Another week with new adventures!

The week of Thanksgiving, we only had to go to school on Monday and Tuesday. Chris, Kat's husband picked us up after school on Tuesday and we went to Jake's, Stephanie's boyfriend, house. So many boyfriends and husbands and everything hahahah.... Our host-mom and sisters were also at Jake's. He has a huge backyard and a campfire place so we set up 3 tents, and started to make a campfire. We don't know how or why, but the fire had some blue, green and purple flames in it sometimes, crazy American campfires.. We put a grill above the fire and grilled sausages and hamburgers for dinner. We also made smores! That is a roasted marshmallow with a piece of chocolate in between 2 honey crackers. It is the best! All the Jones sisters, Kat, Stepanie and Danielle, sang campfire songs all night long. We had so much fun and Mathilde and I sang some songs in Dutch and Danish. Jake's youngest son Luke, he is 4 years old, thought it was a good idea to touch a fire lamp and burned his fingertips on one hand... It was so sad and he cried really hard so he slept in the house instead of in one of our tents. Before we went to bed it rained just a little bit and we thought we could survive one night with just a little bit of rain. But suddenly the next morning at 6 am the Texas clouds above Jake's house thought it was fun to give us huge amounts of rain.... And the tent we were sleeping in was already 20 years old, so guess what happened... Around 6 am I hear Mathilde screaming: Marit wake up the tent is leaking and about to collapse! I was like noooooo and we just ran out of the tent in the house. So everybody was awake, wet and eating donuts for breakfast around 7 am on a non-school or workday, yeeyy... Even though we were busy drying everything until 3 pm we had so much fun together. Luke's fingers didn't hurt anymore and we just played board games with each other, some family time :)
Around 4 pm, the whole family jumped in the car racing to the movie theater to watch....... Fantastic Beasts! That movie is just amazing :) I am also reading all the Harry Potter books, in English.
That night everybody went to bed early to get some extra sleep we missed the night before because of the rain.

Thursday November 24th >>>>> THANKSGIVING! There is no better event to experience the American culture. Aunt Nancy made the turkey that day. So more family members and friends arrived in Houston to celebrate Thanksgiving with us, 24 people in total...... This was the biggest turkey I've ever seen, man man. It was stuffed with all kind of things and it baked in the oven for 5 hours or something :o
But we had fun and everybody ate a looooottt. We also had a dessert, apple pie, pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie :)

The day after Thanksgiving we went to the biggest Renaissance festival. Of course we went with the whole family and Kat, Stephanie, Danielle, Mathilde and Chris dressed up. They wore Renaissance dresses, except for Chris haha. There were a lot of little shops you could buy knives or dresses or other stuff. We mostly went to the performances. We went to a man who made music only with big and small bells, it was very impressive. We saw a dirty Shakespeare show, played by 3 actors who performed a Shakespeare play but in their own words and very sexual but so funny. And of course the play didn't take 4 hours, only 20 minutes. There were artists who played with fire and with whips and it was so cool. We were at the festival around 9 am and didn't leave it until 6 pm, so it was a long long long day. But it wasn't over yet because from the festival we went straight to the Drive-In movie theater and watched Moana, the kids movie, with the family :)

On Saturday, Mathilde and I went shopping the Memorial City Mall. Even though Black Friday was over, it was still very crowded in all stores. A lot of stores were a mess and the lane in Victoria Secret ended almost out of the store... And yes, Mathilde and I were in that lane, waiting and waiting until we could pay haha. I bought new shoes because I really liked them and they were cheap but once we were home and I tried them on again, they hurt so bad because they were too small... I have to return them oops.

On Sunday we went to church like every Sunday. Stephanie had to sing again and it was just so beautiful. I love it when she sings in and around our house :) When we got back in the house Mathilde and I went to a Sinterklaas party in one of the 800 million of thousand churches here in Houston. It was organized by a Dutch Community and everybody spoke Dutch. And since Mathilde can't speak Dutch I was her translator for the whole day, but sometimes it was really hard for me to switch from English to Dutch because I am used to talk English all the time now. They painted our faces in rainbow colors because the whole 'Zwarte Pieten Discussion' is also known here in America so they didn't want to paint us black. I didn't like that but we still had so much fun. We helped with giving the children presents and I had to remind the Sinterklaas to speak Dutch to the little kids because he was also used to talk English, that was really funny. Because all the other Pieten live in the US for more than 3 years they don't know all the Sinterklaas songs anymore, but I celebrate Sinterklaas with my family every year and I love to sing all the songs. So I was the only one who knew all the songs perfectly so they decided to let me sing in the microphone and yeah I was a Piet so I couldn't say no in front of all those sweet little kids..... Soooo I song some songs in Dutch pretending I loved it but my my non-sing-talent increased because of the microphone... Still I had a lovely day and we could take all the pepernoten leftovers home and they got a birthday present for me because it was the day before my birthday and guess what it was :) :) :) Speculaas, Chocolate Letter, Hagelslag, Stroopwafels, Gevulde speculaas and Drop!!! That made my day even better :)

And then finally it was my 18th birthday. It was funny because when it was November 27th at 6 pm here in Texas it was November 28th at 1 am midnight in The Netherlands so technically it was already my birthday :) Mathilde jumped on my bed to wake me up with a happy birthday in the morning and I had such a great day. Two friends in school gave my a huge decorated cupcake and I skyped with my family during my lunch in school. ( Missing them the most ♡ ) We ate the perfect big chocolate birthday cake in the evening and of course when I want to blow out the candles something goes wrong. I don't know how or why but the candles kept lightning back up even if I blew them out!!!!! And everybody just laughed at me and I laughed too and that made it even harder to blow out all the 18 candles. Sticking my face in the cake and eat the first bite is a part of having your birthday in this house so I did that and it was amazing, even though I still had chocolate on my nose when I went to bed... ;) I also got some presents from home including more Dutch food >> ( I love Nienke for that ♡ ) When Mathilde and I went shopping I saw some cute lights with which you can decorate your room, so she bought that as a gift for me and now my room is all decorated and ready for Christmas :)
We had blown up a few balloons for my birthday and I was playing with them and for one moment I forgot they have fans everywhere in the houses here in Texas, so the balloon flew to high in the room, touched the fan and came back straight to my face really fast. It was actually only funny when you saw it happening but I start to laugh every time I think of that action so I just tell y'all about it :)

On Tuesday I watched the girls soccer practice to see if I liked it and I did, so yesterday I joined the team and the girls are really nice and I think I will have fun with them and the coach is amazing too! When I came back yesterday, Mathilde had made us Danish meat balls 'frikadelle' and we ate dinner with our parents and the two of us and we had so much fun, just at dinner. We taught our host mom 'tongue breakers' in Dutch and Danish and it was the funniest thing ever. She was trying to say " Bram de brave broer van breiende brauwende Brielse Brechtje, bracht in zijn bronsbruin broekje een bril en een brandbrief en een gebroken brokje bros bruin brood over de brede brug naar Breukelen. " Every time there was a 'R' and 'CH' in one word she stopped, looked at me and said: So now you expect me to roll my R and say the weird Dutch thing (CH) in one word? I just enjoyed listening to it so much, she did great actually :)

It starts getting really cold now but for real something like 10 degrees Celcius.... That means it's really hot in school because that is what they do. When it is hot outside they turn on the air conditioning really high, but when it starts getting cold outside they make it a sauna in school. But overall my experience is getting better and better and a great month with Christmas, my trip to Kentucky and New Year is coming :)