X-mas and Las Vegas

I celebrated the American Christmas on Christmas day, like Americans do. We started with a good big breakfast with croissants, different fruits, bread, cheese, egg, bacon, champagne and coffee. Delicious!
After breakfast it was time to get ready - we dressed up nice and finished the food we were gonna bring to Celeste and Marcus (were we had our christmas dinner). Before going over there we went to the airport to pick up Renee (my hostsister). Christmas dinner was really good! There was a lot off food!! Appetizers, lasagna, three kinds of meat, salad, plenty of dessert and other stuff I don't remember. After dinner we went home and it was finally time to open all the presents! I got some clothes, money and then the Vegas trip from my hostparents ;)

Early in the morning the 26 we left Arizona to g Las Vegas! We planned to leave at 7 but left at 8:45...
It only takes 4 hours to Vegas so it was an easy ride. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts to get coffee and donuts, think it was the first time I stopped there - other american experience!
We got to Vegas around 1 PM and checked in at our hotel which was huge!! we spent the rest of the day walking around on "the strip" (the main road in Vegas). Soo cool! It felt like walking around the world. There was a Paris corner with a copy of the eiffel tower, french food etc. and then therewas an Italian corner with plenty of stores and stuff. The mall was built so it looked like Venice with water and gondolas. New York, China and lots of other places were represented as well. For Dinner we ate japanese. Sat at the same table as a american rapper that I didn't know haha, still cool.

After a long night up we woke up at almost noon. We had some lunch/breakfast at a small local restaurant (I had a waffel with syrup and butter) and then went to take picture in fron of the famous Welcome to Vegas sign.
Later we went to "the old Vegas". That was awesome! There were so many sparkling lights, bands playing music and crazy people everywhere! Vegas was like in the movies and I had an amazing time!!
I will post some pictures soon ;) and then the rest on facebook!
        

Christmas Eve

December 24!! For me it's Christmas but here most people celebrate Christmas day instead. My family celebrates both days, but the most important day is the 25th.
We are gonna have some swedish christmas food tonight so that my family gets to experience that. I think we're also going to open a few presents...
I have two host siblings who don't live here, one lives in California (Joe, 26 years) and the other one in Michigan (Renee, 21 years). Joe came home last Thursday and Renee is coming home tomorrow. It's fun to get to know them as well!

I'll tell you more about Christmas in America after tomorrow.
Friday night my family and I went to Glendale (town 20 min from here) to see all the christmas lights they have there. Very pretty! The difference between american and swedish christmas lights is that here everything has to be as colorful as possible, "white" lights like we have plenty of in Sweden are rarely seen here. Other difference is that the lights are on palm  trees instead of pine trees.

GOD JUL!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Winter Break!

Finally break! Here you are not allowed to say Christmas Break or Merry Christmas to people. At school the break it's therefore called Winter Break. Teachers say "Happy holidays" instead of Merry Christmas and so does the rest of the world here. On TV commercials, TV shows or in the stores they say "happy holidays". I guess it's a good thing that they think about all the different cultures in the country...
Tuesday was the last day of regular school. In student council we had a potluck (were everybody bring food and share with each other) and secret santa. I baked swedish chocolate cake (kladdkaka). Secret Santa works like this: Everyone gets a person to give a gift to. And it's supposed to be secret so that you don't know who has your name. I got a Starbucks kit and some candies from Burgundi :D

Wednesday and Thursday were final days. That means that we had short days (got out at 12.15) and all we had were final exams in all our classes. On wednesday I had finals in History, Digital Communication and English. Thursday I had Student council, Math and Ceramics.
Went all good ;)
Thursday was also the last day of school. Boring thing here is that nothing special happens last day of school here. After the last final all you do is just go home.
So cool! I've made it through my first entire semester of my exchange 8700 km from home!

Leaving school for break! 

My ceramics projects I made at school haha

A week goes by fast

Monday I stayed home from school as I didn't feel very good. Has been a busy week. Have had DBQ's (kind of project/test) and benchmarks (district's tests) in all my classes. Tuesday night it was the Future Freshman Night at school. As I am in Student Council I was there to help. Had to stand outside for over an hour helping lost parents... Freezing! But it was nice to see all the future freshman, even though I won't be here next year. The weather here is pretty much as cold as it would ever be here in the winter. During the day it's around 14-20 C and in the morning/night it can be as cold as 5 C.
Been a little homesick during the week. I guess that's part of life being far away from home. Feel much better now :D
Tuesday-thursday I had track practice after school. Went well, start getting almost in shape haha!

I spent Friday night in Goodyear with Mette and Gabi. Went first to see their home basketball game and then Desert Edge High School's dance show that Mette was in. The show was great and so was Mette! <3 Saw Shadow Ridge's dance show last Friday (my school) which was also good, even though Desert Edge's was more professional ;) After the show Mette, Gabi and me went to Red Robin with some of Mette's friends. Their hamburgers are sooo good! :D Spent the night and the saturday at Mette's house.
Emilia came by later on Saturday and then we went to the movies. Saw Playing for Keeps, Good movie - worth seeing it! Ended up sleeping @ my place after that.
This morning (sunday) I skyped with Amanda before Mette, Karen and I went to Ikea. Emilia had to go home ;( We bought some Swedish food and then went to Victoria Secret as we had coupons that expire soon.
When I came home I made some "christmas candies". I made "ischoklad" and white chocolate lemon fudge. It's also my mom's birthday today, Happy Birthday mom hope you had a great b-day in Singapore!

Basketball game

Hanging out in the hallway!

What Americans associate Sweden with... Funny thing is that I've never seen these candies in Sweden ^^

Basketball game

Decorating the x-mas tree!

Friday night we went out for dinner (me and my parents), we went to a pizza place. Actually first time the three of us went out for dinner?! Have been eating out a lot or brought food home but in some way we had never eaten out all three together before...
Saturday Key Club (charity club at school) had a car wash that I helped out with. Car wash is the most common fundraising activity here. You write signs about it and advertise it along the road, and people can stop and get there car washed for a small fee. We took $5. We had our car wash at Appelbees (a fast food restaurant) which means that we used  their water. can feel my back muscles, so I hope the cars are cleaned enough! Later I spent some time with Rhianna and then installed and tried our new xbox :)
Sunday we decorated our Christmas  tree! Took Karen and I a couple of hours but it was worth it!
After that I did some homework. For dinner we went out with Marcus, Celeste, Naomi and Millena.
As it was the second Sunday of Advent we had a nice desert when we came home and lighted the 2 candles. Now 2 weeks left before break!!

our advent candles

Car wash!

our Christmas tree

Advent in AZ

Less than a month til Christmas! Best time of the year :D Today is the first Sunday of advent. But Advent is not a big thing here, most people don't even know what it is. They don't have any advent calenders at all. People decorate their houses in the beginning of December with Christmas things, but then they don't do anything before  Christmas. They don't have Lucia either, I guess that's a Scandinavian thing. Thanks to me we have an advent calender (from ikea) filled with candies and then the 4 candles to light the four Sundays.We'll tend the first one today. We also got an "adventstjärna" (advent star) for the window in the hall at ikea:) my hostparents are exited about all the swedish traditions ;)
The Christmas music is the same here as in Sweden, but the songs are in English of course.
A little hard to get into Christmas mood here though. The sun is shining, 25 degrees Celsius, and palm trees everywhere.;) I'll do my best!

My hostmom foud a santa hat ;)

boxes with x-mas decorations

Our Advent calender from Ikea

Queen Creek Parade

Friday night I left Surprise (where I live) and headed towards Queen creek (2 h from here) to my friend Miranda's house. She is an other exchange student from Finland. Together with the other exchange students from YFU we built a float for a parade the next day. A common american thing to do! The  reason we participated on the parade was to promote YFU and get new hostfamilies/students for next year. For the first time in my life I managed to blow up a balloon by myself! haha I know it's weird but I've never done it before... After a short night we woke up Saturday and went to the parade with our float! The parade started at 10 AM so we had to get up in the morning. For breakfast we had doughnuts - a real american breakfast! The funny thing is that when I came here I couldn't eat doughnuts for breakfast without feeling sick and now it's not an issue anymore...
The parade went well, we had all the flags from the different countries and our santa hats on. It was a nice experience, never been in a parade before.
Then we went to Olive Graden (an Italian restaurant EVERYBODY loves here) for lunch. I had Fettucine Alfredo, I have to say I agree with people here, the food was awesome! After that Mette came home with me and spent the night here ;) Awesome girl :D
Watched movies, baked cinnamon rolls and ate Starbucks ice cream. OMG best ice cream evah!!!

Winter Spirit Week

Last week was a winter spirit week. Spirit week is a week when we the school get together and dress up, o games and play music to promote the school spirit. This week's theme was "back to the old school". Monday was "cray cray Monday" where you were supposed to have your craziest outfit and mix and match! Tuesday was "twin day". Student council decided to all be "twins" (even if we're 40...). We dressed like crayons, everybody had one color. I way a black crayon. Wednesday was "Geek day" so we dressed like nerds. Thursday was pajamas day so everybody wore their pajamas to school, some people had slippers and bathrobes on as well. A lot of people dressed up this spirit week which was fun!
Started track pre- conditioning  on Tuesday, could barely walk the next day but it was fun, nice to be working out again :) Track is a spring sport so now we're just exercising. I'm probably gonna do the sprint (short distance running). 
Friday became a very sad day. Thursday night we got the news that a boy's body was found, this boy happened to be from Shadow Ridge High School. He was in my English class. Even if we never talked that much it was very hard to see his desk empty on Friday. The boy took his life. So we didn't have the pep-assembly or anything on Friday. It was a very hard day for both teachers and students.
R.I.P. Levi

Me and Allanah (from Australia) on pajamas day!

Mix and Match day! (notice my different shoes) This day I't felt like my entire closet matched...

Caroline as a geek! Think I'm gonna stick with that... ;)

Pajamas day!

Almost December?!

Feels weird that November is almost over and in a week we'll be in December. The sun is shining as usual here and the temperature is 81F (ca 27 C) :D made swedish pancakes the other day, came out good and my family loved them:)
Ysterday I went to see breaking dawn again. Emilia hadn't seen it so we went seeing it :)
Then she stayed the night. We watched a movie ate a lot and had a good time as allways with Emilia :D
Also skyped with both my brother and sister, haven't talked to them in at least 2 months... I've missed them so it was nice to see them again!;)
This morning me and Emilia made smoothies and sat out in the sun, tryin to get a tan. I almost burned myself as usual... I feel very very sorry for all of you who are freezing in Sweden :'( but sometimes life isn't fair ;)
Tomorrow it's time to go back to school after thanksgiving break. I'm glad there are only four weeks until winterbreak.
The dog got a haircut and they took the chance to style her a little bit:O
Was out for a short time while my dad was washing the car -took some random pictures!

Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Ooops, haven't been writing in a week... time goes by fast!

 Sunday I went to church with a friend from school, Becca. I've always wanted to see what it is like to go to church here as I've heard it's so different from Sweden. Even if I normally don't attend church at home. It was a lot different! The church was bigger and full of people. And they sang a lot more. Went to the youth group that meet before the service every sunday with Becca. But we didn't do much. Ate cake cause it was somebody's birthday and than sat and talked the rest of the time. 

Since wednesday I've been out of school for thanksgiving break (5 days). Wednesday I helped cleaning some more at home hanged out with Rhianna. She came over and we saw the movie Honey 2 :) then late at night both Karen (my mom) and I decided to bake... I baked "pepparkakor" but I cheated cause I used IKEA's cookie dough. Karen baked some lemon and ricotta cheese cookies that were awesome! 

Need to learn how to make them.

Thursday was the day I have been waiting for! Thanksgiving. The people we had over came at 3 PM. We were 9 all together here. We ate soo much food! I'm not even sure we ate half of it :O

And my mom i such an awesome cooker so everything was delicious. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, rice, croissants, beef, pumpkin pie, cookies, cheesecake and more... I don't remember everything. what we did was to sit down and eat :D 

Here in America the day after thanksgiving (Friday) is called Black Friday and is a big shopping day. All the stores have big sales and people are crazy! most stores/malls open at midnight, so after thanksgiving dinner people go shopping. We were going to go @ 2 AM but decided to go later instead. So I woke up at 5 and me and my mom went shopping. Went first to  an outlet mall,  then victoria secret and then to an other mall. We also had breakfast between the two malls at a place called the corner bakery - yummy food! Found a lot in the sales, almost done christmas shopping aswell which is nice ;)