Champions are eating

Swimming season is now ultimately over. Last weekend was the State Meet in the Holland Aquatics Center. We got overall 4th and the Champions were from Saline. They are swimming all year round, so they are much faster. In every individual event, except for the 500free, Saline had the #1 ranked swimmer after the prelims. And they won 2 out of 4 relays. The gap between place 1 and 2 was only 4 pints, though, which is not a lot. Our divers did really well with 4th and 9th place and we had about 8 people in the top 16 combined. Tuesday we had our after season banquet. It was an awesome night. We had so much fun with videos featuring the seniors from something called jibjab. It was hilarious. Parks made really funny jokes about members including Courtis, who goes after the summer to Hameln, Germany for one year. He said I should tell not to dress too stereotypical and showed a picture of two men in leather pants. And the seniors made awards featuring funny things that happened during season. I finally got my Varsity Letter with all the patches to sew on the Varsity Jacket. I actually got the Jacket as a present from Debbie and Robin. It´s just incredible, that they did it and I´m so thankful for this present and the opportunity to participate in this program. Finally the spring has come to West Michigan. The sun is shining and we finally get rid of the snow. The temperatures rise and you can stay longer than 2 minutes outside without gloves. The first week of the third trimester was super easy. It was ACT and other standardised tests for the Sophomores and especially Juniors. We had tuesday and Friday off and a late start on wedenesday and thursday. It felt like a perfect week with too much sleep. It sounds impossible, but I could barely sleep at 11pm, because I slept so much over the days. My classes are great. I have a great government teacher and we are four exchange students in his fourth hour. He always says: „It´s like in the United Nations“. We are reading Shakespeare´s „twelth night“. The language and vocabulary is as bad as German Classics compared to standard German. First hour is still Aquatics for me. We do workouts, that could be a part of swim practice and I definately feel, that I didn´t train as much in the last three weeks. My second hour is Structual Engineering, in which we will build storage sheds and learn about the process of building residual homes. My fifth hour is Statistics. It is really fun to learn about the different things you can learn about data and whether a statistic is representative or not. Now, that swimming is over, I have a ton of free time and sometimes I´m bored, but I hang out with friends a lot, I watched Silver Linings Playbook and Beasts of the Southern Wild, which are both great movies, and do things with my family. This sunday we just had the time switch, so it pretty dark in the morning, but at night the sun goes down much later. I´m so excited for the end of this trimester, although it means I´m not a lot longer here then, but we get to go out of school earlier and I probably don´t have to take 2 out of 5 final exams. And the Graduation will be awesome. First we have Spring Break at the end of March and Prom on May 11th. Exciting stuff!