Last Night

It is the day I´m leaving short after midnight and I´m writing my last entry from this location in the USA. It was such an incredible year full of memories and awesome people. The time since my New York Trip has gone by so fast and was full of great memories. I attended the biggest graduation with about 8000 people and more than 600 graduates, went to many open houses of Graduates, visited Chicago again, had a great a week in Muskegon and hung out with friends a lot. The graduation was overwhelming. About 8000 people were in the huge hall called Delta Plex to celebrate 605 Graduates. It was a long ceremony, because all names had to be called, everybodies hand had to be shaken by our superintendent and pictures had to be taken from everyone. The walking over the stage of graduates went without break about one hour and we had speeches from the important people in the school and our class. The best part of the night, though was the awesome after graduation party, which started at 10pm and ended at 4.30 in the morning. We had an hypnotist, who did a show. There were ten people in the front, but I also got hypnotized. It was really interesting and weird to actually feel that I couldn´t open my eyes, although I felt wide awake. It got a little blurry in my mind for a few moments, but people around started laughing and that dragged me back into full consciousness. We also had a ton of great food, a casino to win tickets for a raflle, and other great activities. After this great night I slept till 2pm and it messed up my sleepcycle for a few days, but it was totally worth it. A few days later I went on a one day trip to Chicago with exchange students from Germany, Malysia, Japan, and Thailand. We went with the host mum of one of the students, took the car to Michigan City, IN and then the train to Millenium Station downtown close to the bean. The weather was really hot and almost no clouds. We saw the bean and then did a boat trip up the Chicago River and out to the Lake Michigan. The views were great and made us hungry for some stuffed Chicago pizza. Giordano´s is a popular pizza place and has great food. I ate 4 big pieces and was so full I could barely walk, but walking down the magnificent mile and visiting all the different locations like the Water Tower Mall or the Hershey´s store helped a lot. We took the train back and arrived home at midnight after 17hours. It was a great day with great people. The trip to the Muskegon State Park with the Stones and their neighbour´s daughters was a great time.The weather was beautiful and the location was very nice. We visited the USS Silversides, which is a WWII submarine, which patrolled in the Pacific and was quite succesful in fighting the Japanese. It was very interesting to see how the layout was and how the 72 men lived in this tight space of 300×16 ft or 100×5.3 m . We went to the Silver Lake Dunes, as well, and it was like I was there at the start of my year. I nice coincidence. The last few days were filled with packing, planning a goodbye party at my house, which was great, and saying goodbye to a lot of people. The party was last night and about 20 people came. A great size. We had pizza, pop and German candy from Meijer. Meijer is a big chain market like Walmart. We played baseball in our backyard and had a barnfire to make smores. Today was a great day, too. I went to the mall for some last minute shopping, went out to eat with the Playfords, Robin and Grandma Phyllis and broke the record of $7.63 for a frozen yogurt at spoonliquors with a 16.2oz or more than one pound and $8.18 monster. The record was done by Holly last year. She was pretty impressed. Tomorrow I will fly out at 3pm in Grand Rapids and have an 17 hour journey back to Germany. It´s gonna be a sad day, but I know I will come back and see everyone at least once next year. The pictures from the last weeks are in the picasa album under the link: https://picasaweb.google.com/108204582564821266521/ExchangeYear201213?authkey=Gv1sRgCMiYt_DT6prcwgE