My Christmas was a very busy and definately unforgetable time. We had family reunions twice with at least 25 people. And there were handing outs of christmas gifts 3 times and one is still to come at my birthday tomorrow. We unfortunately didn´t have a white Christmas, but a pretty decent winter storm with a lot of snow and Blizzards in some parts of Michigan started on the dot afternoon of 26th. We saw at least five cars off the free way, because of skidding, this day. One of the problems is that almost nobody changes his tires to winter tires. Either it doesn´t worth it or someone doesn´t care about it. My activities besides unwrapping presents and eating cookies were very dominated by hellweek practices from the swimming season. Start at 8.30 and ending 4 hours later with a lot exhaustion every day is not the ideal holiday, one can imagine, but you see your friends and you get in shape for the following two months of practices and meets. Here in the public mind is the terrible shooting in New Town, Connecticut, the following debate about gun control and the rapidly approaching fiscal cliff. The news about the fiscal cliff are really confusing and although a lot of people are talking about it, I couldn´t figure it out completely, yet. Right now it is Bowl weeks in the football season, with almost one or two bowl games every day. There are about 30 different Bowls and they have weird names such as Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl or Rose Bowl. The most interesting Bowl game is the College Football Association Championship game with undefeated number one Notre Dame and number two Alabama. A lot of great football and a hard competition are expected . Tomorrow I´m gonna enjoy my birthday with family and friends, but first the obligatory Saturday practice. I wish everybody a Happy New Year and some pictures will be hopefully uploaded in the next week.

In this week I experienced so much new and awesome things. We had our first two swim meets and I had a school trip to Chicago. Our first meet of the season was against Jenison High School. It was like my first competition with the DLRG. I was so nervous and felt so weak before my first race. But after the start, when I thought of nothing, just than listen to the voice of the starter, everything got better. The last 25 were very strange, because I could almost feel the speed the lactic acid built up in my muscles. Sounds like a really strange thing, but I found it very fascinating. My times were 1:02 in the 100 free and a :27.25 in the 50 free. Faster than in the practices, but still not really fast. Finally we won the meet, although it was tighter, than Parks expected. Thursday we had a meet at Holland High School. They are a smaller High School, but are really fast. Parks was really excited, though, because we had weight room training on Monday and in consequence our muscles were sore and we couldn´t swim all out on Tuesday, but Thursday it was almost gone. It was supposed to be very tight and in the end we lost, but it was a great meet. I improved and had a 1:00.66 in my 100 free and a 0:58.77 after a relay start, which are supposed to be faster, but that´s still a significant difference. My 50 free were with a :26.09 better and I hope to improve a couple more seconds, which is not easy, but doable. Saturday we had the West Michigan Relays, which is a big meet with a lot of schools from West Michigan. I didn´t swim, because only the people from the A-Team got the opportunity, but I just cheered for us. We got first place in the overall ranking and had a few first places in races and broke at least one time record. Friday was a awesome and unforgetable day. I went with German learning students and other German exchange students from our school to Chicago. We started at 7am and came very tired back at 10:30pm. We visited the German Christkindl Market, in Downtown Chicago, which is surprisingly much German, and the Goethe Institute on Michigan Avenue, one of Chicago´s main streets. Of course we had plenty time to do christmas shopping and take lots of pictures. It was cold and really windy, but so clear, that the skyline picutres just look incredible. Before I went to the Big Meet we got our Christmas tree at a local tree farm. We cut it ourselves and went with the Hubbard´s. Finally I could add some pictures from my trip and the tree hunt. The link is: https://picasaweb.google.com/108204582564821266521/ExchangeYear201213?authkey=Gv1sRgCMiYt_DT6prcwgE

After the first week of school I am glad to have weekend. Practices are hard. Much harder, than I thought they would be. And one can guess now, what happened 😉 . I finally made the team together with another 34 swimmers and 5 divers. Swimming is very time, that I have not much time for anything except homework after practice, and powerconsuming, that I fall asleep on the couch at night, when I watch tv. My new courses of the trimester are CAD, which is a drafting program for engineers, Psychology, which is one of the most interesting classes I ever had in school and Introduction to Calculus. Intro to Calc seemed hard the first days, but all in all it is not much harder than the german math classes. I still have Aquatics for Fitness, which is the replacement for morning practice. It´s much better to do this in first hour, instead of starting at 6:15am and be done at 7:15. As well I have American Studies B. Mr. Dekuiper is still awesome and now he has three exchange students to make fun of. One from Mexico, one from France and me. It is hilarious. Our swimming practices are twice a day on weekdays and once Saturday. All together it is like a 17 hour job. We just don´t get paid 😉 . The Scheduloe with practices and meets is tight. We have almost the whole christmas break practice and even on my birthday is practice from 8:30 am to 10:30. The weather is getting colder and we are usually now at 31°F/-1°C in the morning.

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody, who reads this while it is still Thursday, November, 22. I´m sitting in the couch after a awesome day with the Playford family in the little town of Merrill, Mi. The food was incredible and kind of overwhelming. So many different to try and almost not enough space in the stomach. This week was really unusual for me. We had a different schedule in school, because it was the end of the trimester. First day was review first hour, exam first hour, review second hour, exam second hour, review third hour and the first day of the week was over. The second day was filled with the exams and reviews for third through fifth hour. It went pretty good in all the exams, but the final scores are not public yet. As well the swimming season started this week. The tryouts were monday-wednesday and the final decisions about the team are on monday. The tryouts were hard and really tiring. The schedule is tough and missing practices unexcused will result in get kicked off the team with the second violation. We have two personal off days, though. These are like excuses for absence. Tomorrow is “Black Friday”. It is an insane shopping day with sales and big discounts everywhere. Everybody tries to save as much money as possible and some go shopping from tonight 12 am or meet at 3:30 to go shopping. Another thing, that just started is Christmas season. Trees are selled and the streets start getting decorated.

After more than two weeks without the possibility to write here I use the election night to write again. The last few weeks were very busy. Homework, Studying, Reading, Homework and more Homework. The last weeks of the trimester will be insane with finishing a book, learning two chapters about World War II, having big tests in  Physiology and last but not least the four final exams for this tri in all my classes except the PE Class. I´m not really complaining about the amount of work, it just will be a big part of live until November, 21st. The three day week before Thanksgiving will be important with tryouts for the Swim and Dive Team. A big topic in the last week was the hell Sandy. We weren´t really effected by this storm, which means a lot rain and fast winds, but instead of NJ of NYC with floods and up to 60 feet /20 m water in the subway for more than 48 miles/ ca. 70 km it was nothing. All in all the weather is heading rapidly towards winter. This morning it was about 25°f/-2°C and the grass in front of the school got hoarfrost on it. The election is still going on and there is yet not a real tendency to a candidate. It´s like a election night in Germany with debates, updates of percentage points and counts of electoral votes. The magical barrier of 270 is not reached yet. Another big thing coming up soon are big decisions for the Graduation and After Grad Party. The decisions have to be done due friday/next Thursday. I didn´t think, that the school needs so long to plan everything and that the distributors of graduation clothes and things need a so long lead time. Anyway will I try to keep up with writing again.