My first Sunday in America 

Today I woke up at about 6am. Because in Germany it's about 12pm and I wanted to call my family. After talking to much on the phone I didn't even get to take a shower before me and my host family went to a Lutheran church at 8am.
Even though the American church has a lot in common with the German church there are still many differences. Time flew by as we sat and laughed with the pastor and it was time to go home. Since Saturday was a pretty exhausting day we were all tired and went straight to bed.
Eventually I got up and lunch was already on the table, some warm and delicious tomato soup and cheese sandwiches.
I was very excited I get to visit the animal shelter since I love cats. After a long time cuddling with the cats I got to play ball with the dogs and pet them. What amazed me was that they all were barking while they were in the cages but once they got out and played with us they were the cutest and softest dogs I ever met. 

We went home again and after doing my homework from my school in Germany it was time to visit everyone in St. Ansgar. Everyone brought some self made American food and itf was delicious!
I hope I didn't gain too much weight.

Hope you are having a nice day

Celina

My first Sunday in America 

Saturday 28th Saturday

My day started "dancing" at the After party of the Homecoming game,which is the main event of the Homecoming week,which is a tradition in American Highschools to celebrate the first American Football game of the year, honor
Ex-Highschool students and much more.
The dance ended ad 12:20 AM, but we (Henri, Cael (my host), his girlfriend and I) went to McDonald's to chill and had a midnight snack. Joris and his host were also there, his hoost is elected Homecoming King,which is a title simply won by popularity, but celebrated by the whole school in a big celebration.
At 1:30 AM we drove home,which is a farm 11 miles from Charles city.

I woke up at 8 AM, because I wanted to watch german soccer, who started at 8:30 our time.
At 11 AM we(Henri, Joris, Cael, the mum of cael, Henry(the brother of Cael) and I) drove to Minneapolis to visit the Mall of America, which is the biggest Mall in America.
We arrived at 2 PM and until 8 PM it felt like we visited 20 stores, who all sold the same clothings.
In between that we ate at a typical American restaurant, slowly I can't eat Burgers and Pizza any longer, I don't know how the Americans are doing that.
Now we are on the way back from the Mall.

Thorben

24th September

 The second day of our adventure started quite unspectacular.
It was 1:30 PM and we all went to bed in a hotel in Minneapolis after a 24h travel trip. After some hours of sleep we all finally woke up rather tired and went downstairs to get typical American breakfast.
After a round of waffles, pancakes, cornflakes and oatmeal we brought our luggage to the bus and headed for the Mall of America. Arriving there we were stunned. On the inside there was an unbelievably huge shopping centre which even included a whole amusement park! So we all took our briefcases and enjoyed the 2.5 hours we had left until we needed to leave for Charles City and St. Ansgar.
So at 12:30AM we left the mall, packed with shopping bags full of clothes and souvenirs and started our 2.5h drive to Charles City.
At 3PM we finally arrived at Charles City High School where 13 of us took out there luggage and stayed. The rest of the group left for St. Ansgar.
In Charles City we we’re welcomed by the principal and advised to wait for our students who still had class. We were so excited to finally meet the person with whom we would spend the next couple of weeks and couldn’t await the ringing of the bell.
At 3:30PM the classes finally ended and we all got to go home with our host students. Then we got to met our host family for the first time, we got to explore the house, our rooms, maybe also parts of the City. In the evening some of us then went to a volleyball match of Charles City high school and cheered for “our” team. Apparently the cheering helped, Charles City won against Crestwood 3-0.

Lena

First day

Finally, the day of our departure arrived, and after a long Sunday of packing our stuff, while trying to somehow be under the luggage weight limit of 23 kilos , which sounds like it would be a lot to be able bring, but the weight of my, we met up at 7:30am at the airport in Bremen.
After saying goodbye to whoever had brought us to the airport, we went to give up the suitcases and to look for our gate. Since we still had some time left, we took some photos and went shopping a little. There was only two stores, so it wasn`t that extravagant.
Five Minutes before we had to board the plane, we suddenly heard an announcement that everyone had to leave and go down again because of a security problem. We all went back to the entrances and waited for a long time before we finally were allowed to go back to gate.
 Then comes the first problem: since we had to leave the area of the plane, we had to go through security again. This made everything take longer, because there was yet another line to go through. Since At this point we where tired of standing in lines, so everybody sat down on the ground, which was fine, because it wasn´t moving anyway. This caused us to get a few strange looks, but we were too tired to mind too much.
To add insult to injury, when we finally got back to our gate and into our plane, the pilot told us that we have to wait an hour more because of some organisation problem in Amsterdam (our first stop). So here comes the second problem: We didn’t fly from Bremen to Minneapolis in just one flight. We had to get a second flight in Amsterdam, which, of course was already long gone once we finally arrived in Amsterdam. Because there wasn’t a second flight to Minneapolis, we had to fly to Atlanta and from Atlanta, finally to Minneapolis. Calling this a long detour would be a understatment. We had to wait for the next flight for some hours, but eventualy we got to bord the plane for America.
The plane was pretty cool since every seat had his own little TV. This lead to half of the group sleeping the whole time and the other half watching every single movie they laid their eyes on.
After nine hours binge watching movies, being not able to sit anymore and sleeping, we arrived in Atlanta and switched to our flight to Minneapolis.
In Minneapolis we drove to our hotel and literally fell into our beds. So this was our first day, and the start of the second day. They kind of blended together, in a mess of travel, and time changes. Though we were all really exhausted I think that is was worth the stress to come to America.

 Have a nice day
 Alex 

First day of school

First day of school

 Today was my first day of school in St.Ansgar. It started fairly early for me because my exchange student, Tianna, had a practice for the school's dance team "Haloz". This started at 6:30am I had to get up at 5:30am so that we could leave at 6:10am. My host family lives pretty far away from the school so it took us 20 minutes to get to St.Ansgar. After dance practice Tianna and I went to her locker to leave our bags there because you aren't allowed to take them to class with you. Then I went to Mrs.Larsons room because all the german students met up there. Mrs.Larson then showed us around the high-,middle- and primary-school. She also explained to us how the school works for example, the schedules or lunch. Next week we can also chose which subjects we want to take. After first period I had art with Mr. Nielson. In the beginning we watched CNN 10 and afterwards we did the pledge of allegiance. When art finished we had lunch. We didn't eat the school lunch because we brought food from home. I am pretty happy about that because school lunch didn´t look very appetizing. Next period we had "Seminar". In "Seminar" you can basically do whatever you want; homework, draw, finish projects, or listen to music so everything is very chill. In general the lessons here in America are way more relaxed then the ones in Germany and the teacher-student relationships here is more personal and friendlier. After "Seminar" I went to band practice with Tianna because she plays the trumpet in the schools marching band. It was really interesting to see the practice because we don't have anything like that in Germany. That's pretty much everything that happened on my first day of school. There are quite some differences compared to german schools for example, everybody writes on their mac books, nobody writes on paper anymore and sports play a very big part in the every day school life. Right now we're about to eat an early dinner because we'll go to an open air concert this evening.