It's getting better and better!
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Marit
31 Oktober 2016 | Verenigde Staten, Houston
First of all, I am sorry I didn't write anything for weeks. It's been crazy at Westside High School and crazy in our new family, in a good way ;)
I first want to tell a lot about the school. We leave every morning at 7.15 to avoid traffic so I have to wake up way earlier than I did back home, I am still struggling with that every morning. I am not a morning person oops... We have to wear uniforms, a black or khaki color pants or skirt and shirts we have to buy at school. The shirts are black or blue and its either long or short sleeves, a polo shirt or a gray sweater. They all have the school logo and name on it. Another thing we always have to wear is our school ID and Mathilde and I have an Off-Campus ID so we can go eat somewhere at lunch break.
The school is TREMENDOUS, 3000 students, and I am still struggling to find my classes. The school is divided in 3 parts, North, South and East. The first question that came up in my mind when I heard that was: why don't we have a West when this school is called Westside? Every part of the school has an upstairs and a downstairs and of course a couple classrooms. So the classrooms are for example named as: E133, E for East, 1 for downstairs and 33 is the number of the classroom. I am following almost the same classes as I did in Gatesville such as Anatomy&Physiology, English, Algebra, Government. New classes are Physiology and Spanish and I freaking love Spanish!! Also, this school is very modern, we don't have books. We have are books and homework on out laptop and also our tests are online. It drives me crazy sometimes because laptops never do what I want but it is also really fun :)
So far school is going great, except for that one day school decided to see if the fire alarm still works... That alarm was way too loud, almost deaf.
Our family follows dance classes every Monday. We went with them one time. I first thought it would be a completely flop because we had to dance with men older than 30 and I can"t dance at all. But the teacher was so funny and the dance passes weren't that hard so we had a really fun night!
The first weekend we had planned an YFU-weekend with all the other YFU students from our area. They are from all over the world. The event was around Dallas and because Kat, our older host sister, lives in Dallas, we went to her house on Friday night. She is a math teacher in High School so we went to a football game from her school that night so that was really cool. We slept in her apartment that night and went to our YFU thing Saturday morning. It was a early Halloween party so we carved pumpkins and there was a costume contest. It was just so much fun to be with all the other exchange students and share each other stories so far. We already made friends all over the world, mostly Europe :) We slept in tents that night, and even though I only slept for 3 hours, we had a lot fun. On Sunday they had all kinds of bandana's and they made teams so you where in the team with people who had the same bandana as you. We had to do all kind of activities with our team such as writing down all the 50 states in alphabetical order, peeling a banana without your hands, build a dice tower on somebody's nose and doing so crazy things with balloons.
A tradition in our family when it's somebody's birthday is to eat homemade chocolate cake. ( Lucky for me we have a lot of birthdays left this year ;) Also, everybody has to sing a birthday song. I thought everybody just has to sing a song after someone finished their song. But nooooo, that's not how they do that in the Jones family. Everybody just sings their song through each other at the same time, it was so funny to listen to that and of course I joint the beautiful together-sing thing and we laughed really hard hahaha.
Now I have something stupid to say. Apparently, people in America have two front doors. A normal one just like I have back home and then right in front of that one there is a glass/plastic transparent door. Don't even ask me why they have two doors but one day, it was night and I was outside. The normal door was open but the glass/plastic door was closed. From the outside I really thought both doors were open and I was just happy at that moment so I thought it would be a goof idea to run inside the house. Well, guess what happened. Me and my stupid head just ran into the freaking transparent door. Now this beautiful door has a mark from my head on it, you're very welcome......
I went to church for the first time last Sunday and it was really fun. There are also other exchange students who are there with there host parents. They just sang songs together and prayed and things. And they talked about nowadays such as the election. It was our dance teacher's birthday last week and he invited us to go roller skating with everybody from the dance group. So Mathilde, our hostmom and I went rollerskating and it was amazing. It was just like in the movies and it really reminds me of the movie Grease. They had round weird tables and everything was colorful and there were also game machines and it was so cool. We are definitely going to do that again!
Last week was homecoming week. Just as in our previous school we had a theme every day. Monday was Hawaiian day, but I didn't had anything so I just wore my uniform. Tuesday was twin day and I twinned with Mathilde again. It was fun again to see everybody wearing something else than their uniforms. There was so much more personality with people wearing their own clothes. Wednesday was Jersey day so everybody could wear a shirt from their favorite team. I don't know any teams here but I took my DSS soccer sweater with me so I wore that :) That evening Mathilde decided to cut her own hair because its too expensive to go to an hair dresser. Once she started making it wet and brushing it she decided it was better if I cut her hair. Well, I did it and it doesn't even look that bad hahaaha..... No seriously, it looks ok. I still don't want to be a hairdresser though but it was fun :)
Thursday was throwback day to your favorite decade. A lot people came in Indianan clothes or 70's. That day was Alina's birthday, she is an exchange student from Ukraine and she is also in our school. We went bowling Thursday night with her and our other friends Emaly from Denmark, Gaia from Italy and then our American friends Austin, Rachel, Masha, Nikolas and Sarah-Joy. We had some struggles with the technique over there but it was a night full of fun and we just made our own little party over there.
Friday, the day of the game, the pep rally and the parade were you allowed to wear blue. Most people put blue paint on their paint or wore their uniform shirt because that is also blue. There were also people who got blue hair and pants and just went crazy.
That day after 5th period Mathilde and I were allowed to leave the class. This school has a lot of clubs like art, baseball, choir and all stuff like that that. Every club got their own car/truck and they decorated it and made posters. So all the seniors of the club were standing in the back of the truck and all the other people were walking ride beside it. All the cars were just driving 3 miles. We first went by the elementary school and there were all little kids sitting on the ground. We, the people who were walking besides the car blew bubbles and threw candy for all the kids. We also ran along them and gave them high fives, it was so cute. Than we went to the old people house and they were just all sitting in there chair outside smiling :)
Back at the school was everybody just dancing and listening to music in the courtyard, it was much fun!
That night we went to the homecoming football game which we won with 63-0. Our opponent didn't even have cheerleaders. We sat in the student section and people just went crazy every time we scored a touchdown. Our mascot is a wolf and we also have a statue of a wolf. 8 boys lift that statue every time we score. And they lift it in the air as much as our score is, so when the game ended they had to lift that thing 63 times in the air..... They also announced our homecoming King and Queen that night during half-time. It is such a big thing in our school, and its really excited to see how happy they are when they win.
On Saturday, yesterday, we had our homecoming dance. We first went to the park in our neighborhood with the same friends who we went bowling with and took some pictures. ( I posted a lot of pictures on Facebook ) Than we went out for dinner in some Italian restaurant and after that we finally went to the dance. There was security and there was police walking around during the party. It is crazy how careful these people are on just an school party. But we definitely had an amazing night with each other and we made photos in the photobooth and there were also tables for if you just wanted to sit and talk a little bit. The food and drinks was all free and it was just so cool. We went to Alina's house after the party and we had a sleepover. She has a swimming pool in her backyard so we 'just' went night swimming and it was freezing cold but so nice. I slept in a room with Mathilde and Gaia and I don't know what happened that night but we almost died from laughing with each other! :)
Our host aunt and uncle live across the street and we went with them to downtown Houston today. Their 2 daughters are seniors in college and they live there. They are 22 years old so we went voting with them to see how the whole process goes. We also just walked a little bit around in Houston downtown and I've never seen buildings so high. We counted one with 50 floors........ We ate lunch with them and we went by metro through the city. It was funny because they call the metro a train while I just call it a metro. A train goes much faster and doesn't stop at traffic lights haha.
I am just so happy we finally feel good here and doing things together with our family :)
I first want to tell a lot about the school. We leave every morning at 7.15 to avoid traffic so I have to wake up way earlier than I did back home, I am still struggling with that every morning. I am not a morning person oops... We have to wear uniforms, a black or khaki color pants or skirt and shirts we have to buy at school. The shirts are black or blue and its either long or short sleeves, a polo shirt or a gray sweater. They all have the school logo and name on it. Another thing we always have to wear is our school ID and Mathilde and I have an Off-Campus ID so we can go eat somewhere at lunch break.
The school is TREMENDOUS, 3000 students, and I am still struggling to find my classes. The school is divided in 3 parts, North, South and East. The first question that came up in my mind when I heard that was: why don't we have a West when this school is called Westside? Every part of the school has an upstairs and a downstairs and of course a couple classrooms. So the classrooms are for example named as: E133, E for East, 1 for downstairs and 33 is the number of the classroom. I am following almost the same classes as I did in Gatesville such as Anatomy&Physiology, English, Algebra, Government. New classes are Physiology and Spanish and I freaking love Spanish!! Also, this school is very modern, we don't have books. We have are books and homework on out laptop and also our tests are online. It drives me crazy sometimes because laptops never do what I want but it is also really fun :)
So far school is going great, except for that one day school decided to see if the fire alarm still works... That alarm was way too loud, almost deaf.
Our family follows dance classes every Monday. We went with them one time. I first thought it would be a completely flop because we had to dance with men older than 30 and I can"t dance at all. But the teacher was so funny and the dance passes weren't that hard so we had a really fun night!
The first weekend we had planned an YFU-weekend with all the other YFU students from our area. They are from all over the world. The event was around Dallas and because Kat, our older host sister, lives in Dallas, we went to her house on Friday night. She is a math teacher in High School so we went to a football game from her school that night so that was really cool. We slept in her apartment that night and went to our YFU thing Saturday morning. It was a early Halloween party so we carved pumpkins and there was a costume contest. It was just so much fun to be with all the other exchange students and share each other stories so far. We already made friends all over the world, mostly Europe :) We slept in tents that night, and even though I only slept for 3 hours, we had a lot fun. On Sunday they had all kinds of bandana's and they made teams so you where in the team with people who had the same bandana as you. We had to do all kind of activities with our team such as writing down all the 50 states in alphabetical order, peeling a banana without your hands, build a dice tower on somebody's nose and doing so crazy things with balloons.
A tradition in our family when it's somebody's birthday is to eat homemade chocolate cake. ( Lucky for me we have a lot of birthdays left this year ;) Also, everybody has to sing a birthday song. I thought everybody just has to sing a song after someone finished their song. But nooooo, that's not how they do that in the Jones family. Everybody just sings their song through each other at the same time, it was so funny to listen to that and of course I joint the beautiful together-sing thing and we laughed really hard hahaha.
Now I have something stupid to say. Apparently, people in America have two front doors. A normal one just like I have back home and then right in front of that one there is a glass/plastic transparent door. Don't even ask me why they have two doors but one day, it was night and I was outside. The normal door was open but the glass/plastic door was closed. From the outside I really thought both doors were open and I was just happy at that moment so I thought it would be a goof idea to run inside the house. Well, guess what happened. Me and my stupid head just ran into the freaking transparent door. Now this beautiful door has a mark from my head on it, you're very welcome......
I went to church for the first time last Sunday and it was really fun. There are also other exchange students who are there with there host parents. They just sang songs together and prayed and things. And they talked about nowadays such as the election. It was our dance teacher's birthday last week and he invited us to go roller skating with everybody from the dance group. So Mathilde, our hostmom and I went rollerskating and it was amazing. It was just like in the movies and it really reminds me of the movie Grease. They had round weird tables and everything was colorful and there were also game machines and it was so cool. We are definitely going to do that again!
Last week was homecoming week. Just as in our previous school we had a theme every day. Monday was Hawaiian day, but I didn't had anything so I just wore my uniform. Tuesday was twin day and I twinned with Mathilde again. It was fun again to see everybody wearing something else than their uniforms. There was so much more personality with people wearing their own clothes. Wednesday was Jersey day so everybody could wear a shirt from their favorite team. I don't know any teams here but I took my DSS soccer sweater with me so I wore that :) That evening Mathilde decided to cut her own hair because its too expensive to go to an hair dresser. Once she started making it wet and brushing it she decided it was better if I cut her hair. Well, I did it and it doesn't even look that bad hahaaha..... No seriously, it looks ok. I still don't want to be a hairdresser though but it was fun :)
Thursday was throwback day to your favorite decade. A lot people came in Indianan clothes or 70's. That day was Alina's birthday, she is an exchange student from Ukraine and she is also in our school. We went bowling Thursday night with her and our other friends Emaly from Denmark, Gaia from Italy and then our American friends Austin, Rachel, Masha, Nikolas and Sarah-Joy. We had some struggles with the technique over there but it was a night full of fun and we just made our own little party over there.
Friday, the day of the game, the pep rally and the parade were you allowed to wear blue. Most people put blue paint on their paint or wore their uniform shirt because that is also blue. There were also people who got blue hair and pants and just went crazy.
That day after 5th period Mathilde and I were allowed to leave the class. This school has a lot of clubs like art, baseball, choir and all stuff like that that. Every club got their own car/truck and they decorated it and made posters. So all the seniors of the club were standing in the back of the truck and all the other people were walking ride beside it. All the cars were just driving 3 miles. We first went by the elementary school and there were all little kids sitting on the ground. We, the people who were walking besides the car blew bubbles and threw candy for all the kids. We also ran along them and gave them high fives, it was so cute. Than we went to the old people house and they were just all sitting in there chair outside smiling :)
Back at the school was everybody just dancing and listening to music in the courtyard, it was much fun!
That night we went to the homecoming football game which we won with 63-0. Our opponent didn't even have cheerleaders. We sat in the student section and people just went crazy every time we scored a touchdown. Our mascot is a wolf and we also have a statue of a wolf. 8 boys lift that statue every time we score. And they lift it in the air as much as our score is, so when the game ended they had to lift that thing 63 times in the air..... They also announced our homecoming King and Queen that night during half-time. It is such a big thing in our school, and its really excited to see how happy they are when they win.
On Saturday, yesterday, we had our homecoming dance. We first went to the park in our neighborhood with the same friends who we went bowling with and took some pictures. ( I posted a lot of pictures on Facebook ) Than we went out for dinner in some Italian restaurant and after that we finally went to the dance. There was security and there was police walking around during the party. It is crazy how careful these people are on just an school party. But we definitely had an amazing night with each other and we made photos in the photobooth and there were also tables for if you just wanted to sit and talk a little bit. The food and drinks was all free and it was just so cool. We went to Alina's house after the party and we had a sleepover. She has a swimming pool in her backyard so we 'just' went night swimming and it was freezing cold but so nice. I slept in a room with Mathilde and Gaia and I don't know what happened that night but we almost died from laughing with each other! :)
Our host aunt and uncle live across the street and we went with them to downtown Houston today. Their 2 daughters are seniors in college and they live there. They are 22 years old so we went voting with them to see how the whole process goes. We also just walked a little bit around in Houston downtown and I've never seen buildings so high. We counted one with 50 floors........ We ate lunch with them and we went by metro through the city. It was funny because they call the metro a train while I just call it a metro. A train goes much faster and doesn't stop at traffic lights haha.
I am just so happy we finally feel good here and doing things together with our family :)
Reageer op dit reisverslag
Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
