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)

Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat! What's that?! Drivers Ed + Push-up basketball as well as the garage =)

Huh, what? Who?! Joseph?! Who's that?! Dreamcoat?! O.o, if that's your thoughts right now, it's okay I'll tell you later what that is =)

Another week, more school to talk about :P Nothing changing really, everything's great I'm having fun, more or less, and I'm doing all of my work :D Nothing interesting really interesting happened this week either, we just picked up a millipede in Music class the one day and named it Abdul Jolie :D It's like a class pet now :D Just kidding of course, we set it free after that day :D But enough of the school, it's only three more school days till spring break anyways, YAY!


THE WEEKEND

Friday:
Now you know what Joseph and the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is, a musical about the bible story about Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers, rising to power there and then helping them in a famine... :) And why did I put it in the title?! AHS performed it on the weekend and I went to see it =) It was really, really, really an awesome performance and they were singing amazingly good, I almoust can't tell the difference between the professionals singing the songs on the youtube and them :D They also played all the music themselves, which was very good too :) Erin and her friend Robin wanted to go too, so we all went together :) I also met Dae Sang and some other people from my school (no point in telling you the names I didn't take my camera :D)there, so I really had fun =) And they were truly amazing ! :) After that we all headed off to the garage, together with Dae Sang, who decided to stay at my place for the night :D We had fun in the garage with also some "older" people being there, Little Lou and friends, as well as two guys from AHS Ryan and his brother Cameron (I don't really know them, only by sight, Jun Hi (he was there too ): ;)) kinda brought them over) :D I even managed to beat a friend of Little Lou in Pool who himself had beaten a proffesional pool player some time ago :) YAY! :D But I was kinda tired that night, so I went to bed rather early, also because I had to get up rather early on:

Saturday:

Yep Drivers Ed was waiting again that morning, and since I bike there I had to get up at 9:15 to make it in time :/ After that I watched the recorded (I didn't want to stay up till 3 in the morning) F1 Qualifying (Kimi Raikkönen didn't do too good ):), since Dae Sang was still asleep, before we went and played some "push-up Basketball" with Dae and Jun Hi :D You try to do free throws and hoever misses does 5 push-ups (10 if it's an airball) and when you hit the others do 7... I actually was the best of the three, even if I'm not really an amazing basketball player, but I guess Koreans just are bad ;P Just kidding :D Also we did another little game where the Loser (Jun Hi :D) had to do 30 push-ups and run a certain distance, but Jun Hi ran away after he lost so he didn't have to do the push-ups O.o So me and Dae Sang just did them instead =) After that it was time for Dae Sang to leave, since Family company was coming over: Lou's sister and her husband had dinner (Lou's amazing tacos =)) with us. The garage then wasn't really empty but not very full either :/

Erin and Janay, the picture was taken after Erin had shown some of her acrobatic "skills" , and Janay was trying to help her up ;D

Only Zac (YAY not at his dads this weekend :D), his friend Devan, Erin. Janay (Bus... and on the pictures) , Ryan (the guy from AHS, he's kinda friends with me too now I guess :D) and Big Bryan were there...

Zac :D and half of me :D

I played pool that night and just kinda hang out, it doesn't seem like fun but it was xD

Well... Janay and Lou :D
Everybody who was there that night, besides Big Bryan and Ryan who had already left...

That's pretty much all that happened on Saturday, so here comes

Sunday

Sunday was really yucky weather (chilly and rain :/), so I couldn't go on a bike ride together with Ryan, what we wanted to do... The day just kinda drifted along, I got up at 12:20 (I even was the first one after Sandy :O), watched the recorded F1 race (called off because of rain with 25 rounds to go (first time since 1991) -.-) and played Pool with Zac =)

THAT'S IT! NO MORE! Good Night! ;D

P.S: Oh, what I forgot to tell you, since I'm addicted to txting now like everybody else ( just kidding, but some kids do like 8000 (!) Txts a month with no problem :O), I just typed in unlimited Txting (EVERYBODY (seriously!) has that over here!) in German into google today, but German Cell Contracts/Prepaid cards just don't have that at any affordable price, at least not if your txting over your phone, you can get flatrates to txt over the internet (O.o)... The cheapest flatrate was like 50 euros a month and the cheapest price per text 9 cts (I pay 5 overhere and i have the cheapest cell possible with a prepaid card!) THAT'S riddiculous ;P Well no more txting for me in Germany then I guess ;/

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

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.

Baby showers, the garage and "apples to apples"

YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO YO, What's poppin' ? ;P (what's poppin' = what's up... and just to get this clear: This is NOT how I or other people talk in the US, I just thought it to be a funny start ;))

Another week, another blog entry, YAY! So what is up?! First the brief update on school again: Everything's going perfectly fine and I'm enjoying it as much as school is enjoyable ;). The biggest difference in the school from Germany, I think, is that there are NO grades on what (and if you at all) you say in class, so sometimes nobody even cares to respond to a question, because it doesn't matter. Also the homework is always graded and takes a pretty big part in your final grade.
Also there aren't really any breakes in school (Homeroom though mostly ends up being a break but ok) just the 30 min lunch. But still I really like school so far...

But now to the more interesting part, as always, the weekend :)
Friday night was more of a quiet day in the garage, only Sol, Jun hi, me, Little Lou (Lou's son) and his friend Matt were there. (Zac's sick that's why he didn't show up, like he normally does)
It was fun though, I'm getting quite decent at pool, beating Sol twice, while loosing twice (all of those were really narrow games though) and the best thing: Little Lou promised me to take me to paintball some time when it gets warmer, Yeah! We went to bed at about 1:30, not too late, but I woke up at 10 o'clock since Sandy was vacuuming ):

She was cleaning the whole house, since there was a baby shower (for those who don't know what it is: You throw a party when somebody's pregnant so they get a lot of presents ;)) at our house. Since it's very girly (apparently, the whole house was decorated in pink :O) me and Jun Hi decided to flee the house and take a walk, since it was the warmest day since I came here (I think about 12/13 °C) and we went to check out the neighborhood the first time, finding some shops where we bought some ice cream (you need to take the chance when it's that warm ;P) and met a guy from the bus, Andre. We then went back and spent the rest of the day in the garage hiding from the baby shower (;P) and later trying (yes trying, we both were kinda bad ...) to throw a football. In the evening we then also met Erin, Andre and Lauren, all people from the bus and played some football with them, before we headed back to the garage.

Lauren and me

Erin, Andre and me

So we stayed there for some time, but eventually Lauren and Andre left, so Jun Hi, me and Erin went over to a little park, where Erin's brother and friends were hanging out. We stayed there for some time, but went to Erin's house soon, since it was getting quite chilly again. There we (well actually, just the girls did, but ok) played a Singstar like game before coming to the last part of the heading:

"Apples to Apples" A really fun cardgame ! It's very simple but very funny though :) Each round there's one theme card and everybody needs to put down cards that, in his oppinion, fit the theme, from his hand of 7 cards. (e.g: Theme: Awesome You put down: Watermelons or Independence Day or Girls or....) each round somebody then needs to decide which one's the best fitting card, and this person gets a point. It gets really funny when there are totally different words on the table like for example: Soft--- Barbed Wire, and since somebody's judging most of the time it ends up the most funniest thing wins (e.g: disturbing---> Girlfriends :P (No I didn't put that one ;D)).

On Sunday I slept till 12:30 so after I got up I immediately left for a meeting of the exchange students with the organisation. They didn't tell us anything interesting though, so I won't tortue you with a more detailed description of what they told us besides the fact, the WILL DEFINATELY send us home when something happens that shouldn't ;D

The rest of the sunday I spent doing some homework, practising to throw the football again with Jun Hi and just hanging out with Jun Hi, Erin, Lauren and two more girls from the bus...

DR. PEPPER!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D (Yes, Cherry and Vanilla tastes good too :))

The End.

P.S: All wish me luck for my physics test tomorrow!

More than 10 posts ! YEAH! ;)

Dear readers,
10 posts have been written, so I think we should get down to serious business and stop the jokes. So here it is No. 11 in the new SERIOUS blog:












Just Kidding ;) Nothing changed I won't be writting like an almoust dead Lord ;)
So what happened this weekend that made me write this post late (well just 1 day, but some people seem to be crazy about this ;P), to put it shortly: Movie @ home ---> andrean winter formal---> garage ----> superbowl ... ;)
Now to the longer explanation: My school week was long and exhausting as always, but I'm doing good in school and am having fun in all of the classes , ok some are more fun (Mr Clark :D) than others (Music is kinda boring, since too easy but hey, you need a class to sleep/do your homework ;)), but I'm having good grades (not want to show off, but: atraight A's everywhere besides Physics (well NOBODY (seriously) has good grades) and one B in math, because it was the first test and I hadn't really catched up to the class yet), so my school life is going just fine and I'm making some friends .

The weekend though was the part where it got interesting: Friday was still kinda boring since, the first time there was no garage party, since Lou came back home to late, but hey I've saw a movie about the vietnam war in sorround sound, you wouldn't want to miss that ! (Called Platoon (really good by the way :))). So after the rather normal friday my saturday started with quite a shock: I forgot my good black shoes in my locker on fridays, and as everybody knows: suit with shoes other than black---> Never ever ;)
So we headed to school to see if there was a game or something else, so I could get to my locker, but even if I got in (there was a basketball practise) they have gates to lock off some parts of the school, so I still couldn't get to my locker ... So what I ended up doing was getting a cheap pair in the thrift shop for only 7 $ (pair that would have cost 200 new, though), so it didn't end up to bad for me (besides the time used for the driving... ).

So then I headed of at 5:30 to the house of my date ( her name's Maddie) and then went to the house of a different girl to take pictures with some more couples that met there, before we went to the dance at 7 o' clock. The dance actually was not really what I expected (Well it's not really a "formal" dance as you would call it in Germany (no Waltz or anything like that)), but it was a lot of fun (the dancing is like in a dance hall or something...), besides the fact that we had to wait about a hour in line for the professionaly taking photos (By the way, they were 30 $ for 4 pictures and some pass photos and the ticket for the dance was 25 $!! I don't know what a private school needs all the money for, but hey what don't you do for being part of american culture ;D)


After the dance (it ended at 10 o'clock) we headed back to Masie's (the house we took the pictures at) and grabbed some pizza and some drinks (and had some fun playing with the toys of her siblings, some nerf(little arrows) guns ;D)
I really had fun (even if not knowing how to dance, but hey most people weren't TOO good, and I kinda learned it ;)) and am quite sad there's no more formal dance for me till I come back (besides prom, but that's only for juniors/seniors, so....).

The other big event that took place was the SUPERBOWl XLIII on Sunday!!!!
Actually there wasn't anything like a party or something, but Zac + Jun Hi came over to watch it and we had Lous famous tacos again :)
I was cheering for the Arizona Cardinals (not because I liked them more, but they were the "Undergogs" and I liked the playstyle of them in the playoff game I watched before), but they lost ): It was a very good game though (at least in the 4th quarter) with many turnarounds, the longest interception return in Superbowl History and 96 yard penalties against the cardinals (-.-). The Winning team, the steelers from Pittsburgh, played really well though and dominated the game till the 4th quarter. The final score was 27:23...

The Official End with another picture of a nice guy I talk to alot in school, his name's Ivan...


P.S: I did some sports today, some running with jacob, a kid from the bus..

P.P.S: Just for some of you, I don't care if you do jokes in the shoutbox, but there's a line you maybe shouldn't cross, since grown up people are reading this ;P

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 :)

About: the MSI, Parties where you don't know anybody and 5 days off of school

America is the coolest country in the world!!!

Ok, at least it's the coolest regarding "snow days" ;) I've had Thursday off, because school was canceled, Friday I didn't go to school, because my host mum thought the way there would be unsafe, then there was the weekend and Monday I'm off because it's the Martin luther king day, which makes it a total of 5 days I didn't go to school :)

My days of school I had this week were fun though, I like all of my teachers and most of the classes are really fun (english not too much (I've just never liked classical books...) and morality doesn't really interest me, though it's easy so not too bad :)) I'm also starting to know my schedule and even am starting to get along with some people quit well (though it's quite hard to get close to people over here, since you often just see them once a dy in one of your classes and maybe lunch). So my everyday life in school is going fine, but...

...you probably now want to know what I did all that time I was off?! So here it is:
On Thursday and Friday I actually just was at home and hang out with Sol, Zac and Jun Hi (even though Zac had to go to school on Friday with only a 2 hour delay (haha ;))), but still it was better than getting up at 5:45 and having to stay in school till 2:45 (that's currently the only thing I don't like about the US: having to get up early and having such a long day of school...). Of course Friday evening was again one of the famous garage "parties" (more of a hanging-out hough, not many people ;)), which I really had fun at, since I the first time played pool, which was fun. We had to go to bed pretty early though, since the next day we wanted to go: To the MSI!

So what is the MSI?! It's the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and it's really really really awesome ! You can spend days (!) in that museum, since there's so much to see, and it's so much fun, 'cause it's all "hands-on" and experiments... Me and my host family, zac, and a friend of Sol went there and had lots of lots of fun...
The coolest thing, though weren't the real, only one captured by the allies, submarine or the models of many different ships or the really awesome Omnimax theatre (even bigger than an IMAX), or the huge model train system, or..., no, it was the really awesome Navy flight simulator, where you even could "fly" on your head, which was the most fun ;) We actually stayed in the museum for about 5 hours, from the opening time till it closed, and hadn't even gone up to the third level !

After having a late lunch at a really cool fast food restaurant, that had every "fast" food you could possibly imgaine (from pasta + pizza to hamburgers + hot dogs) we went home and me and Sol left for a "Goodbye" Party; another German exchange student is leaving on Monday. The party actually was pretty nice, even if I didn't know anybody besides Sol, but there were a lot of exchange students (4 Germans, South korean + belgian) so I had fun talking to them and getting to know people, even if it was just for the 3 hours the "party" (which was actually more a "having-dinner-together" ;)). Aparrently the girl called Danielle (the one who's leaving), has to go through NY on her flight, so her trip will take about 30 (!) hours overall, which kinda sucks...(sry all parents and adults, but it does ;)).

We got home at about 10:00 and then played some more pool (which I'm getting better at ;)) and I got to meet a good friend of the Family, Bryan, who's really nice and fun (even though he had some good amount of drinks ;)).

At last a picture of Sandy and Loui, my host parents, yesterday in the garage:


The End

P.S: I've got much more pictures of the muesuem, but uploading takes pretty long, with the connection I'm using, so that's all you get :P

A new Week, more School and a new blog entry!

Even if it wasn't a whole week since the last entry I think you've waited long enough for some more information... ;)

On the weekend I had some fun with the korean exchange student from across the street, his name's Jun Hi (I hope it's spelled right, this is atleast who it's pronounced...) and he's just arrived three days before me and's a freshmen (9th grade). His host brother Zack( who's been gone on the weekend and came back in the evening of sunday) is also very nice and we are getting along quite good.

Me and Jun Hi actually exercised a lot on Friday/Saturday by shuffling a lot of Snow (there's really a lot of snow overhere..) to a hill and even cleared the driveway when doing it.



I've also but a proper Uniform on the weekend, which was 116 $, and ordered some books, which were just 40 $, but would have been more if I had ordered the physics book (I've asked the teacher about a spare book, and he's looking for one), which is at least 80 (!) $, so I actually got out quite cheap (Sol said she had paid about 450-500 $ total for books/uniforms).

Today was my 3rd day of school and I'm actually able to open my locker now ;) Also I'm starting to remember names and am getting along good with some people. I'll now just give you a little update about my classes and how they are:

• Honor Physics: I like it alot, the teacher's fun and the people in the class too, even if they're mostly Juniors (11th grade) and Seniors (12th grade)
• Music Theory: It's still so easy, but because of that it's fun, since it's really relaxed and there are only about 8 people on the class
• World History: Pretty easy, because I had most of the stuff already in Germany (currently talking about the Frechn rev. + Napoleon), but fun becauese the teacher's nice and the people are okay
• Latin 3: Not too easy (it's latin ... ;)) but I like the people (also Juniors mostly though)
• Honor Alg. 2 + trig. : not too easy, since they're about one chapter farther than we were in germany, but still no problem and a nice jteacher
• English: Nice Teacher + people, but reading shakespeare isn't particularly the most fun experience ;)
• Morality; Only class I had to do homework for, up to now so I don't like it ;) No, actually it's fun and the teacher seems ok

So I'm having a fair amount of fun overhere and really am liking my exchange so far :) Maybe there'll be no school tomorrow (or at least the busses won't drive, which means I can sleep in and my host mum takes me), since there's a lot of snow and a blizzard forecasted for tonight (though I don't see the snow falling yet).

Amother picture, this time of Jun Hi:


Hoping for a lot of snow right now ;)

The End

Weird Schedules, funny lockers and too many names...

Since apparently there are some people actually reading the stuff I'm writing (at least it seems so from the activity in the shoutbox), I decided to give everybody another update on how school went, but that's going to be it, for some time ;)

So after a too shorth night (having to get up at 5:45 because of the bus...) I today took the school bus to school and and talked to the guidance counsellor first. She askes me some Information for the school database before she got to the courses I'm taking. Just a reminder for everyone who doesn't know who the american school system really works: Every student picks 7 classes (some classes of course you have to take), which you have every day. So for now my schedule looks like this (probably staying that way too...) :

• Lesson A : Honor Physics 1 (honor Classes are, at least I think , the "harder" classes) , which I had a lesson in already and it seemed fun (especaially the teacher...)
• Lesson B: MusicTheoryComposition (was ok, but seemed very easy, which isn't necessarily bad ;))
• Lesson C: World History (just basically like history in Germany, even with a German teacher so if I would possibly not beeing understanding something she can tell me in German)
• Lesson D: Latin 3 (Didn't have it yet because of the time in the guidance counsellor office)
• Lesson E: Honor Algebra 2/Trigonometrie (same as Latin)
• Lesson F: English 10 (Just had it for about 20 min. and we watched a film so not much to say (they're reading shakespeare, though...)
• Lesson G: Morality (Religion...)
• "Lesson" H: Homeroom ( Time for announcements and just like a break...)

So now I come to the complicate Part, they have a rotating schedule so my daily schedules for a week would look like this:

Monday: A/B/H/C/D/E/F/G Tue:B/C/H/D/E/F/G/A We:C/D/H/E/F/G/A/B Thu:D/E/H/F/G/A/B/C Fri: E/F/H/G/A/B/C/D

But besides that there is more to know: lunch is in the 5th period and there are three different lunches: A/B/C were A is Go to Lunch/got to class; B: Go to Class/Lunch/Class C: Go to Class/Lunch. So if that didn't confuse you yet, here comes the most complicated thing, the Bell schedules I don't really understand them yet but maybe you do with this picture:

Another thing that I kinda got confused by, was the locker, you had to turn the wheel in a special way and I just didn't get it right, so I even almoust missed the bus, b

But overall I really liked my first school day, especially because everybody was so friendly, and introduced themselves to me, which again was very nice, but on the other side kinda bad, since I have to remember about 70 names I was told from all the kids in the different classes (There isn't such a thing as a class, which you stay together with the whole day) ;)

At last, another picture, this time of the nice garage I told you about yesterday: