A week in my American life

After writing a blogpost about A day in my American life, I thought it would be fun to write about a typical week here as well! I won't tell much about specific classes but I'll mostly tell the activities I did after school. I'm not going to start on Monday but on Friday, since I want to write about my weekend as well. My week was filled with a retreat, exchange student meeting, lacrosse practice, birthday and much more! Hope you enjoy reading. :)

Everyone that was at the retreat!

Friday November 13, 2015 & Saturday November 14, 2015
After I long and tiring day at school I packed my bags to go on a retreat from my church (really last minute, as always). A retreat basically means: taking a break from your normal and busy life, to get away from it all for a while. It's comparable to a camp. The place where we went to is called 'Woodlands Camp' in the state of Georgia. It was little over a 2 hour drive. Because there were 500 teenagers going on the retreat, we needed 9 buses! We left at 6 and arrived in the evening. Even though we were really tired, we couldn't go to sleep yet. On both Friday and Saturday our whole days were planned with activities and games! We also talked in smaller groups about all the things we learned. Of course there was a lot of good food, millions of pictures, a lack of sleep and tons of new friends. It was an awesome weekend!

My awesome small group!

Sunday November 15, 2015
In the early afternoon we headed back to Greenville. In the bus back home I was forced to sing the Dutch national anthem aloud during a game of truth or dare. ;) I was kinda sad that it was over but also really tired. I didn't have any time at home because in the evening the IEC's in the Greenville area held an exchange student meeting, and of course I wanted to go there! I was there with three other exchange students from Germany and Denmark, and three IEC's. We all baked Danish cookies together, talked, ate lots of weird food and roasted marshmallows above a fire! It was a lot of fun and nice to see the other exchange students again :)

The exchange students in Greenville

Some of the Danish cookies we baked. EF is awesome!

When I got back home I found a package in my room. My friends from the Netherlands send that to me all together. It was really sweet and I'm so thankful for them! They all wrote postcards, sent typical Dutch candy and even a CD with 'Sinterklaas' songs (if you're Dutch you know what this is)! I loved it.

The package my friends sent - thanks girls!

Monday November 16, 2015
This day I just went to school. It was a tough day since I was still tired and I had two tests. My Astronomy test was about Jupiter and my English test about Transcendentalism. Yes, American schools are not only fun! After school I Skyped with my family. I try to Skype with them once a week, and so far that's going pretty good. First I talked with my mom for a while, and after that I talked with my grandmother. I love talking to them and hearing how everything's going, because I want to keep up with all that's happening! It's still weird for me to be so far away from them.

Skyping with my parents a while ago.

Tuesday November 17, 2015
After school I had Lacrosse practice. Right now we're conditioning, which is pretty hard. It basically consists of a lot of running and mental toughness! Not really my thing, haha. This practice we worked on our fastness. So we did lots of sprints and drills.
Lacrosse ended at 6 and I was back at school at 7, to watch the play. Each year my school has a fall play and a spring play. Because a lot of people I know were in the play, me and my friend Abby went to school to watch it. The name of the play was 'Ax of Murder' and was a combination between a funny and scary play. It was really professional and a lot of people came to watch. The spring play this year is going to be 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and I'm definitely planning on auditioning for that!

Wednesday November 18, 2015
In the evening I went Swing Dancing for the first time! It's something typically American, and a lot of people at my school do it. I'm not good at dancing, but this was awesome to do. Swing dancing is dance with a partner with a lot of lifting and spinning around. Just type it in on Youtube and you'll find lots of videos. The good thing is that as a girl you don't really have to do anything, the guy is the one who 'leads' the dance. It was such a fun experience so I'll definitely do it again :)

A friend grabbed my phone and started to take pictures - on the second one I'm trying to get it back! By the way, the blue thing I'm wearing is my school ID. We have to wear those every day here.

Thursday November 19, 2015
I don't really have anything special to tell about this day! It was normal day with school and practice afterwards.

Friday November 20, 2015
This was the 16th birthday of my host sister Kendall! When it's someone's birthday here they can choose a place to have dinner that night. We went to a Japanese restaurant where the cooks were making your food right in front of you. Afterwards we gave her presents and ate birthday cake (or actually, birthday ice cream in this case). Of course we also sang some birthday songs. It was a fun night!

So, that was a typical week in my American life! I absolutely love it here, even though there's not something special happening every day. It's just the experience and little things I really like. Hopefully you liked reading it and if you have any blog post suggestions, let me know!