Tuesday - first day at M-A!

Hi everyone!

Tuesday was our first day at M-A(Menlo-Atherton High School). I got up at 6:30, because I couldn't sleep anymore. Maybe because of jetlag, I don't know, it hasn't really bothered me that much in general. Anyway, as I was in the bathroom, Simba came in and started meowing. Apparently, he can open the door on his own. When I got out of the shower and went back into the bedroom, Sasha was lying on the bed. It was pretty snuggly, that they were there and they really made me feel like a part of the family, the way they were following me everywhere. So, for breakfast I had some cereal(they had like 5 different kinds, so I just mixed two, which looked pretty good), and Jennifer made me some salad, I could bring for lunch. I drove with Natalie and Rachel to the school. It seemed pretty weird, that Natalie had a driver's license and basically her own car, since the other children weren't old enough to have a driver's license, and Jennifer and John also had a car each. In America I  think it's pretty normal for kids to get their own car, when they get their driver's license, which for some is already at 16. At least most of the students seemed to drive to school themselves(or drive with older siblings).
In the first period, Natalie had a test, so I had to go with Caroline and Bjørg to another class. Actually, they had some sort of test too, so it didn't make that big a difference, and I sat there doing nothing almost the whole class. The next periods were sort of similar, where the students were sitting and doing something on their own, or just talking to the other students. I didn't really have that much to do, so I sat there pretty much all day doing not that much. I think it is weird how Natalie used 3 or 4 hours the night before doing her homework, and then they don't really do anything in some of the classes. It seems like such a waste of time to me, but I didn't really get a chance to discuss that with her. When we got home, I sat in the kitchen and wrote my blog, while Natalie was doing her homework. She also made a "Tumblr" for me, because she uses Tumblr instead of Facebook. But seriously, I wrote in my blog for hours. For dinner, her mother made salmon and shrimps with rice and broccoli. It was really nice to finally get some 'proper' food. Also, I thought Americans almost never made their own food(and weren't that good at it, if they tried). Myth busted completely! After dinner, I went with Natalie and Rachel to get some ice cream. We also brought Luna, so she could get a walk. I ordered the same ice cream as Natalie, which was a chocolate fudge ice cream with jelly beans on top. Yummy. When we went home again, I found Sasha in my bed, and I sat next to her and petted her for a while. At some point I fell asleep, and when I woke up a couple of hours later, Jennifer had turn the lights off in the room. She said it looked pretty cute, when I was lying in the bed with Sasha next to my face. I can imagine. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that. It was a good day though.

- Sofie

Monday - Muir Woods, Steinbeck Museum and the host family

Hello again everyone!

So, Monday we got up pretty early, we had to pack, eat our breakfast and buy some lunch before leaving in a bus. I also bought some jelly beans, yummi. The first place we went was the Golden Gate Bridge. We had to drive over it to get to Muir Woods(which is up north from San Francisco, I think). After we drove over it, we stopped to take a lot of pictures(which I will put here later on, when I have my camera with me). So, while we were standing there like a big bunch of proper tourists, this man went over to us and started correcting our positions. He made the girls stand like they were holding the bridge and so on, and then he took the photos on their cameras. I think, they got some pretty nice photos out of it, but I haven't seen them, so I don't know. We only had 10 minutes or something for taking photos, so we had to hurry and get to Muir Woods.

When we got there, I think we were already a bit late, so we didn't have that long time there. At the entrance, there was a small tourist shop, but that was it. Then we walked into the forest. It was a bit weird, because as soon as you went into the forest, you could feel that it was a lot more moist than outside the forest. It felt like walking into a jungle or rain forest or something. There were a lot of huge trees, and they all had this weird kind of bark, which was a lot different from the bark I've seen before. I will post some pictures later, then you will hopefully know what I mean. Sort of. There also was this river, that we followed while walking through the forest. It was really pretty. Plus, the earth was covered in fern and other plants, except for on the path we were walking on. After walking out of the forest, we ate our lunch pretty fast, and then we drove again.

A couple of hours later, we arrived at the Steinbeck Museum, where we were actually a bit more than an hour late, so our tour guide had already left. We got a quick introduction from one of the workers, and then we just walked through the museum on our own. I think they were pretty proud, that they had made the museum sort of 'children friendly'. That means, that throughout the museum, we could press buttons, pull in levers and stuff like that to see some extra information about Steinbeck. It seemed a bit lame to me, but who am I to judge? I'm sure younger children love it. Plus, at least they made an effort, trying to make going to museums fun for the children.

When we were done at the museum, we had 10 or 15 minutes to go buy some food, before we had to drive 2 hours or something like that to get to Menlo-Atherton High School, where we were supposed to meet the host families(for the first time) for dinner. Keep in mind, up until this point the only thing I knew about my host family was what I could find out on Facebook on Natalie's very limited page, the mother's even more limited page or the short message, she had sent to me. Apparently, American people don't use Facebook that much. So, I met the mother, Jennifer, at dinner, and we spoke a bit together. The girls, Natalie and Rachel couldn't join us, because they had classes or soccer or something. When we were done eating, we went home, where I was introduced to the rest of the family. That is, the father, the two girls and the younger brother, Devin. Natalie is the girl I am shadowing, and she had just come home and was doing her homework. She kept doing that until 11 or something, so I didn't really get to talk to her that much. Instead, I saw a movie with the father. We watched 'The Black Stallion'. It was pretty good actually, even though it is a pretty old movie. I don't know exactly how old(in fact I have no idea), but it was old. At 11 PM, I went to bed. Oh, did I mention, that I got my own bedroom(with a double bed), and my own bathroom? That's pretty cool. Oops, I also forgot to mention the rest of the family: the two cats, Sasha and Simba(from Lion King), and the dog, Luna. Simba came to say goodnight, while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom. He really likes running water. Apparently, Natalie taught him to drink from the sink. It was really cute.(I'll put some pictures of that up later on too).

Then I went to bed. In that giant double bed. Really, really giant bed. It was almost scary. So I stayed on one side of the bed, pretending it was smaller than it actually was.

- Sofie

Photos from Saturday

Hi again.

As promised, I'm going to upload a bunch of photos here from Saturday. I feel like I have to warn you, because I'm not that great a photographer, so they are probably not going to be that great all of them.
The pictures are going to be in a different order, than they should be in, but I can't figure out how to move them and make it look the same. Sorry.

The whole group walking to Union Square.

A cable car, that we saw.

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair!

(this picture is taken inside the Magic Bus)

Driving through Chinatown!

Union Square

The secret to Chinatown!(The lanterns)

A basket full of ... Well, it's supposed to look like the 60's.

Haight Ashbury

Legs sticking out of a window

A weird place, where you could start playing music, I think?

One of the pretty victorians

The group at Union Square

I love how the roads just keep going, so I took a picture.

I'm not sure, if you can see how far it goes, but it's far away.

Haight Ashbury

City Lights - an important bookstore, because they sold cheap paperback books.

- Sofie

Sunday(boring)

Hi there!

Just to warn you, this post is going to be boring, and maybe not even worth reading. I got sick during the night between Saturday and Sunday, and I was sick the whole next day. So basically I spent half the day on Cecilie's computer(my own wasn't working, because I couldn't get my adapter to work, and it had run out of battery). The other half I spent sleeping. But actually, I did do something that day, I went to the little shop just on the corner of the road(not that far from the hostel, but I did have to go down and up the stairs), and I bought a cola and some pringles. I thought it was pretty odd, that they had 3x as much diet coke or coke zero(or whatever those non-calories-more-healthy-versions are called) as they had normal cola with sugar and all the calories. That is definitely different from Denmark. Not that I buy that much soda in Denmark, because I don't(my mother is reading this blog).

Well, other than that, there is not a lot of interesting things to say about my Sunday. The others went to Alcatraz and the Cheesecake Factory, and I pretty much just lay in my bed feeling sorry for myself.

- Sofie

Apologies... + Saturday

Sorry guys! I've had a bit of a problem with Google, which did not accept the fact, that I was(am) in USA, it kept claiming that somebody else was trying to login to my account. Plus, I haven't had my computer, because I couldn't figure out how my adapter was supposed to work. So anyway! I am starting almost from the beginning, so we landed in San Francisco at about 5 PM last friday. It took us about two hours to get through immigration, and then we were supposed to get picked up by a bus. The bus just didn't feel like showing up before 8 or 9 I think. So we arrived at Adelaide Hostel at 10 PM, and we were SO tired(at least I was). So we went to sleep. The next day, we started with a lecture from Macmood about a bit of America's history(and his own). It was actually pretty exciting. Afterwards, we finally figured out, that we were in San Francisco. So I went jumping up and down and took pictures of everything like a real tourist! We walked over to Union Square, where we had an hour to find some food before being picked up by the MAGIC BUS! So I went with Cecilie down a road, and we found a mall. A really big mall, but we couldn't find any food in there, so instead we found a Subway on the way back.
Then we took the Magic Bus around town. I'm going to upload a lot of photos from that trip later on - but for now, you'll have to live with my descriptions. :) To understand the feeling in the bus, you might want to put this song on while reading the description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvqoxWwplFg
The bus was painted in every colour imagineable, and there was a lady in the back of the bus, who blew soap bubbles out the window and yelled to the people on the streets about how much she loved everybody. She kept on singing and talking about love, peace and harmony during the whole trip with the widest smile I've ever seen, on her face. A couple of times during the trip, the white curtains were pulled down, and it was used like a screen(which I thought was REALLY awesome!!!!!). Seriously. So we saw a lot of San Francisco in the bus, and as mentioned, I'm going to post some photos later on(to make sure I don't forget mentioning something important, when I write about all of it). Maybe I'll just update this post, I'm not really sure how that works.
So after the bus ride, we got some time for shopping. Cecilie and I went to the mall, that we were in earlier, and we spent almost an hour(I think) in Aeropostale. I'm not really going to go into details with the shopping, but I'm just going to point out some of the awesome things about shopping in the USA compared to shopping in Denmark. First of all, all the shops, malls, cities and so on are big. If you're Danish and can't compare to something bigger than things in Copenhagen or Aarhus, then take that and multiply it with 100. Okay, second, we all love the American brands. And they are quite a lot cheaper in America. Sometimes about half the price of what it would be in Denmark. Third, the American people are really good at smalltalking and really nice. There's none of that awkward silence between the cashier and yourself, when you buy things in America, and they are also really great at helping you.
Okay, so after a couple of hours I was almost dying of tiredness, so I went back to the Hostel and slept for an hour, before we all met and went to a steakhouse for dinner. Actually, we had planned to go to the Cheesecake Factory, and we did, but that would've taken a really long time to get seats. Instead, we went to the mentioned steakhouse, and got a reservation for an hour later. The food was excellent, but I also think I would've eaten just about anything, because I was really hungry at that point.
I realize, I've only gotten to blog about Saturday so far, so I'm going to be blogging a lot for the next few days, and hopefully I'll catch up soon enough.

- Sofie

Stuck in the airport..

So, as I think I mentioned in the first post, I had to get up really early today. At 5:45 we drove in the bus from our school to Billund Airport. The first flight started at 9:20, and we arrived in Copenhagen Airport somewhere around 10:10. We were supposed to board the next plane at 12:30 and leave at 13:15, but it's been delayed until 15:05. Right now I'm sitting in the middle of the airport with Cecilie and Camilla. We're supposed to meet up with the others 12:30. At least we have internet available. ;)

So, as promised: here are some photos from  the trip so far:

On the left: Camilla

On the right: Cecilie

- Sofie

Preparing for the trip(first post, yay!)

Hi everyone :)

So, I've started to pack all the things I'm going to need over there. I really can't believe we're already leaving tomorrow morning, but I suppose I'll get used to the thought sooner or later(quite possibly later). To be honest, I've never written a blog before, so I have no idea what I'm doing. But I think it's going to be pretty interesting to try out. :) I am really looking forward to the trip! Except for the part, where I have to get up and out of bed and be ready to leave from the school at 5:45 tomorrow morning! But I'm pretty sure, it's going to be worth it. ;)
We're supposed to land in San Francisco at 15:35 tomorrow, which means it will be 00:35 in Denmark(and saturday). I hope, I will get a chance to post something again(maybe also some pictures) friday evening. Until then, you'll have to survive with this! ;)

- Sofie