Spirit Week

Last week was a really important week for Eastside High School, because it was Spirit Week! For the ones who don't know what this is: it's a week where the school raises money for a good cause. All week there are a lot of activities and things to buy. Every day has a different theme in which the students have to dress up. The week ends with a big football game and the reveal of the amount of money raised. It was my first and last Spirit Week ever, and I loved it! It's awesome to see how much the students are involved in organizing events and supporting the school. Of course I participated in some events myself! This blogpost will be all about that.

The Junior Girls team during Powderpuff, together with the boys who coached us. 

What I've been up to

Hi everyone! Here's an update with some things I did lately. My life here in the USA is starting to feel more and more 'normal'. It's been 47 days since I left the Netherlands, and everything doesn't feel new anymore. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy it though! I'm still happy with my choice and I love living in the United States :)

With the other exchange students

A week ago, my exchange organization EF organized a picnic for all the exchange students in the region. The picnic was at the Greenville Zoo which is pretty close to my house. In Greenville itself are 3 exchange students with EF. Many of the other exchange students came from the states Georgia, North Carolina and some came from other places in South Carolina. I'd met a few of them already, but it was great to meet the other ones as well! Every family had taken something to eat with them. Together with the exchange students and an IEC we talked about our first weeks here, adapting to a new school and homesickness. I feel like the beginning of an exchange year is the hardest, because you don't know anyone yet. You have to make friends and adapt to a new life. During my year, there will be more activities with our 'exchange group', so that will be nice!

Exchange student tag

Hi there! Today I decided to fill in the exchange student tag, which I found on another blog. It contains a lot of random questions about my exchange year. Hopefully you'll like reading it! 

1. What is your name, age, nationality and company?
My name is Sarah, I'm 17 years old, I'm from the Netherlands and I'm traveling with EF!

2. Where are you spending your exchange year?
I'm living in Greenville, South Carolina.

Our student section during the football game last friday!

3. Why did you decide to be an exchange student?
I really wanted to go to the USA, but not as a tourist! Of course I want to visit nice places, but I'm more interested in experiencing the culture. The only way to really experience a culture is to live in a local family and to do what other American teenagers do. I also want to speak English fluently, because that will help me a lot in the future. And I want to find out what I want to do after high school, because right now I have no idea. But the most important thing is that I want to have an experience I'll never forget! If you want to read more, I wrote a blog post about the same question a few months ago.

My first month

Hi there! I know it's been a while since I've updated my blog, but I have a good reason for that: I've just been too busy to sit down and write a long blog post. The main reason for that is school, because all the new experiences (and the amount of homework!) are really tiring. In this post I want to tell you about what's going on in my life and what kind of things I did lately!

I'm starting to get used to going to school here, and I still like my subjects a lot. It gets easier to understand everything that's been said and I've met some nice new people! A hard thing about the American school system is that I have the same classes every day. So I can't procrastinate anymore, because homework is mostly due the next day. And we get a grade for all the homework we do! In this way I'm forced to make it.

Football game!