PROM

The most exciting thing within the last two weeks was certainly prom night.

In the pas two weeks I had another few Track meets and ran PR's in the 800m and 1600m.

One of the meets was at East Noble high school where I know some other exchange students and it was real nice to see them again after quite a while. Two of them where there so we had a little "exchange student meet" since there were 5 of us there in total.

That day I also ran a PR for the mile with 5:15 minutes. Later in the evening I talked to my coach and told him that we have a problem now since my season goal was getting into the lower 5minutes for the mile and I already achieved that. He just replied real dry and laughing: "Well we will break 5minutes then." and now I have a new season goal...

The meet on Saturday was in Muncie where I know another exchange student from France. We met in fall in a camp and haven't seen each other ever since so it was real nice to catch up with her on basically the whole school year.

Right across the street from the high school is also this fantastic bakery and everybody got some donuts after the meet. Maybe I went a little crazy and ate too many over the day but they were definitely delicious.

During this past week we had a lot to talk about prom that was coming up and besides that we ran another two track meets. One of them actually yesterday on prom day.

The first one went somewhat well for me and I could run a PR in the 4x800 relay and had a split time of 2:17 minutes which is a whole 12 seconds faster than my old time. I am still not really happy with it though.

Yesterdays track meet was wet. It was raining most of the time and just nasty. Since I was only an alternate runner and nobody was hurt I did not need to race so I wasn't freezing.

The meet got done around 3pm and prom started at 9pm so there was some time for a nap since it was going to become a long night.

Then I had to get ready since I met up with others to take pictures and then go out to eat. 

We had such a good time eating dinner and the waitress was the same one we head 2 weeks ago after the track meet so we had many laughs and she convinced her coworkers, which we talked to a little earlier, that she was psychic abilities since she knew we were exchange students from Europe.

Then it was time to go to the actual dance. The music was deafening loud but it was a lot of fun talking to so many people I know and just having a great time.

ready :) (I will add some more pictures as soon as I get them)

The highlight was definitely the cookies though! And meeting one of the wrestlers that already graduated last year : ) And talking to everybody. All in all it was great.

After the dance we went home to chance into super casual clothes to go to the post prom at 1am.

Post prom was fun as well! First we ate some pizza, donuts and cookies and and drank coffee to keep awake and then we started having fun. There were a whole bunch of activities. At one station we got drunk goggles and had to drive around cones on a three wheel bike. I didn't hit a single cone and even started racing against other dudes that cleared all of them. If that's a good sign I am not sure but it was fun.

We also raced on a blow up parcour course and had drag races with a bungee cord attached. The bungee cord thing was fun and after I played it against a friend and happened to tie the best score of the evening as well I had to use the bounciness of the mat and did a front flip on the way back as requested by the other exchange student :D

The night flew by real quick and all the sudden it was 4am and time to go home.

It was a super great night and then I slept until 12:30pm today.

Today was a really relaxed day and I just did my laundry, talked to my family and ate :)

Trackmeets

This week was only a 4 school day week, which was quite nice. We had Friday off since it was good Friday.

The week was rather uneventful except for the two track meets I was able to attend.

On Tuesday we had a dual meet in Huntington itself. It was my very first track meet so I was as excited as nervous about it.

All in all I can say it went somewhat well for me and I'm glad that I know now how those things work.

Participating in 4 events, so I had quite a lot going on. 

Before my first race I already got two long jumps in. Then I was running in a 4x800m race. My 800m took me 2:29 so I was really unhappy about that. But at least there is room for improvement.

Then I took another two jumps into the sand and ended up having as my longest jump 16feet 9inches. I guess considering the amount of preparation I had for this event, almost none, that is acceptable but it did not make me happy.

Then the only good race for me for the day came. It was the 400m race.

Starting in the JV section I was able to win the race with a time of 59.2s therefore achieving my goal of breaking the 60s mark.

Followed by a longer waiting period, during which all of us were freezing, I participated in the 4x400m.

I ran a 62s split leaving me really unhappy with my own finish of the race. But I knew all I can change is doing better next time so I just went with it.

Here are two pictures taken during my first race, the 4x800m 

After this meet I was really tired and sore for the next few days, which made practice the following days not so much fun.

On Saturday I was able to run in another race. We went to Fort Wayne to North Side High School.

It was a bigger meet and there were around 16 teams there.

I only ran one race, the 400m in the DMR, which is a race split up into a 1200m, 400m 800m and 1600m ran by a group of 4 runners.

It was a really long day since we drove a total of almost 2 hours, stayed there for about 6h and all I did was warming up and cooling down for a total of 30minutes, stretching for 15minutes and actually racing for only 57.6 seconds. This time isn't official, since it's only a split but for me it is setting my PR over the 400m two times in one week which made me quite happy.

Today, Sunday we went to church in the morning and then had lunch.

We ate in McAllisters and I got a sandwich with "swiss cheese" and beef. I am pretty sure the "swiss cheese" is actually Emmentaler by the taste but I always have to laugh when I think about how many cheeses are swiss and what is considered a general swiss cheese here in the US. The Sandwich was followed by one of the biggest cookies I ever had which was great :)

And this concludes my week.

I hope everybody had a happy easter and a wonderful time

Springbreak 2k17

Springbreak didn’t even start right away. During the winter we had some off days because of snow, cold or fog (I’m still amazed that something like this happens) so we had to make up 3 school days.

Nothing special happened and I just went to school Monday through Wednesday and Thursday we were supposed to have a Track meet. I was really looking forward to this since it would have been the first meet I could run. But Indiana weather decided that it wasn’t a good day for a meet and let it rain and we had thunderstorms as well as reported tornado touchdowns all over the mid-west, not in Huntington though.

Friday we went to buy a „toy“. So I got to go to a gunshop for the first time since I have been here. Well not the first time actually, but the one I was in in Nashville didn’t have any guns in it.

Im still amazed by what can be bought just over the counter and we had a good laught when we saw the target throwing machines having a ruber tube around to mark the radius where a person could get hit in the leg.

Then the weekend flew by and we had spent some time in Fort Wayne too.

On Monday we did some work on the bookshelf for the downstairs and it’s crazy how many types of different little tools can be handy for such a thing. I enjoyed building somethign with my hands again since I haven’t really done that in quite a while.

Tuesday was a good day too. Dad and I went to Chicago. We spent about 5 hours in the Field Museum which was really impressive and had a great amount of different exhibitions and pieces in those. I really enjoyed the ones about the dinosours, the meteorites and the different tribes of central and south america.

After our museum visit we took a walk into downtown and paid „the Bean“ a little visit and spent some time outside in the sun before we had to get on our way back to beat the rush hour traffic.

On our way back I got dropped off in Plymouth where I stayed until Friday.

I’m glad that I could spend some time there. I always enjoy being with other exchange students. We talked an awful lot about our exchange which is coming to an end and what we experienced and learned. We also went to the movies and saw Kong. All in all we thought it’s a good movie and it has real pretty sunset pictures J

We also went running in the rain and wind.

After coming home on Friday I went to Fort Wayne again with my liaison and after lunch we had some fantastic ice cream.

And then the weekend came again. This weekend we went to Cincinnati. We went there for a surprise birthday party for my mum but she didn’t know about it until all the children and her siblings welcomed her. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet her siblings for the first time as well as see all my hostsiblings again, which is really nice since I only saw the ones living a little further away once so far.

We spent the night in a Hotel and today we went back to my hostbrothers house for breakfast before we went to downtown Cincinnati where we walked around in the beautiful weather and warm sunshine, had a good lunch and fantastic ice cream after and then it was time already to say goodbye and head home which means a 3 hour drive. And just like that springbreak was over and I will be going back to school tomorrow.

The only picture I took in Cincinnati...

My host brother picked me up at the Fort Wayne Airport since my parents went on a cruise for the week so I stayed the week with him.

As we got back I had a bunch of laundry to do and grab my school stuff for the week.
Before we went to dinner at his wife's parents house we had to grab some things from the hardware store to finish up a sign he made for a customer. As we were in the hardware store we found out that I should try cream soda, which actually is really good. Then we went to the dinner and it was Italian lasagne and a orange cake and was really good. We had a good evening and then went home and to bed.
During the whole week I was working on my Hawaii blog every evening for a little bit.
I went to school too and the days just passed by with some movies in the evening. We also did some work on his trailer tiny house which will serve as his workshop.
I had fun building and learning to do new things. We had to do some plumbing work in his house so I learned about that too. All in all it was quite a busy week and in practice we ran about 23miles during the week.
One night I also got a special gift in form of a little drone! We tested it outside and lost connection really quickly. In addition it was windy so it flew through the whole neighborhood with us running behind it before it landed under a tree.
It was a really funny evening though and we had a good laugh; after we got the drone back.
Also I got to see the old bank building as well as the old train station. The bank was really cool since I could walk into those old huge safes with the huge doors and could see the bolds and all mechanisms.
On Saturday and Sunday we built the roof and sealed the tiny house and put some windows in.
Sunday we once again went to Fort Wayne for dinner and it was really good again.
All in all I would say I had a good week and it certainly was a little change from the usual day.