Last Friday after track practice we went to Minneapolis to fly to Phoenix in Arizona the next morning.
We drove to Minneapolis in rain which soon turned into a snowstorm. We arrived at the hotel at about 10 and I went to bed right away.
The next morning we went to the airport and flew to Phoenix. We flew about 3 hours. The flight was good, I slept most of the time. We arrived in Phoenix at about 8 a.m. I went to the bathroom and put some shorts on. Because it was supposed to get over 90°F. We went out of the airport and it was nice - dry air and a little bit windy. We got our rental car and drove to Jack in the Box. I always wanted to go there because my sisters boyfriend went there a lot, when he was in the US. The food was pretty good, but I thought it was like 5 times bigger than every other fast food restaurant.
After we ate we went to downtown Phoenix. It's pretty nice but not as nice as New York or Chicago. There are a lot of little nice parks but also a few skyscrapers. We went to a little tourists mall and walked around. At noon we went to a baseball game. The Milwaukee Brewers against the Cincinnati Reds. The Brewers had their spring training in Arizona, that's why they are playing there. It was the first time I saw a baseball game and it was ok. I think to watch a basketball or a football game is more exciting, but the baseball game was not boring. The game ended 9 to 9.
After that we went to Rawhide near Phoenix. It's an old western style town where you can do a bunch of country stuff. I did rodeo and we went to a western theatre. We also saw a magician. When that was done we went to the Rawhide steakhouse. It was very tasty and a lot of food.
We drove to Sedona to stay in our hotel.
The next morning we went to a national park and saw old indian homes. The homes were up to 5 stories high and bult in rock. I still wonder how they were able to bulit it. By the way.. it was hot!! About 93°F. The valley was near a river and a small forest. A good place to live.
We left at about 11a.m. and drove to the grand canyon. At about halfway I saw a sign with route 66 on it. We stopped and we found ourselfs in the little town Williams. It's a nice town with many little shops. We took somephotos and went drove to the Grand Canyon, the highlight of the trip. We arrived at the parking lot and you really don't expect the Grand Canyon to be right behind a couple trees. We walked a little bit and you could see the Canyon. The Grand Canyon is amazing. It's so wide, deep, long and beautiful. You can't really describe it. It looks better than every postcard or picture. You can't really describe it, you have to see it. It's really one of the things you should see when you are in America. If I have the chance to go there again I would take a hike down there. I'm sure that would be amazing! Well, I can't really write a lot about the Grand Canyon other than it was amazing.
The next day we went to Payson. Dyland went golfing and we went to see the Tonto Natural Bridge Park. It's a nice park with a huge natural bridge. A natural stonde bridge with water underneath. Reggie and I hiked down to the water and then up to a mountain right next to the bridge. We had an awesome view. After that we drove around and stopped at places we liked.
We went back to Phoenix that night. The Next morning we flew from 90°F Phoenix to 13°F Minneapolis! It was soooo cold. Anyway, I had an amazing time in Arizona with my great host family. You will hear from me after the New Orleans.

Fred

Hey, Last weekend I've been on my trip to Chicago. But first I wanted to say that Aquines won the state championship. Aquines was the team we lost to.
Well, I got up at 4 a.m. and took a shower. I took my gifts for the host family and went to the meeting point. The bus arrived at 5 a.m. and we took off to Chicago. I was sitting next to Nut (a friend from thailand). We were listening to party music and danced in the bus - the time went by fast. We had a stop after 4 hours and then after 6 hours we arrived in Chicago.
First, we went to the Chicago history museum. I would say that was the most boring thing of the trip. The only thing that was interesting was a replca of an old Chicago trainstation. Anyway, after we finshed a guy came and talked about the Holocaust and WWII. He was a jew from the Netherlands.It's always interesting to hear someones story about the war. I always have to think about my grandpa.
After we got done there, we went to the famous Millennioum Park in Chicago. The place was amazing. If you want to see the beauty of Chicago, go there. You can see the famous big bean and you have a perfect few on some of the best constructed skyscrapers in Chicago. It was awesome because I got the same feeling which I had when I was standing right in the middle of Times Square in New York. Then, we went downtown to eat in the hard rock café Chicago.
The food was OK and SUPER expensive. Since I havn't bought a t-shirt when I went to the hard rock caf+e NY, I bought one from Chicago. At least I have something what says Chicago in it ;)
After that we went to the Willis Towe, better know as the Sears Tower. It's a 108 story and 1,451-foot (442 m) skyscraper. We went on top of it and took pictures. When the tower was completed it was the tallest building in the world. The tower has three glass bottom skyboxes where you are just on glass and you can look down 102 storys and you see the street right under you feet. At first it was a little bit scary, but you get used to it.
After we were there for a long time we went to the hotel. I went to the hot tub for like 20 minutes and after that I went to bed. I was tired. During the day some black people joined our group. They were from a church and we were staying with them for one night.
Anyway, our first stop on saturday was at the Chicago Aquarium. I forgot the name :(
It was pretty cool, even though I allready went to a couple Aquariums in Germany. At the end they had a show with dolphins and white whales. That was very cool. Especally the whales.
After that we went to a church organization which helped the homeless people.
I didn'tg think It was very interesting to see the building, but I was amazed by the stories the people there told us. The guy who toured us around had his own company and then moved on to be one of three executives of a big company but he lost everything because of bad decisions with money, drugs and women. He ended up being on the street for two weeks. I just think it's so sad to hear about this. I prayed for this person after he told us the story. It was so sad.
After that we went to the mall. I don't want to talk much about the mall. We all just had a fun time :) Than it was time to go to out host families. I was really lucky. My host family was super nice and we exchanged some cool stories. at about 10 p.m. I went to a party with my hostbrother Kenton. The house where we went to was super rich. They had their own cinema in the basement, a pool, 3 about 7 feet flat screen TVs and more. Well, we had fun. It was awesome.
In the morning we had good breakfast and went to the church where we met up with the other students and their host families. We went to the service and..... I liked it! It was a gospel church so everybody sang and danced. Even when the people had a speech, the band played smooth jazz music, which gave the speech more power. It was 90% like the church part in "The Blues Brothers". I would go to church if it would be like this! ;)
After we had a little time to take pictures and talk, we jumped on the bus and drove home.
It was and awesome experience to be in Chicago. I loved it.

Fred

Hey,
I feel bad for not posting anything for 3 weeks. I just forgot it and when I wanted to write something I was busy. Well, I'll just write everything in this post.

My brithday was a school free day. I woke up at about 10 and Reggie wished me a happy birthday. Nobody else as at home. I got a bunch of good wishes on facebook and twitter. Well, at 4p.m we headed to the highschool to play out last JV basketball game. It was the most intese game I've ever played. We played very well and I had 11 rebounds 6 assists and 3 points in the game. It was an awesome game even though we lost by 3... After the game we celebrated my birthday at Pizza Hut. It was fun because one waiter who worked there started to speak to me in German. He spent a couple month studying in Germany. It's always fun to meet people like this.

The Varsity team won the Conference Championchip. After that they had to other games an won the Regional Championchip. The next game was against. Aquinas. They have one guy who's going to play for the Wisconsin Badgers. He's really good. After an intese game GET lost by 15. They had no chance against an amazing Aquinas team. We played them before and lost by just 3 I suppose, but this time they were jsut to good. Maybe they tried harder because It was a playoff game.

School is going good. My grades are fine and I have fun in school.
I started lifting again and it's going OK. Lifting after 4 month of basketball hurts ;) But I have to get in shape for track season. I'm probably going to jump. I don't really want to run but I guess coach's going to make me to. I'll see.
I got a new personal best score in bowling. I bowled 184. I stared out having an average of 84 after the first 2 weeks. Now 8 weeks after teh beginning of junior bowling and I constatly get over 120 and as I said, a couple days ago I got 184.
In curling my team von the second event 1 place. It's pretty cool.

Next week I'm going to Chicago. It's a trip over the weekend. I hope It'll be great fun - I always wanted to go to Chicago. Two weeks after that I'm going to New Orleans and Memphis with the Choir and Band of my high school. I'm excited for both of tne trips. I hope my next blog post comes sooner than this one. Hopefully after the Chicago trip.

Fred

Hey, I just realized that time runs fast! Very fast. Already 6 month in the US... Half a year... Can you imagine that ? I hardly can. Well, This weekend we went to Wisconsin Dells and Baraboo to celebrate Reggie's and my birthday (even though my birthday is next week). The first day we got out of school early and drove to our hotel in the Dells. It was a nice hotel with a cool waterpark. Our friend Matt was with us. We went to a burger place to eat. It was good. The next day we went snowboarding at Devils Head.
It was great fun. The mountain (if you can call it a mountain) had decent hight and the snow was good. The hills were steep but not too steep. I also tried some of the rails and boxes in the park. I was surprised how well it went. We were snowboarding for about 10 hours. After that we were very tired. We ordered pizza and went to the water park again. We planned to go snowboarding on Sunday, too. But when we woke up it was raining. Because the lift tickets are very expenisve, we decided to get a nice breakfast, go to the mall and then head home. Even though we couldn't go snoboarding on Sunday it was a fun weekend.
School is going allraight, I'm almost done reading the Hobbit, the first book I'm reading in english.
I'm excited for my 16th birthday on friday. I hope it'll be a reat day :)

Fred

Hey,
last week was the first week of the 3rd term. I have 3 new classes. The only classes I kept were band and choir. Instead of Gourment foods, American History and Chemistry, I now have American Government, English and Advanced Algebra. On the first day the teachers talked about what we'll do and I think I'll like the american government class. It's a class were you not just learn about the american government, you also have many group discussions about recent news, laws or important topics. We already had a 90 minutes discussion about nuclear power. It's very interesting, if you have you own opinion and now a little bit backround.
English seems to be a harder class for me, because we read very much and analize books or short stories. We have independend reading time in class where I read the Hobbit, and later we'll read McBeth together in class.
Advanced Algebra first seemed to be a harder class but it's not that hard.

We had three basketball games. One yesterday, and one on Monday. One against Viroqua, where I scored 4 Points, then against Altouna where I scored 6 and then against La Crecent, Minnesota, and I scored 5 :D My average is about 5 points a game. In Germany it was over 20 :D

Well it's still very cold we had a couple days with about -20°C or lower, but it's OK because you stay inside most of the time. I hope it gets warmer soon so we can do more stuff, because the last couple weeks we stayed at home almost every day on the weekend.
Our last basketball game is on my birthday, and track saison starts in March.

Fred

Hey folks,
I really havn't had much time to write smething s here's the first pst f the second half of my year in the US :)
First of all I want to say that my ankle is fine again. A week ago we played Onalaska, a division 2 school. They had a guy who is going to play in Iowa, a Division 1 College. So he's really good. Every GET team got beat by about 20 points. Since my ankle is fine I guess I'm going snowboarding on Saturday. Our next game is tomorrow against Viroqua.

A couple days after New Year school started again. But now the 2. term is almost over. Tomorrow, january 19 we have our finals. Test in every class abut everything we did. But I don't have to worry, my grades are fine, I have straight A's. After the weekend I'll hae new classes, Adv. Algebra, English and American Goernment. Finally an actuall "English" class :D
Well we didn't do very much during the week, and we just stayed at home on Saturday and Sunday so I don't have very much to talk about. But yesterday I made "Schoko-Crossies" little chocolate cockies. I got 25 extra credit points in chemistry.

Well, the first half of my year here is over. I'm sad and also happy... I feels weird to know that the first half is already over... It seems so fast, but I really enjoy it here, with my amazing host family. It's awesome here, even though it's cold :D
Now there are 150 days left, until me and hopefully Reggie are flying back to Germany :D

Fred

Hey, on New Years Eve, Hunter Dylan and me went to a good place to eat in La Crosse (I forgot the name..). I had chicken pieces in a very very spicy sauce. Very spicy but good :)
After that Hunter and me went to the movie theatre and we saw the Hobbit. A great movie....which stopps in the middle of the story. Now I have to wait for the next part, but I want to buy the book.
After that we went to Champions, a country bar near Galesville. There we stayed until about 1am.
We danced a little bit (to country music...). Well after that me and Reggie went to Barrets house to meet some friends. We matched a bunch of movies.
Since Wednesday we have school again. That sucks but it's cool to see all the people again.
The next semester starts in two weeks and I have 3 new classes. I wonder how that'll go for me.
My ankle feels pretty good. It's better every day. I hope I can go snowboarding in a couple days and play basketball in about two weeks.

Fred

Well, first I talk a bit about my sprained ankle. Actually it's not that bad I guess. I can walk normally and it doesn't hurt most of the time. Reggie and Matt went snownoarding today. I wish I could have gone with them. I don't want to rush it though. I guess i will snowboard in a week or so. I'll see how it feels.
Well Our first Christmas was with the Evenson's side of the family. The food was very good and I got food.

On Christmas eve, our family sat in the living room and we watched the movie elf. A fun movie.
Than the "kids", so Hunter Dylan, Reggie and me, we exchanged our gifts. I got a nice T-shirt, new headphones, Dr Dre 2001 and a 10dollar footlocker giftcard.
On Christmas day we opened the gifts from our parents. I got many nice clothes, most of them from Hollister :)

Then during the days after Christmas we spent most of the time with our family.
On day we went Christmas carloling (von Haus zu Haus gehen und singen..?).

Then we had our Hunter Christmas on the 29th. It was fun. It was at Chrisie's hous. We played bingo, poker and we had fun. And I got gifts, too. A nive american eagle shirt and 10dollar gift card, socks, and some other gift cards :)

Earlier on this day we went to a basketball game of GET. I wasn't able to play though. It still was fun. During the varsity game (GET lost) the other team dunked the ball 2 times and they made on Alley-Oop dunk. I was pretty amazed by that.

Fred