Be[e] in America

Shades of Colours

Hey,
So I haven't blogged in forever and I am really sorry about it. However a lot of stuff has happened: I had a wonderful Christmas with my family, went skiing for a couple days, got a decent grade report, went to a thousand rehearsals, had winter break with even more rehearsals, turned 18 and had an awesome premiere of the play.
That was basically everything but I feel like I should be a little more accurate about some parts.

Let's start with rehearsals and the premiere:
I am part of an abstract dance play this year. It's called "Shades of Colours" and it's about colors (who would've guesses that?) and our associations with them (red = love, white = innocents, black = death). We're a cast of 9 people, 2 guys and 7 girls. It was a really fun time working on the choreographies and I am so glad that I was able to work together with them. But let me show you some pictures. :)

All pictures were taken by Tilmann Graner and he owns the content!

In case you really wanna see us perform you have to come to Germany. Other dates on which we perform are Sun. 15.02., Tue 03.03., and Tue 26.05. So come over if you want to. :)

Next big thing was my 18th birthday. It happened to be on the same date as our premiere and it was just the perfect day. At midnight some unexpected friends came by and we celebrated a little. In the morning I drove alone for the first time (you're not allowed to do that until you are 18 in Germany).

Fun fact: My first ride went to the hospital.

After going to buy some groceries I picked up some friends and we made ourself some brunch. It was delicious, not quite IHOP standards but close enough. Shortly after I already had to go to the theater to get ready for the play. We started on time and even more important every seat was occupied. In the end everybody told us that we were awesome and we were just so proud. Afterwards we had a little party and a lot of great food. Here's a picture of the cast:

Yes I had a birthday crown - because I am awesome!
(and because my friends gave it to me)

I hope you guys are having a great time over in sunny Florida.

Bine

November, November

Gosh, I didn't write a blog entry in forever.
But I've been so busy with school and everything that I just didn't find the time to do it. A lot has happened though. Firstly I am officially allowed to drive now [well my mom and dad still have to sit next to me till I'm turning 18 but still]. So that has been really exciting!
The next thing is that we finally got divided into groups in my theater club so now we know which play we're worling on this season. "50 Shades of Color" is the title of the play I'm part of. It's a dance play so all we do is dancing. We're working in the abstract. It's something I have never done before and I'm really excited about the chance to do it. The greatest part about my theater-club is the freedom they give you with the material. So we don't learn the choreography somebody else made but we invent it ourselves. It's like a huge project and that's just loads of fun.
We also started taking the first term papers and so I gotta study constantly. Just today we took the one in algebra and I just wish I was still in Florida where Mrs Hadden would explain the stuff to me in a way that actually somebody could understand. Unfortunately my teacher doesn't quite see the point in explaining things in an easy way.
Oh and not that long ago was Halloween. My friends and I decided to do a little Halloweeen-Party with dressing up and stuff. It was so much fun doing that!

Besides that I'm doing some of my Christmas shopping tomorrow. Even though I do know I'm a bit early but I'm always running late on things like that.

It's also really cold in Germany. Today it was like 38 degrees in the morning. The day's are shorter too. It starts getting dark around 4.30ish. But Christmas is coming up with all it's lights so I'm just gonna keep thinking about that.

I hope y'all are doing fine! :)

It's been a long time since...

A long time since I postet something. I'm sorry about that but first of I was on vacation and then there is school, which is just a little bit (soooo much more!) stressful than in America.
I could write a huge paragraph about what I did the rest of the summer or how stupid and long my schedule is but it doesn't really matter anywway.
So I'm just gonna list some highlights of the past two months:

We went hiking and biking.
We went to Croatia and it wasn't as warm as expected but I still got a really bad sunburn on my stomache.
We went to Vienna and I gotta say I am in love with that city.
I got sick the weekend before school started again.
I went back to school while was still sick).
We got our schedules and just to list the worst thing: I have 9(!!!) periods on Monday.
I went on a one week class trip with some kids from my school who are into sports.
It was pretty cool there (Baltic Sea).
I had to make up one week of school (aka as a lot, and I mean A LOT, of work).
I had to study a lot.Oh and still do. (Fortunately we're going having two weeks fallbreak coming up soon!)
Our town hosted the Theater-Festival "Freiwild". They had some really great plays (Unfortunately I just saw two.).
Today I'm goint to the "Oktoberfest" in our town with a bunch of friends.
I'll spend 12 hours on the train this weekend.

I hope y'all have fun with homecoming tonight and I already wanna congratulate everybody who is in the court. I'm so excited for you! :)

xoxo

Baltic Sea

Hey.

So three friends of mine and me spent our last week in Graal-Müritz at the Baltic Sea. It was incredible. The weather was great, the food was good and the feeling was simply amazing.

On Monday morning we met at the train station and then had a 7 hour train ride to go. *yeiy* It was uhm, how can I describe it best?, exhausting. When we finally arrived we went to buy groceries and then, after a nice dinner, to the beach. One of my friends decided to go swimming. She didn't have her swimsuit with her so she just went with her romper. :D It was pretty funny though.

The next day we went to the beach again and were there pretty much all day long, read and listened to music. I got tanner, my friends got redder. One of them got a really bad sunburn too plus funny tan lines but since we're a nice group of people she didn't feel too bad about it after a while anymore.

Wednesday we decided to visit a bigger town, called Rostock. And since we're girls we went shopping and bought, of course, some stuff. But oh well. :)

Thursday we spent at the beach again and had a great picnic in the evening. It was kind of romantic but since we're all missing all on the whole relationship-thing we just had to cuddle with food which is nearly as good as a relationship plus less stressful. :D

On the second last day we went to an open air concert in another city. We just found out about that concert in Rostock and were so excited to be able to see Milow, Mark Forster and Andreas Bourani (not that y'all know them but I do). I you want to listen to some of their songs click here:

It was directly at the beach - so cool! It was just so amazing.

We also took some pictures, I don't want to hide from you, so here are the best ones:

I should probably tell you who is who. The girl with the blond and curly hair is Lucie, the girl with the short brown hair is (have fun with saying that name) Wiebke (try to say her name and then listen to how you actually say it by clicking here, oh and send me a snapchat saying her name!!! I mean of course the people who have snapchat) and the girl with the brown hair is Fatima. Oh and the girl with the long brown and kind of reddish hair yeah, that's me. I hope y'all didn't forget me yet. :D

Hope y'all are doing great!

Oh and leave some comments if y'all want, I'd like to read what you think. :)

xoxo

Bine

Patriotism, Soccer and Heat

Hey you guys,
I'm truly sorry that I didn't blog as much as I wanted to but a lot of stuff was going on. First of I passed my theoreticaldriving test, which gets me one step closer to my drivers license. Since I'm going to be gone most of the next 6 weeks, I'll take the practical test (aka driving the car without crashing the car, running over red lights or even worse pedestrians while a man or women is looking at you and trying to find the mistakes you make) after the new school year already started.

Before the game

The next BIG thing, and I mean REALLY BIG, was the World Cup. In case some of you didn't know, GERMANY WON THE WORLD CUP, for the first time since 1990! Some friends and me went to public viewing for the finale. Unfortunately it started raining - no, not raining, POURING - during half time. But as supporter of the German team we stayed and got soaked. It didn't matter in the end though, because Germany won and everybody was so happy/excited. It was an amaziing feeling being there. But I think a little visual impression would help imagining:

After the game

I should probably mention that the only time Germans wear German flags, or have a German flag in their houses is during the World Cup. It's like the only time Germans get patriotic.

And now I had to get ready for vacation. Since Friday all my friends have holidays too (not to mention that I'm having holidays for 6 weeks now ;D). Summer holidays in Germany are 6 weeks long, which isnt a long time but I'm going to travel around a little. Of course, I'll try to blog about it every now and then but I can't promise that I will have time and/or wifi.

The first week, or better tomorrow I will go with some friends to the Baltic Sea, which is up north in Germany. We have our own holiday apartment and I'm sure we are going to have so much fun!

While it was rather cold when I first arrived back in Germany, it is so hot at the Moment. I mean it is already 10.18pm over here and I'm still sweating my boody off. Plus Germans don't believe in AC as much as Americans do, so no house has an AC here. Sometimes during the summer it is so hot that I just can't sleep in my room at all (My room happens to be under the roof too, so it's as hot as possible up there, plus my window is toward the side where the sun is in the afternoon...). On those days I prefer the guest room, the couch downstairs, or even the floor. The main thing is that it's cold(er).

I hope y'all have a great time too! Enjoy the AC for me.
xoxo

Back in Germany

How most of you already know I'm back in Germany. I arrived in my home town with shorts and tank top, which wasn't quite the right choice for Germany. With 55 or maybe 60 degrees it was just a little bit cold to wear those things. BUT I wore my cowboy hat so everything was fine (and the people had something to stare at, since thats what people tend to do). However, when I finally arrived by train (I flew from Orlando to Frankfurt and took the train to my home town) my mom and my three best friends stood there with a "welcome" sign. It was really nice seeing them all again and I have to say that barely anything changed while I was gone. As we drove down the street to my house, I could already see two people standing outside the door, which I didn't expect at all, since I didn't tell anybody but my three best friends that I would come back. It was really sweet though that they were there too. We ate some cake and exchanged news. I showed them my year book and they all thought it was so cool to have one (which by the way is so true! Yeiy yearbook). An hour later three of my other friends came by too and we made a small BBQ. It was overall a great time.
On Saturday then I met up with two other friends and watched the soccer game. Unfortunately Germany tied against Ghana, so it wasn't as good of a feeling as it could have been but how we know now it didn't hurt the team and thats all that matters (Germany and the US team both qualified for the next round!).
Monday I started my driving school. The whole getting-your-drivers-license-thing works a little different in Germany. While you just drive around the block in America and fill out a multiple choice test, you have to take a certain amount of theoretical lessons and also practical lessons in Germany. You have to have a certain amount of the latter to be able to take the driving test. Oh and you are also required to take a first-aid class (One day, up to 8 hours). And of course it is expensive too.
On Thursday, as well as Friday I went to school (Thursday for half an hour and Friday the whole schoolday) just to say hello to everybody and because I couldn't think of anything better to keep me busy.
Today (Saturday) we had our annual street festival going on and that is always fun.

Beeing busy really helps in terms of missing Florida. I mean of course I still miss it. I miss it a lot. I miss eating breakfast at iHop with Brett, or going outside the house and getting hit by a heat wave and 100% humidity. I miss playing with the dogs, Nick going to Publix and the cat that steals the socks out of my room. I miss starting a school day with the happy, but for most stdents just annoying "Good morning teachers and students, please stand for the flag". And that's just some of the stuff I'm missing.

So and now that I am back I think it is also a really important thing to say THANK YOU:
Thanks first of all to my parents that made my whole last year possible.
Also thanks to my awesome host family. I love you guys as my real family and you became so important to me and were always there for me in times of need.
Of course a big thanks to all my friends. You guys took me in and helped me a lot. Y'all are awesome!
Another thanks goes to my teachers and coaches. You made it possible to experience an american high school in the best possible way.
So yeah a big THANKS to all of you. :)

And if you guys kept reading till here I'm really proud of you. :)

Oh and of course here some of my favorite pictures from the last year.
But first klick play so that the whole thing has some background music:

I hope y'all enjoy your summer. I miss you!

Bine

Junior Parade

Jedes Jahr werden die Seniors (12. Klässler) etwas eher aus der Schule entlassen. In unserem Fall war es der vergangene Donnerstag. Am Morgen des folgenden Freitags haben sich dann alle Juniors (11. Klässler) in Frostproof getroffen (6.30Uhr!!!!) und dann gab es eine kleine Parade. Wir alle bemalten unsere Autos, trugen Senior T-Shirts, die wir die Tage zuvor gestaltet hatten und fuhren dann in einer langen Schlange durchs Örtchen und zur Schule. Jeder hing so mehr oder weniger aus dem Fenster, spielte seine Musik super laut und war einfach gut drauf. Ich saß auf dem Dach des Autos in dem ich fuhr.
An diesem Tag gibt es dann auch einen so genannten "farewell assembly", also eine Art Verabschiedungsversammlung bei der alle Schüler, Lehrer und auch viele Eltern der Seniors anwesend sind. Jeder Senior wird einzeln aufgerufen und dann hat unser Schulleiter ein paar Abschiedsworte gesagt und die Seniors wurden entlassen. Danach kam dann der große Teil für uns Juniors: In unserem Gym (Sporthalle) gibt es zugeordnete Sitzplätze (Juniors in eine Ecke, Sophomores in eine andere, Seniors in eine Ander usw.). Nachdem alle Seniors aus dem Gym entlassen wurden, wechselten wir zu der Senior Abteilung. :)
Jeder war super happy, denn somit ist man dem Abschluss wieder ein Stückchen näher. Leider bin ich ja nächstes Jahr wieder ein 11. Klässler aber das Gefühl nahezu mit der Schule fertig zu sein war schon schön! :)