house on the weekend, he was very excited to be able come :O But it was fun, we pretty much just sat around and talked oh and did the, now almoust traditionally, walk to CVS to get some AMP energy drinks xD

So not much to say really I mean it's just the usual awesome crazyness in the garage you know :P I'm so glad I got this host family it's so much fun!!!! :> Pic time now, ofc I took some random pictures again :D :

Erin was there ofc :D

Paul and Lauren! This pic actually turned out very nice :)

Katherine (she was at the garage some time ago) and me

Paul and Brian
Umm yeah lol Lauren's smile looks awesome and my expression is just screwed up, but that's okay :P

Besides these people also Ryan Wilson and his brother Cameron were there, no pics of them though Idk why :O

List of people there: Erin, Lauren, me, Katherine, Ryan, Cameron, Lou ofc, Paul K, Brian

Zac wasn't there btw, because he had to be at his dads again :O ):

Saturday:

Driving in the morning! Last drive! I practised some parallel parking and got an B- average overall :) That's all I needed, now I can do my drive test at the driving school :)


Anyways what we did after driving lesson was: CHICAGO!!!! SIGHTSEEING!!! It was really alot of fun! :) Me and Sandy were the only ones that went though, don't ask why long story :P We took the train from Gary metro station (yeah not a good place to be at at night I can assure you of that :P) and walked all over Chicago from there :) We started at the Millenium park (somewhat comparable to the Central park in NY); continued w/ the center of culture and art; went to a 13 floors department store; looked at the lake/river; went up to the Sears Tower; Had some chicago thick crust pizza and looked at the big fountain (I forgot the name, dang! ;P) as well as many other things :) We then took the train back to Gary, which we reached at about 9 PM. I had a very very good time and especially the sears tower (okay soon willis tower :P), the biggest building in the USA, was amazing and offered an amazing view, even though they had closed the highest floor and you could just go up to the 99th floor :D

Pictures:

In millenium Park, a pretty big screen :D
you can do some SERIOUS shopping there :D
Sears tower...
...from the ground...

...and the view from the top :>

But even though, I walked around chicago all day and my feet were dying the night was hardly over yet when we got home the Garage was waiting of course :D that day it was pretty much the same people as on Friday, w/out the two people from Andrean ofc :P We pretty much just did the talking thing again, and of course, not to be forgotten if it's american teenagers, we were all txting like crazy :P I even managed to text from Erin's phone OMG! :P She's got some weird word recognizing on her phone, which makes it kinda complicated to text, but now I know how to :D Oh and 3 people from Merrillville High showed up, that Cameron (Ryan Wilson's brother) knew, a girl called Pauline a guy called Jose and another guy whose name i forgot :P sry ;D but they only stayed for about an hour before they had to leave, so no Pics either :D they said though they will come back next weekend :D

One funny story really quick :D : Lauren recorded me saying: "WHAT'S UP?!" (I got a very enthusiastic way of saying it and I do it like every 20 minutes when nobody's talking, even if the answer always is "not much" "Nothing" or "Idk" :P ) and put it on her phone as the ringtone for new txts ! I feel special haha my voice surely will be a famous ringtone all over the US very soon ;P

Ryan, Idk why the picture isn't very sharp...

Lauren!
Umm, we somehow managed to take a picture in the exact same instant haha (Erin's glasses are fake ofc :P)
Me and Cameron Wilson

So, for an overview a list of the people there Saturday: Erin, Lauren, me, Katherine, Ryan, Cameron, Lou ofc, Pauline, Jose and the other guy :D

SUNDAY:

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM IN GERMANY! SANDY! AND EVERY OTHER MOM!!! :D The first day I was able to sleep in, for like 2 weeks, I always had driving/driver's ed classroom lessons...

Today was kinda boring but anyways, here's what I did all day in short telegraph style:

Hang out w/ Erin- Txt/chill - Sit in the garage - eat dinner - Hang out in the garage w/ Erin and Zac, who got back from his dads - write my blog - go to bed :D

That's all people I'm gonna go 2 sleep now, I hope you had as much fun reading this as I'm having overhere, I doubt it though, it's very hard to have that much fun ;P


The End w/ a picture of the bean and me ! :)

Uniform Violations, Embarrassing moments and a (rather) quiet weekend!

The first time I don't want to write this blog, cause there's not much to talk about, really, it just kinda happened to be a rather quiet weekend (ok, compared to weekends of other people it's still quite exciting), but hey you're expecting to read something tomorrow, so I'll fullfill my duty ;P

Again the beginning will consist of another school week, and this time even some funny stuff :) I'll start off with telling you again, I'm doing very good in all classes, even in Physics I'm getting better, I just checked the grade for my last quiz and it's a A *cheer*, for all those who are asking themselves, how did he check his grades on Sunday?!? Since Andrean is a privileged (;D) private school we have a thing called "Edline", where we can check our grades, homework and other news about our school in the internet, it's actually pretty cool, since you don't really need to remember homework anymore ;D (well, some teachers just don't use it (My latin teacher (too old ;P) and my physics teacher (doesn't want to :D) , but still it's pretty cool.) . So what funny things happened this week?!

Well to start in the order of my headline, the Uniform violation :D As I told you last week I bought new shoes, which I wore to school on Tuesday/Wednesday. I didn't think it was any problem, because 90 % of the people are wearing shoes other than the allowed dress shoes, but apparently it was for me :D On Wednesday Mr. Torres saw me with the shoes at lunch and I got a "Uniform Violation note" on Thursday :D I don't know why he picked me and not the other 123949 kids around me wearing the wrong shoes, but ok ;). It isn't anything bad though, I just wasn't allowed to participate in the "Dress down day" on friday, I had to wear uniform when the other students were wearing Andrean wear (Andrean related shirts/sweaters...).

The next more or less funny thing ( not really for me :/ ;D) was that I somehow (I really don't know how :D) managed to fall off my chair in music class. I was just sitting there right, not even tipping the chair or something, when I suddenly found myself on the floor again ;D But, hey if had to pick a class to fall off my chair it would certainly be music, there are just 8 people and I like them all, so it wasn't that embarrassing, just gave them a good laugh ;D


Now the rather quiet weekend: Again of course I spent the 2 evenings in the garage, with Friday being very, very quiet, only Zac, me, Sol, Andre (he was in the blog sometime before ;D) and Bryan (a very good friend of Lous, I think I mentioned him sometime before) and of course Lou (he's always there, so I don't mention him most of the time ;D) being there. I played some more pool, but at the moment I seem to be getting worse ;D. I headed to bed at about 2:30 since there wasn't really anything happening :D.

On Saturday I was woken by Zac texting, and then calling me at about 10:30 in the morning :O He asked me if I wanted to go to Best buy to buy a PC-game so we could play together later that day. That's pretty much what I then did the whole day, played PC-games with Zac/Jun Hi at their house, it was fun though, Jun Hi tought me some Starcraft, the most popular game in South Korea which is as popular as soccer in Germany, it even has its own tv channels :O


The garage was filled a little it more though that night, since I had invited Lauren, Erin (she brought a friend, Robin), Rachel (she didn't show up though, cause she was at her dads) and Andre again. Jun Hi, Zac, Sol, Jeff (the friend of Lou where I play the drums) and me of course where also there and later two friends of Lou (I'm sorry I don't remember the names ^^) showed up.

Erin, Lauren and Me

The people in my age all left pretty early (Lauren at 11, Zac + Jun Hi soon after that, Erin and Robin at 12 ) and since I was woken up that early that day I decided to go to bed pretty soon at abou 1, with only Andre being left, who was enjoying playing pool with Sol.

Me and Robin, in the back Jun Hi

The End of a rather short blog entry, next week I'll participate at a Poker game at Zac's house, with 25 $ buy in and about 15-16 people showing up it's gonna be alot of money to win and I'm really looking forward to it :D (If I win (which i don't think, Bill (Zacs stepdad) beat me twice in heads up after the party last week (starting with 6 people)), I'll buy the Dr. pepper bike Sandy found on the Internet and ship it to Germany :D).

A random picture of the drumset I'm practising on, it's very good actually nice cymbals, very good sounding toms, just the snare drum is kinda bad, but I'm probably spoiled from mine at home ;D

P.S: Today another exchange student arrived at our street, living at Jeffs (the one with the drums, remember ;D?!) , from Finnland, his name's Art (well actually it's something unpronouncable, but he goes by Art ;D) and he seems pretty cool (ahaha joke there ;P You got it?! (from Finnland, it's cold there---> cool xD)), he transfered from another host family, because it was living in a rather bad neighborhood, one time he was being chased by a gang with a gun :O

Elvis's still alive!

As you can see; the almighty Elvis is still alive!

Well, at least he lives on as a paper figure. The picture was taken in a restaurant we went to on saturday: It was in the 50's style and they even had the original "Green River" a soda everybody drank that time. It tastes like a mix of 7up (for the Germans: It is the same as Sprite) and some lime. It also had, besides the very good burgers and the homemade (!) fries, the best milkshakes I ever had, I could have ordered a so called black cow; a mix of Root Beer (this is a very bitter soda, no alcohol ;)) and vanilla ice cream, but I wasn't that eager to experiment with different tastes ;)

So how was my week overall?! Well, I now know for the first time how exhausting five days in the american school system are with 5 days of 7 hours of school each and not enough sleep becausee of the early school bus. In school itself though I'm having really fun and my first grades have arrived too: The first multiple choice test I took, was history and I scored zero points, since I crossed the right answer, rather than blackening it out on the scantran sheet (they use a machine to check your answers and it doesn't understand crosses apparently ;)), but I scored 97 % (which is an A) on the remake of the test :) Some more grades: 100 % in morality (had the questions and the answers from the teacher already though ;)) ; 97 % in Music Theory (I just couldn't remember one word in english ...) , my math test was easy, I haven't got it back though and at last my physics test, which was very hard and I think I didn't do too good, after hearing the solutions ): ...

So how does a typical school day lokk for me: I get up at 5:45 ():):), get ready for school and put on my uniform (which is: navy blue long pants and either a andrean polo shirt untucked (that's what most people, including me, wear) or a white shirt with a tie) and lave with the bus at 6:30. The bus reaches the Merrillville Highschool at about 7:15 and we wait there for about 10-15 minutes before taking the bus to andrean, which then drives for about 10 minutes. So I reach school at about 7:40. I head to my locker to get the books for my first class and then the school starts with a prayer and your oath to the flag of the United States. I have 2 lessons before homeroom, which is supposed to be the time for announcements over the radio, but ends up to be nothing more than a 20 min break. In the 5th lesson you have lunch in the cafeteria, which you can either buy there (pretty expensive though) or bring it with you (what I do most of the time). You have another 2 classes before school ends at 2:45. Then the running starts , since you only have 5 minutes till the bus leaves and you need to get to your locker to put away some books/get the ones you need at home. At Merrillville Highschool we need to wait another 20 min for our bus (our bus driver seems to be the last one every time...) so we reach home, sweet home at about 3:50 - 4:00 PM. Normally you need to do some homework which takes another hour (or more...), so after a day of 9 - 10 h of school you are pretty exhausted then and most days end up to be nothing more than relaxing...

I do have the opportunity to practise the drums now, so maybe the days will be a bit less relaxing (for all of you that want to know what I'm trying to play at the moment: click here )


The best part of my stay here are the weekends and the evenings in the garage though. It's really fun since there's always a lot of people (on Friday there were about 12 people) and I'm learning pretty fast to play pool, I even bet Sol on Saturday and Zac on Friday (only because he scratched though when playing the 8 Ball ;)).


These pictures were taken on Friday, and Sol wasn't there (birthday party ):), but I had fun without her ;P. The people you can see in this picture are Zac (only partly ^^), Erin (the tall girl, somebody me and Sol met on the bus, and she just lives down the street, so she hangs out in the garage quite often :)) and Kat, a friend of Erin's.

On Saturday the garage was pretty empty though, only Sol, Lou, Zac, Devan (a friend of Zac (and btw also a Drummer :))) and of course myself. Zac and Devan left pretty early so we actually went to bed at about 1 already (watched a movie...).

A picture of Devan and Zac.

The End

P.S: No picture of the school, because you're not allowed to have any electonical devices, and they take it from you if you have it, so I don't want to take the chance, since you then wouldn't be able to see anymore pictures :)

~17 Days left!

Since I today gave out the web adress to some more people, I decided it would be a good Idea to write something more up to date, so here it is.

I'm experiencing my last two days of school in Germany and everybody is wishing me good luck already, so I myself kinda am starting to realise that it's just a bit more than two weeks until I leave for my big "adventure". I did get my confirmation of the american school last week so Travelworks currently is trying to book my flight (which will be on the 4th or 5th of January) and is looking for a host family which will take me for the 6 months.

I'll probably start getting my stuff together after christmas so then the first pictures of my suitcase/s (I'm allowed to take 2 x 23 kg, which is quite much in my opinion) will followl, so you all can see how much I'm taking.

For all of you that don't know the actual dates I'll be in the US: I'll be there from the 4th or 5th January on (depending on the flight the agency gets) 'til the 28th of June (school end at about the 10th and I'll be staying at my grandparents house from the 14th on, just having some vacation, after the 6 months of hard work ;))

Before finishing the post, for any of you that want to know something about the school I'll be attending, this is the link to its homepage. Below you can see an aerial view of the school:


I again hope I didn't bore you too much and maybe you even enjoyed reading my post a bit ...