How fun and happiness can turn into being sad and tears :O

Yes, everybody it's true I left Indiana, my beloved Indiana! I'm currently on the plane to Virginia and from there I'll be going on a trip out west before I catch my flight back to Germany on the 12^th of July :O So my last week over here, probably you all want to know how it was: Okay here we go :D On the one side I had SO much fun and it was really, really awesome, but on the other side time just went by too fast and I'm so sad it's all over now ): ): This entry is gonna be both a normal entry and the end of my awesome time here! I love everything here SO much and I really don't wanna live without The garage, the neighborhood, Andrean and my stay would have sucked without the following people:

Sandy + Lou (the BEST host parents EVER and they are just frickin' amazing :> Thx for everything! I love you)

Erin (the crazy American girl, pls don't cry anymore, your the most fun chick I ever met! :) ;P I love you!)

Lauren (sweetest and nicest girl ever :> I'm gonna miss txting u till 1 in the morning till u pass out each day so much :D I love you!)

Ryan ( My best friend in the short time I hung out with him! Bro, u don't know how much I'm gonna miss u, we had SO MUCH fun together ): I love you! No Homo! :D)

Even though the picture quality isn't the best I just really like this picture :>

Zac (Omg, You've been my friend since the time I came here, since the first day! :> Man I love You in a no-homo way and you better come to Germany so u actually get to use your Bierstein! :D)

No of course this isn't real ;P

These are pretty much the people, I met over here, that are the most important to me, but there are so many others I need to mention especially the people from school, even though I didn't hang out with them outside of school, they still were good friends and awesome people :D So here we go a long list of names :) I will put picture on sporadically from this point my grandparents don't have the best internet connection so it takes kinda long :O

All the people I will miss:

Paul Crowley (I love him too (No Homo ;P) but he didn't hang out with everybody else 24/7 like the others that's why he didn't make it to the picture section ;P) , Rachel, JanayNay (:D), Nathan, Stephen, Jon, Collin, Little Lou, Missy(America ;P), Matt , Big Bryan, all the people I went paintballing with and forgot their names already (sorry guys ;P), Bob, all of Little Lou's friends, Nick (aww I can't put that nickname here ;P), that Ozzy-chick (katherine haha don't ask), Robin, Blaire, Monika, Jill, Denzell, Luqmann (! :D), Liz, Cameron, Kyle, Fetcko (Nicholas ;P), Nicholas (Ryan's brother), Peter (same), Paul Kulesa (:>!), Masie, Mary, Candy, Kelly, Geoff, Darius, Andrea, Maddie (Winter formal lol), Znika Bros (Andrew and Ivan! :)), Teglia (Anthony :D), Andre, the Donut people (lol), our best friend at CVS (haha), Dae Sang (fo sho bro fo sho! :D), Meghan, Scott, Michael, my teachers (some of them ;P special mentioning ofc: Mr. Clark, hate-love relationship you hate him so much for all the work he gives you and the impossible tests, but you love him for his lessons haha), Kat and Jeff, Beth and Bill, all the other parents of who I don't know the names ;P, ART! (I LOVE that kid (no homo ofc lol), even though he left , at least it seems that way, such a long time ago :O), Jun Hi (LOL he was an … ******* but sometimes fun ;D), everybody from the bus I didn't mention everybody from school I talked to I didn't mention yet, everybody from the bus not mentioned, everybody who ever was at the garage and I forgot, Sol (mmh yes, I won't say anything, bc it very well might turn out mean ;P), everybody I ever talked to and never got their names and just every single person I ever met, because EVERYBODY was SO nice to me :) AMERICA IS AWESOME I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! :>

Two days later I now continue this entry :D I still miss Crown Point SO much and it's very hard for me but everything has an end I guess ): Anyways here goes the regular blog entry :D

It was the last week of school so it was just reviewing/ watching movies/playing games on Monday and Tuesday before the finals started on Wednesday. For all the Germans that have no idea about how finals work: You go to a classroom for 1 and a half hours and take the test (which is probably the longest and hardest one all year), then you have 30 mins of break, before you go to your second final that day. This happened on Wednesday and Thursday and since Andrean then got out at 11:30, I had a lot of time to spend with Ryan, since Merrillville didn't have their finals till Fri and Mon … On Thur we both went swimming in Zac's pool while all the others were at school, that was fun ;P

On Tuesday, since it was the last regular day of school, I also took my camera to school and took some random pictures, but those will be added later, since the connection here really isn't too fast and I don't like waiting for the upload ;) On Wednesday I had my math and science finals (both pretty easy, I think I did pretty good :>) and on Thursday the History (easy, as always ;)) and English (not hard, but since it was a lot of vocabulary and I didn't study at all I might not have done THAT good ;P) ones. Thursday was the first kinda sad day, since it was the last time I was going to see a lot of people in school, but on the other side I got out of school, that's a good thing too :D My 10-week-vacation this year started :> AWESOME!!! (I'm still sad though I'm not gonna see all these cool people again ):)

Anyways Friday! Another “big” Adventure, Six Flags Great America WOHOOOO!!!! :> Since Merrillville still had school (Haha ;P) it ended up being only Sol, her friend Kenisha, Ryan and me going there but we still had an AWESOME, AWESOME time :> We also got a VERY good deal (I can't really write why, I will tell everybody when I get to Germany ;-) ) and it was so much fun :> The only bad thing: I lost my camera on the “Raging Bull”, so no cool videos from on the Roller coasters (Yeah I really took 2 or 3 of those ;P) and no pictures till Monday, but that's okay since I wouldn't be able to upload them anyways with this connection ;) So Six Flags, awesome roller coasters like Raging Bull, Superman, or (my favorite :D) BATMAN!!!!! (Omg that one was so much fun due to mine and Ryan's yelling, I just love you man, I love you in a no homo way ! :D) We got to the park at about 11:00 Am and left at about 8:00 PM so we had a lot of time where we rode every single roller coaster (okay besides the kids one ;P) and just had an awesome time (Okay this may sound mean but it's true, me and Ryan had a lot more fun after we split up with the two girls ;P). Some random fun people we met: guys telling us about how people died on roller coasters (that was umm interesting ;D), 3 mexican chicks (I would guess aged around 30), that were CLEARLY hitting on us and even took Pictures with us, lol were probably on some random facebook now ;D, and a guy and his 2 little kids we talked to about Germany ofc :D

Overall it was an awesome day but we got home at about 11, so the day wasn't over haha GARAGE!!!! It was the usual people pretty much (which by now are quite a lot ;D) and we had a lot of fun, and here's the story how I got in trouble a bit that night ;P Sandy told me the curfew for that night was 12; that's when my friends have to leave, so I followed that rule exactly and my friends left exactly at 12, what she didn't say (or I didn't get Idk...) was that I was supposed to stay home after that too, so not knowing that I left with them and we hung out in the park till 2:30 and Sandy was a bit upset when I came back ;P It's not like I got in any big trouble, don't be afraid, it just was a misunderstanding and that's okay :>

Saturday!

DRIVE TEST AWWWW!!! :O I was SO scared but it turned out to not be that hard haha, I had only one mistake (parking too far away from the curb while parallel parking (kinda what I aimed for, if you HIT the curb you flunk instantly if you park too far away it's just one mistake point P)) so it wasn't all too bad, but I can tell you I was VERY nervous ;)

After that I somehow forgot what we did, no pictures because of my broken camera didn't really help that haha, I think it was the usual people hanging out in the park though ;P. The only thing I remember: We bought fireworks for the night, my last garage party ): So here is the story of who all showed up that night, it was pretty amazing and even Lou was stunned about how much friends I actually have made (just in that neighborhood ;P) and he said it's more than every exchange student they had has made (that made me feel really good right there ;)). The list of people there: Erin, Lauren, Ryan, Paul C, Zac, Devan , Janay, Nathan, Nicholas Fetcko, Dae Sang (okay he's not really from that neighborhood ;P), Luqmann!! (first time he came wohoo! ;)), Big Bryan, his friend, Sol (kinda I guess... ^^), Lou and Sandy ofc, Jeff and Kathrina and some other neighbors ;D and ME :> Again my camera was still broken, which kinda sucked but that's okay we had an AWESOME, AWESOME time and did a lot of fireworks (you wouldn't believe how much fireworks you can get for 25 $ in Indiana ;P and both Zay and Ryan said they know places where they can get 10 times the amount for the same price ;D). Anyways it was lots of fun and I really am thankful that all my friends showed up and made it such an awesome time for me :D

Sunday!

Planned: Paintball, it got canceled because the wife of a very good friend of Little Lou's had a bad car accident so he stayed in the hospital with them, understandable :)

I hung out with friends 24 h (haha almoust ;P), let's see: starting with Zac and Devan at Zac's place, going to Burger King with Erin, Janay and Jill (okay I didn't know her before, but she's cool ;)) , to Tennis with Lauren (okay I suck at tennis Ik that now ;P But that's okay still fun! ;D) and meeting up with Nathan, Janay, Erin and Jill again in the park (Lauren was still there..) we had a lot of fun that day and I pretty much was out of the house from 11 AM till 10 PM ;) It was a lot of fun, no pictures again I'm very sorry still didn't have a camera haha.

Monday!

Merrillville still had school (haha), Ryan was grounded (okay Id even know why this time, his parents are umm interesting ;)), so I kinda decided that it was time to get a new camera ;P (Okay I decided that a lot earlier, but really I had to wait for my parent's okay to buy a new one in a email that took some time ;P) I biked to radioshack and got my SWEET new camera! :> 10 Megapixels, HD Videos (haha you will see some of those when I get to Germany, connection too slow to upload here you know ;P), Blur Reduction and Smart Capturing (Okay I just read that from the package not that somebody thinks I new that from memory ;P), but what matters, the pictures it takes turn out good ;D (5 of those up there are taken with my new camera, can u guess which ones? ;D). When I got home school was almost out for Merrillville, so I waited for them to finish their last school day and then Lauren, Erin, Zac and me went to jump into Zac's pool again, that was a lot of fun :> I got pictures of Erin, Zac and me; Lauren wouldn't let me take any pictures of her in her bathing suit, Idk why though ;) , but again the connection speed keeps me from uploading pictures maybe I will add them sometime later when I'm REALLY bored ;P

Anyways, the rest of the day was a lot of fun too, it ended up being the usual people (Ryan (yeah his parents let him outside later I really don't get “being grounded” over here, parents ground people for a bunch of BS (like for example Lauren got grounded one time for “doing her homework too late” lol), but then they let them go outside and hang out O.o), Erin, me and later Lauren (she had a Softball game , but it got canceled … )) just hanging out, going to CVS and playing Pig (or actually we played “Schwein” but okay ;D) at Ryan's house (it's a basketball game for all you uneducated Germans :P ;)) late at night :D.

Tuesday: Almoust leaving, awww ):

We decided to get up really early that day, but we kinda failed, because I wouldn't even wake up when Erin rang the bell 1230041 times ;D Eventually I woke up though and it was the day I had to say goodbye to Zac, because he was leaving on his fishing trip and isn't coming back for another week or two, so that was really, really sad ): But Ryan and me then went on a little bike trip to Dunkin Donuts haha it was fun (actually we wanted to go farther, but then Lou called, bc...) and I also got MY LICENSE THAT DAY WOHOOOO!!!! :D Lou took me to the BMV, I took the written test (wasn't scared at all about that one ;P passed with two wrong (okay who needs to know the legal speed limit in a residential area and an urban highway when you follow the signs anyways ;P)), he signed for financial Liability (Thx btw haha), I signed and paid the fee (id remember what it was, like 15 $ I think, but Idk) and now I'm the legal Owner of an Indiana Probationary (Anybody under 18 gets that, only means I'm restricted for 90 days to drive either alone or with somebody over 21 with a license, somebody signed for my financial liability and I have a curfew of 1- 5 on weekends and 11-5 on weekdays, that shouldn't make a difference in Germany though haha) Driver's license and can drive YAY! After that Ryan me and Erin just hung out in the park and then later Erin's mom took us to Red Robin's haha a good Burger Place that was fun :> (Lauren was at Six flags with the orchestra that day btw ;D) We then watched Superbad (Haha nice movie ;)) before I had to be home. It was a lot of fun haha and ofc (I never write n that but it happened like every day ;P) I txted till late at night with everybody (Especially Lauren, she's up the latest haha).

Wednesday! AWWWW LAST DAY!!!!!!!!!!!

We actually managed to get up early; I gave Erin my key so she could wake me haha, I packed all my stuff before Erin had to go babysit at Kathrina's :O Ryan and me then headed off with our bikes to the square again YAY! (We tried waking Lauren up btw but she was sleeping in that day, apparenty ;P) We had a lot of fun just walking into each store (Omg the gay (literally lol) Art museum remember that? ;D) talking to people, buying some good Popcorn before we then headed home and picked up sleepyhead Lauren that was awake by then ;P We just hung out all day and it was a lot of fun, Thanks everybody SO much, even the random people in the park I took pictures with haha and the “skater gang” lol ;D

Later that day it got SO sad though and everybody had to make it hard for me ;P Jk but it was tears and more tears and goodbyes and AWWW!!!! It was really sad ): and it made me feel really bad too ) :O THANK YOU EVERYBODY SO SO SO SO SO SO MUCH! I had the BEST time of my life in Indiana and I miss it so much already ): I wish I could come back next year people I love you all ! :)

(Pics follow later ofc ;D)

Thursday!

The day I left, more tears in the morning for the last time when I left (they all even got up early to say bye :> THX!!!!! :)) and then a day of txting and talking on the phone to them, it was really really hard and I miss all the people so SO much ): Sandy then took me to the airport and it was hard saying good by to her too ofc! My host parents were AWESOME!!!! Thank You Sandy and Lou you made my stay SO much fun and I'm gonna miss you SO much ):

That's it about Indiana and stories from Virginia and Wyoming as well as more Pictures will follow later, folks :>

I miss Crown Point, I had the BEST time of my life there so far and I wish I could be there right now :> Ladies and Gentleman, whoever is reading this, when you EVER have the chance to do an exchange to any place DO IT!!!! It's SO much fun and it's just the greatest experience you can possibly imagine :) Peopl in Crown Point, I miss you so much and I love you all :> If you don't show up in Germany I'm gonna come and kick ur asses ;P

THE END !!!!!!!!!!!! ):

Lame exchange students, Indy trip and an interesting sunday lol

Oh no the last week of school is coming up :O ;P jk ofc I'm happy, that school is done in 4 days, but on the other side that means I only have 10 days left in Indiana, not counting today :O That is really sad, America is awesome, awesome and I'm really enjoying myself here, especially since its warm enough to be outside and now I'm hanging out with my friends almoust 24/7 :D


So this week, it was only 4 days, since we had monday off as I told you last time, so it went over rather quickly, also because we don'tt do anything in any class anymore, it was the last week of "real" school, since this week Tue through Thu are final exams :D Even though my teachers didn't do anything IN school they gave us all these "last-grade-bring-your-grade-up" projects -.-" So tue I was doing a lab report, thursday a essay and the only day I was able to hang out was wednesday :O I did with Erin/Rachel/Ryan(+ Kyle, his brother) (not all at the same time haha divided over the whole day :D) My grades are all A's again this quarter, idk how I did it, but I did somehow haha


So the weekend :)

Friday:

1. Went to CVS with Rachel/Lauren/Janay haha, very awkward situation being there while they were looking at makeup O.o I needed minutes for my phone, that's the only reason I went ;P

2. Lame exchange student party :O It was at the house of the guidance counsellor Mrs. Reed and after we pulled into the driveway of a random person, because we had the wrong adress (that was funny the guy looked at us like: Who the **** is this?! :D) we got to her house at about 5 :45. A couple of things made it really bad, for one it's never a party when your parents (even though they are "only" your host parents :P) are invited, and also EXCHANGE STUDENTS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES ARE RETARDS!!! :P No jk, but they ALWAYS talk in their own language :O So what it was, was essentially a korean group on the one side, a spanish-speaking group on the other side and me, a guy from Hongkong and the host parents talking english :O That's exactly the reason why I don't like hanging out with exchange students and why I think Germans are just the best exchange students :O (not because I'm German myself, it's just the truth, sorry :O) We NEVER ever start talking German, even if we meet here, there's just no point, for one it's just plain rude and retarded and secondly all these people claim they came here to learn how to speak english better and then they don't do it?! That doesn't make sence to me but okay :P

3. Garage! :D FUN! :) Besides the fact that all my friends were txting me while I was at the party: "When are you coming back?!?! We want to hang out in the garage ! :D" there already was a party going on when we got back :) Little Lou had come and brought some of his friends :) FUN! :D People that showed up pretty much immediantely after I got home were: Lauren, Ryan, Erin and Crowley :) We then walked to CVS at like 10:20, because Ryan said they were open till 10:30 but when we got there, ofc it had closed at 10 :O :P At least we got to talk to a guy named Bruce, who was sitting there waiting for his ride, and he told us his life story of him selling magazines as a living and having just gotten taken his license away for speeding :D He was pretty cool ;D We had alot of fun that night, but since I couldn't find my camera (it was under my bed :O No idea how it got there :P) there are no pictures and I went to bed kinda early anyways since we had to get up really early the next day for:

Saturday: INDIANAPOLIS ROAD TRIP!!! WOHOOO! :D Supposed to go: Sol, Sandy, me and Lauren. People that actually went: Sandy, me and Lauren haha, somehow Sol bailed out in the morning :P
We still had alot of fun though, even though the trip started WAY to early, we left at 6 AM (after only like 3 h of sleep for me AWW!!! ;P) :O The first gas station we pulled into I got some energy drinks then ofc, since I was dying of tiredness :P The ride was fun, especially since we listened to some funny weird radio show where they were asking questions like: "For how much money would you burn you country's flag in your backyard?" xD We had some breakfast at a McDonalds (which was very... interesting (to put it nicely ;)) before we reached our first stop in Indy: The Indianapolis speed way, where the Indy 500 is held and where the F1 race used to be. We were in the museum there, which was interesting and as soon as I told anybody I was German they would say : "Michael Schumacher land?" :D

Just some randomly taken pictures of cars in the museum

After that we went to downtown Indy and visited the Indiana State Museum (after having some trouble finding the parking garage lol). It was very interesting and featured everything from Indiana's history over the history of the earth to Birds living here (and a weird guy in a video making bird sound ;P ) and was pretty huge :D We also went to the IMAX 3D movie theatre there, and they showed a REALLY amazing movie (I mean Ofc I've been in an IMAX before, but this movie really was just amzing!) called "Under the Sea 3D" and it featured some incredible pictures from underwater :O And some animals I have never seen before :D

Just a cool thingy that was in the museum, I don't feel like uploading anymore pictures most of them are kinda dark :P

After that we walked to the Zoo and saw a little bit of Indy while walking :) Apparently Indy is a VERY empty city though, we saw like 5 people on the way, so no fun while talking to random people :D

The canal
SKYLINE! :D
River! :D

The Zoo was very cool and we had alot of fun there, seeing everything from ice bears to Elephants :D Especially the monkeys were cool :D The Baboons were really angry at me when I picked something up to throw it at the one baboon so he started screaming and glancing mean at me :P So I didn't throw it haha. Overall it was alot of fun there and they had a free Dolphin show which we went to see, and it was really, really amazing with Dolphins doing crazy jumps, turns, splashing and flips :D

A "Dragon of Komodia", which can apparently eat a whole water buffalo :O

Rhinos being fed :D
Baboons :>
Really dark and out of focus, but only picture I had from that day that actually shows people :P In the Dolphin show, Lauren and me

After that we went to the capitol of Indiana and had dinner in a really cool italian restaurant, which was set up as a maze so you couldn't find the way to your own table haha :P (not even kidding :D) I don't have anymore pictures of that time though, my memory card was full :D (178 pictures lol). We then drove back home and Lauren and me watched "Reservoir Dogs" in the car, a very umm interesting but confusing movie lol (it kinda starts at the end and brings in all these different parts of the stories in flashbacks :O), we both were lost after 30 mins haha.



But that's okay :P We got home at about 7 o' clock but the day wasn't over of course :D the garage was more or less filled that night again with Crowley, Erin, Lauren, Ryan (and his parents for some time :D). Cameron (Ryan's older brother), Jeff and Big Bryan showing up :D We first walked to CVS to get some energy drinks (long day, I was tired! :P) and then ryan and crowley put on make-up at Erin's house lol, Idk why they wanted to look Emo haha it looked really funny, but I didn't get any pictures :O I didn't empty my camera's memory card till this afternoon :P We had alot of fun that night :D


Sunday:

I got up at 1 PM (well I was tired u know :P) and then, after having talked to my mom on the phone (No fun ! ;P jk mom! ;)) I first watched Ryan work for Bill (Zac's stepdad...) , then did some lawnmowing for sandy and then went to play Tennis with Lauren :) When we (Erin, Lauren and me) got to the park, where the tennis courts are some old people were playing tennis, and they didn't leave till we had to go lol so no tennis for us (they're so rude ;P) :P But that's okay we did some swinging (O.o idk ^^), talked to a random guy named Bryan, who told us about Andrean and Merrillville High school and gave us some coke when his family left the park and just hung out xD After that we hung out outside of Erin's place and then met a senior of Merrillville High school, who knew both Lauren and Erin so we talked and then walked Lauren home, went to CVS and then I got here and started writing this :D


Long exhausting weekend and I'm up late again! :O shame on me ;P But that's okay tomorrow is the last real day of school so there won't be anything going on anyways (sleeping time for me ;P jk Idk movie time in most classes probably ^^)

The End

P.S: Zac was at his dad's again just if you were wondering ^^

Guest writers are a thing of the past! ;) Now it's all my job again, be prepared people! :D

Looks Cool doesn't it? ;) i like this picture alot I'm Tarzan oh yeah ;) Jk read later where this was taken... ;)

Oh yeah, a 4-day awesome, awesome, awesome Weekend just ended with a last part of awesomeness haha, that's why my blog is one day late, I don't like writing an entry and then missing part of the awesomeness that happens ;)

So here we go: A week of school :O More or less boring, but I got to see two interesting things, besides the usual people hanging out like almoust every day now, due to the less serious school, due to the upocming end of school ;) : On Tuesday the Merrillville Orchestra performed and I got to see it together with Ryan, that was fun! :D They're actually pretty decent too, and I played 3 of the songs they performed before ;D : Mambo No. 5 ; Slovak Dance by Dvorak and a Waltz, of which I totally forgot the name already haha. I went together with Ryan an Erin's family and Ryan and me had alot of fun watching all the people we knew, play (Lauren, Erin, Paul Crowley, Monika, Katherine), and we were the ones clapping the loudest and longest, oh yeah! ;) At the end we were also the ONLY ones giving standing ovations, that was kinda embarassing, but it's all good as Ryan would say :D

Besides that, Thursday night I went to see Lauren play Softball ! That was fun too, they dominated the other team though kinda, they won like 21:4 or something riddicolous! :) It was really fun though and I got to show my skills at cheering again haha, compared to the tennis match the people at softball actually were loud :P Lauren played 3rd base and in the end pitcher, and even though I really don't have too much clue of soft/baseball it looked good I guess, so I'm just gonna say she's very good :P On Thursday, since AHS (bc of Prom) and Lou were off Friday, the garage was open of course, but nobody really was there so I just went to bed early to be prepared for the next days ;)

Lauren, Thursday night after the softball game, still in her uniform

Now the awesome weekend! I'm even gonna go so far and say, that it was the most fun weekend so far, just from the stuff we did (not really the garage this weekend, it was alot of fun too and quite some crowds, but the other stuff was more interesting this weekend :D).

Friday:

A day off, no school!!!! Yeah, fun! ;D I hung out with Ryan all day pretty much (he's homeschooled, Idk if I told you that yet, so he doesn't really need to attend school at certain times...) and we had a lot of fun :) We started walking to downtown Crown Point at about 11 and reached "the square", after having stopped at Dairy Queen for some ice cream (Yummy! ;D), after a good hour and a half :) There we checked out the "courthouse" and the shops in there, Ryan got a haircut, we went throught the little museum in the courthouse for 50 ct (it actually was pretty interesting, for example an Astronaut who was in the ISS is from Crown Point...), walked into a bar and didn't get kicked out (haha, that was funny, ofc bars are 21+ but apparently nobody really cared at 1 PM ;)), talked to a old guy in his modell train store about how he used to be in Germany with the airforce and liked Trier (he was pretty cool haha), checked out the millions of antique stores on the square and got some Hot Dogs :D We had a lot of fun and walked back at about 2:45 PM, when the Merrillville kids were just getting out of school, haha ;P We reached our subdivision at about 3:30 hung out with Erin for some time, before we headed off home and waited for the night in the garage to start :P

It took some time to get it started (even Zac was late :O) but we then had a pretty big crowd there (it was so funny, I was txting Lauren and telling her she needed to come , because nobody was at the garage, so then, when I walked to get her (she actually was grounded, but was allowed to go because she had cleaned the whole house all day so she could go ;)) everybody showed up and when we got back the garage was filled up pretty good already haha :)) People there were: Lauren, me, Paul Crowley, Erin and Katherine (came late that night), Zac and his Buddy Devan, the Stephen guy and his buddy Jon (new! ;P), Colin (a guy apparently living in our street, he rides the bus, no idea why he never was there before), Ryan ofc and even Andre showed up for some time later that night :D We had tons of fun, but my camera was out of batteries that night so only one picture ;P

Crowley with, ... Lauren's purse ;P

Saturday:

TONS OF FUN!!!!! :D Yay that day really was fun, we (Lauren, Erin, Ryan) and me had planned to go bike riding the night before, so we started that at about 2 PM (even though Ryan and me started gearing up at 12 lol, Erin took like 2 hours to get ready O.o). We went, after a quick stop at CVS for some minutes and batteries for my camera (important ;P) (lol I'm not kidding you, Ik all the cashiers there by now and they like all know our group and say hi ;P), to the bike trail I had gone on for a ride quite some time ago. We biked all the way to Griffith High School, stopping at a fun Ice Cream store on the way, scraming very loud in a tunnel (haha :D), checking out a cool bridge (the first photo, remember?! ;D), doing some random stuff and saying WHAT'S UP? to everybody we met on the way :D.

Biking is fun :)

AWW RYAN IS GOING TO FALL!!! Haha jk, the bridge was fun! And I like the lighting in this picture ;D

Ice Cream Store :D
Griffith High School :D We randomly met Erin's cousin Rachel there btw ;D
Oh yeah, Umm can someone explain to me the point of the Stop Ahead sign 10 feet before the stop sign?! ;)
End of bikeride, Ryan, yeah, he is out of the picture kinda ;)

As you can see, we had alot of fun and it was pretty frickin' awesome :) We got home at about 6 PM...

But the day was far from over after this :D Sol's Bday party was that night so we all headed home changed clothes and showered (yeah I was pretty dirty after half falling into the stream under the bridge (yeah I kinda left that part out on purpose ;P)) and met up again at like 8 o'clock. Besides us 4 actually quite the crowd showed up :) : LouLou (yeah Idk, Sol's best friend (Korean exchange student), her name apparently is unpronouncable so everybody just calls her LouLou haha), Maise and Meghan (Ik them from music class! :>) Kenisha (History), Shelby (History and Homeroom lol), Bryonna (Idk her but it wasn't my party either haha), Saskia (Exchange student from Germany Sol knows from different tripy by the organisation), Big Bryan and his buddy Greg, Zac ofc and Little Lou and Missy all showed up so it was good times :D, even though Erin, Lauren, Ryan and me had to run to CVS really fast at some point, (since Lauren had forgotten to buy a card :O), but we pretended it was for Energy Drinks ;P No pictures really, because umm, Idk ^^

Lauren and Erin at the party... I took like 5 pictures that night and this one was the only one that turned out kinda decent...

Sunday:


MORE FUN!!!! :) After Sandy got home from church that day her, Lou, me, Sol and Erin (Okay would have brought more friends ofc, but Sandy didn't want me to, but that's okay of course :)), went to the beach of Lake Michigan :) It was lots of fun, even the water still was ICY cold :P Erin and me still did some water splashing and then ran up the sand dunes to get warm (that's harder than it looks, okay ;P) . The beach looks just like one on one of the oceans and there really is no difference, besides that this water is sweet no salty ;) After that we had some KFC chicken (yummy ;D) and then went off to go for walk in the woods that were right by... It was alot of fun overall and we spent about 5-6 h at the beach and in the woods right there. I won't upload that many pictures really, for those interested, click here , that's the pictures Lou and Sandy took with their camera, they got a picture server they upload it to...

The Lake...

One of the Dunes :)...
...up on the Dune :)

The day of course wasn't over yet, since Monday was off too for us, so here the short story: After some dinner at Ryan's house (Barbecue #1 ...;)) , not many people at the garage, only Erin, me, Ryan, Zac, Kathrina and Jeff, and Ryan's brother Kyle showed up but it still was good, especially since Ryan, Erin and me headed off to Ryan's house later that night and just hung out around a camp fire they had going on :) We didn't leave that till 12 AM and it was just good to chill there together with Ryan's older brothers Cameron and Kyle ;)



Monday:

Happy Memorial's day! Think of all the men fallen in wars, that's what it's about pretty much, so Lou took me and Zac for a trip to the "Munster War Memorial", a big memorial "garden" which is pretty cool, and they had some speeches there and a marching band playing... It was pretty cool and it was pretty sweet seeing all the patriotism you would NEVER EVER see in Germany... :/ Yeah not much to say about it really it was pretty cool though :>

WWI memorial part
The celebration part with cannon shots that day

"The forgotten War" memorial (Korea ;))

At the end of the walkway this was put up, just read it I thought it was kinda cool ...

But that's not all that happened today, after we got home, I started planning another trip to the movies, but because of various reasons (don't even ask haha american Teenagers kinda problems of people txting NO! YES! NOT WITH HIM/HER! OH YEAH! DIFFERENT MOVIE! NO! YEAH! LET'S GO! NO! WHATEVER! at the same time to each other ;P) that didn't really work out haha. Anyways Erin, Ryan and me met up and then walked to get Lauren (this time we had to wait for her changing and getting ready like 15 min, but that's okay haha(, before we just walked around the neighborhood and CVS of course (Donuts and Chocolate lol) and had lots of fun just doing random stuff (like I gave some of the Donuts to some random kids on the street, Lauren was cracking up on that very bad ^^ or we talked to some nice, unknown people playing Bags). We then went off and had dinner at Ryan's place again (another Barbecue :D). It overall, even though we didn't manage to go to the movies (that seems harder in the US than doing ANYTHING else ;P), was LOTS of fun and one last picture of our little group at the barbecue, will be the end of this EXHAUSTING weekend :)

Lauren, Ryan, Erin and Me (yeah mine and Ryan's faces look... interesting ;P In the background is one of Ryan's little brothers btw, it's Nicholas...)

THE END!!!!!


P.S: I'm SO tired this weekend, you can't belive it, 4 days in a row with more or less a lot of exercise and not enough sleep each night (okay actually probably enough, but Idk ... ;P), so I'm going to sleep right now so I'm not dying tomorrow in school (I will anyways, I'm ALWAYS SO tired ins school here, getting up at 6:15 still just feels wrong ;P)

GUEST WRITERS AGAIN!!! :D even an adult! :D oh and I'll be writing some stuff too ofc ;)

Bwha ha ha ha... Dan is letting me write something for him. I am the Neighbor who lets him practice drums in my basement. He is a lot of fun to hang around with, and he is so polite! |Usually he is on his computer on weekends blogging so, it is nice to have him just hanging out while I write something for him. The teens went out to the battle of the bands at the local High School, and they had a good time, and I am sure that they still have their hearing intact. And now they (Dan and his Friends) are about to get their butts kicked by Lou on the pool table. They are gluttons for punishment. I am sure that Lou is trying to be nice and letting them get a few balls into the pockets. It's been really great getting to know him over the last few months.

~Katrina Fogg


SWEET BEANS! WHAT'S UP?! Oh my goodness I'm writing in Daniel's blog!! Hahaha... Of course, and he's texting at the moment! but that's okay. This dude is the first foreign exchange student I've ever really met. And his host parents and host sister are pretty awesome. Now I'm spending most of my weekend nights in "the garage" with him, Erin, Zac, Paul, neighbors, random people, etc. I totally won my tennis match last week because he was cheering! At least that's what he thinks... just kidding! I got to autograph his tennis ball that he got that day too. Yesterday we went to the battle of the bands at Andrean High School, and it was extremely fun, besides the creepy techno guys. : )
Now Daniel is complaining about how people ditched him tonight... and his morality class. Did you know the first time I played pool was here at the garage?
Who goes to bed at three in the morning Daniel??? Then you're always tired in the morning on the bus! That's okay, doesn't everyone?
Things are starting to get RIDDONCOLOUS!!!
Oh, we totally beat Zac and Paul at pool yesterday! WOO!!!
WE HAVE A BAND! THE BIRDIES!
Remember when you and erin were dancing and broke the sign??? Or when you took a picture of Art and it make me laugh like crazy??? What about the thunder yesterday while were all by the pool table??
Now Daniel is trying to get a text to send... hah.
I love the stories about his old Latin teacher and how she doesn't even know how to use a phone!
DR. PEPPER!!! He's drinking one right now. :P
Well now, so Daniel is as cool as cool beans, funny, a super nice guy and everytime I've been in the presence of Daniel is the YOU ES OF EY, it's been fun and interesting. I'm glad I met him, and Imma miss him when he leaves!!!
-Lauren Carniello :)

Haha proof, so nobody can ever think I make all this stuff up, Lauren was really writing the blog :)

WOW! :D Thanks alot Kathrina and Lauren! :) I love this guest writer stuff it's SO MUCH fun, even for myself, since I get to see, what people really think about me and you get to read stuff by people, that totally write in a different style than I do :) So anyways here we go: another week lots of fun and time is running out for me :O I DON'T WANNA LEAVE :O :/ But hey, I've promised I'll be back next summer, the only thing I need is the plane ticket, since they won't have a exchange student in the summers :D Who wants to join me for 2-3 weeks of absolute cool partyness in the garage haha?! And yes this is a promise I'm intending to keep :D

My week: Very much fun and I'm still "enjoying" (as far as you can enjoy school ;)) Andrean alot w/ my grades being all A's atm so it's pretty much perfect :D This week was special too, since we had "Armageddon" on Friday, which is essentially a field day, where the different classe compete in different games like: Dodgeball (OMG! everybody is SOOOOOOOOO serius about this ;D); Tennis; Powder Puff (flag football :D); Soccer (yeah :O); Ultimate Frisbee; Softball; Chess; Basketball; Volleyball; Bean Bags and Quiz Bowl. It was alot of fun (ofc, who wouldn't like having a day of games instead of 7 (boring) classes ;P) and overall the Juniors won, even though the Seniors won Dodgeball (which ofc is considered the most important game :D). It was alot of fun, especially the teacher's dodgeball game was very ... ...interesting :P

Friday n8:
But that's not all the special things that happened this week :) Friday ofc we had the garage party like usual but before that we went to the "Battle of the Bands" at Andrean! ("We" includes Erin, me, Paul Crowley, Lauren and a Stephen (friend of Erin/Lauren I guess, he plays the drums that alone makes him acceptable xP)) It was ALOT of fun and the acts partly were really amazing (even though, as Lauren has already said, the 2 techno guys were very, very, very creepy w/ their 2 white masks and electronic music :P). http://www.myspace.com/nothingbutthecollectivejudas here's a myspace link to one of the best bands there (it was like 11 acts).

Battle of the bands stage, yeah not really sharp Ik Ik :D
The Stephen dude at the battle
Jeff Gough, a freshman at my school, I don't even really know him, but he apparently used to go to Merrillville High so he knew all of them xP

After that we of course went back to the garage and hung out there for the rest of the night and it was alot of fun :) Lauren and me beat Zac and Stephen (and later as Lauren wrote Zac and Paul :P) in Pool, that was pretty frickin' amazing haha, we didn't just have the much cooler team (a sweet american girl and a cool German exchange student compared to a fat guy (sry Zac ;)) and a lame (not rly, but u know... :P) guy I don't even know; ofc we win in coolness ;P ;)) we also did beat them pretty badly, YAY!! :) We just did the usual stuff, but since the Battle of the Bands thing had been pretty long it wasn't the longest party ever :D Anyways People there that night were: Ryan, Cameron, Lauren, Erin, Paul Crowley, Katherine (no not Kathrina that wrote the entry... ;D), Jeff, Me ofc :D, Lou, Nick( a friend of Lou) and some of his buddies and (SURPRISE!!! first time since 3 months :O) Sol! :D

Umm yeah half of Paul, Lauren w/ her eyes closed and Cameron in the back haha

Jeff and Lou

Yeah umm I have no idea how this picture was made but yeah no idea why my eyes are closed or only half of Lauren's face can be seen xD
Zac! :D Btw if anybody's wondering where all the pics w/ Erin are that I normally have no idea lol, she's just in one somehow and it's pretty bad :O

Saturday:

The next morning I had my 2nd last driver's ed' class so I had to get up kinda early, but that's okay haha :D I just hung out w/ Zac for some time then, before in the late afternoon alot of us went to the mall (Erin, me, Zac, Katherine and Ryan) and did some shopping and just kinda were the cool teenagers ;P If anybody cares I bought the new Greenday CD (released May 15 :O, I didn't even know it was out already), a pair of shorts, something random for the garage (a "insult" button that randomly insults you when you press it :P) and a birthday card for Sol.

So the garage that night :) It really didn't start out that good, since Ryan, Katherine and Erin all said they wouldn't be there that night, but it still was alot of fun :D Zac and me walked to CVS at about 7:15 to get some interesting pop (Mountain Dew Voltage (mmh! :D) and Coke cherry (juck! :P)) as well as to pick up Lauren, whose parents don't let her walk around alone, even though this is a very good nerighborhood ;P We then just were in the garage, played Pool and later Kathrina, Little Lou and his now-wife Missy as well as a buddy of them showed up :) We had alot of fun and Lauren and Kathrina wrote my blog haha

Wow I didn't even know this picture existed till 5 minutes ago Idk who stole my camera :P I think I'm texting or something and Lauren is laughing really hard :P
Kathrina and in the back Zac

First picture I got with both Sandy and Lou and me :D

That night I also slept over at Zac's, because my last driver's ed class wouldn't start till 1 the next morning :)


Sunday:

After a pleasant sleep in the old room of Jun Hi (;)) I got up and kinda panicked about the final test I had to take in Driver's Ed today :O I studied straight from 11 to 12:40 when I left, but it turned out to be SO easy xD I don't think any studying would have been necessary at all :O I got an A+ with one question wrong :D So I'm gonna schedule my drive test this week sometime, and that one really kinda scares me, since if I flunk it once (Parallel parking scares me the most, since if I hit the curb I automatically fail, with everything else I see no problem :O) it would be the greatest fail in my life since I can't take the test w/ the BMV as far as I know xP But the "Yes, we can!" mentality should help haha.

Anyways after that I came back and started helping Sandy in the garden plant some flowers (lol yeah Idk y I just wanted to be nice xD). At about 6 o' clock Erin came back from Kat's house (where she had been all Saturday night) so we hung out and walked to get Lauren at about 7. We also (Ofc ;D) stopped at CVS, I'm a known customer there by now ;P, to get Sol's birthday present (I didn't find anything in the mall, since I really have NO idea what she likes besides baseball and Ik she has a bat ;D). We then headed back to the garage where us three and Lou just hung out and talked for some time :D For example: we established, that I'm gonna try and go to Merrillville High on Friday as a visitor, since we don't have school because of Prom and I would like to check it out ;D And also that before I leave I'll have everybody I know sign one of my school uniform shirts as a souvenir :)

The End of a fun weekend :)

P.S: It's NOT true that I go to bed at 3 in the morning in the week only on weekends and I'm not on the computer all the time on the weekends either as Kathrina wrote (actually I'm only on it for the time I write my blog/some very short time periouds in the middle of the day) :P And here's a picture of the tennis ball Lauren signed haha:

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 ! :)