guess whos back from niagara falls...
IT WAS SO AWESOME!!!!!!!!! first of all, my hostparents were not here for the weekend and thursday and friday. mom is in california to visit her family and dad was in washington dc on a business trip. so i slept two nights in the house of the other german exchange student andrea, who lives 2 blocks from here. so, then it was saturday and the group from syracuse area met a little outside of syracuse on a highway parking lot. we were 13 xchange students overall and we were travelling in 3 cars. my car was a boys only car (yes, segregation of genders begins already in the cars...) and i was travelling with amir and abdil from kazachstan, joe from thailand and chris and greg from germ. the three cars were travelling in a small convoy to buffalo. when we arrived in buffalo, th first thing we saw was a sheriffs dept car and a person always walking between the sheriffs car and our first car. and because we were the last car in the convoy we thought o my god, what went wrong? why are we pulled over? but as it turned out, the sheriffs car was there to give us an escort to our "headquarters" in buffalo. but we had to wait for another group of students from ohio and west virginia who were travelling with a coach. then we went with that sheriffs car in front of us through buffalo, that was kinda fun....our "headquarter" in buffalo was located at the end of a long street and as we turned in that street we saw a lot of yfu students who already arrived with flags from random countries in their hand a we were like passing them...this was pretty impressive...
yeah. after our arrival we we were split up to go to the different houses were we would spend the weekend. (we were 200 students overall on that weekend, so it was quite crowded, in our house for instance 50 people stayed....) and then we had a little free time, before we went to the gym of a nearby catholic church (the whole neighborhood was irish catholic) for diner. during dinner we had a presentation of the schools irish dance team, you know, all that stuff that michael flatley does, but performed by students of that school. it was awesome!!!!!! and then they tried to teach us how to do this, and this was so funny...we completely failed. after diner, we had the dance part, with music provided by a professional dj...yep. i didnt like the music that much, though they had pretty good songs...anyways, i spent most of the evening outside, which was rather amusing.
after the dance we went home and were sent to bed, because we had to get up early the next day to go to niagara falls. and this was awesome. first of all, i called christoph, who spends the year there and set up a meeting at 11 am to meet him. but - thanks yfu - we spend an hour in buffalo sitting in our cars and waiting so i missed chris in niagara falls. so i was pretty pissed when i came there. so we went on a boat tour to see the falls from the water. after that we went to the hard rock cafe to have diner, and while we were waiting for the food i called him again, and so we finally met at the hard rock cafe in niagra falls, ny. and it was so awesome!!! we had a lot of fun together and made many inside jokes...hehehehehehehe! yeah as it was about three thirty, we went on the cave of the winds tour, where you can walk almost under the falls. this was also a lot of fun and we all got severely wet...yep. in the evening then we went home again, where a huge party was already waiting for us! first we got our official "columbus day weekend"-tshirts and then i spent the first hour eating and getting my face painted. and i painted another persons face, christoph from northern germ, and it was really fun!!!! then we played touchfootball for three hours and this was so awesome and exausting...after that we started watching movies. first legally blonde, was kinda fun, but then we watched monsters inc. and those of you that haven't seen it yet - do it now! the movie is so hilarious...after that they started watching the sweetest thing, but i went to bed cause i felt my eyes closing...on monday then we had a "last breakfast" before everybody went home in every direction...and i have seen many tears! and i changed a couple of emailadresses. then we went home and the first thing i did was going to bed...
so, this is the detailed report of my columbus day weekend. today (tuesday) i didn't have to go to school, because all the juniors (by the way, nearly everybody in buffalo was a senior! thats so unfair...) had to take the psat's, its one of these multiple choice tests that qualify the students to all the scholarship programs for the universities here. its kinda a preparation for the sat's, they are taken in january/february, and the score you get on them decides if a university accepst you or not. but as a foreign exchange student i dont have to take them...so today was my household-day, i cleaned up my room and washed the clothes...and we had a techmeeting today. yep, thats basically it.
i will try and post more often!
later, folks!
felix