Hey everyone,

Here is a quick update about what I’ve done the last weeks.

I will start with track. The season really ended now. After Conference, my last meet, a part of the team stayed practicing for sectionals. This is the meet where you can qualify for state. The team left earlier in the day, so I couldn’t drive with them because I would have to miss a class while I’m not running. So after school I went home, where I ate something and then my hbrother brought me to the track where sectionals was at. The team did really good. My school made it to state in the 4×800 meter relay, the 800 meter and one of the throwers made it down to state. I’m really proud of them!! My hsister Hannah also made it to state, in 3 events!! That is really good!! She made it on the triple jump, the 300m hurdles and with her team on the 4×200 meter relay.

I went together with my hmom to the Track & Field state meet. Hannah had her events in the morning. She did pretty good I think. But she didn’t make it to the finals. She jumped better with the triple jump before, she wasn’t really happy with her jumps this time. But it is still great that she made it to state! The 4×200 team ran really fast but not fast enough for the finals. Those people who were there were all really fast!! Hannah unfortunately fell in the 300 meter hurdles. This is the first year that she started hurdles so it is already amazing she could make it to state!! She will probably work on her form the coming summer.

My team ran later in the day because my school is bigger. The state meet is divided in 3 groups based on the size of the school. My school is in the group with the biggest schools. We stayed so we could watch my school race too! We didn’t make it to a final at any event. But it was great to see them running!! They did great!!

Last week we had a banquet with the team. Here we came all together to end our great season. I got a varsity letter and the team gave me and all the seniors a card where they all signed on. It is really nice to read all of this and I will miss them a lot!! I’m so thankful that I could be part of this team!! I’m proud to be a Willowbrook Warrior!! One of the coaches made a video about our season. You can see me at 9:33 in blue, first I will get the baton and then I will give it to the next runner. You can also see me in some pictures at the end.

One of these weeks I also went to Éviny her graduation. Robin another exchange student from France graduated too at the same school. It was fun to see this, it took a while but it is nice to see everyone with the graduation clothes and cap. I asked at my school if I would be able to walk with the graduation. But the school said that wouldn’t be possible. But I will still go to the graduation of my school to see it! After Éviny her graduation we (Diane from Switzerland, Manuella from Brazil and Monica from Portugal) went to her house, Seraina (Switzerland) came too but she wasn’t at the ceremony. We had a lot of fun! Here are some pictures we made.

Last Monday I had a birthday party and goodbye party from Talles. There were other exchange students too!! It was a lot of fun! They had a Brazilian treat which is called Brigadeiro and it is really good!! Matheus taught me this word so I didn’t have to look it up now haha I remembered!! (To the Brazilians: Aren’t you guys proud of me??? :)) I will miss everyone who was there a lot and I don’t know how it will be without them next year… It is a weird feeling, last year I didn’t know all these people yet and now I care so much about them that I don’t want to say goodbye to them! This is the same with all my friends with school, skating and the family.

The last weeks of school started for me. I only have 1,5 week left. I can’t believe that this year went so fast!! At the end of an American school year you have prom, this is more for the Seniors but Juniors can go too. I went here and I had a great time!! In the morning I still had to go to school, there were no Seniors in class because of the senior recognition ceremony so there weren’t many people in class. The least people that I had in class that day was in precalculus where we were with 4 persons and a sub. Here we just talked. After this period I went home to prepare for prom. Tessa, one of my hsisters, did my hair. She first cut it and then she put it ready for prom. It was really pretty!! Thank you Tessa!! My prom was at the Science and Industy museum downtown Chicago. I really want to go back to that museum to see everything better! A lot of times when I saw someone I knew I lost the people I was with. So I was with a lot of people at prom. Here are some pictures of my prom here! This dance was a lot bigger and really different than the one in the Netherlands. It was nice to experience this!

In exactly a month I will be (almost) home and I can’t believe that. I don’t want to leave all these here people behind. I wish I could clone myself and stay at both places. But unfortunately that’s not possible. I’m so happy I could be here this year and I know I still have a month left!! And I will have a great time this month!!!!!! One of my friends from the Netherlands will come visit me here. So I will show her around in Chicago! 🙂

Some exciting news in my hostfamily is that my hbrother Noah got a puppy yesterday. His puppy named Strider is so cute!!! Hannah and I ran to his house yesterday to see Strider. This was 5 miles (8km), so we did our workout. Tomorrow Jed, anther hostbrother who lives at the same house will get a puppy. So our dog Ponce will get a new friend. I hope he will like it. I’m not 100% sure what the name of that puppy is. But I will post it on facebook and in the next blog! 🙂

Monica, one of the other exchange students in my area team made a video about being an exchange student. It is 37 minutes long but it is really nice! So if you bored you should definitely check it out!! I’m in the first shot with Alexia and Éviny!

I think this is it for my blog this time. I don’t have much more news. I am going to enjoy my time here!! Byeee

Heeyyy Everybody!!!!!

It is time for a new blog again!! I didn’t have time to do it last weeks so prepare on a (really) long blog!!

My last blog I wrote was when I just came home from my amazing trip in Hawaii! That week I was tired a lot. But after my day off I felt a lot better. That Saturday (April 10^th) I had my home track meet. Because this was the only meet at our own school it was our ‘Senior Night’. This means that the Seniors get recognized. I am a junior at my school but they still recognized me to! I got a really nice banner here which says: Willowbrook Warriors, Track & Field 2014-2015. It also has my name on it and I am really happy that I got this!! It is so nice!!

Hannah, Brandon and Ethan came to the meet to cheer me on (and to see me having a hard time in the 4*400 meters). When the meet was over we all went to my house and went kayaking in the creek, which is behind my house. We wanted to go all the way to Graue Mill, but this was a lot farther than expected so we ended earlier. My hdad picked us up. I got a sunburn this day, which was kinda surprising. I got a sunburn in Illinois, and not in Hawaii. I guess it was because I wasn’t paying attention to put sunscreen on..

On Sunday I went downtown with Arina (Russia) and Ayna (Kazakhstan). Arina needed to buy new stuff so we went shopping. All I bought that day was a pair of socks, sharpies (so people can write on my flag), food and a kind of toy thing that was for sale and I wanted to know what it was. It was kinda stupid. But we had fun with it! 😉 After we got everything we went to a Russian Tea house that is downtown Chicago. Here they told me stuff about the Russian culture, which was interesting. After we were done we had to run to catch the train. We didn’t have a lot of time but we were in time for the train.

Ana texted me that day if I wanted to come to a concert with her. I asked my hparents and they said I could go. So the next day I went with Ana to the concert of Sixx AM. It was a lot of fun. After school I didn’t go to track practice. I went home to get my stuff and then I went to the train to Chicago. I met up with Ana at Ogilvie, from here we went with the L (which is the train from the movie Divergent) to the place the concert would be. Two other persons of Ana her school were there too. It was a lot of fun!! Just before the concert we were talking about Disney princesses also with other people who were there. It was kinda bad, because this was rock music and those things are 2 totally different things haha. First they had a band called Vamps, I didn’t really like their music and it was really loud. After the Vamps there was a band called Apocaliptica, they were pretty good. They had some songs I really liked. Sixx Am came finally after a long time waiting. Their music was pretty good! During this concert they almost send me out. Just because I was making pictures… No one told me that you couldn’t make pictures. Not even when we came in where they checked my camera.. But when they told me that I really had to put my camera away or they would send me out I put my camera away. I didn’t get a lot of good pictures, just a few. The concert took longer than we expected so I couldn’t get in time back to the train. So after the concert ended the mother of one of the persons of Ana her school drove me to Woodfield mall where Jed picked me up. It got home really late and I had to get up early for school Tuesday. Luckily I survived the day at school! J

That week my hip started to hurt. I don’t know why because I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t run my practices. I still had to run my meet that Saturday in the relay. At the 4×100 we got a false start and because of this we got disqualified. I did run the 4×200 too. But my hip hurt after.. The day of this meet was really rainy. Luckily the school we were at opened the doors so we could sit nice and warm in the cafeteria. In the evening we had an award night with Glen Ellyn speedskating, my skating team here. It was a lot of fun! I won the team spirit award and the zambunni, this is like a bunny that you can win for the fastest flying lap. The zambunni has to go back next year. So Hannah will take care of it when I leave . They had a lot of other awards. My hostsister Hannah won an award too! I’m not sure exactly what she won. It was a lot of fun to see most of the skating team again! I didn’t see them in a while.

On Sunday April 26^th I had my pre-return orientation. This was kinda sad because it was the last time we were together with the whole group and we only had like 2 months left (less than 2 months now…). It was nice to see everyone but the orientation itself was kinda boring. We talked about things we still want to do here and about some basic things they tell with every orientation. I was invited that day to go to six flags. I’m sad that I couldn’t go there because of the orientation. I hope I can go there later before I leave. I started to let people sign my Illinios flag, there are already a lot of people who signed it. A lot of exchange students, my track team and my family. I still have a lot more people who have to sign it. I hope it will fit.. Not sure if it will because there is not much space left……

That Friday I had a track meet which was varsity only. Here I ran the 4×100 and the 4×200. These are relays. We got 5^th at the 4×200 and we won our heat in the 4×100. So that is really good! J After the meet we went with the team to Wendy’s were we did awards. I got a nice medal for our 5^th place.

That Saturday morning I went shopping with Hannah. I bought new running shoes for NL, compression socks, running shorts and some shirts. I’m already thinking how I can get everything home.. and I’m still buying stuff haha.

That evening I went with some other exchange students to the Blacklight run in Joliet. My hparents brought Diane, Eviny and me to the run. Here we signed in and we got our shirt. We first wanted to wait for a while until we found the other exchange students before we would go and buy paint. It took a while until they found us. So when we were finally with them and we wanted to get some paint they were sold out. Diane found some paint on the ground somewhere so we used that. A little later I found some paint tubes which were thrown away with a lot of paint left in the trashcan. So then we were all getting pain out of the trashcan haha. We probably looked really stupid. But we got our paint for free hahahaha. After putting all paint on ourselves and some pictures we started looking for some other exchange students we didn’t found yet. We were with Eviny, Ana, Alexia, Manuela, Matheus, Talles (Brazil), Diane (Switzerland), Monica (Portugal), Arami (Paraguay), Rosa (Finland), Gam (Thailand), Naya (Indonesia). It was a lot of fun!! Some started out running, but because I wasn’t able to run with my hip I had to yell. Someone stayed with me than and someone else ran to the group to get them back. We just walked the whole run. Haha It was a lot of fun and with some people I talked a lot with some. From our plans what we still want to do here to and what we are going to do when we get back and we made plans to visit each other. We also were singing and dancing, people thought we were crazy! Maybe we are, but we are fun crazy! I can’t believe all those amazing people won’t live close anymore next year.. They will live at the other side of the world.. At the end of the run we were full with powder, we also got powder after the finish. So we even got more ;). I didn’t open my bag with powder. My hparents were already there to pick Diane and me up. So we just said goodbye to all the others and we went home. Hope I will see everyone before I leave again! Will miss them so much!!!! Really love them!

On Sunday we ate breakfast with the whole family, in the noon I had to fill out papers for studies I signed up for. Earlier that week I had to sign up for the studies. In the evening I went to my liaison from AFS, here I ate dinner and I showed some pictures of trips I made. My liaison checks if everything is going good with me. Everything is amazing! I don’t have any problems here!! Only that I have way to many stuff to bring back. Most exchange students have this problem I think.

This past week I had a pasta dinner with my track team and conference. This was a lot of fun!! Conference was my last track meet. I had to hand in my track uniform after… My team is still training for sectionals and maybe state and I will stay training with them. The coach will probably take me to sectionals to see how it is. I’m not allowed to run there because I finished my school back home.. So that’s kinda stupid…

We also had a skunk problem the last weeks. There was a skunk right in front of our door. We knew there was an animal. It was my job to catch it. So I set the trap up and put a camera in Hannah’s room so I could see when I catch it. The skunk was really smart and walked all the way around the trap but didn’t go in. Because of my camera we knew it was a skunk. Like a week later I came home from school and then the skunk was in the trap. It was a lot of work to get the trap away. Unfortunately we weren’t carefull enough and the skunk sprayed… It was luckily on a blanket and not on us. Then Jed, Hannah and I brought the skunk away. I let the skunk out, that was the closest I’ve ever been to a skunk haha. Here a video letting me the skunk out, it smelled a lot so that’s why I had the hood on my nose haha:

I’m still planning on going to a drive-in cinema, to go to starved rock, science and industy museum, art institute, hancock building, six flags and more! I will also go for a week with my hfam to their lakehouse in Hayward, Wisconsin. So as you see I have a lot of things I still want to do. And time flies. So I hope I will be able to do all of it!! I will have a great time my last 1,5 month here!!

I’m going to have some fun now!! Hope you enjoyed reading!! Byeeeee!!