These memories will last forever!
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Marit
24 Februari 2017 | Verenigde Staten, Houston
Let's start with the week after the Super Bowl. We had soccer practice during school and after school, and that in 30 degrees Celsius… But it is all fun though, I enjoy it a lot! That evening, me and two girls from my team (Joanna and Lizzulli) wanted to see our 2 next opponents play, because they had to play against each other. The game started at 6 pm but we had some problems with being there on time, so when we arrived, it was already 7.30 pm and the game just ended. Let’s just blame it on the traffic that we were late haha. Though, there was another game after, so we watched that one. We beat both of the teams of that game, so they weren’t that good, but it was a fun night anyway. During the game, the water sprinkles in the keeper’s area appeared on the field and started sprinkling water. The keeper got all wet and they had to pause the game. It was really funny haha.
We had to do a project in economics. It was about creating your own budget plan. Everybody got a random budget and you had to find a home and a way for transportation. So basically you needed to survive with your budget. Some people got high budgets, like $7000 every month, but of course I got the low one…. I had to survive with $1200 every month… I didn’t have enough money for a lot of groceries and I couldn’t buy a car. Not that the car was a problem, because I just bought a bike :) It was a fun project though, you really learn how you would have to live without a lot of money.
Friday was game-day, so we stayed after school to eat and just to hang out for a while. Lizzulli wants to go to the army next year. There is a special army and navy hall in our school. There are some classrooms in there, where all the students who want to go to the army or navy get special lessons. It was so cool to be there. We don’t have anything like that in The Netherlands. There were also pictures and stories and all that stuff. That evening we had the game against Lamar. In previous years, Lamar used to be a really difficult opponent. Now they are not that good anymore, but we screwed up and tied them 1-1… I also got cramps in both my calves at the same time in the first 15 minutes, so I barely played. Some girl from my team told me I should eat a banana, because that would help stopping the cramps. We couldn’t find a banana so we just left it the way it was. When we were back in the bus on our way to school again, the first thing I saw was a bag with bananas. It was really funny and nice because those cramps were the worst I’ve ever experienced. Lamar was really happy when we tied, because they know that we were the better team, so that was even worse. We will beat them next time :)
Jake is moving to a new home so on Sunday we went to his old house to clean up stuff and to pack a lot of things. We sorted thousands of toys from the boys, my god I didn’t know they had this much stuff haha. Sometimes Mathilde and I just entertained Luke and Nate whenever the adults had to do some work. We played baseball with them and watched tv, it was really nice. Jake had made a cupcake piñata with a lot of candy for Stephanie’s birthday. We hung it up with a rope on a branch on the high tree. We took turns hitting the piñata with the baseball bat. Everybody had 3 changes and then the next person could try to get candy out of it. But Jake thought he was funny, so every time someone was about to hit it, Jake pulled the rope which lifted the piñata so the person would just hit air…. It was really funny though, because I was too aggressive so the first time I hit the piñata, it let go of the robe and we had to fix the robe on the high branch…. Oops ;) But after a couple of good hits from everybody, the candy came out and everyone was running to it, grapping it from the ground. It was an amazing hot and hardworking day and night :)
For my (Dutch) friends/family who want to know what I’m going to do with school next year:
Ik heb me ingeschreven aan de Haagse Hogeschool voor de opleiding ‘Mens en Techniek: Bewegingstechnologie’ Het is een 4-jarige HBO opleiding en ik zojuist een email ontvangen dat ik tijdeljk ben toegelaten. Ik moet nu nog schoolgeld betalen en de Studiecheck doen. Daarna is het als het goed is officieel. Ik moet alleen nog even aan mijn wiskunde B werken, want dat is belangrijk zeggen ze. Maar in het algemeen ben ik echt heel benieuwd hoe het gaat zijn, en ik heb er echt al heel veel zin in. Oja, het eerste jaar ga ik sowieso thuis wonen, omdat ik dat gewoon wil en geen geld over heb voor een woning daar na dit exchange jaar hahaha. Ook is het goed te doen tussen Haarlem en Den Haag met het openbaar vervoer dus dat is helemaal top :)
On Monday, we are just having a normal school day until lunch. We are always sitting outside with our group and this time it smelled so weird. It was a burned material smell, like plastic or something and it was really strong. First we were stressing out, because we thought it was a big wood fire or something ( Papa’s advise: Aaaaaaaltijd rustig blijven ;) )
We looked up on the internet what it was, but even the people from the news hadn’t figured it out yet. You could smell it all over Houston and after some time, we found out it was a leak in some factory downtown Houston, so yeah. It was all good in the afternoon though, no poisoning or dangerous stuff.
Tuesday February 14, we all know what day that is… Valentines day…
I really don’t care about this day, but I just couldn’t avoid it this year. I don’t know if it was just Westside or American High Schools in general, but it was soooo big. There were balloons and big teddy bears and hearts everywhere. You could not walk 10 meters without seeing something Valentine-ish. People even gave each other chicken!!! There is this chicken restaurant called Chick-Fil-A and they made heart-formed boxes to put chicken in for Valentines day, so a lot of people bought that for each other hahaha. One friend from my Anatomy&Physiology class, Kenneth, brought chocolate for Valentines day to share with our friend group, so that was really sweet!
Also, it was all fun until the principal had something to say through the speakers. Apparently, there had been sent out a tornado alarm and it was so bad that we couldn’t stay in our classes. We all had to go sit in the hallways against the walls and not close to the window, because that is more dangerous I guess. After 30 minutes, we could all go back to our classes and everything was fine.
I got out of class early because we had a game at 4 pm. The game was against Chavez and we won 6-0. It wasn’t really a special game but we really needed the points so that was great.
The next day we had to dissect a sheep heart in Anatomy&Physiology….. I’ve done it before back home, but this was not the same at all hahaha. The hearts smelled really bad, and it was pretty boring. We just had to cut open the heart and find the aorta and other big veins and arteries. Poor sheep died just for that…
Apparently I’m doing something good in Art class, because the teacher used my ‘masterpiece’ as an example for other classes again! So when I come back y’all can buy all the masterpieces I created over here. $100 for every piece, good price don’t you think?
On Friday we had the big big game, against Bellaire. The game was at 8 pm and it was out first time playing on turf. We had the bus for ourselves, because the boys had a game somewhere else. It was amazing how much space we suddenly had without them haha. Last time we lost 2-0 and this time we lost 3-0… It made the whole team upset, because we worked hard for this game. We are the only team in our competition who could’ve beaten them, but they were still better, so that didn’t work out. Even though I was sad because of the game, Mathilde, Gaia, Austin, Rachel and Joshua ( he is a friend of Austin and Rachel from church ) made my evening good again. After the game I went to Gaia’s, Austin’s and Rachel’s house and we just hang out. Gaia made us Italian pizza ( which was delicious ) and we watched movies. Around 1:30 am I decided I was too tired to keep my eyes open so I went to bed. The next morning I heard that they all stayed up until 3 am or something… I think I love sleep too much to stay up that late haha.
We had one of the best breakfasts I’ve had so far. Austin had made pancakes ( as we call them American Pancakes ) and Rachel had made the biggest and best fruit salad. We also had scrambled eggs and we had a lot of fun. There were no parents so we had to do everything ourselves. Gaia, Mathilde and I discovered that we are amazing singers. We did Karaoke hahaha. Mathilde and I also decided to go for a walk through the neighbourhood, because it was a beautiful sunny day. The last time we decided to go for a walk, we got lost. This time we convinced ourselves that we wouldn’t get lost. Well…. We lied. I don’t even know where we all went. We just turned left and right, or decided to turn a whole different way. There was also this one garage door and it had a 20 centimeter gap at the bottom. We were just casually walking near the garage on the sidewalk, and suddenly this big dog mouth barks from under the garage door. We just ran for our lives!! That was the moment we called the others to come pick us up haha. Another adventure with Mathilde and Marit (Another one) :)
When everybody was back at the house we just chilled, played games outside and tanned. Yes we tanned, because you know, it’s always summer in Texas! ( daily temperature: 28 degrees Celsius )
Around 6 pm, Austin and Rachel had to go to church and Josh, Gaia, Mathilde and I went to the Memorial City Mall. There was some sale thing at Victoria Secret so we thought that would be fun. Never doing that again… first of all, I was waiting to check out for more than an hour and I also picked the wrong stuff that wasn’t on sale so I had to change it…. After all it was really nice in the mall, until Josh lost his car keys... We are some complete crazy teenagers hahaha. He found the keys and we met Austin and Rachel at a Chinese restaurant, Josh used to work at. The women in the restaurant still recognized him and they were so nice. We also got to try some things, which were actually really expensive, but we got them for free, because we were with Josh :)
After everybody was stuffed with all the delicious Chinese food, we went to Josh’s house and met his parents. We just hang out for a while and went back to the Hills house ( Austin, Rachel and Gaia’s house ) We first wanted to have another game night but we were really tired, so they brought Mathilde and me home. It was an amazing Friday and Saturday with them!
On Sunday, we went to church again, and Stephanie was singing yaayy. Before church we met with Jake at Torchys Taco’s and ate tacos ( FOR BREAKFAST ) The tacos were really good though. Our family is addicted to Pokémon GO so we did a Poké-walk after the tacos. Then we went to church, but it was actually a really boring church day, because there was a new woman telling stories or something.
In the afternoon, we had the spontaneous idea to go rock climbing. So Mathilde, Josh, Austin and I went to a big climbing hall and we did bouldering. Not the thing that you’re attached to a robe but we were just doing routes along the walls. We wore those weird shoes that hurt your toes real bad, but it was worth it and we had a great afternoon again :)
The adventures with Austin, Josh, Mathilde and Gaia didn't stop, because on Monday we decided to go play golf! The place is called Top Golf and it is so fancy. It had 3 floors and we were on the highest one. There were all bars and real fancy things and everything was electronic. On the field were all kind of big circles. They had different colors and some were worth more points than others. We also ordered some of the fancy food they served and wow it was good. ( Mathilde and I ate quesadillas. Why don’t we have that in Europe? I’m gonna miss those ) First we just played a game that your goal was to hit the circles. Everybody had 20 balls to try. It was really funny, because Gaia and I kept missing the ball. ( Love you Gaia ) All the others were getting points and Gaia and I had some struggles… We still had a lot of fun though! Until we did a new game. Now the computer told you what color circle you were supposed to hit. I didn’t know that in the beginning, so I was just going and going, being super happy every time a ball actually hit a colored circle. Then I looked at the score, Marit >> -4. I was like WHAT THE HECK!? I thought I was doing great ,but every time your ball landed in a wrong colored circle, it would take points off…. Stupid game hahaha
On our way home in the car we prepared ourselves for the Zara Larsson concert we want to go to. Nobody can sing so that is going to be great! These days with these people are just the best. I can’t wait to spend as much time as we can together in the next 4 months.
That’s what it is for today, but I’ll write a new blog soon!
We had to do a project in economics. It was about creating your own budget plan. Everybody got a random budget and you had to find a home and a way for transportation. So basically you needed to survive with your budget. Some people got high budgets, like $7000 every month, but of course I got the low one…. I had to survive with $1200 every month… I didn’t have enough money for a lot of groceries and I couldn’t buy a car. Not that the car was a problem, because I just bought a bike :) It was a fun project though, you really learn how you would have to live without a lot of money.
Friday was game-day, so we stayed after school to eat and just to hang out for a while. Lizzulli wants to go to the army next year. There is a special army and navy hall in our school. There are some classrooms in there, where all the students who want to go to the army or navy get special lessons. It was so cool to be there. We don’t have anything like that in The Netherlands. There were also pictures and stories and all that stuff. That evening we had the game against Lamar. In previous years, Lamar used to be a really difficult opponent. Now they are not that good anymore, but we screwed up and tied them 1-1… I also got cramps in both my calves at the same time in the first 15 minutes, so I barely played. Some girl from my team told me I should eat a banana, because that would help stopping the cramps. We couldn’t find a banana so we just left it the way it was. When we were back in the bus on our way to school again, the first thing I saw was a bag with bananas. It was really funny and nice because those cramps were the worst I’ve ever experienced. Lamar was really happy when we tied, because they know that we were the better team, so that was even worse. We will beat them next time :)
Jake is moving to a new home so on Sunday we went to his old house to clean up stuff and to pack a lot of things. We sorted thousands of toys from the boys, my god I didn’t know they had this much stuff haha. Sometimes Mathilde and I just entertained Luke and Nate whenever the adults had to do some work. We played baseball with them and watched tv, it was really nice. Jake had made a cupcake piñata with a lot of candy for Stephanie’s birthday. We hung it up with a rope on a branch on the high tree. We took turns hitting the piñata with the baseball bat. Everybody had 3 changes and then the next person could try to get candy out of it. But Jake thought he was funny, so every time someone was about to hit it, Jake pulled the rope which lifted the piñata so the person would just hit air…. It was really funny though, because I was too aggressive so the first time I hit the piñata, it let go of the robe and we had to fix the robe on the high branch…. Oops ;) But after a couple of good hits from everybody, the candy came out and everyone was running to it, grapping it from the ground. It was an amazing hot and hardworking day and night :)
For my (Dutch) friends/family who want to know what I’m going to do with school next year:
Ik heb me ingeschreven aan de Haagse Hogeschool voor de opleiding ‘Mens en Techniek: Bewegingstechnologie’ Het is een 4-jarige HBO opleiding en ik zojuist een email ontvangen dat ik tijdeljk ben toegelaten. Ik moet nu nog schoolgeld betalen en de Studiecheck doen. Daarna is het als het goed is officieel. Ik moet alleen nog even aan mijn wiskunde B werken, want dat is belangrijk zeggen ze. Maar in het algemeen ben ik echt heel benieuwd hoe het gaat zijn, en ik heb er echt al heel veel zin in. Oja, het eerste jaar ga ik sowieso thuis wonen, omdat ik dat gewoon wil en geen geld over heb voor een woning daar na dit exchange jaar hahaha. Ook is het goed te doen tussen Haarlem en Den Haag met het openbaar vervoer dus dat is helemaal top :)
On Monday, we are just having a normal school day until lunch. We are always sitting outside with our group and this time it smelled so weird. It was a burned material smell, like plastic or something and it was really strong. First we were stressing out, because we thought it was a big wood fire or something ( Papa’s advise: Aaaaaaaltijd rustig blijven ;) )
We looked up on the internet what it was, but even the people from the news hadn’t figured it out yet. You could smell it all over Houston and after some time, we found out it was a leak in some factory downtown Houston, so yeah. It was all good in the afternoon though, no poisoning or dangerous stuff.
Tuesday February 14, we all know what day that is… Valentines day…
I really don’t care about this day, but I just couldn’t avoid it this year. I don’t know if it was just Westside or American High Schools in general, but it was soooo big. There were balloons and big teddy bears and hearts everywhere. You could not walk 10 meters without seeing something Valentine-ish. People even gave each other chicken!!! There is this chicken restaurant called Chick-Fil-A and they made heart-formed boxes to put chicken in for Valentines day, so a lot of people bought that for each other hahaha. One friend from my Anatomy&Physiology class, Kenneth, brought chocolate for Valentines day to share with our friend group, so that was really sweet!
Also, it was all fun until the principal had something to say through the speakers. Apparently, there had been sent out a tornado alarm and it was so bad that we couldn’t stay in our classes. We all had to go sit in the hallways against the walls and not close to the window, because that is more dangerous I guess. After 30 minutes, we could all go back to our classes and everything was fine.
I got out of class early because we had a game at 4 pm. The game was against Chavez and we won 6-0. It wasn’t really a special game but we really needed the points so that was great.
The next day we had to dissect a sheep heart in Anatomy&Physiology….. I’ve done it before back home, but this was not the same at all hahaha. The hearts smelled really bad, and it was pretty boring. We just had to cut open the heart and find the aorta and other big veins and arteries. Poor sheep died just for that…
Apparently I’m doing something good in Art class, because the teacher used my ‘masterpiece’ as an example for other classes again! So when I come back y’all can buy all the masterpieces I created over here. $100 for every piece, good price don’t you think?
On Friday we had the big big game, against Bellaire. The game was at 8 pm and it was out first time playing on turf. We had the bus for ourselves, because the boys had a game somewhere else. It was amazing how much space we suddenly had without them haha. Last time we lost 2-0 and this time we lost 3-0… It made the whole team upset, because we worked hard for this game. We are the only team in our competition who could’ve beaten them, but they were still better, so that didn’t work out. Even though I was sad because of the game, Mathilde, Gaia, Austin, Rachel and Joshua ( he is a friend of Austin and Rachel from church ) made my evening good again. After the game I went to Gaia’s, Austin’s and Rachel’s house and we just hang out. Gaia made us Italian pizza ( which was delicious ) and we watched movies. Around 1:30 am I decided I was too tired to keep my eyes open so I went to bed. The next morning I heard that they all stayed up until 3 am or something… I think I love sleep too much to stay up that late haha.
We had one of the best breakfasts I’ve had so far. Austin had made pancakes ( as we call them American Pancakes ) and Rachel had made the biggest and best fruit salad. We also had scrambled eggs and we had a lot of fun. There were no parents so we had to do everything ourselves. Gaia, Mathilde and I discovered that we are amazing singers. We did Karaoke hahaha. Mathilde and I also decided to go for a walk through the neighbourhood, because it was a beautiful sunny day. The last time we decided to go for a walk, we got lost. This time we convinced ourselves that we wouldn’t get lost. Well…. We lied. I don’t even know where we all went. We just turned left and right, or decided to turn a whole different way. There was also this one garage door and it had a 20 centimeter gap at the bottom. We were just casually walking near the garage on the sidewalk, and suddenly this big dog mouth barks from under the garage door. We just ran for our lives!! That was the moment we called the others to come pick us up haha. Another adventure with Mathilde and Marit (Another one) :)
When everybody was back at the house we just chilled, played games outside and tanned. Yes we tanned, because you know, it’s always summer in Texas! ( daily temperature: 28 degrees Celsius )
Around 6 pm, Austin and Rachel had to go to church and Josh, Gaia, Mathilde and I went to the Memorial City Mall. There was some sale thing at Victoria Secret so we thought that would be fun. Never doing that again… first of all, I was waiting to check out for more than an hour and I also picked the wrong stuff that wasn’t on sale so I had to change it…. After all it was really nice in the mall, until Josh lost his car keys... We are some complete crazy teenagers hahaha. He found the keys and we met Austin and Rachel at a Chinese restaurant, Josh used to work at. The women in the restaurant still recognized him and they were so nice. We also got to try some things, which were actually really expensive, but we got them for free, because we were with Josh :)
After everybody was stuffed with all the delicious Chinese food, we went to Josh’s house and met his parents. We just hang out for a while and went back to the Hills house ( Austin, Rachel and Gaia’s house ) We first wanted to have another game night but we were really tired, so they brought Mathilde and me home. It was an amazing Friday and Saturday with them!
On Sunday, we went to church again, and Stephanie was singing yaayy. Before church we met with Jake at Torchys Taco’s and ate tacos ( FOR BREAKFAST ) The tacos were really good though. Our family is addicted to Pokémon GO so we did a Poké-walk after the tacos. Then we went to church, but it was actually a really boring church day, because there was a new woman telling stories or something.
In the afternoon, we had the spontaneous idea to go rock climbing. So Mathilde, Josh, Austin and I went to a big climbing hall and we did bouldering. Not the thing that you’re attached to a robe but we were just doing routes along the walls. We wore those weird shoes that hurt your toes real bad, but it was worth it and we had a great afternoon again :)
The adventures with Austin, Josh, Mathilde and Gaia didn't stop, because on Monday we decided to go play golf! The place is called Top Golf and it is so fancy. It had 3 floors and we were on the highest one. There were all bars and real fancy things and everything was electronic. On the field were all kind of big circles. They had different colors and some were worth more points than others. We also ordered some of the fancy food they served and wow it was good. ( Mathilde and I ate quesadillas. Why don’t we have that in Europe? I’m gonna miss those ) First we just played a game that your goal was to hit the circles. Everybody had 20 balls to try. It was really funny, because Gaia and I kept missing the ball. ( Love you Gaia ) All the others were getting points and Gaia and I had some struggles… We still had a lot of fun though! Until we did a new game. Now the computer told you what color circle you were supposed to hit. I didn’t know that in the beginning, so I was just going and going, being super happy every time a ball actually hit a colored circle. Then I looked at the score, Marit >> -4. I was like WHAT THE HECK!? I thought I was doing great ,but every time your ball landed in a wrong colored circle, it would take points off…. Stupid game hahaha
On our way home in the car we prepared ourselves for the Zara Larsson concert we want to go to. Nobody can sing so that is going to be great! These days with these people are just the best. I can’t wait to spend as much time as we can together in the next 4 months.
That’s what it is for today, but I’ll write a new blog soon!
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