April 30th

Okay, just a quick little post, because I gotta go to bed soon.

The seniors had their last school day today. They had a party on senior patio during the last period of the day, dancing, hollering, singing, having a water-fight-thingy and stuff like that.

It was fun to watch. I must say it made me just a little sad that I won't be here to do the same with my grade.. Oh well, you can't have it all!

Okay, I PROMISE I'll post the pictures in the next post. I just really have to get enough sleep for tomorrow.

We're having our chorus spring show, where we are performing in small groups and stuff like that. It's gonna be fuuuun! My group is doing this song from the Musical "In the Heights", called 96.000 . And basically, it sounds awesome. I hope I can get someone to get it on video.

3 more weeks of school. I really dont want to though, now that the seniors are gone. I must say I am a little bit frightened at the idea of the juniors taking over. But.. we'll see.

Tomorrow is also the mud-slide day for the seniors! Although they don't have clsses anymore, they have gazillions of events they have to come to school for, so they'll still be around. And tomorrow is senior-fun-day. Exciting!

They make this huge mudslide (by pouring tons of water on some dirt I suppose?) and have fun. 

But yeah, that was just a little short update.

I hope y'all are doing well!

And you can comment. I'd like to hear what y'all think. Or just that you actually read this.

23rd April

It's kind of in the middle of the night right now, but I can't sleep, and I really feel like writing about something more focused on the daily life at Westminster.

The seniors are graduating so soon! They have 6 days of class left. 6 days. And then there will be no Glenn, no Leigh Ann, no Stasi, no Cat, no Daniel, no Jake, no a lot of other people I really like! Bahhhhhhh! And then the JUNIORS are going to take over the entire school. That class (class of 2010) is so obnoxious. They've been acting like they were seniors since forever (and they are obviously not seniors yet). In a way, that's good though, because that's what they are supposed to do as seniors. I'm just glad I wont be here to suffer, next year. Haha!

Besides that, the exam stress is slowly taking over everyone's social life. Luckily, I will only have one exam; Chinese. French is an AP class, and so they have this special AP exam that I won't take, as I'm not planning on going to College here (well I mean not so far at least). For English class, we're doing a "Sophomore Project", which is this big project Westminster sophomores do at the end of the year, and that counts as the exam. (And of course, no exam for Portfolio, 2 dimentional design and Chorus)

Conclusion; I'll be fine. And I will have time to enjoy life once my Sophomore project is done.

I don't know if y'all remember that I wrote about this art project we were doing about graffiti, but FINALLY, we put them up! Now they're all over campus. We met at 7 pm at school to put them all up without people seeing it. It was supposed to be TOP secret. But guess what? Yes there was a parent meeting that night. So much for being undercover.. Oh well, it was fun dressing all in black and pretend to be a ninja.

I got some really good pictures, so I'll put them up ASAP (along with the Dallas pictures!)

And I'll try to post the video we made that will (hopefully) be showed in homerooms tomorrow morning, at school. (Although I bet you 70% of the teachers will forget)

And oh! I did this Chinese project a month ago, where we had to interview someone in Chinese and record it somehow. I videotaped mine, and I just found it on my computer! I thought it would be fun to post it.

The guy I interviewed, Marco, a Westminster senior, went abroad junior year, to China, with SYA (a very different program from AFS) and therefore speaks pretty decently Chinese.

[I will post it as soon as youtube accepts the video]

I hope y'all are well, and goodnight from Atlanta.

April 19th

I am so so so so tired right now, but I'm going to just fight that, and write a post about Texas and my amazing weekend with my amazing AFS group!

So let's go with Texas (I'm so far behind):

Texas was awesome. I loved it so much. So pretty. So very pretty. 

Steve's family was awesome and crazy. They're great!!!

To describe the trip in a few words;

a whole lot of hours of plane-delay, homestay, Texas food, visiting Dallas, eating more Texan food, see where JFK  was assassinated, dying easter eggs, having some fun family times, going to church (oh wow, that was.. .. .. different from a Danish service. Not a big fan. That guy was talking waaaaaaay too much about how God gave his son's life for us and he didn't care about our relationship to other people, but between "you and Him". I was like "yeah sure, you would know". My point is that I don't like it when people tell you how to believe and how to interpret religion. I really don't like that at all).

So Texas was fun! 

Pictures (say more than words):

[will be uploaded ASAP! My camera is currently uncharged]

This weekend was spent with my LOVELY AFS group! I love them so much. They are such great people... We have an amazing group.

Atlanta's Piedmond Park was hosting the Dogwood Festival, this weekend, so we had a great opportunity to volunteer and do something together. 

Saturday we went for a walk in this old neighborhood with old Victorian styled houses (I am so moving there once I get the money for a house like that) and then we went to check out the festival afterwards. 

At night we cooked (we as in the exchange students) delicious food, made cakes, talked for hours, stayed up most of the night, and just had a great time all together. Thank you Ruth for hosting all of us!

Sunday morning, we went to the festival to help out at different stands and stuff like that. I think everyone had a lot of fun!

We were split up to groups of two and sent to different spots/stands/whatever they wanted us to do. I was with Alessandra (not really unexpected) at the International Stage. We had a lot of fun! The international stage was hosting different schools and dance schools, that were performing dances and that kind of stuff. Some of it was really good! I especially liked the African Drumming and Dancing. That was so cool!

Alessandra and I were kind of keeping track of where everyone was and what they had to do. It was a lot of fun, although quite stressful sometimes. 

Some pictures:

The AFS group talking

preeeeeetty

Atlanta is so pretty is the spring

Pretty Victorian house

My pretty, beloved, Italian girl!

Alessandra & Fabienne!

Group picture!

Group picture WITH the house!

Funky Victorian house

Fabienne, Me and Guy

Atlanta. So pretty

Me and Alex cut and tied our XL AFS shirts, so they fit us better (and made headbands)

the back

Andy & Alex

Andreas and me!

posing and being silly

Julio and Alessandra

Ruth, Andy and Alex

Ha ha ha Andy mastering the "Big Green Egg"

Andyyy! My little German friend

Andy and Oscar working the barbecue

Fabi is cutting her birthday cake (turning 18 on tomorrow, Monday!) 

April 14th

So much has happened since last time I updated. Prom, Texas and the storm!

Let's start off with the Prom.

One word to describe it, would be; amazing! It was so so so so much fun. I had such a great night!

I went to Allison's house to get ready and pretty and all that kind of stuff. Then we went to Ford's house for the picture party (it's like PDC all over again, but a bigger deal), where David & Lauren, Alex & CeeCee, Ford (Allison's boyfriend and date) and José (my date) had already arrived, long before us (oopsee!).

So they took a million pictures in Ford's beautiful backyard, and then, after a few snacks, we went into the limo that took us to the Restaurant. We ate a this Italian place called Antica Posta, that served absolutely delicious food, but had terrible service. We had 3 vegetarians ( and a single vegan), and they brought us meaty plates. And when we tried to convince her we hadn't ordered meat, she didn't believe us, and kept talking with her weird accent about some RAGÚ. Finally, we pointed out to her on the menu what we had ordered, and so they changed the dishes to what we originally had ordered.

We enjoyed our meal, but when it was time to pay, it took FOREVER for them to get the check, so we didn't get to the actual prom at Wesminster until 10.30 (it started at 9pm, and ended at 12 am). But.. It wasn't too bad that way. I danced with José and had a great time. He is a great dancer and he is really nice, so that part was great.

At 12, everyone went back to their limos to go to the post-prom party; a Casino party with a whole bunch of prizes to win! After some minor trouble with getting in, and the Casino-fake-money, because both me and José are sophomores, some lady helped us, we got in, and had a lot of fun gambling. I met all of my friends in there, and it was great to finally get to chat a little bit :)

Afterwards, our limo party (but not José) went back to Ford's house to spend the night. His parents had made breakfast for us when we came back (4.30 am, yepp), which was so perfectly timed, that I can't even put words on it. I was fully satisfied, emotionally, and now also physically.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience, and I am really happy I got to go!

Here are some pictures from the picture party (for those who haven't seen them on Facebook yet)

There was a terrible storm Sunday night. A lot of trees fell (a guy actually died when a tree fell on his car and made it explode) and broke all the cables all over the city (it's old-fashioned here, they're not underground yet). Therefore, we had no power whatsoever all of Monday (that we had off, because of Easter) and parts of today, Tuesday. I really realized how dependent we are on electricity. Luckily, the Mathesons have a gas stove and the water is warmed with gas also, so we were able to have warm dinner and warm showers, but no lights, no TV, no telephone, no music, no internet or computers (well.. approximately an hour and a half of computer, until the labtops ran out of power TOO), no nothing. I read a whole lot that day.. It was hard a night though, so Steve built a fire, and we sat in front of it and told each other all kinds of fun stories. It was a fun night actually.

When I woke up in the morning, there was still no power. I walked to school, and yeah, Westminster did have power (darn, I thought we could finally have a day off because of the weather). By the time I got home after school, the power was back though. So everything is fine now. 

It was estimated that 250.000 people in Atlanta didn't have electricity yesterday.. That is a lot.

Texas was great. I loved it!

When I upload the pictures, I will write more about it.

I hope y'all are doing well!

April 2nd

SO:

here we go again

Tomorrow, Friday, is Big Day Off!

It's a day scheduled in the beginning of spring every year, where we basically just come to school and have fun. Unfortunately, a lot of the activities are supposed to happen outside, and it has been raining like crazy the last few days = all the fields are so so so wet. And... they get damaged if people step on it too much, so these activities will probably get canceled.

But it'll still be plenty of fun. Everyone will be wearing this year's Big Day Off t-shirt (I'll post pictures of it) and it's going to be a great day, despite the weather.

+ we can wear shorts because it's a special day (usually, we can't wear t-shirts either)

OH, I completely forget to say this.

So apparently people coming to Westminster think the girls' shorts are outrageously short, and so guess what? Yepp, they took them off the list of things girls can wear on the dresscode. So now, girls aren't allowed to wear shorts. Hello? We're talking 90 degrees in the summer? Oh of course we'll deal with pants. Pshh.

And what about the girls who feel uncomfortable wearing dresses are skirts? 

Definitely not a big fan of this new rule.

We had a chorus/chorale and orchestra rehearsal tonight, for Fauré's Requiem. We have been working on it since we came back from Christmas break (7 beautiful pieces) and finally, we are ready to perform next week. I am really excited, because we have all worked really hard on this (well, the 9th and 10th grade boys haven't really, because they for some mysterious reason don't feel like contributing with their efforts) , and for a very long time AND it sounds a-m-a-zing. It's the most beautiful music I have ever heard. No kidding.

I was super excited about FINALLY getting to listen to our soloists sing, since all of them are in the chorale - which is for 11th and 12th graders only. They (David Howe, Deena Tumeh and Matt Bennett) all sounded amazing. So it was a great rehearsal. I hope they'll record the concert so that I can get a copy on a CD :)

And then, there is Saturday. My goodness, I am so super excited! ! !  ! !!!!!!

I haven't even found a dress yet! And José already got his tuxedo! Hey, I'm the girl, there is something wrong with the timing.

But Allison and CeeCee are both bringing me dresses to try on tomorrow. They have offered me to borrow one, if it fit me, and I liked it :) yay nice friends!

Carolina is coming tomorrow! Woop woop!

Well.. I hope y'all are doing well back in Europe!