First day of school

Eastside high school!

Yesterday my first day of American high school finally started! I was really nervous about it before, but there was no need to be nervous. School here is a lot of fun and I love all my classes! In this post I want to tell you how my first day has been.

I don't have to take the school bus, because my host sister can drive me to school. It's only a short drive. In my opinion the school starts very late: at 8:45! It's great though because in that way I can sleep longer, haha. When we walked into the school I immediately felt like I was in a movie, which was really fun to experience. It wasn't really hard for me to find my classes during the day, because I already had a tour through the school. I only got late one time so that's a great accomplishment for me!

Biggest differences so far

I thought it would be fun to tell you something about the biggest differences between the USA and the Netherlands I've seen so far. Even though I've only been here for 10 days, I can tell that there are many!

1. The food

I love the food here! I've tried many things so far: Reese's, twinkies, Chick-fil-A, hamburgers (of course), Chipotle and El Jimador (both Mexican restaurants), bagels, frozen custard, P.F. Chang's (Asian food), cream soda... My two favorites were Reese's (peanut butter cups) and Chick-fil-A! In general, the food is not as healthy as in the Netherlands because there are many fast food restaurants. The dishes are also bigger. Another difference is that they take leftovers of the food in restaurants with them, so they can eat it another time. I think that's a good thing because the food doesn't go to waste.

Arriving in South Carolina

In my last post I talked to you about the Welcome Days, and in this post I want to tell you what happened after that! Together with a girl from Denmark I flew to Atlanta, Georgia. There we had to change planes to fly to Greenville, South Carolina. Both flights went okay and in the flight to Greenville we were booked in First class! It was the first time flying First class for me and I really enjoyed it. During the flight we were nervous but also excited to meet our host families. When we got out of the plane we walked around a corner and there were our host families already!

My host family and their welcome signs

The Welcome Days

I've been with my host family for two days now and I just love it here! I'll write a post about arriving at my host family later. In this post I want to tell you something about the Welcome Days.

Last picture with my family!

On Wednesday August 5 my exchange year finally started! I drove together with my parents and sister to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. There I had to check in to my flight and shortly after that it was already time to say goodbye to my family. I found it really hard to say goodbye and the hardest thing was to walk away from them knowing I won't be seeing them for a long time. That was also the moment I realized that I was really starting my exchange year.

EF Student Video Crew

I have some really exciting news to share with you: I am going to be a part of the EF Student Video Crew!
A few weeks ago I saw an announcement on the Facebook page of EF exchange year. This is what it said:

We are looking for students from the Class of ’16 to join our EF Student Video Crew!

As a member of the EF Student Video Crew, you will film your experiences before and during your exchange year and submit your unedited footage to EF for editing by professional videographers. We will create short videos each month to share online, and at the end of the year we will create a longer Exchange Story Documentary.

My first time in the USA

As I've told on my blog before, I've already been to the USA once. When I was 12 I visited New York together with my grandparents. I've wanted to go to New York as long as I can remember and the city definitely didn't disappoint me! I'm so happy that the EF Welcome Days are also in New York so I can go to this beautiful city once again. The first group of exchange students has already left and my year is getting closer and closer, just 2 weeks left! :) Lately I was searching through some pictures and when I saw the ones from NY I decided to share some on my blog.

I've got the best grandparents ever and I'm still so thankful that they made it possible to go to New York! 

Getting closer

Since my summer holiday started I've been spending time with family and friends, and preparing for my exchange year. I've had (another) goodbye party, but this time for the 'adults': my family and friends of the family. It was great even though it was really hot that day. I still can't believe I won't be seeing some of them for a long time. Luckily there's Skype and social media! :)







                                                                   






















My parents and sister gave me a photoshoot for my birthday on the 30th of may, and two weeks ago we planned the photoshoot! It was a really nice thing to do and it's great to have some good pictures together with my family. I won't be able to take pictures with them for almost a year and they are the people I'm going to miss the most. They will probably visit me in the USA in the second half of the school year, but that's still a long time without them! Luckily my host family is really nice so I hope I won't get homesick often.

Goodbye Party

Two days ago I organized a goodbye party for my friends. It is really weird to realize that I won't be seeing a few of them for 11 months. Even though I can't wait for my year to start, I have mixed feelings because I will miss them a lot! We had a really nice evening with hot and sunny weather (finally it's summer in the Netherlands!), there was a lot of American food and I got many nice presents. We made many pictures and I'm going to show a few of them in this blogpost! 

With Eva and Amber

Greenville

Within two months I'll be living in a typical American suburb of Greenville in South Carolina, which is called Taylors. I've been walking through it in street view and it looks so nice and American. In this post I want to tell you something about Greenville!

Update

Because I haven't written on my blog for a while I wanted to give you a little update of what's going on. I've been quite busy with school lately, and it's not finished yet because my final test week is coming up. After that I only have to review my tests and hand in my school books though, so that's a little bit vacation already. And then my school gets out at the 3rd of July and my holiday is finally starting! I'll tell something about an EF meeting, my visa and skyping with my host family!