Destination reached!

After I've got Internet on my Laptop just 10 minutes ago (it's encrypted and just Mrs. Oseguera has the password...) I'm now ready to give all you readers the first update on my trip :)

On my leaving day I really was excited about the whole exchange, but after having checked in and beeing rid of the suitcases excitement set down to a reasonable level. Of course my Mom cried when saying good bye to me, but hey, probably any mum would have.
My flight to the US was more or less comfortable, the plane was fine, since it had tvs at every seat in economy class, so you were able to choose from various channels (they even showed a show of House, M.D ;) ). But on the other side my seat wasn't the best, since the plane was packed with people (btw: what's with people from India travelling to the US, there were like 20 of them in just the part of the plane I was sitting in) and I didn't see any free space, I had to sit in the middle of the middle row, which always makes it uncomfortable, since you can't move your legs as freely and can't get up as easily.

After reaching Chicago I first was in a bit of a hurry since my flight had been late and I had to go through Immigration, customs, go to another terminal, go through security (just btw, it's very ridiculous to take off your shoes at security in my opinion but okay...) and find the right gate in about 1 hour, but since my next plane was 20 min late already, it worked out quite ok. After I waited for about 20 minutes at the gate, I boarded and then the real waiting began: We waited 1 hour for the start, taxied on the ground for about 20 min total, with a flight time of aprox. 15 min !!!! How can it be any more ridiculous?!? Well at least for those 15 min I had more space since the seat next to me was free... (Didn't do me too much good though, since we weren't even allowed to take off our seat belts...)

But I reached South Bend just fine and my host mom was waiting. After another one and a half hours of driving we reached her house, which is very nice and I also have a nice room:


I also met my guest sister today, she's very nice and her name's Sol( she's from south korea...)
Today I was allowed to stay at home which I did and so I took some pictures of the house (they got a really nice "party" garage), but I won't upload them today, but instead I'll show you a picture of the dog they have, his name's Kelco and he's really nice...

Tomorrow's first school day, and since I have to get up at 5:45 (school bus schedule.... ):) I'll go to bed soon....

Look Forward to my next Post, possibly with more picture of the house and the cool garage (with a pool table and a flipper...)...

Less than one Day left in Germany!

There it is, the day of departure is almoust there. Tomorrow my plane leaves Germany, and I'll at last (after so many things that had to be done) touch US ground and hopefully have a lot of fun for half a year.

Today also the excitement hit me as I realised, that from tomorrow on, I won't see my friends, parents, relatives and anybody I know here till I come back! But after awhile all the fun I'm hopefully going to have came back to my mind and my excitement came to a normal level again.

At the moment I'm packing the last stuff into my suitcases (yes plural I'm allowed to take 2 suitcases of up to 23 kg, and I'm taking about 20 kg in each (which in my opinion is too much,but my mum thinks I need to take so much things I won't need for the first 3 months anyways...)) and the rucksack I'm taking on the plane, so my new Laptop, from which I'm writing this, will be going into it just after I'm finished with this. Just to give you a little impression of the chaos in my suitcases before I repacked them some minutes ago:

So this is probably the last thing you will hear from me before I'm in the US and from then on I'll try and blog once a week about all the cool things that'll do and that'll happen to me ;)

Actual Departure Date !!

As some may have noticed, the countdown on the right side of the blog suddenly went up two more days, that's because I now know the actual date I'm leaving.

My flight leaves on the 6th of January at 12:30 P.M (German Time) and I'll be landing in Chicago airport at 3 P. M (American Time), where I change planes to then fly to Southbend Airport, a much smaller regional airport on the other side of Lake Michigan. I'll land in Southbend at about 5 P.M (American time), after almoust 11 h of travelling. I really am getting quite excited at the moment, since it's not long till I leave all of my friends and my parents and start my "Adventure".

But on the other side I'm actually not getting as excited as I thought I would get, since I talked with my host family already and at least on the phone they seemed quite nice ;). I also got some new information about them, which maybe'll interest some of you:

• They don't just have the chinese (which actually is from south korea) and brazilian exchange student, also a german exchange student is there at the moment and will be leaving when I go over. I even was able to talk to her and she said the host family is very nice and I'll have fun, so I'm really looking forward to meet them :)
• They have a dog, which I think is cool, since I always wanted to have another dog after our first dog died when I was three....
• My host "mum" is actually russish-polish and my host "dad" spanish
• They do have WLAN at the house (No I didn't ask that, she told me from herself ;)), which will make it easier to blog, since I'll be able to do it from there and don't have to do it in school

Since they all seemed very nice and happy, from what I heard on the phone, I really am glad I chose to go to the US and really am lloking forward to it :)

The End

P.S: Today I got the required haircut for the private school, which is much shorter than before...
If you want to see a picture spam the shoutbox (This shoutbox needs some activity :D) and maybe I'll post one ;)

Host Family !!!

After more or less (for me less for my parents more ;)) nervous waiting for the letter telling me about the family I'll stay with, today was "the" day. I now know the name and adress of my host family and got some information about them:

• They are a hispanic couple with 5 kids (I didn't like that at first, but...), who are grown up. (that made it ok, since probably not all of them live at home anymore.)

• I won't be the only exchange student there, a brazilian student will be leaving from them soon after I come and a chinese one will be coming and'll stay there the whole time I'm there.

That's about the only Information I got, but at least I now know I'll have a place to stay at in America ;). I think it'll be a great experience living in a hispanic family and with a chinese guest "sibling".

Maybe I'll even learn some Chinese or Spanish...


The End of a rather short entry (the next one'll be longer, I promise ;))

~17 Days left!

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

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

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

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

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


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