Ab August werde ich 10 Monate im Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten leben!!

Friday, December 21, 2012

Basketball

On December 6th I decided to quit Basketball. it was no easy decision at all, I like my team and would have loved to play Basketball but I realized I can't do it, it is just way to hard on me. The dirty thirty "killed" me and afterwards I couldn't participate that well any longer and through that I felt like I left my team down. I am just not as good as they are, still not used to the hard training every day, sometimes Saturday. I don't want to let them down, so the only way I could go, was quitting Basketball. :( Until Spring I have time now to either do nothing after school or maybe a club or something, I don't know, yet. I will see. Through the 2 months of Basketball I learned and experienced how it is to be in a athletic team, the support from the team mates, how far I can go and the improvent I made, the school spirit during a game, the hard practice, was at a Prude game and even took a picture with that team.
Yes, I liked Basketball but now it's over for me and I'm fine with it.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Shipshewana trip

4 months!! :O Wait a minute.. Seriously?!? I'm here already for 4 months? I almost reached half-time, that's so crazy I still feel like I have just arrived.. But in this post I am telling you a little bit about our Shipshewana trip!

From November 17 - November 18 (day 94; 95) our group of exchange students wereon a trip at shipshewana, a town were Amish people live. Amish people don't believe in electricity or driving in a car but believe a lot in God. I know it's not a very good explanation. But anyhow, we went to that town, called Shipshewana for the weekend.

In the morning at 7 am, Mom brought Rost, Wasilia and me to the school where our local coordinator already waited for us. As we got into the bus there  were already some other exchange students from our group. After some time another group joined us. I talked a lot with Heluma (Brazil), Dody (Egypt), Sahya (Israel) and José (Mexico). We drove about 1 hour or so north until we got to Wendy's, where I ordered a burger with coke and French fries, I gave the fries to Wasilia. :D

Our first thing we visited was the chocolate factory.  I really love it! As we entered the factory the smell of chocolate was all around us, mmnn! First we went to the store where we got some percent off of everything we brought, I went to the "Almost perfect" section, that is chocolate which is not perfect by looks and so had also some percents off. I brought some of chocolate pralines.
Afterwards our guide talked a little bit about the history from chocolate, from the cacao bean to the final chocolate. (Nathi, that reminded me so much of the KPP, that was scary! ) Then we were split into 2 groups, our group saw the factory first, we first saw huge plates of chocolate, and then we went into another room where they prepared "turtles ", a special kind of chocolate praline, nuts,caramel and chocolate. First the nuts went through machines with caramel and through a " waterfall of chocolate". Before we left the room we all got some samples, yeah! The next thing we saw was the packing station where the chocolate is being packet into fancy paper and boxes, afterwards we had the chance to make our own chocolate lollipop, we spinned a spoon in chocolate which then went into a refrigerator. As we all had finished making our lollipop we could walk through a museum about chocolate. As we left the factory everyone of us got a little bag with chocolate.
After the chocolate factory we drove to Shipshewana. We first drove around the town, the stores looked like houses and some of them had already Christmas decoration on them, it looked just great! Unfortunately I couldn't take a picture of it :/  After we were done with our tour around the town, which like I said was real beautiful, we split into 3 groups. I was in the third one and as we got out of our bus and first searched a bathroom. We found one in Subway. As we were done the group I was with, which had been the second one had to go and I searched for my group. Heluma was in my group and as we waited until I would be our turn we took some pictures on an interesting chair and next to a horse buggy,  in the first place we wanted to walk through the town and take some pictures but we weren't sure whether we would be allowed to. The buggy ride was great but also a little bit cold and pur driver was kinda crazy. Once Heluma had to turn right and she moved both hand to the right to make the horse turn right but instead it continued walking straight and Heluma started panicking, until our driver turned. The ride was funny but also real slow.
Afterwards we drove in our bus to a farm. We met there some Amish children which were real cute and our group took a picture with them :D Then we looked at a steam machine for a while and got some cookies from an older woman.
Our next stop was a cheese factory. It was called : "Deutsch Kase Haus". As I saw that I was really astonished by that!  In the factory we could buy and try cheese and also different things like chocolate, candy and jelly.  Then finally we drove to our hotel.We got our keys and went to our rooms. I was in a room with 5 other girls.  The rest of the day we spent walking around in the hotel, taking pictures and once we were in a game hall for a little bit. In the late evening  we got pop, popcorn and chips and went into a room and played a game and just talked. We went to our rooms at around 12, there the girls in our room and I talked until almost 1 in the morning. The day had been just great! :D

The next morning we woke at around 8:30 and got ready, packed our stuff and such and then went to go eat breakfast. After breakfast we got slowly ready to leave but before that  Wasilia,Dody, a girl from Germany and another girl and I took some funny pictures. Then we went downstairs and put all our luggage into the bus and met all of our group in the reception hall. There we played a game until about 12:30. Afterwards we drove to a museum about Amish people, we could first look through a store and  then walked into several rooms to stories or watched movies about Amish people. Afterwards we all got back into the bus and stopped at Subway to eat something.  The scholarship students went first, which was almost the whole bus! And then the rest of us could get into line.  On our way back home I talked a lot with the students, it was just so much fun! As we had to say good-bye to our new friends I was just so extremly sad. But luckily I'll see them again! :D 
Wasilia,Rost and I were back in our town at 6pm. There Wasilia's hostdad already waited for us and brought us back home.  At home I was kind of sad that the trip had already been over but also happy being home again! :)

All in all it was a very awesome and funny weekend!!








I found Aldi sued in America! xD


Heluma <3 br="br">


Deutsch Kase Haus!



Monday, December 10, 2012

December!

Hey! It's already December!
I still can't believe it! Soon, very soon we'll have Christmas, yeah! I am sorry I didn't write something in a while and it's even a month ago! I'm so sorry about that! I know I still have to write about church, the shipshewana trip, Thanksgiving, Trudy's Christmas party and I some things more I can't think of right now. I'm working on it but I'm just so busy all the time, haha! ;D

Anyhow I just wanted you to know I'm planning to write about some things in the hopefully near future!

Xoxo Clarissa