Already Halftime and more!

Hello everybody!!!

Another 2 months are over! Now I'm for 6 months - already halftime and more - here in America and still in the same host family. But it is not a 'host family' anymore!! It is my second family! And I love them. <3 
I am so happy and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life! It is definitely one of the best experiences you can ever have! You live a total different life with people of another culture, of another lifestyle! You live with them; you discover another side of you, you experience something new, something that's awesome, that you cannot describe!!
I know it is a long time you have not heard anything of me but now I am back...So I still have some things to tell y'all about last year but there already happened a lot this year, 2014!!!

2013:

Ice skating/Roller skating:
It was a surprise. One day before we went ice skating Chuck and Ashley asked me what I like to do, and I told them I love ice skating. The next day my whole family went to Little Rock but the kids and me, we had no clue what we were doing. Ashley told us - it's a surprise, it's a surprise! If she tells us it is surprise she is not going to tell us what it is. So we had to wait. We did not get any information from her! I was so happy when I saw what we were doing...This day was a lot of fun..Ice skating is almost my favorite thing to do during the winter and the last time I went ice skating is/was a long time ago. After a while we switched to roller skating. They have two arenas. One ice skating and one for roller skating. This was the first time I went roller skating and it was a really-funny experience. :D 

Kobe:
Kobe is a Japanese restaurant. After our ice skating trip we went to this restaurant. It was awesome. They cooked our food right in front of us. I have never seen something like this before. Our cook was good. The food was delicious and he had some funny jokes for the kids. Like, he had a fake ketchup tube with a plastic red straw and he scared Kip with it. It was a nice night. 
Furthermore I ate Sushi for the first time in my life and it was pretty good. *.*

Bass Pro Shop:
Bass Pro Shop is a shop where you can almost find everything. Start with fishing over hunting to guns. It is a paradise for people that like to do things outside...There are not a lot Bass Pro Shop's in America and there is only one in Arkansas. It just opened. It is so big. And the craziest thing was there were a section with guns. They were not behind glass or something you actually could touch them. This was amazing...!! :)

Out of school:
We did not have to got school two times because of the weather. If they have an announcement for snow or ice for the next day we get out of school because it is too dangerous! So we actually got two times out of school. But the disadvantage is that we have to go two more days after school to school because we missed these days. So we have two more days at the end of our school year. 

Wrestling:
This year the Sheridan Highschool had his first Wrestling match in our school. Yes, we really have a wrestling team in our school and hey are really good. I went to this first match in our school and I have to say that wrestling was different than I expected it to be. It is not like the wrestling on TV (on German TV). It was a good experience.

Ronja's Birthday:
Ronja invited me to her Birthday and we went with her and her family to Hot Springs to the movies. First of all we went to a Japanese restaurant. And I loved it because it was like 'Kobe' and they cooked in front of us. And after that we went to the movies. We watched 'Catching Fire'. It is a really good movie.

Christmas:
Christmas is almost totally different than the German Christmas. Like in Germany we get our presents on Christmas Eve and not on the 25th of December in the morning. It was different but it was pretty good. I really liked it. You have a nice Christmas Eve together with the family, then you go to bed, but before you go to bed you read the special Christmas book (I forgot the name of the book :( ) and then you go to bed and the next morning you wake up and you gonna open the presents Santa brought you. The days before Christmas we went to the families houses and ate supper with them. In my family we ate the same like Thanksgiving. 
On Christmas Eve Mollimae baked some cookies for Santa and she made some food for the deers. So they are not going to die of hunger. They were so excited. All three kids. They found a side on the internet where they could see where Santa was at the moment. 


2014:

Church Camp:
We had the Winter Retreat the last three days of Christmas Vacation. We went to Greers Ferry, AR, about three hours away. We were talking about Identity that weekend. And some College students of my church talked about their life in college and how important it is to find your own identity. We were reading passages in our bible and we learned more and more about Identity. It was a good and interesting weekend!! 

Painting:
Ashley, Sarela and me and a few other  people went to Artist here in town. There we drew a letter with professional aid. I know, it does not sound like you need help to draw a letter but this woman is awesome. The pictures look so good and we had a lot of time. We were drawing over 3 hours the time went so fast. A great night. 

Iceskating:
This time I went with Sarela and her church. We went to Little Rock and there we met two other churches. But the craziest thing was - it was over night. We were ice skating, or roller skating but I actually prefer ice skating, form like 11.30 pm to 1.30 am. It was so awesome and there were only the 3 churches and nobody else. 

Super Bowl Party:
Super Bowl is the final of football. This year BRONCOS vs. SEAHAWKS!! And some people get really crazy. But not my family. Peyton had a Super Bowl Party with his friends, so Ashley and me decorated 'a little' for the party. During the game we had a lot of games like Commercial Bingo. Everybody says that the football commercials are the funniest and the best. And we actually watched the commercials this time. Almost everybody was for the Broncos but they lost. :(

Sarela's Birthday Party:
This weekend Sarela celebrated here birthday. We watched movies, played Just Dance and had a lot of fun. We are lucky girls. It snowed this weekend so we went outside. It all ended up in a small snowball fight!! :) It was a great weekend with great people!

Oaky, that is all! 

Sarah <3