Horseshows, basketball, school and more! (May)

From my last post lots of things happened. I will start in chronological order. On April 17th, I went riding in the morning. I rode Bommer, a school horse and we had a lesson outside with just two people. This was the first time I intentionally cantered. In the evening, I went to our school festival, called Celebrate Western, and looked at my presented Art pieces. It was all about the Fine Arts and is the main fundraiser for the school in partnership with Husky Oil - our school sponsor. The evening included a programm of choir, drama, dance, etc. The following day, my sister had her confirmation and it was nice skyping with her on such a special day. I hung out at the mall with Julia and in the evening Stan bought spraypaint and we painted our garage with graffiti because they get a new one. That was fun to do! On Tuesday, April 20, our Rotary meeting was in the evening at Heritage Park, nothing really special. Julia's club president was so kind to take her and me skiing at Sunshine on Wednesday. It was the last time for me and I had so much fun even though the snow was a little too soft and too wet. Every Monday and Tuesday I have basketball practice and on Wednesdays we have our games. We are in one league higher than our skilllevel because there are no other teams. But we improved by quite a bit and I'm getting back to where I once was. I have a lot of fun and this keeps me really busy! Friday the same week, we prepared a presentation with some exchange students for Leila's club. They asked us to talk a little about our experience and it was so much fun to do so the next Monday! It gets easier and easier to speek in public and it is nice to share with people that know how we feel. It was really sad, too, because we all know that the end is close and we are all so busy with doing things that we know time is running. Afterwards, I went to a dress rehearsal for the Presidents Ball of my club. They are doing that every year to honour the president and in my club it's tradition to have a play with songs in it and the Rotarians are playing. We went to a Chinese restaurant afterwards with some members of my club. My Saturday, April 24, was a really busy day: I had a lesson on Boomer and I'm improving with every day. Eva then drove me to my basketballgame (the only one on a Saturday) and then I got home and changed to go to the Presidents Ball with Julia. It was really nice to meet all the Rotarians outside the meetings. The next day I had to get up at 7am to ship horses from our barn to where my hostfamily had their horseshow. I went with them and held the horses. The next Rotary meeting was about all the social programs our club is involved in and it was really boring and really bad! On April 28, I was at a Rotarian's house and had a very nice dinner with his girlfriend, his daughter (my age), Ana from Brazil and her hostmum and another German man. It was snowing really bad that day and on the next day many places lost power. In the evening, I watched Avatar with Natalie and Maria, and even withouth 3D I quite enjoyed it. On Friday, we met up with Leila and the rebound from Finland to watch "The Back-Up Plan" - a very enjoyable movie. On the weekend, I helped cleaning out the garage and we played soccer with my sisters in the backyard. It was so much fun! I spent the night at Julia's house and we played Wii Fit Plus, as usually. On Sunday, we went and played lastertagging. I never thought I would like it, but I had fun. On May 3rd, I went to Marco's school. All the exchange students were invited to go to 'Turning the Tide' - an event where two keyspeakers talked, one about MSF and the other one was a crazy ice climber. In between those two, we went into classrooms and listened to one presentation about 'Bridges Social Development' and the other one was about Afghanistan. It was a nice day with lots of information. It was snowing biiiig flakes on May 4th, and that wasn't even the last time. We had our Rotary meeting at Ford Calgary and the speaker was from the Chamber of Commerce. He was one of the worst we ever had! I hung out at Chinook mall with some of the exchange students on Friday after school and in the evening, Julia came to sleep over because we went to Spruce Meadows for a horseshow of my host family the following day. In the evening, we went to Leila's birthday party and we watched "The Blind Side" and played some games and just talked until we finally went to bed at 4am. The next day, I just relaxed at home as I was way too tired to do anything. Finally, I got to go riding again and I did everything myself. The trainer said it was my best ride ever and I was quite proud of myself. And it was also another weekend that Julia slept over. We watched "The Time Traveler's Wife". I read that book in the beginning of my year and really liked the movie. On Saturday, May 15, we went with Eva and Stan to his ranch and did some westernriding through the cattle. It was such a nice and warm day and I loved being out in the nature and just enjoy everything while riding. Believe it or not, I really fell in love with horses! The same night, I joined Julia's club with their president's ball. I love her club, they are all so nice and I know most of the members. I slept over at her house and the next morning was relaxing, in the evening we went to a circus together to which her hostmum got free tickets. But we were both really tired and I started to get a cold so that we left during intermission. The next day I felt really sick and stayed home after school, I even took a nap! I went to the Calgary Chinook Club Rotary meeting instead of my meeting because they asked us to come and speak, but as the other presentations took a long time we didn't have to do that. Julia and I then watched "Letters to Juliet" and I still didn't feel well. It was a very nice day with over 20 degrees. :) And then we went on a big trip from last Thursday to Monday - a horseshow in Edmonton. I took Julia with me and whenwe arrived we prepared the stalls for the horses that came about 2 hours later. We went to West Edmonton Mall, the fifth biggest mall in the world! It is really impressing!! They have a pirateship, two minigolfcourses, a chinatown, a Europa Boulevard, a swimming pool, an adventure park with rollercoasters and a hotel is included as well. It is really big and it took us very long just to walk through the mall so that we didn't go shopping. We spent the next morning at the horseshow, which was just 15 minutes from our hotel and every morning at 7.30am we took a cab there. It was freezing and raining and really muddy! Stan fortunately picked us up and in the evening we went to the waterpark in the mall. It was so much fun!!! We had dinner at Earls in the mall and went to bed being very tired. The next day wasn't any better, but we found a heated tent at the horseshow and I just had to help sometimes with holding horses. In the afternoon, we went back to the hotel and watched TV - yes, we were being really lazy these days :D! On Sunday, it was still really cold and I had to hold Eva's horse Princeton and take off her blanket. My feet and hands were frozen, but after I warmed them up the weather got a little better. The afternoon was the same as the previous one; we watched "P.S. I love you" and even the second time I still enjoyed watching it. The weather finally got better on Monday, even a little too hot. The last day of the horseshow and I got to ride Princeton for a little while. We shipped the horses back to Calgary which is a drive of about 4 hours. But then we had to bring them back to the barn and by the time we got home it was midnight. It was a very tiring but very nice and I was allowed to skip my first period on Tuesday. Monday was not school because of Victoria day and neither was Friday because of PD Day (professional development day).
You probably ask yourself if I went to school at all?! Of course I did and here is what I did. Science was so boring for me. We started Chemistry and it was all review from what I did in Germany. I did a timeline on the periodic table and all the labs we did were really boring: conductivity of acids/bases, indicators, neutralization. I wrote my Chem A Final after school on May 5 and just yesterday I wrote the Chem B Final. Now we started with climate. Social wasn't any better: Aboriginals, residential schools, transnational corporations and right now economic globalization. On World Book Day, we had to bring a book and read the entire period. I started a book that I got for my birthday and from that day on I read every day on the bus on my way to/from school. We looked at pictures where you could see what different families eat within a week - including a German family. And guess what you could see??! Right, at least 20 bottles of beer :D:D They must have picked a very stereotypical family! In Design, I had to design a piece of furniture and build it on the computer. That was interesting and I did a couch with a bookshelf underneath. My favourite class is PE! We went playing pool, we went swimming and just fooled around, we went playing tennis. Other than that we played flagfootball, baseball, kickball (baseball with a soccerball and kicking), tennisbaseball (baseball with tennisracquet and tennisball), softball and just last week we went canoeing. What I also enjoyed was golfing. We prepared on our schoolfield with plasticballs and two days we went to a driving range where you practice your hits. And the last day of the module we spent at a real golf course. I think I did pretty good for never playing golf before. Yesterday we had to run up the hill behind our school and then run up and down some stairs as a preparation for our hike the coming Monday.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Und bis zum naechsten Mal!