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!!

 

Aloooha!!

Believe it or not, but I’ve been in Hawaii for a week! It was one of the best weeks in my life! I met a lot of new amazing people and we did a lot of things. When I found out I could do a trip with Belo travel I was really excited. AFS allows their exchange students to do a trip with this organization. I could choose between a couple of different destinations, I chose for Hawaii.

 

 

Saturday March 28^th I finally left to Hawaii, where I would stay at the island O’ahu. First I flew to Dallas together with Diane (Switzerland), Ivanka (Chile) and Ilka (Belgium). From here we said a quick goodbye to Ilka who would fly with another flight to Honolulu. Diana, Ivanka and I got some food and we went to our gate where we met Ruth (Norway) and Celina (Germany). We flew together with them to Honolulu, Hawaii. The flight from Dallas to Honolulu was about 8 hours. Diane was sitting in front of me and Ivanka was in front of her. We all had a window seat. Arrived in Honolulu we found out that Benji (Norway) was in our plane too. We went all together to the baggage pick up and got our bags. After this we all walked to baggage pick up H where we had to meet up. Here someone from Belo was waiting together with some others who did the trip. We all walked together to the bus. Here we had to wait for a while before we left to our hotel. When we arrived there we had to choose a color group (I was in Orange) and we had to fill out some papers. Then we got our roomkey. I was together on the room with Patricia (Switzerland), Tomasine (Norway) and Tina (Argentina). At 9pm we had a quick orientation where Belo explained some things about the rules, what we would do and that sunscreen was really important here. That night I didn’t sleep really good. I think it was because of a jetlag.

 

 

 

The next morning we had to leave at 8am. We walked with the whole group (99 people from all around the world) to Waikiki beach. Here my group (Orange) started with some free time. I went into the ocean and got a subway sandwich for lunch. At 11am we started with a catamaran tour. Here we had an amazing sight on Honolulu and the Diamond head. From the boat we saw a sea turtle and dolphins. Our group was the only group who saw this.

 

 

 

When we came back at the beach I went together with Ellie (Switzerland) and Paul (Austria) to a man who had parrots where you could take pictures with. These pictures where really cool! It took longer than we expected so after we took all the pictures we had to run back to our group to go to our surf lesson. It was a lot of fun to try this. We had to paddle every time back and an instructor helped us to get enough speed. I think I did pretty good. I stood the first time and only fell 1 or 2 times. After surfing we had some free time again. I went to Denny’s together with Patricia, Ellie, Bas (Thailand) and JJ (Thailand) to Denny’s to get some food and a refill for my water bottle. At night we went into Waikiki again with the whole group, we went to a pizza  place to eat. After dinner we had free time in Waikiki. We saw a show of street artists and went to a super cute market where you could buy all small souvenirs. At night we had a meeting again where we got information about the next day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday morning we left from our hotel at 9am. We went first to a kind of Pineapple garden. Here I got a change to crack open an oyster to get a pearl. My pearl was black, which means wisdom. At that place they also had the best pineapple whip. This was really good, normally I don’t really like pineapple. But the pineapple at Hawaii tasted different I think, it was sweeter. After we went there we went to North Shore. They have the biggest waves here and people from all around the world come there for surfing. We went to the town there to eat some lunch. I ate together with Ellie, Patricia, Bas, JJ, Ploi (Thailand) and Baitong (Thailand) at Kua’aina, this is a Hawaiian burger place. I also bought a surfing shirt in North Shore. After lunch at North Shore we drove further and we drove by a lot of beaches where our amazing busdriver Rwanda explained things. We stopped at Sunset beach. Here we could make some pictures. It was a really pretty beach. We just stayed there for like 30 minutes. After that we went to the Polynesian culture center.

 

 

 

 

We started at the Polynesian culture center with a Hula dance lesson. It was fun to do. No one could remember the dance. So when we had to do it alone we just started laughing because we didn’t know how the dance would go further. After that we split up in 3 groups to do another activity. I couldn’t find the group I wanted so I went with another group. Here we didn’t stay that long. I just walked around with Ellie, JJ and Baitong. We first found a boat where we could do a quick ‘tour’ we did this. After that we walked around a little longer and we decided to go to a theater to see a 15 minutes movie about Hawaii. When it ended we had to meet up with our group again. At the place where we had to meet up was a show. Here a man showed us how to make fire, how to get coconut milk out of a coconut only with your hands and someone climbed in a palm tree. When the show ended we went to dinner. Here we could try out some Hawaiian foods. I got everything. It was a lot of food and I couldn’t finish it. We had some free time after dinner. In this time I met up with Jerica. She is a skater who lives in Hawaii and works at the Polynesian culture center. Brandon knew her and told her I would be there and that’s how I met up with her. In the evening we had a show there with all kinds of Polynesian dance styles. It was a lot of fun to see! I think I lost my camera bag here. But l luckily had my camera in my hands. It’s only the bag that’s gone. On our way back in the bus we watched the movie 51 first dates. This movie was recorded in the area we saw that day. That was pretty cool to know! 🙂

 

 

 

We had a beachday on Tuesday. We went with the whole group to Waimanalo beach. They say this is one of the nicest and cleanest beaches in Hawaii. On our way there we made two stops. The first one was at a place where you had an amazing sight. Here everyone made a lot of pictures and we also made a group picture. I think a fun fact from Hawaii is there are chickens walking around on a lot of places. These chickens blew away once with a storm and made the place where they landed their new home.

 

 

 

 

 

After we enjoyed our view for a while we went to a place where we could buy our lunches. We couldn’t buy food at the beach where we were going. Ellie and I bought together a normal bread and nutella, also some grapes, a pineapple (which we couldn’t open) and some animal cookies. We shared our food with others and we could get their food too at the beach. So we had a lot of food total. We knew it wouldn’t be possible to open a pineapple with a plastic knife. But we used our pineapple for some pictures. At the beach we went swimming, eating, playing football and volleyball and later Ellie and I made sand angels. It was a fun day at the beach. The waves in the ocean took me a few times down and one time was painful for my back. After that I didn’t go into the water anymore. But it was still a lot of fun and I don’t feel my back anymore! 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a long day at the beach we went back to our hotel. We stopped by a place where you can sometimes see whales on our way back. We saw a few times water going up into the air far away. It could’ve been a whale, but I’m not sure. At night we ate at the Hard Rock Café. Here I bought 2 shirts and that night in the city I went to the nice market again where I probably bought some more small souvenirs.

 

 

On Wednesday we broke our big group up in two groups. My group went hiking on Diamond Head and the other group went snorkeling. It was really pretty on Diamond head. From up there you had an amazing sight on Honolulu, the island and the ocean. Of course we made a lot of pictures up here. A lot of us took the flag (I brought mine too) and this was really nice for the pictures. After we were up there for a while we went down again to the bus. The bus dropped us off on Waikiki beach. Here I went stand-up paddling with my Belgium friends Marlies and Celine. This was one of the extra activities that we could do. We went on the ocean. This was harder than in Giethoorn on the lakes, where I did it before. I also had my camera in my hand so it was sometimes hard to balance. I fell twice of my board. During standup paddling we saw a sea turtle which was really close. That was so cool!! I wanted to make a video of it. But my camera decided to die just before we saw the turtle. Luckily Marlies was able to make a picture of the turtle. After standup paddling we walked to a soccerfield. Here we did a game. We arrived a little later, so I only played the second half. I think my team lost.. But it was still a lot of fun. In the evening we went to Ala Moana Mall. This is the largest open air shopping mall in Hawaii (maybe even in the world). I didn’t buy stuff here, I was kinda proud of myself! 🙂 Well didn’t buy stuff…. I bought some stuff at Bubba Gump, the place where we ate. But I didn’t buy that much there. 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday was a day to learn something about the history. We went to Pearl Harbor. This is a memorial center for the ships that sunk on December 7^th 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The USS Arizona ship is still there in the water. We could see this. This ship is also the resting place for people who died on the ship during the attack. There were so many names on the wall, it was sad.. There was also a survivor from the attack there, he will turn 98 in June. He was really nice and we took pictures with him. We also got a sign. I bought his book that he wrote himself with a sign. 🙂 Some survivors want to be buried with their mates from the ship when they die. So there will be special funerals there where they put the body into the ship, this is impressive I think. The attack killed a lot of people and changed a lot of lives. This was also the day that the US came into the World War II.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Pearl Harbor we did a city tour. We drove around on a cemetery which was I think to remember special people like a memorial. After that we went to the Capital building, this one had a different form than the normal capital buildings have. This one had like a volcano in it which stands for the volcanos that made the island. It also had like palm trees in it. Here the group made a picture of all the girls. Unfortunately I missed this picture because I had to go to the bathroom. I found out 10 minutes later that they made the picture.. 🙁 We walked further to the palace of the queen that Hawaii had a long time ago. We also went to the palace of king Kamehameha, the guys made here their guys picture and we made some more pictures here. This was our city tour.

 

 

When we came back in the hotel we had some free time. I went together with Bas, JJ, Ellie, Ploi and Baitong into Waikiki. We made pictures in a photo booth, it was a lot of fun but it was hard to fit all of us in the picture. We didn’t really fit all together in the photo booth. Then we went into some shops, we didn’t buy stuff but at one shop we started talking to the person who worked there. About being exchange students and doing this trip and about Hawaii. He (the person who worked there) also learned us some more sentences in Hawaiian. The pronunciation is pretty hard.. After our Hawaiian lessons we went further to a place where we could buy shaved ice. This is really popular in Hawaii, I had it once or twice before. Those times the taste was really sweet. The one I had now had really the taste of the strawberry and the mango. It was really good and so much better than the times I had it before! We also went again the super cute market, which I really loved. The people there really want to sell and were sometimes a little pushing until you bought something. All the souvenirs they had were nice. And luckily they didn’t do that with me. When we walked back to our hotel we saw a really nice sunset. I made an awesome picture here! In the evening we went eating at Mac 24-7, it was good food but I’ve had better that week. In the evening we had a beach party with the group. It was fun to go into the water at night and to see the City at night. Also to hang out with the people ofcourse! 🙂

 

 

 

Then it was Friday already. Time went so fast.. On Friday we had to get up early because I would go snorkeling!! 😀 We left the hotel at 7am to Hanauma bay to go snorkeling. This bay was really pretty! For snorkeling we had ‘buddies’, my buddy was Haya (Yemen). I took pictures and videos with my HD SJ4000 during snorkeling and I took pictures with an underwater camera that a friend from NL gave before I came to the US. I don’t know yet if those pictures  turned out. But I will see if it did soon I hope. Haya and I went once up the hill of the bay to get some food. There was like a car who drove people up and down. We got a daypass for it, that wasn’t that expensive. After we came down again there wasn’t much time left. We stayed a little longer and then we went up to go back to our bus. Snorkeling was really fun! We saw a lot of different kinds of fishes. Those fishes weren’t afraid, so you could swim really close to them. It was beautiful!! When we walked back to the bus I also made a really nice picture of a white heron where I’m really proud of! 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we came back at the hotel we walked a little towards the city. I bought Spam Musubi to try to eat, some friends back home (Illinois) said I had to try it, this was pretty good. I heard some people don’t like it at all. But I thought it wasn’t bad. We didn’t go that far into the city and not too long. Back at the hotel we could make a fresh flower necklace, like the ones where you think of when you think of Hawaii. On our last evening in Hawaii we went to a Luau on the West side of the island. With being here we’ve seen all sides of O’ahu. Here they had some Hawaiian activities to do. You could get a temporary tattoo (which was really easy to wash of) and I got like a ‘crown’ with flowers. Don’t know this quick a better way to explain that. From here you should be able to see the sunset really good, I thought I had seen better the night before. The sun wasn’t all the way on the ocean like it was the night before. At the Luau we also ate dinner, and during dinner we saw a hula show. We got a card which was $8 worth at the shops there, so during the show I went to the souvenir shop to get a souvenir. I got an Hawaiian license plate which says ‘ALOHA’. After the show we could make some pictures with the dancers and then we had to go back with the bus for our last night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a meeting when we came back at our hotel where we looked back on things we did and with information for the next day where we had to fly back. After that we had free time in a room. Here the most of us let others sign our trip shirt or flags. I also looked over some pictures during this night and I said goodbye to some people that I wouldn’t see anymore. It was sad to say goodbye. 🙁

 

On Saturday April 4^th we had to fly back to our host states again. I had to leave the hotel at 10.30, so in the morning I had time to say goodbye to other people.  I also sort some pictures to see which ones I would put on facebook. At 10.15 I had to go to the bus. Saying goodbye to the last people who were there and then we really had to leave. Arrived at the airport we had to check in, go through security and wait until our flight would leave. The security here was different than other airports. They took random people out of the line and checked their hands if there are no illegal chemicals on, I think that was the reason. They like went with a paper over your hands and then they put it in a machine which would check it. And with the scan you didn’t have to take of your shoes or put your laptop apart from your other stuff. Normally at airports they always say that you have to take your laptop out. But I had to put it back in my bag. Everything was good so we could go further to the gate. I flew my first flight to Los Angeles, California with Diane, Ivanka, Ilka, Suvi (Finland) and Hana (Slovenia). Diane made a sign with ‘Belo Travel USA’ when we were waiting in our gate in the hope someone who would arrive for the next week would see us and then we could meet them. Unfortunately no one came to us. Our flight was good and we arrived in time for our next flight. In LA we had to say goodbye to Hana and Ilka and we were with four of us left. Diane, Ivanka, Suvi and I went to a burger place to eat at 1am, it was really early but we needed to eat and this was one of the cheaper places. It was really expensive there…. After eating and waiting we finally could board to our plane. We had to say goodbye to Suvi who had to wait for a couple more hours..  In the plane they announced that the flight was delayed for at least 40 minutes. Luckily it was one of the best planes I’ve ever been in and I could watch a movie and charge my phone and laptop. The flight was good and I arrived around 8am in the morning at O’hare. I picked up my bag and said bye to Diane and Ivanka, who I will see for sure again because they live close to me.

 

 

 

 

My hdad and Hannah picked me up from O’hare. That day I just tried to stay awake. I went to church with the family and in the noon to my hgrandparents for an Easter dinner.  Monday I had to go to school again, I was really tired. Tuesday I felt horrible and sick and today (Wednesday) I stayed home because I’m still not feeling good. I hope I will feel better soon. I’ve had an amazing week looking back on this week. I’ve had a lot of fun and I met so many amazing people! I miss all of them and I miss Hawaii of course. If someone would offer me a ticket back right now I would go!! I hope I can meet up with a lot of people who were there later and I hope I will get back to Hawaii once. It is amazing there!!

Mahalo nui loa (thank you very much) for reading this blog! I hope you enjoyed it!!

Aloha from Illinois!! 🙂

For people who were on the trip:
Mahalo nui loa for being such amazing people!! I had an amazing week and I hope I will see you guys again in the future!!!! Love you!!
Right now I’m ‘homesick’ to Hawaii with you guys!
Mahalo again!!!!
Alohaa!! 🙂