The turkey didn’t survived

This time my blog will be in English! (I can hear you thinking Gill, I know). This is because in this way my American friends & family are able to read it and it is for me a good practice. I’m sorry for all the spelling and grammar mistakes…

Anyways. Last week I had my first (and last… 😦 ) Thanksgiving! Because our dog decided to have her puppies on Wednesday we didn’t had the chance to leave Wednesday night. So Thursday morning around 8 am we left to South Dakota. It was only a 4 hour drive and on our way we passes a town called Holland! And as stupid as I’m I forgot to take a picture. But with Christmas we’ll also go to South Dakota and I’ll try then to take a picture (remind me!). I did took a picture of a Bold Eagle we saw on our way! Only thing is, is that it isn’t focused, so next time better!

We arrived around noon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I met my host grandma & grandpa (is that the right word to call it?) and aunt Janel, and we helped with getting the food ready for the Thanksgiving lunch. By the time we were ready all the other family members were arrived. I first was thinking that we just had a dinner and that’s it. But no. The whole day is about food. We started with the lunch, which was to be exactly a dinner around 2 pm. And around the time that you normally have dinner, you will eat more. Lunch was a typical Thanksgiving meal. This included of course Turkey, stuffing, Cranberry’s and pumpkin pie (we had more food, but smarty-pants forgot the names of it). That evening we didn’t really do much with the family because everybody was filled with food. I talked with the family about things. I had a lot of fun with Janel and Jen learning them a few words of Dutch…and I do not mean the good words….oops….
It was a great Thanksgiving and everybody was super nice and friendly! And never laughed that much on one night with Janel, we have the same kind of humor hahaha. I still laugh when I think back of some of the moments (which are kind of inappropriate to mention on my blog hahahahha). That night I didn’t slept that well. This was because we took the dogs and newborn puppies with us and they were also sleeping in the room. And for those who don’t know, puppies make a lot of noise in their sleep!!!! But it was Black Friday the next day! We slept in that day (or at least tried to) and we had a late breakfast at a restaurant with the family. And Al (the grandpa) gave me some 1$ coins! I never saw them before and they are really nice. On one side of the coin is one of the former Presidents and on the other side is the Statue of Liberty. I have one with Lincoln, Hayes and Tyler.

This is not a reallt good picture, but this was a glas wit 800 ml of soda in it! It wasn’t any problem to ask for a refill (I didn’t, don’t worry) 

After the late breakfast we started with the Black Friday shopping! The most of the things I bought were Christmas gifts for my family. But I also bought a pair of hand gloves and winter boots! But guess what, all the snow is gone now! It all melted Sunday night/ Monday morning. But at the end of this week it supposed to snow again. And it’s kinda stupid that my parents every time get a text when I spend money with my Credit Card with the amount and store information in it. I’m sorry mom and dad for the texts you got that day…oooppss… Anyways Friday night we ate at a restaurant called HuHut, the only problem, Jo and I drove with Janel and she wasn’t paying attention and she drove straight by the restaurant so we were a bit late.  But It is a restaurant where you can grab a bowl and fill it with noodles, meat, vegetables and sauces and the prepare the food on a big cooking plate in front of your nose. It was really nice and they also had a separate menu with all the choices of soda where you could choose from ( A LOT!). Oh in case if you’re wondering, Rod (hostdad) didn’t go with us to South Dakota because he had to work that Friday.

HuHut

Our Black Friday shopping result

The seperate menu with the weird soda’s. I went for Fanta Mango.

That Saturday, also known as Broke Saturday, we had a Swedish Massage! This was the first time in my life I had a Swedish massage and I was a kind of nervous because a woman is going to give you a massage and what if…  but I was nervous  for nothing because it was really nice! This was also my early Christmas gift from Janel! Really nice of her! After the massage they showed me the Sioux Falls (for the Dutchies under us, you say it like Soe Falls) and the prison made of the rock you can find in that area. And now you’re probalby thinking why do you show a prison to an exchange student? Because it was a really nice building! Only it’s used as prison. I also saw people walking around with an orange t-shirt on with the text Inmate on it, omg. Around 5pm we start driving back to Minnesota.

On our way back I saw a really awesome sky full of stars (stupid that I still don’t have a tripod, otherwise we could have stopped and took a picture). And around 8  pm it suddenly started to get really foggy and we could barely see further than 4-5 meters.

This was last sunday when we went to Walmart for some groceries. 

I had a great Thanksgiving weekend in South Dakota and I’m really happy with my new family! I still like it at Jo and Rod. By the way, I met the Monday before thanksgiving Rod and he got also the same kind of humor as me and he is a really good cook!

Also on school I’m starting to get to know more people. We have every day after school One Act practices and that is also helping to get to know more people. But I still really miss the people in Holdingford! (Miss u so much guys!) The days are really long now and I’m tired when I’m back home but I prefer being tired of doing things on school than being tired because I’m bored.

I have also some random things I couldn’t really tell in a story:

• I found my new favorite snack! A girl on school gave me a small bag of Goldfish Vanilla Cupcake flavor and since them I’m solded (is that a normal sentence? I’m translating a Dutch expression (“ik ben verkocht”) into English…).
• I saw somebody going from school to house with his snowmobile. Omg. Just a young kid with his backpack driving a giant snowmobile like it is a bicycle for us…
• I was wondering and I’m still wondering what word you use when you want to say; “een boot is aan het varen of een boot vaart…” You say a car drives but a boat? A boat doesn’t really drives in the water, does it? I would think a boat sails, but that only works for a sailboat and not for a boat without sails. A boat without sails can’t sail… AHHH STRUGLES.
• Can also somebody tell me what the word springvorm is in English??? I want to buy one to make a Dutch apple pie J
• I’m almost 100 days in the USA! The time is going really fast now!
• The puppies that were born the day after I came here are starting to get really big now! But they are so cute!

The horses at grandma’s house! 

I’m going to end this blog for this time!

Tot de volgende keer maar weer!

Emma

The turkey really did not survived Thanksgiving. One of the turkeys we had was turned into a Thanksgiving meal, only not ours….