HIGH SCHOOL YEAR!

I’m a real dreamer. There are so many things in life that I would like to experience, to see, or to own. My mother always tells me that I’m only fifteen and so will have many more years to do all those things, but I’m pretty impatient and want to do everything as soon as I come up with the idea. However, she’s right.. I’m only fifteen, so first of all, I have no rights to decide for myself what I’m doing, and when the time comes that I do have the right to do that, I know that my wishes will be different again.

That’s the reason that, when I was about twelve years old, when I heard about an EF high school year for the first time, I thought that it was never going to happen. I knew that it was just another idea and it would be over in a few months again. I decided to quit thinking about it and told myself that I would travel when I would have finished school and university. However, about a year later, I still wanted it and started working to make this happen. And guess what? Dreams can actually come true!

I know it sounds very dramatic to call this blog ‘My American Dream’. I agree that it sounds like I want to be the new Barack Obama and change the world or something. I don’t. Well I’d love to, but I have no idea how. And I’m starting to drift away from the subject of this blog so let’s stop talking about it! This is something that I really want to do and you can’t even imagine how happy I am that I’m going ! And to get back to the title of this blog (I still think it sounds dramatic), I just didn’t have any inspiration. Any suggestions?

So, to get to the point of this entire weblog, I’m going to do a ‘High School Year’ in the United States next year. I will be going to school there and I will live in a host family. Furthermore, I will go to ‘Language & culture camp’ for the first two weeks to improve my language and ehm.. cultural knowledge? Don’t know why I just explained that. Anyway, down here you can read the information about my host family, school and stuff like that. I tried to organise it a bit, so it might look like I’m just summarizing it because I don’t care too much, but that is definitely NOT true! It’s just that, when I wrote a blog on my Dutch hyves page (some sort of Myspace for Dutch people), I tried to make a nice story out of it and it turned out to be almost enough information to make a whole book, which is not my intention right now. So I hope this is a bit more clear!


My flight to the United States:
17th or 18th of July, from Amsterdam (Schiphol). Don’t know details yet!

Language & culture camp
From the 19th of July until the 1st of August. It will either be at Norwich university of Bryant university, both close to Boston. I was told that I’d go to Norwich, but that was a mistake,so I don’t know that yet. All exchange students from EF going to the USA, who wanted to, are attending camp. We will have 5 lessons a day; homeroom, English, History, current issues and life in America. Next to that, we will have the opportunity to do ‘’after-school activities’’ and we will have a few trips!

State
Nevada! It’s next to California, to the south-west of the United States. It’s said to be the most arid state in the USA, so I will finally see the sun for more than a week a year! I will live just an hour away from ‘Sin city’; LAS VEGAS!

Host family
I have a temporary host family. This means that they are still looking for a permanent one, but I do have a place to go when they haven’t found one yet. I’ve already talked to them several times and they are really nice! They are Richard and Jackie, and their two sons Austin and Robert. They live in Logandale, Nevada. Also, Sarah will be staying there. She’s also an exchange student, from Switzerland, and I’ve already met her too. She’s also really nice and I can’t wait to meet all of them!

High school
I will go to Moapa valley high school. It’s a small school, where you can do lots of activities like many sports, you can join the choir, orchestra or band and they have many different clubs and stuff like that. They even have real cheerleaders and school spirit merchandise, so it’s a real American High School! There will be 17 exchange students from different countries going to that school, so that’s another good point. I can’t wait!

I guess I mentioned the most important things. I believe this message is even longer than the one on Hyves. Whatever, I will learn from my experience the coming year!
I will try to keep this thing updated! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

Love, Cille