Homecoming - monday to thursday

I seem to start to get the hang of blogging - waiting for months doesn't do you any good. And you know what, I actually enjoy writing a lot.. So here I go. Keep checking my blog out, because from now on I will actually use it!

I'm still in the middle of homecoming week, and it's just amazing. Every school day we have a dress-up day. Monday was Science fiction day, tuesday was ESPN day, wednesday was Disney day, today (thursday) was black&white and tomorrow will be extreme blue and gold. Most of you that know me good enough know that I'm not the kind of person to dress up to school, so as boring as I am, I didn't. However, Homecoming has a whole lot more to offer!
Every day there is an after-school activity. On monday there was signpainting. I
didn't go, because I had powderpuff practice. On tuesday, there was the powderpuff game! Powderpuff football is American football for girls. We all had to ask a football player for his jersey and play.. hard haha. It was amazing. The freshmen and seniors played the sophomores and juniors, which was my team. We lost by 12-8 or something, but I had a lot of fun. And I didn't really care anyway, because that day my soccer team had beat Adelson High by 9-1, a game in which I finally made 2 goals! So I had an amazing day after all. Thanks Nathan for your jersey!
Wednesday there was the movie on the field. At least, it was supposed to be on the field. We never get rain here, except for on moments when we really don't want it (although people here are happy with rain at any time it seems), so yeah, it was raining. No movie on the field! It was in the cafeteria instead. The movie was.. Peter Pan.. so kind of boring, but I had a good evening anyway!

And today something that homecoming is best known for back home; the parade! Every grade had made its own float, the cheerleaders and football players had their own firetruck, and some other groups also had a float. The pep band was playing and the dancers were dancing and it was amazing, just like in the movies. After that there was the assembly in the gym, where they announced the Homecoming king and queen, thanked the senior athletes and had some peps by cheer and dance. Once again, amazing! After that there was the bonfire, where they ''burned the eagles''. The eagles are the mascottes of Moapa Valley High School's main rivals; Boulder city, and since the football team is playing Boulder tomorrow, we burned their mascotte?
Evil...


So as I already said, tomorrow there will be the big homecoming football game and saturday the dance! I am so excited!
I will tell you everything in the weekend :) For now I am going to do my homework and be very proud of myself for finally using my blog.

Lots of love

Cille

'To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. ' ~Aldous Huxley

Sweet 16 & San Francisco!

Two really important things I have to tell about, and you know what.. I was planning on being lazy again and to wait for another month or so, but then I realized that this week is homecoming week, which definitely deserves its own post at the end of the week.. So let's just get it over with because I need to start doing my homework!

Monday October 4th, 2010.. A great day in history. My 16th birthday!
When I told my friends back home that I was going to go to the USA in this year, the first thing they said that I was totally ruining my most important birthday of my life. In Europe 16 means party, in America it means.. drivers licence? Yeah that's something, but that doesn't even apply for foreign exchange students. So I gotta admit, I wasn't as excited as I should have been, but once it started coming up I got the feeling back again. And I had an AWESOME day! It started of with loads of rain - which was probably the first time I've really seen a lot of rain out here - , making the waters in the valley flood, which looked awesome and was really exciting sitting on the schoolbus to Las Vegas to play a soccer game. I was riding the bus in the front and talking to Maaike, when suddenly my whole soccer team started singing happy birthday! Arrived in Vegas, we totally beat Adelson, by 7-2. It was an amazing game.. When I got back home late in the evening, I celebrated my birthday with my host family and Jackie and Richard's family. I got great gifts and had an amazing evening. And then there was a bunch of letters and packages from back home.. I felt overloaded. I was so happy with everything! This was the best sweet 16 after all! Thanks everybody!

However.. the real party hadn't started yet. That was all up to SAN FRANCISCO!
On October 7th we left from Las Vegas. An amazing view, seeing Las Vegas by night out of a plane, I can tell you that! We arrived in San Francisco and went to our hotel. I shared a room with Tina (Norway), Caro (Germany) and Sarah (Switzerland). It was amazing! We had a lot of fun. In the 3 days we spent there, I saw so much! We did a lot of bus tours which gave us the opportunity to see the whole city without having to walk for hours and hours which I really appreciated with my lazy but.. I saw the golden gate bridge which was as amazing as in the pictures, we even drove over the golden gate bridge! We went to Alcatraz, which used to be a prison on an island, just in the bay of San Francisco. All the psychos went there, because there was no way of getting out, even though you could see the city easily from out there. That was fun too :) I did a lot of shopping.. Maybe a bit too much.. but everything's cheaper here! If you ever want to go shopping and you can't go to Vegas; go to San Francisco! We had dinner in China town (yeah! Chinese! haha) and a lot of Starbucks.. I had the best weekend ever. Thank you weather for being so perfect and not cover the whole city in fog, I truly loved it! We could actually see the bridge. Thanks everybody for making this such a good trip!

Lovely how blogger is helping my out uplouding my pictures right now.. I tried three times and I give up now. Pics are on my facebook! Check that out! Maybe I'll try to post them later :)

Prepare, because NEXT WEEKEND there will be a post about HOMECOMING! I'm right in the middle of it all right now, but I'm not telling anything! Ha!

See ya laterrrrr

I'm still alive!

So it's almost been a month since my last post.. I remembered saying someting about telling you something about my first day of American high school? Will the first few weeks work as well?

I'm really sorry, but I've had so much stuff to do the last weeks I din't even think about blogging. But no worries, I didn't quite understand the lockers at first but I didn't lock myself up, and the Pirates walking around school are all very nice and friendly.. It's been going AWESOME!
When I walked in school I was shaking and so afraid that I would get lost or something, but everything went well. American High school is so much better than school in the Netherlands! We get grades for doing our homework, the stuff they make us learn is not too hard and the teachers are great. After a few days I changed my Art 1 class into Drawing, because it's a more advanced class and people told me that there would be at least a few people in there who actually LIKED it and not just took the class because they wouldn't get homework, which works better for me. I also changed my ALGEBRA class into SPANISH. Yep, I'm serious! No math for me this year! No doubt this will be the best year of my life, hah!
All my other classes are amazing. I'm having a great time in choir and orchestra. Geoscience is amazing, Spanis is amazing, creative writing is awesome (except they're making us read a book now.. but I'll have to get over it to prepare for the IB program I will be following for the next 3 years anyway) and US history is so much fun too.. I honestly can't believe how American teenagers are constantly complaining about their life in High school.

Soccer is going good! Well, practice is. I kind of made the varsity team which is great, but we're not doing too good on our games. However, we are really improving and I'm having a blast. I mean come on, leaving school early to drive up to Las Vegas in a yellow school bus to play a soccer game? I freaking don't even care about the score anymore!

A while ago I went camping in Utah with Richard, Jackie, Robert, Austin, Sarah and Caro. We drove to St George on this amazing road which was blown out of a mountain many many years ago, it was so pretty! We got up to the mountain in Utah and there were trees! Was very nice to see because we don't have many of them here in Nevada!
We slept in tents for two night and it was freeeeezing, but I had a blast. We went hiking, were only a few inches away from Zion's national park so it was beautiful over there.. We had a campfire, ate smores (=American calorie bombs but really good!) and did a lot of other stuff. My favorite retarde chihuahua Taco was with us to so I had a blast!

Then there was the EF orientation meeting just a few days ago! We got to miss 2 days of school and drove up to Mount Charleston, a high mountain just half an hour outside of Vegas. It's crazy how the landscape changes so fast here, because I swear, when you're in Vegas you have the feeling you're right in the middle of the desert, but Mount Charleston was cold and densely vegetated! Is that a word?
We came together with all the exchange students in southern Nevada and had orientation meetings, a campfire, a dance and a lot of free time. I met a lot of people, got to see some people from Language&culture camp again and had a great time. Can't wait for the next EF meeting!

Thennnn I've got some great news for you guys! Well.. actually for me. I WILL BE CELEBRATING MY 16TH BIRTHDAY IN SAN FRANCISCO! CALIFORNIAAAA! Well, I'm not really celebrating it there but I'm going only 3 days after my birthday.. I'm so excited!

And homecoming is coming up.. I'm getting nervous but really excited! A new real American experience!

Life is great.

I know that I haven't had a lot of contact with many family and friends back home.. I still love you though! I promise it will get better.. I'm working on it!
Gotta go back to homework now. Don't think I'm on a vacation here! I'm actually learning a lot :)


I'll keep you updated! My next post is probably about how christmas was.. But we'll see!

Bloggertimeee

Since this might be one of the last days of my life, I found that it was time to blog again. School is starting in 3 days and I am getting so nervous that I don't know if I am going to survive haha. What will happen? Will I lock myself up in my locker or will some creepy Pirate eat me? Choke myself in choir class or get some serious brain damage in algebra? Just kidding, I will be alright. Not saying that I'm not enjoying these last three days without any worries.

The last weeks have been all about soccer. Soccer soccer soccer. It's clear to see that the Americans are more fanatic than anybody else. I'm lucky to be going to a school that accepts all the girls trying out for the soccer team, but it's not like they wil be easy on us because or level is not that high. Soccer lasts until around November and it feels like they want to get us on the National team before that - but how hard it may be sometimes, outside in the desert with temperatures reaching up to 45 degrees celsius every single day - I am loving it!
The team is amazing, the coaches are really nice and it just feels good to be working out again and doing something useful during my day. Today we had our first game, but the exchange students didn't get to play yet, long story, not important. I did go there to watch and the team didn't do too good (we were playing the varsity team of Virging Valley.. one day we will beat them though) but still it was fun to see!
Tonight there's another game in Mesquite but I'm not going. I'm not allowed to play anyway (I probably won't be until the game on tuesday).. and it's this or WATCHING MY FIRST AMERICAN FOOTBALL GAME EVER! I am so excited! Our football team is playing home against some school from somewhere in Utah.. I don't care who they are, I don't even understand the whole American football thing, but I will find out tonight! Can't wait!

Just one more thing that you guys need to know about; a few days ago I spent my first official day in Vegas! Wow! Linda drove Caro, Maren, Max and me up to the Fashion Show Mall, a mall on the strip. It was huge. IT WAS PERFECT! Seriously, if you ever want to go shopping, Vegas is not only good for visiting Casinos and creating hangovers, believe me. I bought some stuff and was out of money pretty fast (surprising). We were planning on walking on the Strip before Linda would pick us up, but the mall was somewhat bigger than we expected it to be, so when I was just about to buy a bikini we had to leave. We asked Linda if we could go and get some dinner somewhere (we hadn't had time for that either) and instead of some road restaurant we were thinking about, she asked if we would like to go to the Hard rock cafe on the strip.. well... YEAH! It was so amazing, the music was so loud and amazing, the staff was so funny and they had the most amazing guitars and costumes in their restaurant.. Believe me, the Hard rock cafe in Amsterdam is nothing!

After that we saw some more of the strip from out of the car.. Oh we saw the big watershow! So amazing.. Had the time of my life!

I gotta go get ready for a party now, there's an EF party tomorrow and they want us to make some traditional food from our home country. I had no idea what to make because Dutch food is disgusting, so I decided to make 'Appelflappen'. I'm not going to try to translate this.. it's something with apple haha. I'm excited for the party, just not for making those things.. I'll probably mess up but I'll try!

I really need to start doing something now.. next post will be about school!

Help
me

help!

Haha, love,
Cille

Vegas baby!

So much went by since my last blog - we're already a week ahead. Sorry for that haha. No more saying that I will update my blog more often because I keep saying that and never do it.

Another week in Nevada.. wow, it's going so fast! I'm still enjoying myself. First of all, I went to soccer practice for the first time. It was indoor soccer, because in the daytime it is simply too hot to play here. I was really nervous to mess up but the team wasn't pro either, so I had much fun and now I'm sure I want to play soccer for my sport here. Tomorrow (saturday) is the next practice. Outside this time. At 7 o'clock in the morning. Wish me luck!

I also spent many time hanging out with other exchange students. I am so happy to be here! It's like the perfect location - the middle of nowhere but very close to Las Vegas, and also really close to Arizona, Utah and California.. and most important; the huge amount of exchange students around here. Some people are with two or three other people in the whole state but there are already over 100 people here in southern Nevada, which is really nice, especially now because school hasn't started yet.

Talking about school, yesterday I went to my school for the very first time, to register. American High school is amazing! There is no way that you walk around the hallways and forget where you are. The whole school is covered with pirates and other school spirit stuff. Everything is painted in the school colors and pictures of sport teams and so on are spread over the walls. I'm so excited to start school! I'm so happy with the classes I picked - no boring stuff for me anymore. I picked US History, Geoscience, Creative writing, Orchestra, Choir, Digital photography and Art of course. Oh, and algebra.. but I'm going to try to take Spanish instead. I don't enjoy math. At all. Anyway, those other 7 classes are all classes I really wanted to take! So excited!

And, last but not least.. Yesterday I saw the strip in Vegas! We drove up to Vegas to pick up my new host sister, Caro from Germany. Before we got to the airport we had dinner, then we went to the airport and after that my host parents took us down the strip.. I have no words to describe how big everything was. All the lights, the high buildings. It was even more amazing than I thought it would be. We stopped at the Vegas sign but all the other pictures were taken from the car, because we couldn't stop, but I saw so much! The statue of liberty, the eiffel tower, Ceasar's palace.. Can't wait to go up there again!

Well that was it for now guys, I'll keep you updat.. oh, wait. I wouldn't say that anymore. Anywayyyyy... see you later!

Cille

Sweet home Nevada!

I could say that Language and Culture camp at Bryant University were 2 of the best weeks of my life - without a doubt. I had never expected for people to get so close to each other in just 2 weeks, but they did. That's why I will not say too much about the last evening when we had to say goodbye, it was hard, very hard! However, when I got on the airplane and we were flying to Las Vegas, I was smiling again. My High School Year was finally starting! And..
HERE I AM NEVADA!

Last saturday, which is already a week ago, I arrived in Las Vegas at 10.15 in the morning. I'm glad I wasn't alone (2 Dutch girls I met at camp were flying with me), otherwise I would have missed my flight for sure. When I arrived in the arrival hall, I immediately saw my arrival family. I don't think I have ever been that nervous before.. but they were so nice!
When we got out of the airport, after waiting for some other students to arrive, we had lunch together and we went home. I'm sure I would have loved the ride back to the valley if I wouldn't have fallen asleep.. I did get to see a bit though, and this place is so beautiful! Very, very hot, but beautiful. Yes, I know what you're thinking, so I am sorry to tell you that they DO have trees here.. Just not outside of the valley, haha.

So much has happened last week, I think that if I would try to describe every day, I wouldn't be finished by tomorrow. I have been to church for the first time in my life, which was a whole new experience, but I liked it! Too bad Sarah (from Switzerland) and I got lost after our 'Sunday school' and missed.. whatever we would have been doing in the last hour of church.. but I actually enjoyed the first 2 hours and think that I will learn much in church, not only about their religion.
Also, I have made a ride with on the motor of Richard, who was my host father in my arrival family. It was so cool! We got to see the sunset, it was beautiful. With my arrival family, I've had much fun. We had dinner over at my host parent's friends, my host mother's mother, watched movies, played guitar hero and had much fun at home. However, on wednesday morning, I got to go to my real host family!
My new host parents are the parents of my first host mother, so I'm still in their family. Their names are Ron and Linda. Linda works for EF and so knows a lot about pretty much everything. They have one dog and two cats. This week, Augusto had lived here, which was one of their exchange students 2 years ago. He will leave on monday, but the thursday after that my host sister from Germany will arrive! I am very excited to meet her.
I've had much fun with my host family here so far! We went to Mesquite where we went bowling and had dinner and where I went to the Wallmart for the first time in my life! Today, my host mother and I went to Las Vegas airport to welcome some new students here, and tomorrow we will go to church and have dinner with the whole family, including my arrival family, who will come back from California tomorrow! Can't wait to hear their stories.

School will start on August 30th, but before that we will have to pick our classes and sports have already started. I am going to try out for the soccer team - I wanted to do either volleyball or soccer, but the volleyball team here appears to be really good and I am.. how do you say that.. extremely bad, and since I want to do a team sport for sure, soccer is the only thing I could do. I might try out for basketball in the winter.. Depends on their level, I don't want to make myself look stupid!

I don't have my pictures on this computer, but if you want to see pictures you can see them on my facebook page! I will post some pictures soon :)

I am having so much fun here, I've met some people already and I simply can't wait to go to school! I will post again soon, let's keep this thing updated!

Love,
Cille

Out where the sun always shines,
Here is the land which I love the best,
Fairer than all I can see.
Deep in the heart of the golden west
Home means Nevada to me.
-Nevada State Song-