Last weeks

I made it!! I can officially say that I ‘survived’ a year of highschool in the USA. I only have a couple of days left until I will fly home. I don’t even realize that I will be home next week. It kind of seems like a dream that I will sleep in my own bed and see family and friends again. Anyways first of all It’s been a while since I wrote on my blog and it’s so cool that people read this from all over the world! I can see at my statistics who reads my blog (only the country where people come from.)

Since prom the time went by way fast. School was counting down, seniors were graduating and soon enough I had summer vacation too. I’ve been so busy!! One of the things I really wanted to do before I would leave Idaho was going to the sand dunes. Idaho has like 5 miles of completely sand, I also call it Africa cause there is literally nothing besides sand haha. A lot of people go there to ride razors and four wheelers, we just went there and made a little fire and roasted some marshmallows. So that was kind of cool to see!

The weather has become so much better!! It’s 20-28 Celsius all the time, only the wind is blowing a lot so that makes it a little colder. But I’ve been sun burned a couple of times and lots of swimming! The last 2 weeks of school have been so chaotic. The seniors had summer 1 week earlier than the rest of the school and we still had some finals so all the classes were messed up, the only thing what’s so nice about American school is I don’t have to do or study anything and I can still get A’s haha! I honestly wish school was like this back home.

That Friday was the last day for the seniors and that night we had a ‘lock-in’ in the big gym. You could go to school on Friday 21:00 till 06:00 in the morning and do all kinds of fun stuff. It took forever though.. and everybody was so tired! We mostly signed yearbooks the whole night. Because we got our yearbooks that day! It looks so cool and like everything is in it! It’s just a little photo album of the whole year. And everybody can sign it and put a little story in it. So my whole yearbook is literally full with it haha! I’ll probably

keep it forever!

Our principal wouldn’t let the exchange students graduate or walk or even participate in anything the seniors did, so we couldn’t do American graduation which was kind of sad but it was still cool to see the typical American things. The only thing we could participate in was seminary graduation. Seminary is a religious class, so it’s part of the church. And our teacher is so nice! so we could ‘graduate’ from the church haha. It started around 18:00 on a Sunday and it was at the church, we just had to sing a song and walk up front when your name was called so they could give us a little diploma paper. It was not really special but still fun though and really nice that they would let us participate in this since we’re not even from this religion. On Wednesday they had the real graduation. Students were wearing those typical graduation outfits with those little heads haha. It took like 2,5 hours. A teacher spoke and a couple of students did too. After that everybody took pictures and people got presents etc.

Friday was finally our last day of school. Well school… I’ve never seen something so unorganized it was so chaotic. Everybody was everywhere and nowhere it was mostly cleaning out lockers signing out of classes; sit around in the hallway and signing yearbooks. After we got officially signed out we were free to go and we had summer!! We went with a couple to this little hamburger place to celebrate school was over. After that we went to the lake to go swimming and canoeing! That night Ilse and I had a goodbye party for all the people from school. It was so weird to realize that you probably won’t see some of those people ever again… and I still don’t realize it. Anyways we just had a bonfire with everybody and it was way fun!

Saturday I went to town with some friends to have lunch and get our nails done. I’m gonna miss the cheap American manicures (it’s only $25) everything is so cheap over here ha! And I’m also going to miss the big sizes of food, free refills, and if you don’t finish your food in restaurants you can just take it home! Or water is free in most restaurants and things like ketchup. They really should have these things in Europe too!

Saturday night I went riding four wheelers and fishing with a guy from school and ofcourse I had to say goodbye. it’s just so weird to say ‘goodbye’ to people all the time. I don’t realize it at all and telling people: “well it was nice meeting ya this year, good luck in the future and hope I’ll ever see you again.” is the weirdest thing in the world.

Monday we went to grammy in Rexburg and hung out there the whole day. Tuesday I went with a couple of friends to town to do some fun stuff. We went (lekker burgerlijk) to the zoo, had dinner, hung out in the park and went back. And of course another goodbye I’ll probably realize how much I’m going to miss everybody and this place two weeks after I’ve been home. I have no idea how things are going to be when it’s home, I’ll probably get a culture shock again. But I’m also really excited to go back home and see friends and family again, eating normal food and having a little part of freedom back. Like biking, oh my god I missed biking so much haha!! But I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to live in Idaho and with this family the past year. It’s amazing how they opened their home for me and treat me like I’m their own child. And I definitely see them as my second family! I can’t believe that this exchange year is almost over. Thanks to everybody who helped me through this. It’s been amazing!

Well, I’m going to enjoy my last couple of days here and I’ll write soon (: