50 days in America

Hello there! ⍟

50 days have now passed since my arrival.

It sounds unbelievable. 50 days, that's almost two months. It already feels like half a year, but I am certainly used to everything now. School became a daily routine, I've been to my first football game (the spirit is amazing) and the best thing is probably going riding with my Counselor Deb. She and her horses are so lovely. Also, I've seen Bill & Hillary Clinton at the Harkin Steak Fry!
Another thing is that I started babysitting. A friend of Deb has a ten year old son and last Friday I went babysitting him for the first time. It was really nice, because my host parents only have kids who are 26 and I told Deb that I missed the family environment with more kids. She then contacted a few friends of her with kids and who knows, maybe one of them will host me in the following trimesters.

I've been in the newspaper.

Oh my goodness and the picture is terrible. They featured all of us exchange students and they wrote my last name wrong! But still it's kinda cool! Look at it: 

Rotary Meetings.

Another nice thing that happened the last few weekends was meeting the other Rotary exchange students at the Rotary Meetings. There are 15 of us in the District 6000 (South-East Iowa), from all over the world. Ecuador, France, Chile, Austria, Spain, Croatia, Brasil, Paraguay, Italy, Belgium and Germany. It's always nice to meet other exchange students because you go through the same things, you always have something to talk about, and it's interesting every time because everyone comes from a different part of the world. And Rotary has this great tradition of exchanging buttons and pins to put them on your Rotary Blazer too so that was a fun thing to do. At the end of the year it should be completely full with buttons and pins from all over the world.

Shopping Day with Eleonora.

So on Saturday I went to the mall with Eleonora (one of the exchange students at City High, she's from Italy) and it was such an awesome day that I just had to mention it here. We had so much fun! There were huge sales going on at the mall and we got Abercrombie & Fitch sweaters for unbelievable prices! Perfect for the coming fall, or how I would call it, the sweater season! 

I'm just really glad to have found such a nice friend here, and not only her, the other exchange students Vicky (from Bulgaria) and Malin (from Norway) are people that I definitely call close friends now. On September 15^th it was Vicky's birthday and me and Malin decorated her locker with cute birthday stuff and got her cupcakes, an awesome card and a book because she just adores books. Later that evening I went out for dinner with Vicky's family and they're such a nice big and energetic family!

Of course I talk with American people during classes too and they're all nice but I just can't call anyone of them a really good friend. Maybe that will come later, but for now I'm just happy with the other exchange students.

Yep, this is basically what's happening here, and this week it's homecoming week!!! Look forward to a blogpost about that!

Stay tuned!

Bye ⍟