Howdy & hello!
I know I should’ve updated this a long time ago, but as y’all can imagine being abroad is hugely busy. However, I’ll just start back off from where I stopped last time.
When my plane was called I got on the plane, even found another guy who was nice to talk to, and then was on my way to Oklahoma. The plane was really small (Just 3 seats in a row) but it was okay. While sitting in the plane it was pretty uncomfy, I was tired and also really excited & insecure. I hoped everything would go well concerning finding and meeting my host family. After a ride of almost 4 hours, I got off the plane and immediately felt the heat of Oklahoma, hahaha. It was HOT. I said goodbye to the guy I’d met earlier and headed to the baggage claim. I took one of the escalators and when I was about to get off I saw my host family waiting there behind a bunch of other people. I really recognized them immediately, which was good. A huge smile appeared on my face and I hurried straight to them, hugging everyone. They’d even brought me balloons and a welcome sign which was the cutest thing EVER! It made me so happy!
This is me and my host mom & dad:
My host sister Kacy & me:
Papaw & Meme:
It was so awesome! After having gotten my baggage we went to the car, got my stuff in and drove to “Chalinos”, a Mexican restaurant. Since I’ve never been to a Mexican place before, I was pretty excited! Anyways, we got there and everybody was being so friendly already. We had a great time eating there and I even got to take a picture with a Mexican hat plus guitar! Haha! About everybody was looking at us, but we didn’t care. And it was so fun. Here’s my host sister & me (with a giant Mexican Sombrero) at that restaurant:
Yeah I know we’re crazy ha!
Then we drove home & I got to see my new home for the first time. And I can only say: it’s amazing!!! I loved it from the first second and when I entered my room I already felt like home. Really, I just love it! Here are a few pics:
Our GIGANTIC tv!
My super comfy bed
baathroom!
Living room
Our porch
kitchen
I was pretty tired that evening so after having settled down a little I just went to bed.
The next morning I woke up pretty early so I unpacked all of my things and tried to store them anywhere in my room. Later in the morning I joined my host sister at work (she works at a dance studio). And since they were just moving we helped transporting things and sorting them out. There I already got to know some really cool people!
Having finished “work” Kacy & I drove back to our house and when my host mom & dad arrived shortly after, too, we immediately went to Pawpaw’s & Meme’s house (which is about 1 minute away from ours) since it was Pawpaw’s birthday. There we met up with the whole family – my host aunts, cousins, all of ‘em. It was great getting to know everyone and we had an awesome dinner! (Hot Dogs, Burgers, salads; and then brownie-fudge cake with vanilla ice cream and cheese cake with strawberries. = AMAZING.)
Eventually we just ended up chillin’ on the floor, watching tv and talking. And oh, sweet tea is delicious, omg.
Throughout the week I had some really cool experiences, too. For example my first visit at Walmart! It was truly extraordinaire, since we went there at like 12 in the night, haha. We wanted to go there before Emma would arrive and her flight was delayed to 1am, so we just went there right before we went to the airport. And let me tell you something about Walmart: It truly has EVERYTHING (everything) and you won’t be able to spend less than one hour in there.
Anyhow, after that we were heading to the airport to pick Meme’s student up. (Meme just recently decided on getting an exchange student, too, so.. Her name is Emma and she’s from Norway. & she’s pretty cool!)
Waiting sleepily on her plane to arrive, Kacy and I took some ‘it’s-freakin-1-in-the-night-and-I’m-so-tired-and-I-want-food-pictures.’ There you go:
Yeah I know. We really were bored, tired and hungry. =desperate.
After some more minutes of waiting in despair Emma finally arrived! Look:
The following days we also drove to my new school, “Moore High School”, actually we went there twice. With “we” I meant Meme, Emma, David, Kacy & I.
We enrolled Emma & me and then Kacy and I randomly walked around in school and tried to find my class rooms. Here’s my schedule; in America each day looks like this:
1. Drama
2. French
3. American Studies
4. Biology
- Break -
5. Algebra
6. English
Another memorable day was my first school day.
I had to get up at like 5:45am (OMG, EARLY) and after I’d got ready, David drove Emma and me to the bus stop close to our house.
We introduced to some other kids at our bus stop and did chit-chat until the bus arrived. And let me tell you something about ‘bumpy-bus’ (that’s how Emma & I named it): it is.. AWFUL. Truly awful. The first ride in the morning was bad, but after having rode it for a couple of days already, the mornings are comfortable in comparison to the afternoons. In the morning it’s just bumpy and jumpy and long – it takes us 1 hour (!!!!) to get to school – but in the afternoon it is like 120° in there.
Then I arrived at school, we tried to open our lockers once more (and just rarely succeeded) and then each headed to their classes.
The day pretty much consisted of me running around, desperate not to be too late for a class and find the class room (or opening my locker). My classes were good, though; all of my teachers are SO nice. The funny thing is that in America, every teacher has their own classroom they can create however they want to. Almost every teacher’s got a pc in their room and pictures of their family. At one point my American Studies teacher (she is hilarious, but that tough-hilarious-kickin’ butt-kinda type) walked around barefoot! Lol!!
But the bad thing is that in the class rooms, especially in my French and American Studies class room, it is FREEZING. Like seriously FREEZING. About 40-50° ! So it’s of no use that it’s 105° outside, you always have to come in something warm. Even jeans are not enough, for me, at least. And then after freezing to death you get on the bus again, where everyone’s screaming, everyones jumping (because of the bumpy bus ride) and where it’s 140°. And this you gotta bear for ONE HOUR.
So as you can tell, I was pretty exhausted after the first school day. The thing that stressed me the most was that I didn’t know the school at all so I was always running and looking around and in the end physically and mentally exhausted. That was about the only day here when I wasn’t feeling that well.
But it got better and already on the second day school was fun. We met some awesome people during break with whom we had lunch, and we were even able to open our lockers. (At least we figured out how to open mine, haha.)
So school’s already begun to routine-in (is that a word? Lol) and except for the fact that the class rooms are still freeeeeeezing, it’s been kinda fun. I was even invited to go to Moorewars (famous football game next Friday) !
Other than that I went to some awesome places such as: Braum’s, Taco Bell, Snow Cones, Starbucks (and I got one for FREE! :O) and so on. Last Sunday we went to church and it was such an amazing experience! It’s so different from the german church – first off, it’s a whole, huge building and they’ve got everything: a kitchen room, a church room, a room for kids etc. In the beginning a group of people sang (with microphones etc) and a huge screen showed the lyrics of the song so you could sing along. Then a vicar talked for like 30 minutes and then there was another song. After that we went to Sunday School (which was taking place at another room in the building) since Kim, my host mom, teaches there with other people. We were divided into groups and it was awesome talking with everyone! Then we headed to David’s mom (one of my host aunts and my host cousin live there, too) because she made a German lunch for us! She cooked “Braten mit Spätzle und Rotkraut” :D And it tasted awesome!
Having spent quite a bit over there we drove to several stores and then to my other host aunt where we spend another 2 hours. They’ve got such a biiig, biiiiiig house with a pool, a gym, a movie room, a work-out room.. everything! It was overwhelming, really! But so beautiful.
Other than that I’ve enjoyed watching Castle with everyone – since pretty many people are Castle fans over here; my host mom likes ‘em too! - and I’ve already had some awesome & hilarious evenings with my host sister (with whom I get along really well, too; we’re so alike.)
For example at one point when she came home from work I showed her “Memphis”, a dance I learned when I was in dance class, and we just started dancing and hopping around in the kitchen. When my host mom then came back from Zumba, she wanted to be taught how to dance Memphis, too, so the three of us eventually ended up jumping around in our living room, which was amazing haha! Then she told me that they’d danced to a german song called ‘shake your bacon’ (Schüttel deinen Speck by Peter Fox) and then I translated the name for her & told her I knew the song. They immediately – of course – wanted to know how to pronounce and say it so I taught them how to say it in german. And omg – I’ve had the best time ever. We were so cracked up we almost cried. I even had to sit down because I was laughing so hard and when I sat right NEXT to the couch and fell on the ground we were laughing even harder. This was such a hilarious evening & I just had a blast!
Throughout the week I also skyped with my mom and a few other people and I really enjoyed it. I’m not really homesick (yet) though, since it is just so awesome here. But I would never even dare to say I wanna go back home! Of course I would for example have my best friend over here so we could have fun together, or my mom so she could meet all of the awesome people over there, but it’s not that I’m sad because I’m not home. (Am I weird? Probably. Sorry, guys, but it’s just been my dream I guess.)
Last Saturday we had an orientation meeting at my International Coordinator’s house which was okay but there was nothing new actually. Then Pawpaw, Meme, Emma & my host family (except for Kacy; she’d left yesterday to go to Texas where her boyfriend lives) went to a steak place for lunch and after that we parted and Kim, David & I headed to.. guess what – TEXAS!! Logan (Kacy’s boyfriend) had an important race last night so we just decided to go there! OMG! (As you may know) I’ve ALWAYS wanted to go to Texas since it’s my fave state and aah! I was so excited!!! The race was in Amarillo and it took us about 3-4 hours to get there. Texas is so beautiful. There were wide open spaces and so much land – the sight was so precious.
Concerning the race: It was so exciting. I’d never been to such kind of a race before and I really enjoyed it! Even though it was pretty dirty and dusty I liked the atmosphere and it was awesome watching the cars race, especially since we actually knew someone that was racing. I think Logan did great although bad luck was kinda chasing him last night somehow. When the race was over we all met at the truck and talked, called the “socializing part”, haha! I had a blast meeting new people and hearing some cool (chicken) stories. Kacy & I took a picture of us at the cars, I will include it in my next post. But here are some general race pictures:
one word: beautiful!
At about 1 o’clock in the night we all headed home, quickly stopped by McDonalds and finally arrived at Logan’s at 2:30am. I was really tired and after Kacy set up the couch for the two of us we all went to bed and fell asleep in a rush.
The next morning we all got up pretty early and then we got in Logan’s truck. He showed us all of his land and we’d been driving around for about 1 hour. His land is absolutely gorgeous and precious, here are some of the things we saw:
Peanuts :D
Logan, Kacy & me
a cotton flower!
But it was pretty exhausting walking around outside since it’s like 105°.
When we came back my host parents & I said goodbye to Kacy & Logan and drove back home; again a 4 hour drive.
On our drive home we made many stops – at a restaurant, some grocery stores (we also went to Aldi!!!) and eventually at the guitar center where I FINALLY bought a new guitar! YAAAY excited!!! It sounds so awesome. <3
And that’s pretty much about it. School today was pretty fun; I scored 100% in my English test, yay!
Alrighty kids, I’m gonna leave you with that for now.
Have a great week y’all! I miss everyone out there ;) But it’s so amazing here <3 bahaha! Sorry.
Byee xo
P.S. Same like last time about the mistakes (I wrote this while we were driving, nuh-huh.)
