Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

This time I won’t wait two months after everything is over :D I'll tell y'all right now: I had a great Christmas!!!

To be totally honest I wasn't so sure how my first christmas without my family is going to be, but all worries I ever had were completely without reason. I spent a wonderful Christmas Eve and Day with my second family and I enjoyed it so much.
On Christmas Eve we went to a German Christmas Service of a Lutheran Church in Houston. That was great for me. It especially made me very happy to know all the traditional Christmas carols. Later our family friends came over for dinner, and we had lot of fun together playing games and eating lots of food. I made German pancakes and I think the Americans liked them.
Later that night we got our first christmas presents, matching, red pyjamas for everybody with our first initial on it. We slept in them, and also wore them during half of the next day.
Most of you probably know already that Americans get their gifts in the morning of Christmas Day, so that's what we did then. I got so many things that I absolutely love! Thank you again to everyone who thought of me in these days!
After that I got to skype with my german family/ies. I realized that I now have three wonderful families that I love so so so much, and I couldn't live without a single one of them!
Tonight we had another dinner with friends, which was a lot of fun too. Now we are all going to bed, very tired and very happy (at least for my part)!

So Merry Christmas again, for the Germans it isn't over yet, enjoy your Second Weihnachtsfeiertag!
Love, Johanna

Christmas is coming!

Hey!!!

Sorry, I didn't write anything for an even longer time this time and people keep on asking me for a new post, so finally: Here you go! And thank you for still reading this and being interested!

I'll try to start at the beginning and I hope I won't forget anything but so many things happened in the last (almost) two month...
The homecoming dance was great! I went together with three girls and our dates (I was so happy that I acutally had a date :D). We girls got ready together, then we met the boys at a Japanese Restaurant where we had dinner and then we finally went to a Country Club where the dance was and stayed there until midnight.

I am playing the trombone here more than I've ever played before I think. Basically just because I have Band in my regular schedule every day. I'm defenitely very happy about that because it's a lot of fun, I'm doing it with friends and I'm pretty sure that I'm improving. Especially because all the band students had to go to the All-city auditions, which is a solo-contest for brass and woodwind players in Houston. For that contest we had to learn pretty hard (high and fast!) music. I practiced a lot and I think it was worth it. Three of the four Bellaire-trombones, including me, made it. That means that we are getting new music soon that we have to practice and I think we will have a concert with all the people who made All-city together.
As you can see I'm spending a lot of time in band and with band friends - and I love it! Our band director is so nice: one night, during the halftime show of a football game, all the seniors who have been in band during their high school time were recognized with their parents on the field and they got little medals from Bellaire High School. And because this is my only year here they treated me as a senior and I got one of those medals too. That is soooo sweet and nice! It really made me happy.
Sadly the football season is over now. But at least we got to play one playoff game, which was very surprising since our football team didn't play that good during the rest of this season.

I watched two movies with my friends: Specter and Krampus. Both of them had at least a little part in German in it, Krampus even more. That was so funny! By the way, the story of Krampus, a bad Santa Claus, is apparently German. I had never heard about it before, and all the other German exchange students that I asked didn't know what I was talking about either. So if you are German and you know Krampus, tell me!! I really want to know if anybody has heard about it before.

Tanksgiving! - November 26th. I finally met my second host sister. She lives and works in North Carolina and came home for thanksgiving (and now again for christmas). I  like her a lot (just as I like everyone else in my family so much!)! She invited me to do Hot Yoga together (something I have never done before). I'm glad I tried it and I acutally really liked it and would definitely do it again. Thanksgiving itself was great too. We cooked all day long and then had dinner, with traditional turkey and Tofurkey for the Vegetarians (not the best idea to be honest :D). But everything else was delicious! The day after, we had a second brasilian thanksgiving dinner together with family friends (they are hosting a german student too), that was a lot of fun too.

The Wednesday after thanksgiving until Sunday, I went to New York with my host family. I love that city now, it's huge and it was soo crowded everywhere but it's just so cool and interesting! I could probably talk about that forever because we did so many things in only 5 days, but this post already is pretty long. So just a little overview about what we did: Empire State Building, Central Park, Shopping, Broadway (An American In Paris and Wicket), Museum of Modern Arts, Little Italy, Chinatown, Chocolat-making Class...  It was amazing and I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to see New York, something many "real" Americans in my age have never done.

Together with my host mom, a friend that I met in school and her family (They lived in Hannover for 3 years) I went to a German Christmas Market. It was a lot of fun, we had Flammkuchen, Bratwurst and Bretzeln and saw traditional german clothes and an "Alphornbläser"!
The last week of school here was Final-week, what means that we had to take an two-hour test in every class we have. The good thing about that is, that all the questions are multiple choice so it actually wasn't too hard.
Now it's finally Winter break, although it doesn't feel like winter at all (today it's 28 degrees celsius outside). I like this warm weather a lot better than freezing without snow! It felt a little weird that I went ice skating with some other AFS students yesterday since some people were acutally wearing shorts or skirts but it was a lot of fun!!

Ooookay that's it for now, the only thing I want to say is:
Merry Christmas, Frohe Weihnachten, Joyeux Noel - you know what I mean :D

It's a small world!

Hey!

Sorry, I didn't write anything for a looong time... Now it's already October! I don't know where to start, so I will probably just tell you some nice/interesting/great/exciting things that happened so far. The

Last weekend there was a big halloween costume party for exchange students, about 45 minutes from where I live. But since the weather was really bad (It rained all day long) we decided not to go. My friend from Germany stayed the whole weekend with us, because her host parents were out of town, so we just invited some other exchange student friends over to my house to have a little pre-halloween party. It was so much fun (look at the pictures)!

Football season (and marching band season) is nearly over, we only have to games left. That makes me a little sad, because I really love marching our halftime show and playing in the stands. But the "marching band" becomes "concert band" after that, so I stay in a group with all the nice people I met. We already started practicing christmas music!

Another weekend I visited Galveston, together with 22 exchange students. We were a huge group and had so much fun being at the beach, the pleasure pier and eating s'mores at the fireplace! (photos) Isn't it funny that we actually spend the "hug-an-exchange-student-day" together? We hugged each other a lot!!!

The title of this post refers to another unexpected meeting. My host mom and her friend took me and her friend's exchange student to Austin, the capital of Texas. There we visited the Capitol, the campus of one of the big universities in Texas and had dinner at a beautiful lake! The Sunday after that we went to New Braunsfeld to see a large cave. It was very interesting! And for lunch we went to a german restaurant, the "Friesenhaus". There we met the owner of the restaurant, and guess what - he was from Emden!!! He told me that he just moved to the United States in 2005. I couldn't belive that I met someone from my (not huge or famous) town in Germany, about 8.500 km entfernt!

At October 3rd we celebrated our two dogs' 16th birthday. That was a great experience! We had some friends over for dinner, the dogs got dog-ice cream and dog-cookies and we had a dog-cake.

Something else that made me very happy is that I got my first invitation to a birthday party of an american friend! She celebrated her 16th birthday together with about 40 friends at a pizza place. I had the great evening together with the other band students that were invited!
Next weekend is Halloween, and my school's homecoming football game and dance. I am very excited for that and I think it will be a great weekend again!

You see, I am having a great time here, not bored at all and way to busy and happy with everything to be homesick! I hope that everyone else in Germany, Martinique or wherever people live and read my blog is having a good time too!
Johanna

News ... :D

Heyyyy!
Today I'll tell you just some interesting things I did/saw in the last days or weeks.

1. Wednesday I had no school - "Fall holiday". With my host mom and a friend (another german student I met at school) I went to the NASA Space-Center in Houston. We had tickets for a behind-the-scenes tour, so we saw some rooms/building where usually no visitors are. For example we could sit in the historic Mission Control room, see where astronauts train and eat in their cafeteria. We had a great day, it was lot of fun and very interesting!

2. Yesterday was a football game again, and we started marching our whole show in uniforms (pants, jackets and hats). It was very hot because we had to keep everything on, even after the halftime show, but it was fun, though!
One girl filmed the whole show, it is not the best quality and sometimes she talks to her friend, but maybe it gives you an idea about what we're doing:

I also learned something new, called "Trombone-suicide". Sounds and is kind of dangerous, but very very funny! (I am the trombone slide on the left :D)

3. I don't know if I alrady said that I changed my schedule after the first three week. In my dance class, we never did something, we just sat around and waited until the class is over. I knew that the choir teacher is very nice, and so I decided to change into that class. It was definitely the right decision, I love what we sing in choir and all the students there are very nice!
I also changed from French 4 to Spanish 2. Our french teacher wasn't organized the whole time and we didn't learn anything new. I took spanish last year in Germany and I think here in Texas everybody speaks at least some words spanish (because it's so close to Mexico). I'm happy with my new spanish class too!

4. Last Sunday I went ice skating with a group of AFS exchange students. There is a shopping mall in Houston where you can do ice skating during the whole year. It was awesome and we had lot of fun!

Mal auf Deutsch ... ;D

Hello again!
For all of you who are german or at least speak german (I don't know why I write this in english :D):
My old german school asked me to write something about my first time in the USA for their homepage. I did that last weekend, and now I want to post it here too, for everyone who wants to read  a little summary of my life in the last 5 weeks.

An alle Deutschen/ Deutsch-Sprechenden:
Eine Lehrerin meiner Schule in Deutschland hat mich gebeten für die Homepage einen kurzen Bericht über meine erste Zeit in den USA zu schreiben. Das habe ich also am letzten Wochenende gemacht und jetzt poste ich den Bericht für alle Interessierten die gerne mal etwas Deutsches lesen möchten auch hier.

Mein Jahr in Houston, Texas

Seit etwas mehr als 5 Wochen bin ich jetzt in den USA. Ich lebe in Bellaire, einem Vorort/Stadtteil von Houston, Texas. Hier werde ich das Schuljahr 2015-16 verbringen.

Ich fühle mich sehr wohl hier und die Zeit bis jetzt verging unglaublich schnell, was vor allem daran liegt, dass ich sehr beschäftigt bin.

Schule

Ich gehe in die 11. Klasse der Bellaire High School, einer Schule mit knapp 4000 Schülern von Jahrgang 9-12. Das bedeutet ich bin ein Junior, als Austauschschülerin darf ich aber trotzdem zum Prom der Seniors gehen und werde auch mit ihnen "graduation" erleben dürfen.

Die Schule hat am 24.08 begonnen, 1 1/2 Wochen nach meiner Ankunft. Der Zeitpunkt war für mich ziemlich perfekt, ich hatte vorher etwas Zeit zum ersten Einleben in der Gastfamilie und hatte dann aber auch bald etwas zu tun und die Möglichkeit neue Leute in meinem Alter kennenzulernen.

Meine Fächer: Algebra 2, English 3 (Literature), US History, Spanish 2, Choir, Band und Environmental Systems.

Mit meinem Stundenplan bin ich sehr zufrieden, die meisten Fächer sind nicht zu schwer, nur manchmal ist es noch etwas verwirrend weil eben alles auf Englisch ist. Der Unterschied zum Unterricht in Deutschland ist vor allem, dass man sich hier nicht meldet, wenn der Lehrer etwas fragt. Wenn man die Antwort weiß, ruft man sie einfach in die Klasse. Das heißt sowas wie mündliche Mitarbeit gibt es hier eigentlich nicht. Dafür wird aber alles was man macht (Hausaufgaben, Arbeitsblätter etc.) eingesammelt und bewertet.

Außerdem werden deutlich mehr Tests geschrieben, in manchen Fächern einmal pro Woche. Das finde ich aber nicht schlimm, weil die Tests dadurch nicht ganz so wichtig und vor allem kürzer sind, als die ein oder zwei Arbeiten, die man pro Halbjahr in Deutschland schreibt.

Am meisten Spaß macht mir im Moment die "Marching Band". Jeden Tag nach dem Unterricht, der normalerweise um 3:15 pm endet proben wir draußen das Marschieren zu unserer "Show music" bis 5:30 pm. Damit unterhalten wir dann die Zuschauer der Football-Spiele in der Halbzeitpause. Ich bin froh, dass ich dadurch auch hier in den USA weiterhin die Möglichkeit habe, Posaune zu spielen, was mir in Deutschland immer sehr viel Spaß gemacht hat.

Außerdem ist die Marching Band eine tolle Möglichkeit auch außerhalb des Unterrichts neue Leute zu treffen und gemeinsam Sachen zu unternehmen. Letztes Wochenende hatten wir zum Beispiel unseren ersten "Car wash". Das bedeutet, dass wir uns mit Eimern, Wasser, Seife und Schwämmen auf einen großen Parkplatz gestellt und Autos gewaschen haben, um etwas Geld für die Band zu verdienen.

Durch die Band habe ich auch die Leute kennengelernt mit denen ich jetzt beim Lunch an einem Tisch sitze.

Gastfamilie

Ich lebe hier zusammen mit meiner Gastmutter und meiner 21 Jahre alten Gastschwester, die im Moment ein Semester lang zuhause wohnt und in einem Sportgeschäft arbeitet. Ich bin sehr sehr glücklich mit meiner Familie und es fühlt sich schon jetzt an wie ein zweites Zuhause.

Die beste Freundin meiner Gastmutter hat auch eine Gastschülerin aus Deutschland aufgenommen, wir sehen uns also sehr oft und unternehmen and den Wochenenden viel zusammen mit beiden Familien.

Wir waren zum Beispiel schon zwei Mal zusammen in ihrer "Farm" auf dem Land, etwas weiter entfernt von der Großstadt Houston.

AFS

Meine Austauschorganisation ist AFS (American Field Service). Ein paar Tage nach unserer Ankunft hatten alle AFS-Austauschschüler eine "Orientation" um sich kennenzulernen und ein bisschen über Houston und die Umgebung zu lernen.

Mit AFS fühle ich mich sehr wohl, es gibt immer jemanden an den man sich wenden kann und wir haben immer viel Spaß wenn wir Treffen mit allen Austauschschülern haben.

Dieses Wochenende haben wir uns zum Beispiel in einer großen Mall zum Shoppen und Ice skating getroffen (Bei 30°C im September :D)

Interessantes/Besonderes/Lustiges:

- Die Leute hier sind sehr höflich, alle begrüßen sich und fragen wie es einem geht, zum Beispiel im Supermarkt an der Kasse. Meist zwar nicht wirklich aus Interesse, aber trotzdem einfach um freundlich zu sein.

- Es ist sehr heiß hier, meistens 25-38°C, davon bekommt man aber kaum etwas mit, weil man sich von Haus mit Air Conditioning zu Auto mit Air Conditioning zurück zum Haus mit Air Conditioning bewegt.

- Niemand fährt Fahrrad hier, und eine Familie mit 3 Personen hat mindestens 3 Autos, auch wenn die Kinder noch lange keinen Führerschein haben

- Alle sagen "Gesundheit" wenn man niest, auf Deutsch!

- In der Schule trägt jeder was er will, von Jogginghose und XL-T-shirt bis zu Anzug und Krawatte, das ist viel lockerer und entspannter als die Mode in Deutschland

Insgesamt bin ich wirklich sehr glücklich und zufrieden hier und freue mich auf weitere spannende, schöne Erfahrungen und Begegnungen!

Johanna Philipps

Football games

Hello again!

Now I finally found some time to write about my first football game experience.

Friday, 08.28 (28. August) I played with the marching band at the first football game of the season. 

It was great, awesome, fantastic, I can't descripe how good it was!

We played little, easy songs during the game, and then we went on the field and played our show music during the half time break. We started marching last Friday, at the second game, because we hadn't enough time to practice it before. 

But also during the first game we had so much fun dancing with our trombones. Low brass is the best section of the whole band - everybody agrees, even the flutes and our section leader  is so nice!!!! He always answers my about 100 questions. But I still have no idea about football game :D Unfortunately, our school team lost both games. 

After the first game we all went to Cici's, a pizza place that only openes for the marching band till mitnight. Some parents and the band director came with us. Everybody loves him, he is very nice and calls us his children and we call him dad:D 

When we went back to our places after the half time break, the football game-speaker said the names of the under- and upperclassman of the week (two students). He calls my name!!!!!! I got  the "upperclassmen of the week"-stick with candy inside, that was soooo sweet and it felt wonderful to be a part of all this!

 

I had a great Labor day-weekend at the Four Oaks Farm, you can see something about that on the photo-page.

 

Bye for now,

Johanna

School and marching band

Hey!

Today I'll write about my first experiences in school and in the marching band.
In the week before school starts I went to school to find and meet the band director to ask him if I can borrow a trombone at school. I only found his assistent, but he invited me to come to the marching band rehearsal in the afternoon. So I came back later.
When I arrived in the band hall (the room where we usually practice our music), there were already around 20 boys and girls talking to each other and waiting for the band director. I met two very nice girls who introduced me to some other students. Finally the band director arrived and I introduced myself to him. He was very nice and asked one student to give me a trombone. So I was ready to start!

We also had rehearsals at Tuesday and Wednesday in that week. First we usually practice our music and then we go outside  with our instruments to march. That was a totally new experience for me but I like to try something new and marching is really fun although it can be very very hot outside!

After being three days in the marching band, Thursday was our first performance. Therefor we had to wear kaki shorts and we got a new band shirt for this year. This is our "summer uniform", because it's too hot ouside to war the regular long uniform. We played in a large hall in school for some parents. In front of us, girls with huge flags showed their performance to our music.

After our first marching band performance

I spend the weekend with our family-friends and the other german exchange student in their country house, near Brenham. It was a great time there, relaxing in the pool and enjoying calmness of that place!
Sunday we ate in a german restaurant in a very small town (like Uttum for everyone who knows it). But anyway they had two restaurant and a high school!

The house near Brenham

Monday did school start. Now the time passes very fast! The first three days every student had to go to to his/her homeroom in the morning. Then we have to follow our regular schedule. School starts at 7:40 am and ends at 3:15 pm, but I have marching band rehearsal till 5:30. That is a long day and sometimes I have to do homework at home too.
After the first days I was always very tired when I came home, but it gets better every day.
Bellaire High School is a very large school with more than 3000 students. So in the five minutes between two classes all the long hallways are very crowded and it can be confusing and hard to find the next room!

I think the classes aren't very difficult compared to german ones, but they are in english, so I don't understand everything yet. Also all the teachers and students are new for me and I meet new students every day, but everyone I talked to was very nice!

I still love marching band, because I already know many students there and I enjoy playing with them (when I arrived at school at Monday, there were so many students everywhere and I was very happy when I saw some band-students I had seen before!). Tomorrow is the first football game, and we're going to play there. I'm very excited and I think it will be very fun!!!

I hope I have time to write about the game soon,
bye for now!

first days in texas

Hi!

The last 4 days were so exciting and great! So many things happened and I met many very nice people. Now I want to tell you something about the main events.

The day after my arrival I went to my new high school with my host mother for "registration". The first thing I noticed were all the students waiting for something. I was wondering why they were in school almost two weeks before classes start.
We got a number and saw some classrooms until our number was called. Then we had to wait for some paperwork and finally I could choose my classes.
There were four given categories: english, math, history and science. In addition to that I could choose three further classes. I chose:
english 3
math
US history
environmental systems
french 4
band
dance 1
Today I'll go to a band rehearsal to get a trombone and meet some other students from my high school - I'm very excited!

Later that day, after registration,  there was a birthday party for the other german exchange students host sister at our house. We spent the whole evening (about 4 hours) in the pool. That was great!
In the next days we went out for dinner every evening, so I tried much different food (japanese, mexican, ...) and I really liked it!

I also made a blueberry pie with my host mum, that  was fantastic!


Saturday I went to the AFS-orientation here in Houston. I met many exchange students from all over the world, we learned something about Texas and the USA and we had a little pool party after that.

Yesterday I went to "the galleria" a huge shopping center. There was an ice rink in the middle of hot Houston, that was interesting!
After that I spend the afternoon with another exchange student and we went to an indian dance show at night. I've never seen something like that before!

That was a little abstract of the last days, bye for now!

flight and arrival

Hello again!
I decided to write in english from now on, because I'm in the USA and I want to learn it.
There may be some mistakes, but I hope that's no problem because I'm still learning ...

Tody at 07:00 am I met the other AFS students at the airport in Frankfurt. We checked in together and at 10:00 am our flight to Houston started. 10 1/2 hours in the air, that was long, but not too boring for me because you had somebody to talk with and you could share your excitement with the other students.

After having showed my passport to 100 different persons in Germany and the USA I arrived in Houston at 13:30 h. My host mother was already waiting for me.
Together we drove about 45 minutes to my new home in Bellaire.
There I met my host sister and I saw our huge house, pool and garden.
I love everything here, my room (especially my large bed), the house and my very nice family!

Abschied und Vorfreude

Sooo, der Abschied rückt ganz deutlich näher! Mittlerweile bin ich  mit meinem Vater schon in Frankfurt und werde hier auch übernachten, damit mein Weg zum Flughafen morgen früh dann nicht so weit ist.

Auf dem Weg hierher habe ich mich schon von meiner Mutter verabschiedet und noch eine letzte deutsche Butterbetzel gegessen. Kurz danach folgte dann die Einstimmung auf die USA mit einem typischen "Bagel with cream cheese". 

Nach letztem Umpacken von Koffer zu Handgepäck und zurück bin ich jetzt zumindest in dieser Hinsicht bereit zum Abflug.

Nun sollte ich wohl versuchen noch etwas zu schlafen, da ich morgen früh um 7 Uhr am Flughafen sein muss. Weil ich aber seeehr aufgeregt bin und das Gefühlschaos nicht wirklich entspannend ist wird das wohl nicht so einfach...

Egal, ich werd's versuchen.

Gute Nacht!