Graduation, and saying goodbye!

Saturday may 29th already. The day of graduation. Graduation is a day many teenagers have been waiting for and others never thought they would ever experience. The ceremony was very long. First they had the presentation of the colors, then the national anthem, followed by the pledge of allegiance and tree speakers. After about an hour and 15 min it was finally our turn to go up on stage. We were organized in alphabetical order, and by the time they were doing the I's I already wanted it to be over. With a graduating class of 470 students they hit a new record for the school.

After the ceremony i went to my friends graduation party, her whole family and some close friends were there. We had a lot of fun singing karaoke eating and talking and taking pictures. Sunday I went to a gaduation lunch before i went home to start my packing.

Monday we went to the airport to see Renan leave. The time have gone

by so fast and tomorrow it's my turn to leave already. The rest of the day I spent with my friends. We made scrapbooks so we can look at all the silly and funny things we did together also when we are apart. Two of my closest friends Carolina and Adan left out of town that day so it was the last day i had with them. For any little thing we would cry because we knew that we wouldn't see each other in a long time. Carolinas mom and sister even called her, and said that they were crying because I'm leaving and I had only met them twice before.

On Tuesday I went to the movies one last time with some friends before I leave. We saw Shrek in 3D. It was pretty cool and my first 3D movie. To day I spent the day trying to finish packing before I went to the mall with my friend Maria. I bought a lot of stuff so I had to repack and take some stuff out of my suitcases.

Tomorrow is the day I leave and I still can't believe it. It feels so unreal. Many people ask me "do you want to go home already?" and I always answer "Yes and no. Yes because I miss my family my friends my house and everything else. No because when i leave im gonna miss my family, my friends and everything here". Sometimes I ask my self why would i do this to my self. It's just a whole lot of missing, but then I remember all the fun I've had and it really is worth it.

Party in the USA

May 24th was the day i turned 18! I really can't believe I'm an adult yet :o I still feel like a child not really ready to grow up. I had been asking my friends for a long time what we should do for my birthday, but we never came up with anything but my host parents said that we would have a little BQQ at the house, because it was my host grandfathers birthday too.

When I got to school the the day of my birthday my friends told me "We already know what we are going to do so you cant say no! and we already talked to your hostmom and she said it was okay." They told me they would take me to the mall and give me money to go shopping. I think that was really nice!. After our little shopping trip we were going to go eat out. They wanted me to call my hostbrother Renan and ask if he wanted to go too. I told them no because he probably wouldn't want to go. They ended up calling him and said we were almost there and he had to go with us. When we drove down the street i noticed that there were a lot of cars parked in front of my house. When i opened the door all of my "Texas family" and many of my friends were there "surprise!". Wow I did not expect that at all! It was very nice of them. Definitely a birthday I will always remember.

PROM

And then it was spring and time for PROM something I believe all teenage girls are very exited for, and with it comes a lot of preparation.

1. Find the perfect dress- Well I already had a dress that I had only worn once in Norway it was a nice dress and since no one here had seen it before I decided not to waste money on a new dress. I asked my parents to bring it when they came down and they did.

#1 check

2. Get the nails done- Tuesday before prom me and my two 0f my best friends here went to a nails salon and got our hands and feet polished.

#2 check

3. Get the flowers- Here in America you buy your date flowers that matches the girls dress. The guy wears his on the tux- jacket and the girl wears hers around the wrist. My hot mom was so nice as to order mine for me.

# check

4.Hair and make-up- My friends aunt is a dermatologist or something like that so she agreed to do our hair and make-up, and of course we had to test try it first so we did that on Tursday.

#4 check

I was all ready for prom. When the day finally arrived we had a few problems:

1. My hostparents weren't home so they couldn't take me to my friends house where I was going to get my hair and make-up done

2. My friends truck was stolen so they could not pick me up either.

3. When my hostparents finally came home and were ready to take me we were just going to stop by the bank so i could get some money out. My card decided to stop working (and it hasn't been working since)

My date who was also my neighbor came driving down the street in his truck followed by his younger brother and his two sisters. We took pictures and then it was time to leave. We went to my friends house and took some more pictures there (some of the guys found it a little embarrassing as her whole family including two sisters, one brother, her parents, three of her aunts and 5 of her cousins were there to judge them). And then..

4. When we were ready to go me AND my hostbrother remebered that we had forgotten our tickets at home, so we had to go back home and get them.

5. My dates friend who we were going to follow to the actual location had gotten the wrong flowers for his date so he had to go back to the flower shop and get the right ones.

When we after some problems on our way got to the ball room we had a lot of fun talking, dancing and taking pictures.

My date doesn't go the same school as me, so I went to his prom the week after. I was afraid that it was going to be weard because I didn't know a lot of people there, but it was actually not at all. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet many new people.

Track & Field

Two weeks ago we had District for Track and Field which is the most important meet of the year. As usual I ran the 400 and 800m runs. I was very nervous, it was going to be my last meet in Texas and my coach expected me to do well. I ran the 400 first and PRd (personal record) by 6 seconds! I was so happy, 6 seconds is a lot! Then I was going to run the 800. I gave it my very best and used every trick my coach had taught me. It really payed of! I PRd by 20 seconds! I could not believe it! It was definitely my best meet.

I'm done running now, but I try to run a little on my spare time to stay in shape. Track really gave me more muscles than I have ever had before. I really hope I will continue to run when I come home. I didn't get fat as an exchange students as many others. I learned to like sports and got in shape.

Friday march 26 my family came from Norway to visit me here in Texas. My American family and I went to San Antonio to pick them up at the airport there. It was so good to see them again after 8 months. I even shed tear of happiness. I had missed just to have them around me in my daily life. Finally I had them all to my self for 10 days.

We went to Austin that Saturday. We saw the capital which btw the only state capital bigger than the National capital Washington DC. We also went to see the Texas Longhorns football stadium. After Austin we went to Gruene, the worlds cutes little town. In the evening we went to the River Walk in San Antonio. On Sunday we went back to the River Walk and got on one of the little tour boat. After that we went to the Alamo, and then we headed back home.

I had to go to school the week they were here, but we still got to do many things together.They went to see me in a track meet, we went to the outlets and in the beginning of the weekend we spent at the beach. Easter Sunday we had a big easter party with humonguos amounts of food an egg hunt and a piñata.

On Monday I took the day of from school to say goodbye. It was harder than I had thought to see them leave again, but at least this time I knew that I was going to see them again in less than 2 months.

Crazy week

This week has been crazy! My host dad told me and my Brazilian brother to go to our counselor first thing in the morning, and we did. Our counselor told us to go wait in the office for the principal. Our awesome principal told us to come in to the conference room where 10 other students where waiting. “We are up for an award and I want all of you to help represent the school” she said. If we win our District gets a lot of money. Our district is 1 of 5 school in all of Texas that are chosen. First we were going to have a power point presentation and then a tour around the school.
We practiced our presentation over and over.

Later that Monday a solider came to visit the school. We had a project called “project Christmas cards”. Many of the students wrote Christmas cards and they were sent to American soldiers in Afghanistan. The solider that came to visit us was one of the ones that received the cards. We greeted him in the auditorium. The band played and the cheerleaders cheered. After that a small group of students got to come to the library and ask him questions and eat cake. He had many interesting things to tell. Chanel 5 was there too, and I actually came out on TV. Wow I'm famous :p!

Tuesday and Wednesday we practiced more. And when they came on Thursday we were fully prepared. We were really spirited and bragged as much as we could about the school. We did a good job, when they announce the winner on May 2nd I really hope we are the winners !

On Thursday I also had my first track meet. It was so much fun. I ran 400m and 800m. I was very nervous before I ran. I was afraid that I was going to be last and way behind everyone else because this is the first year I'm in track. I did ok, for a first timer. At least I wasn't last.

On Friday the principal got me out of class again, this time we went on the buss. We went to get measured for a letterman jacket. The jackets are in your school color and has the first letter of your school it. You can get your name and patches on it. The patches are for the sports or clubs you are in. These jackets are worth $200. You get them if you have been in a club or in varsity (the a team) in a sport for 2 years. I'm only here for one year, but my principle wanted me to have one, so she is going to pay for it!

After practice on Friday we went to Mercedes to a cook of. It is only about 20 min away, but still we went in the RV and spent the night over there. My host dad was awake all night an put the first meat in the bbq pit at 4 am. He cooked chicken, brisket, fajitas, beans and ribs. It all tasted so goooood! I ate and ate all day! We didn't win any prices, but it was a fun experience and a lot of good food!

There was a little competition for children too. It costed $35 and they gave the kids two pork chops a little bbq pit and an apron. My hostsisters joined. Also in the picture are my hostsisters friends who came with us.

Finally an up date

I have been real bad at writing, and a lot of things has happened since last time. We had Christmas break an new years it was Nice to see how they celebrate the holly days in another country. What i noticed was that it's not as formal as in Norway. Some of our guests even came in warm ups. For me Christmas is all about traditions but they didn't have very many here. They invited a lot of people over for Christmas eve and my host dad made a real good meal.

In the break i also went to San Antonio on s field trip to see the lion king musical. I was so good and i was really impressed about the creative costumes and the actors were really good too!

Today i had my last basketball practice and to morrow is my last game! I cannot believe that the season is over already. I have had so much fun and i have learned a lot. I'm very grateful to all my coaches and team mates for being patient with me and teaching me everything I know about basketball.

Today was also the varsity team's last home game and parent night. They presented all the varsity players with their parents. At the end they said "we would also like to recognize another young lady for her dedication to basketball, an exchange student Linn Boldevin from Norway. I didn't know anythig about it. They also gave me a poster with my picture on it. I Think it was very Nice of them.

Basketball games

On December 1st we won our first basketball game or actually we had won one before but that was when i went to Austin so it didn't really count for me.

This time we played against la Joya and won 36-43, but i have never seen my coach as mad as he was that day. We didn't really play that good. We lost a lot of balls because we made bad passes an we also lost 20 free throws! The day after he punished us with 20 laps around the gym.

The next Tuesday we played against Edinburg Bobcats and lost bad. The head coach was mad at us for not being depressed about the loss. Everything here is very competitive and this was our first district game so they were not happy, but I can't help but being happy. Of course I like it better when we win, but I realize that we are not gonna win every game. Our district is the toughest in the valley and we are not that good, but I like the game a lot and I'm happy as long as I get to play. I have finally found a sport that I really like.

Thanksgiving

Thursday November 27 was thanksgiving. This is an American celebration
where you eat a lot of food. We ate turkey. Mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, breads, pies cakes and ice cream. In a traditional celebration you say grace before you eat and every one have to say what they are grateful for. It is also very common to watch football games. We saw
Texas longhorns win against their rivals Texas a&m.

After we ha eaten first at my hostmothers mothers house and then my hostfathers parents house we went Home to change and then we went to aStore. I went to HEB. I sat outside the store for 7 hours to wait till it opened, i did it because the day after thanksgiving is known as black Friday and is the day of the year they have the most sales. When HEB finally opened at 5 a clock in the morning i ran in to the store to Get an iPod touch. I got it for 169 dollars that is about 1000 nok. Everyone went crazy to get what they wanted. All the Wii's and TV's got sold out within 30 sec. It was a fun experience, but practice was hard that day. I came home at 6:30am so i only got two hours of sleep before practice that was from 9:30 till 12:30.


I would also like to send my thougths to Regine Stokke's family and friends. I have been reading her blog where she have been writing ever since she got to know that she had cancer. She fougth for 15 months she died December 3. You can read her blog www.sinober.blogg.no (it's in norwegian) .
R.I.P Regine

Texas Longhorns

We left school early on Friday to go to Austin. We were going to see a collage football game. Texas Longhorns against Kansas Hawks. Austin is a 6 hour drive from here so we had a long drive ahead of us. The trip actually went by really fast. We did not drive all the way to Austin on Friday through we spent the night in a small town called Gruene which is about 40 min from Austin.


Gruene was a super cute town. It had a lot of old buildings, like the oldest Dance hall in Texas. They also have a market there every third Saturday of the month were they sell hand made jeweleries and homemade sauces and a lot of other things.

From Geuene we went to Austin to get a hotel room and then we went to the game. We stopped by the Texas longhorn store we bought stickers to put in our faces and my host dad bought a football that he wanted to get signed by the players.

We knew that our seats were going to be high up but i was a lot higher than i had expected. We had to take 11 escalators to get up there and after that we walked up some stairs almost all the way to the top. We were saying that we would probably not come out on TV because then they would have to get a Helicopter to film all the wat up there.

I ejnoyed the game very much even though we were high up. The band were doing all kinds of cool formations before the game and i halftime ad it is actually better to see that from were we were sitting. Texas won the game in the end of course. When the game ended we went outside of the stadium to see if we could get autographs from some of the players. I didn't have anything to get signed, but i got to take a picture with some of them and my host dad got the signature of about 20 players. I felt bad for the players though because when they left tha stadium it was about midnight and they had practice at 6 am the next morning.

Basketball ++

Hi again first of all I want to thank you all for reading my blog. I have almost 1000 unique visitor now and that is super cool. I did not know when I first started writing that so many would be reading it. Awesome!

Two weeks ago was Halloween. We started the day with cleaning the house before we went to Sarah's last soccer game for the season. They won 11-0! We had brought our costumes to the game because we left directly from the game to a family friend's house. We changed before we all went trick or treating. Here people in all ages go. In most of the houses there were people sitting outside to give out the candies and all the houses were decorated. I was dressed up as little red riding hood, Renan was a Rockey Balboa, Sydney was the little mermaid and Sarah was a zombie soccer player. We got a lot of candies we went back to the house for a little while before we went back home and ate all the candies :p
I'll post a picture from Halloween later.

This week the basketball season started I had my first game on Tuesday. We also played a tournament this week. We had one game on Thursday and two on Friday. We lost all our games, but I had a lot of fun. We'll do better next time ;) On the game on Thursday i made my first foul and the ref came up and congratulated me. In the first game on Friday i finally made my first basket in the game it felt so good hopefully there will be many more of those later.

One ting i have noticed is that all the teams we have played against have a lot taller girls than we have. I'm actually the tallest girl on my team. Good excuse for why we haven't won yet ;)

Busy life

You think your life is busy you have a lot to do? Really? I Used to think my life was busy, but it really wasn't. I always had a few minutes here and an hour there, now I have nothing. Last weekend I took my ACT test from 8am to 12pm then I went to my host grandmothers house to set up tables and chairs for a party we were going to have for my host great grandmother later. After that I went to my other host grandmothers house to make food for the party. We got home at 5.30 pm and then we had 30 min to shower and get dressed for the party. At the party I was busy all the time serving people drinks and cakes.

On sunday I went to my host sisters cheer leading show. After the show I went with my friend to her church and afterwards we went to McDonalds with all her friends from church and we had a great time.

Then another week started and also basketball practices. I'm at school from 8am to 3.47pm and than I have practices from 4 to 6 EVERYDAY and on Saturdays from 10am to 12pm. On weekdays I'm home between 6.30pm and 7pm. Then I take a shower eat dinner do my homework and go to bed. Home in Norway I would watch a lot of series like Desperate House Wifes, Gossip Girl and Grace Anatomy. I was looking forward to see all these shows before my friends in Norway, because they come out earlier here, but I don't have any time left over to watch TV. The life of an exchange student is busy.

Homecoming

We have homecoming this week and it is a big deal here. What happens is that the football team picks a team to play against often a rival or a team they think they can beat. The week of the homecoming game is called spirit week and every one dresses up. At my school the themes were not that cool we had tie day, collage day, twin day and “drag a bear day”. The drag a bear is because we are going to play against the bears. Everyone are gonna drag a bear around all day and then in the end rip it apart. Other schools have had themes as Hollywood, Disney, Neon and Nerd day.
On Thursday we had a parade that ended up at our school and then we had a peprally were they announced the homecoming king and class favorites and after that we had a bonfire.

The field trip

I was selected to go to the field trip as I said. I think they picked about 60 students to go. They picked the ones that had good attendance, handed in their homework on time and were behaving and positive in the class room. I was honored to go. We went to the “Museum of South Texas History” It was very interesting to learn about the history of the place I'm now living in.

In Mexican tradition November 2nd is “el dia de los muertos” or the day of the dead. That is a big celebration where they decorate with scelletons and they go to the graveyard and leaves their friends and family that have passed away their favorite food. Because its soon gonna be Noveber 2nd they had people at he museum dress out and there was also a play. I could only understand half of the play because the actor switched back an forth between talking English and Spanish. They also had dancers and a mariachi band. A mariachi band is a typical mexican band. The ones that were playing for us were from a highschool in the area and they were really good.

After the museum we went to Peter piper where we got free lunch and ice cream mmmm.

Update

It's a while since I have been writing now because i have been really busy the last couple of weeks but now I'm gonna go ahead and give you all an update.

The football team lost last week against Harlingen Cardinals 7-63. This week we won over Harlingen south hawks 28-12. One of my friends Gabby won another cross country gold medal and is now the best cc runner in the valley. The lady wolverine volleyball team played against the lady cardinals and won 3 of 5 sets.

On Saturday we went to my hostsister's soccer game and after that we went to Pet Smart which is a huge pet store to buy some clothes for our dogs because it was only 20 degrees Celsius so they were could. On Sunday we went to church and to the mall. Guess what. I bought another pair of shoes. My third pair here so far. We had a day of from school on Monday and we used it to clean the house. It took us all day.

This weekend I was supposed to go to San Marcus which is about a 5 hour drive from here to go see my host sisters cheerleading competition, but I got selected to go to a field trip with school so I'm gonna stay here with my host grandparents. The field trip is to a museum in Edinburgh. It's from 10am-4pm and we get free lunch at Peter Piper Pizza.

This week

This week the people from the exchange organization came over. They just told us about the rules and stuff. They were really strict and blunt, but I guess they have to be with the job they have. If someone is braking the rules they are the once to send them home so you don't want to get on their bad side.

This Friday our football team played the Raiders one of our rivals and also one of the best teams in the vally. We lost... 42 - 7 .. It' bad!

On Saturday I went to my hostsister soccer game again and later i went to Sonic with some friends. Sonic is a dive in burger place where they also have a sand volleyball court we were there all night and had a lot of fun playing, talking and taking pictures :)

Babyshower

Last Saturday we went to a babyshower. They had a few games and then we ate. My host parents told me that this was more like a birthday party that an babyshower, because usually there would only be girls and they would have a lot more "baby games". They made me dance with the chicken that was kind of fun and embarrassing at the same time.

Football game

Yesterday I was at the football game. The boys in my class was so dissapointed that i didn't go to their game last week so this week i had to. My hostmother dropped me of and I met my friend Daniella there. It was a lot more people yesterday than the first time i was there. We had fun cheering for the wolverines, but we lost 34-13 over the Brownswill vikings :(

A lot of food at school

Yesterday was a crazy day. First i had government class and my teacher took us to the gosenter. Every one had to sign up for the ACT test which is a test all Americans have to take to get accepted to collage. She wants everyone to take the test even if they are not planning to go to collage because she wants everyone to have the opportunity if they decide they will go after all. I had to sign up too. I don't really mind doing the test. First of all my teacher gives us a 100 as a test grade for signing up and another 100 for actually taking the test. The second thing is that we get to take this test for free and if you are not in high school you have to pay for the test. That means that if i decide to take a semester of collage here I have already taken the test for free.

After government i had physics and we had a test that i hopefully did good on. After physics I had anatomy and we had to present our project. The project was called "Edible organ - 3D" Which meant that we had to make an organ in a material we could eat in a 3D shape and do some research on our organ. I got the eye and made it out of "marsipan" which I made from scratch. Eggs powdered sugar and egg white. After the presentation we tasted everyones projects and rated te best ones. Bianca's tung was the best, my eye was second and Izzy's brain was 3. It is actually a coincidence that those three are the ones I have a picture of.

After anatomy we had Spanish and because we live so close to the boarder and every one here are Mexicans we had to celebrate their independence day which was yeasterday. All we did in class was eating Mexican food. It was a good day at school. We should have more days like this.

Full house

By the time i woke up and took a shower the house was already full of people. Ralph's (host dad) uncle form Dallas is in town so all his relatives came here for a BIG breakfast. We were about 20 people here and we ate tacos, eggs, bacon, beans and cake. It was really nice.

Today we were supposed to go to the zoo after breakfast, but my host grandfather bought a boat yesterday so we went out with the boat instead. It was a really nice day!

It was so hot so I just had to go in the water!

My hostbrother from Brazil

My little hostcuz

Sydney hostsis

Renan (hostbrother) and Roman (host uncle)

Hostgrandmother and hostcuz

Hostsis Sarah

Ralph, Renan, Sarah and Rapha (Hostgrandfather)