Spring Break!
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19 Maart 2017 | Verenigde Staten, Houston
It is rodeo season too, which means the real Texan experience is here! Last Wednesday, mom, Aunt Nancy, Jake and Stephanie took me to the rodeo for the first time. I sat with Jake and Stephanie, because they had 'special seats' from which you could see the arena really good. The rodeo started off with the national anthem of course, because that’s what every event here starts with haha. Everything they did was on horses, it was fantastic. First there was an event called ‘Calf Roping’. They would release a calf and a cowboy on a horse would chase the calf to rope his head. This happened while the cowboy was riding a horse! After roping the calf’s head, he jumped off his horse to bind both legs of the calf. This all had to be done fast of course, because the fastest cowboy would win a lot of money! They let the calf go after the cowboy caught it. There was also ‘Team Calf Roping’ which was almost the same. They released calf, but this time two cowboys on horses would chase the calf. One had the job to rope the head of the calf and the other had to bind the legs. This all was also done while they were on their horses….. The next two events were ‘Saddle Bronc Riding’ and ‘Bareback Bronc Riding’. They are almost the same, the only difference is that one is riding with a saddle and the other without. It was some crazy thing happening. The cowboy had to sit on a horse and hold it with only one hand while the horse was just going wild. Jumping around and trying to buck off the cowboy! I was kind of in shock after I saw this, because I thought things like this only happened in movies hahaha. They had to stay on the horse for 8 seconds to receive points. If they fell off, too bad… Most cowboys could handle the horse. It is all getting better. There was ‘Steer Wrestling’ which means the cowboy chases a steer, jumps off his horse, and lands almost on top of a calf. By ‘wrestling’ the calf, it was the goal to get it on its back. This was pretty cool to watch too. The next event was a thing only women did. Everything was done by men, because yeah, I don’t like to admit it, but they are stronger when we are talking about things like this wrestling horses and stuff…. ;) The event is called ‘Barrel Racing’. Basically there are 3 barrels, placed in a triangle and your job is to get around all the barrels as fast as you can (on a horse of course). It was not as exciting as the previous events, but it was still fun. #girlpower! So the next thing was ‘Bull Riding’. Well, we all know what that means….. It was absolutely crazy. The cowboy was sitting on top of a big bull, which was trying to buck off the cowboy. Because bulls are more dangerous, stronger and sometimes even try to attack the rider when he falls off the bull, there had to be distractions. There were 3 clowns jumping around the bull so they could protect the cowboy, once he fell off the bull. There was also a clown sitting in a barrel for extra distractions. This was so cool to see, I loved it! There is a video on Facebook about the bull riding ;) Now that the crazy stuff was over, there was still more. ‘Chuck Wagon Racing’ was the next event. There were 3 wagons with brands like Kroger and Sell racing against each other. Every wagon had 4 horses to race with and they were racing around barrels :) Of course, all these things are done by adults, but there were also children activities. The first one was called ‘Calf Scramble’. Around 30 High School aged kids were standing in a line in the middle of the stadium. Then they released young steers and the kids’ job was to get a steer, tie them and bring them back to the center of the arena. The first one back was the winner. It was funny to see all the kids running after the steers. Sometimes when a kid got a steer, they would hold on to the tail to keep it close to them. The funny thing was that the steer was much stronger so they would just drag the kid all around while the kid was still holding the tail hahahaha. The last event was for the little kids, it was called ‘Mutton Bustin’. A child sat on top of a sheep and the sheep would run around until the child fell. It was really cute, but most of the kids cried when they fell, which was pretty sad haha…
Now the rodeo-part was over, and it was time for the concert. They would place a small podium in the middle of the arena for the artist. That Wednesday was Military Appreciation Day, which means that there were a lot of military people at the rodeo. Before the concert the played some music and a couple of military people climbed down by ropes from the ceiling (which was really high) while holding a big American flag. It was really cool actually :) Right after this, there was a lot of firework and the concert started. The artist was Cody Johnson, a country singer! I knew only one song, but it was still a great night, one of the best nights!!
Thursday during 4th period, coach bought us pizzas and buffalo wings for our important win against Lamar! We also watched the game on tv again just to enjoy that moment again, it was great :) I’m definitely going to miss this soccer season and especially the team…
Friday was the last school day before spring break yaaass! Mathilde and I were waiting for mom in parking lot after school. We were standing underneath an under-funding, because it rained just a little. After 5 minutes, the weather changed real fast with a lot of rain, wind, lightning and thunder all at the same time. We couldn't get back in school, because they didn’t want students in school right before spring break. When somebody finally opened the door we could wait inside where it was warm and the wind didn’t want to blow us away haha. When we finally were at home, we just had a relaxed Friday night :)
Saturday morning was our last district game. It didn’t count for our points anymore, because we cleared second place already, but we still needed to play the game. The game was against Chavez. There was sooo much rain during our game. It rained all the time and a lot too. We eventually won the game, 2-0! Of course right after the game it stopped raining…… After the game we went straight to the rodeo with Mathilde, Sarah-Joy and Josh. We met with the YFU group at the rodeo. Our seats were all the way in section 600, which is almost the highest of the stadium. People like Andreas and Jan were there it was a lot of fun. The rodeo events were the same every day, but it was still fun to watch for the second time :) The artist was Alan Jackson, another country singer haha. After the concert we went all the way down to the carnival ( which took us half an hour, because we were all the way up haha ) We just hang around at the carnival with Mathilde, Andreas, Jan, Sarah-Joy and Josh. We enjoyed looking at all the people wearing cowboy boots and hats :) Also, there were a lot of food tents. You can buy everything fried at the rodeo. They were selling fried Oreos, fried cheesecake, fried cookies, fried pickles and much more….. Everything is also on a stick, pizza on a stick, cheesecake on a stick, it was amazing and fun to see haha. We also went to the Live Stock Show to look at all the cows/pigs/chickens and after a while everybody got picked up by their parents. I went home with Mathilde, Josh and Sarah-Joy so we walked to Josh's car. It was pretty far actually, because the rodeo is so big and we had to walk all the way around, but we made it haha. We went to an ice cream place and after that Josh brought all of us home. It was again a great day with lovely people :)
Sunday was the first day since a long time I could actually sleep in, which was great haha. Mathilde and I watched Harry Potter 4 in the morning ( I’ve seen all the movies 5 times or more this year…! ) In the afternoon we went down to the rodeo again. This time it was just Mathilde and me. We didn’t go for the rodeo that day, but for the concert after the rodeo. We had seats really close this time so we could see everything. The rodeo was still the same, but different because we were so close this time. The concert we were waiting for was The Chainsmokers! It was just great. The songs, the people, everything. Perfect night :) I’ve posted some videos about the rodeo and the concerts on Facebook so you can actually see what it looks like.
Monday morning we left the house to go camping for 3 days. Our plan was to leave at 10 am, but that of course did not happen haha.... The people who were with me on this amazing trip were Kat, mom, Mathilde, Jake, Stephanie, Luke and Nate. We went to a park, called Monument State Park, it was somewhere half-way to our destination. We did a little bit of hiking in the woods and we got a tour in a really old house (1940) made by only one man. It was a nice park and the weather was good too :) We had a little picnic for lunch and played frisbee. After lunch we went to the camping. We set up our 2 tents and made dinner. It was chicken and vegetables smoked on the barbecue! We thought it had to cook longer than it actually had to so a lot of the things were burned haha…… It was not too bad, because we still had some things left and we ate s'mores for our dessert! Stephanie brought her ukulele so we played some music and sang around the campfire till late that night. It was really cold which was a problem for some of us, but we all survived so that is good haha.
Tuesday was great too. We ate breakfast ( Jake cooked eggs, bacon and tacos for us, which were delicious as always ) We brought 2 hammocks, which are perfect places to read. I also played soccer with the boys (Nate and Luke) and other small kids from the camping. It was great :) We ate hamburgers for lunch and after lunch we went to Austin. When we arrived we walked through a beautiful park and the family wanted to play Pokémon GO as always haha. We ended up under one specific bridge looking at bats. It was this season of the year and this time every night that thousands of bats flew away from underneath the bridge. It was pretty cool too see! We had late night sandwiches for dinner when we got back at the camping. The moon was really big and orange that night, which was interesting to see :) Everybody was glad that it wasn’t as cold as the night before. We already had to go the next day. We packed the two tents and all our stuff and we did it pretty fast. We went home and everybody went to bed early because we were all tired haha.
Thursday morning I had soccer practice, because our play-off game is next week and coach wants to be prepared and stuff. When mom dropped me off at school there were no cars and no people. Eventually 4 other girls showed up and coach was there too so we played a little 3-against-3 game. When I came home, Kat and Stephanie took me downtown to go prom dress shopping….!! We went to Macy's first. It is a really big store and they sell a lot of prom dresses. I've tried on around 50 dresses just in that one store! Dresses with sleeves/no sleeves/colorful/black/glitter blabla, soooo many different things…. It was great though, we had a lot of fun :) After that one store we needed a lunch break (we were exhausted from all those dresses already). After lunch we went to a special prom dress store and I tried on 10 more dresses.... In the last store we didn’t see a lot of nice dresses. We did see one Cinderella kind of dress so we decided to try it on just for fun. We thought it would be ugly but it was actually really pretty! Then we looked at the price and decided to put back the dress, acting like nothing happened…. Because yeah… (the dress was $400…..) After our shopping day ( I haven’t bought anything yet by the way ) Kat and Stephanie were going to see Beauty and The Beast in the movie theater with some friends. Mom picked me up and when we were about to leave the parking lot Stephanie called us. A friend of theirs couldn’t come anymore so I went to see the movie in her place :) It was such a fancy cinema with big seats. You could also lift you’re your feet on your own seat and it was just really cool. The movie was amaaaaaazing!!! Gotta love Disney movies haha. The rest of the springbreak days, I just relaxed, which was good too. I have to go to school again on Monday. It is going to be great to see everybody again! :)
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