Unit exam, an interview and the treadmill

29th of October, Thursday

We had our first Unit exam in History today. Mr. Gangarossa wasn't in, but we still wrote the test. I didn't study for it, but it didn't seem too hard. It was a 50 multiple choice test, and most of the questions were in the review or in the previous tests. Everybody finished early.
  In Creative Writing, we started a new topic: fanfiction. It's about the movies or series or books, that you absolutely adore, and can't live without and you die if you don't watch that newest episode because you HAVE TO know the story! Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with that situation. So you have to take that story (or several ones), and write an alternative beginning/ending/universe. The possibilities are endless, and I have so many great ideas, that I can barely contain myself! But I'll have to play it cool, and write a good story about ONE thing. (who am I fooling?)
  In Advisement, I visited Marie Wilson's room. She is an ESL teacher (English as a Second Language), and the advisor for the Freshman Mentor program. I was interviewing her for the newspaper in the latter topic. I think it went well, I was a little awkward, because there were a bunch of kids in the room, who all spoke different languages. There was a kid, who asked me if I spoke Spanish, and when he found out, I didn't, he immediately started speaking to his buddy in Spanish, presumably about me. That didn't feel good, I don't often experience being left out because of language problems, so it bothered me. Now I have to learn Spanish ... I'm going to show the interview's final form, to whoever asks me to.
  After going home and relaxing for a bit, the rest of the family came home, and Herb and I decided to go to the YMCA. This was the first time I was back since I twisted my knee. I wanted to run for a bit, so we got on the treadmills, and ran while we were listening to music. I was kinda tired, I was running for 30 minutes really fast, I was dehydrated and hungry, and frankly, I'm kinda clumsy too, so the combination of all of those led to the catastrophy of socially awkward gym users: I fell of the treadmill. I closed my eyes for a second, took a wrong step, lost my balance and flew back on the treadmill. I didn't hurt myself, I was just dizzy. A moment ago I was running, the next thing I know I'm standing up from an embarassing event. And thanks to my dizziness, my logical judgement dissapeared, and I tried to step on the treadmill again, the only thing I forgot was that it was still running at a high speed. So to add to my fails, I fell again. I must have been the clumsiest, most ridiculous person anyone at the gym has seen. I was completely fine, I didn't hurt myself at all (only my dignity). Looking back at it, it was hilarious! Me and Herb laughed about it for a long time. He was frightened of course, but still, it was pretty funny. We continued our workout with 30 minutes of cycling, then we called it a day.
   Lots of interesting things happened at Wegman's, at our aftergym shopping. I've met Kim Greenauer, my next hostmom! We ran into her and Sydney, and we recognised each other with Syd right away, but I have never met her mom. Funny, that in 3 months, I'll be living with them. They were really nice. She's a small, fit woman, Sydney's almost a head taller. Sydney and the Athena cheerleaders won sectionals, which is a huge deal. The whole school will be proud of them.
  We came home, and this was the first time I talked to my Mom at 9 pm here, 3 am there. She couldn't sleep. It was strange, chatting with her at this time. It's so hard to imagine, that there are 40 more weeks, 279 days exactly, until I go home. But there is only 1 day left to Halloween!

Goodwill ... poppin' tags ... yeeeah!

29th of October, Wednesday

The highlight of my day, as every Wednesday was the Rotary Club meeting. And I'm not just saying that, because I could get out of a boring day at school early.
  We played a competition at US History, but my team lost. No matter how hard I tried to get points for the group, it's completely useless, if most of the people not listen in class, and don't study. Then at PE, we were introduced to pickleball, which was fun, but no enough to make the schoolday interesting. Finally, 11:50 came, and Brad Shea took me to the meeting. There were a lot of Rotarians today. I presented my word of the day, which was "Sör", for beer, and my fun fact would have been the list of Hungary's neighbouring countries, if I wouldn't have gotten confused with geography. It's not difficult, I just gave in to the suspense of the situation of public speaking, and that broke me confidence for a moment. But I quickly got back on the horse, and got back on track. I hope at least I showed everyone, that I'm still just a human.
  After a speech about polio and Rotary's involvement, the meeting was over, and me and Larry went into the city, to get train tickets for him to Conneticut, to see his daughter. Everything went well, and I got home by half past two. I knew I had a lot of schoolwork to do, so I watched an episode of my new favourite TV show, Scorpion. Just to demontstrate some procrastination. Then Anne came home, and we went shopping.
  Now that I have an actual plan for Halloween, I need a costume too. I originally wanted a serial killer Alice from Alice in Wonderland, but two days before Halloween, I settled for something a little bit more easier. We went to Goodwill, me for the first time. It's the second hand store Macklemore wrote a song about. It's packed with used clothes and items, and it's quite cheap. Of course, finding stuff, especially good stuff is pretty difficult. I think it took me more than thirty minutes to find a white, flowery dress, and decide to get it. I also got a horror makeup kit, with lots of fake blood. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do, I'll probably figure something out Friday afternoon.
  So we got home from a lot of shopping, at 7 o'clock, and I still had to write a Supreme Court Case Summary, a Graphic Organizer, a Vocabulary of definitions of 24 terms in US History Unit 1 and an Artifact Summary (these are 4 essays we're talking about. But in some miraculous way, I did it in 3 hours. I'm pretty proud of myself. 

Dinner at the Masiello family

28th of October, Tuesday

I had a meeting with my counselor today. We looked at colleges, that might be suitable for me, and we found Emory and NYU very good, but it's all about the budget sadly. We talked for nearly one hour. I shared my story in Creative Writing, a lot of people shared. Seems like most stories turn dark and brutal, especially after the twisted fairy tale story. Morbid stories have a stronger impact on the audience. We also had a pep rally today too. This was the second one, but it was really weak compared to the previous one. It was supposed to be to support the teams in sectionals. Most of the seniors skipped it, no one shouted V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!, no one even volunteered for the competitions. I felt bad for the senior's team, so I joined, but everything was so faint about it.
  Abbey picked me up at 3. We went shopping for dinner to Wegmans. We talked a lot, she's so easy to talk to. She's lively and funny, we get along really well. She just got a job in NYC, so she packed while we watched Criminal Minds. She was done after a few episodes, so we just chilled and watched the show till the end of the afternoon. It's pretty cool, I never watched it actually before. It's a detective story, but the cases are brutal. We watched like 5 episodes, while commenting on what the outcome will be like, what the characters should do. Then Kim and Mike came home, and we made dinner. We had steak fajitas, it was delicious. Mexican food is not as popular in Hungary, which is a shame, I really like it. After dinner, Megan, Abbey's friend came over. Kim told me, that we looked similar, and I can see the resemblence a bit. She brought a board game us girls played. It's called "What's yours like?". You draw a card with a word on it, and everybody looks at it, except for one person,who has to guess what it is, just by listening and connecting what the others' thing is like. (For example: the word is "vacuum cleaner", and you have to say a sentence like "Mine sucks", so that you either confuse the person guessing, or help them guess what the word is). It's a really fun game, we had a good time. It was half past 9 when Kim took me home. I had so much fun! Here's a picture of me, Megan and Abbey. Awesome day today!

Eastern Cities Dinner

27th of October, Monday

I finished my Creative Writing piece, if you're interested in reading it, shoot me an email to bernat.bori@gmail.com ! It's got quite a "boom" at the end.
  Today was one of the most fun, official Rotary meetings I've been to so far. Kim's daughter, Abbey picked me up, and Kim and her husband, Mike, took me to the Joe Floreano Convention Center in downtown Rochester. I met the other exchange students again! It was obligatory for everybody to come. It was good seeing everyone again, it's really nice to bond with people, who are going through the same stuff as you are. Then we were seated in this giant  convention centre, that was nicely decorated. There were several dozens of fancy tables, with fancy lights and fancy foods. There was also a huge stage at one side, the important people sat there. There were 4 giant projectors, and a serious camera, to show the speaker for everybody, because it was impossibe for everybody to see, as I said, the place was huge. I sat at table 3, right at the front, with my Rotary Club. My club has proven once again, how awesome they are. The other exchange students all told me that 4-5 people came from their club, but 17 Greece Rotarians attended this evening! We listened to Don Alhart giving speeches about Rotary, the special guests (there were Rotarians all the way from Scotland too), and the announcements. More than a 1000 people were there!
  The food was good, we had a really good steak. I talked a lot, and joked with my club members, as we always do. I got introduced to a lot of people. We recieved Rotary pins for our jackets too (I got 2). After the speeches, the Paul Harris awards and the remeberence of Joe Floreano, who was a Rotarian, and he built the convention center, the exchange students gathered to talk in the hallway. We chatted and took a billion selfies untill everyone was leaving. We didn't spend a lot of time together, but we did have fun! I ceratinly did.
  Kim and Mike took me home. I was in a good mood, I felt good about Rotary, America and myself.

Last weekend of October

25th and 26th of October, Saturday and Sunday

I've decided not to write about every single day that I have here. On some days, I'm just not doing anything interesting, or worth mentioning. Like yesterday. I didn't leave my room the whole day, and honestly, there's no problem putting on your pyjamas at night, when you didn't even take them off in the morning.
  On Sunday though, we went to church. I had an idea, that I think will be a comfortable arrangement for both me and Herb. He insist that I go to church with them, but I don't want to. So I suggested to stay at his office (his school, where he's the principal, is together with their church), while they attend the ceremony. That way, I'm still in the building, but not really in the religious part of it. And I can do whatever I want. He accepted my suggestion, so I did my Creative Writing homework on his computer. We have a new project. We needed to draw pieces of paper out of bags, and the terms on them defined our story. There was a protagonist, a complication (like what happens), an object and a place. Mine was Mr. and Mrs. Popularity; is trapped; someone else's spouse; and a subway station. It's one of the harder ones, but I'm halfway through already. I'll finish it tomorrow, and then it'll be open for anyone to read, if you shoot me an email.
   After the ceremony, Herb and Anne came down, and we had a lunch at the school's gym. There were a few dozen tables set up, and a lot of people. We ate chili and listened to religious organization's presentations, about how they spread the faith around the world.
  When we got home, I skyped my parents. My Mom just got home from a demonstration she took part in. The Hungarian government wants to make a new tax on the Internet. It would mean 0.62 USD / GB, if we were to translate it into dollars. This is outrageous, after my Mom left the, then peaceful, demonstration, it turned really wild. People threw keyboards and mouses on official building of that political party. And a lot of people are angry. My Dad counted that if that tax law would become official, it would mean our family alone would have to pay 150$ more per month! Not to mention, that even the government mainly runs on the Internet, and everybody uses emails. Our Prime Minister (which would be the President), doesn't even know the difference between fax and emails. This is really dissapointing, frustrating and annoying. Even for me, although I don't live there now.
  We went to Applebee's for dinner. It's a restaurant, but there's a bar in the middle. There are a lot of half-fastfood restaurants like this in America. Your food is prepared in 5-10 minutes, and it's mostly junk-food, but the healthier kind. Like chicken wings, salads, soups, burgers. We tried to order with a little touchsreen device that was on every table. It's an alternative way to order without a waitress, but we failed, so we just called a server. We shared a taco appetizer and I had chicken breast with grilled vegetables. It's nice to visit new restaurants once in a while. I haven't been to a lot of places, still.

A skinny Friday

24th of October, Friday

The schooldays are divided into fat days and skinny days. Monday through Thursday are the fat days, and Fridays are skinny. This means, that on a skinny day, we have every subject in one day, but shorter classes. Instead of the 55 minutes, we have 47. I personally like fat days better. This is a new system, it started last year, I think. Before that, there were only a few classes per day,but they lasted hours.
  So on Fridays, my schedule looks like this: AP Psych, French, AP English, US History, PE, lunch, Creative Writing and Choir.
  At 1:50, at the end of the day, I took the bus home. I've only done this a few times so far, because I always stayed for volleyball. But now that's over. Nothing really happened in afternoon. I took a nap, and in the evening, we watched the premier of Constantine with Herb. I saw the trailer of this series in spring, and today was the pilot episode. It's based on DC Comics, but it's kind of like an angel-demon battle thing, odd, very scary and suspenseful. I'm not sure if I like it yet. It reminds me of Supernatural, which is one of my favourite shows, but without the drama.
  In the year of an exchange student, there are days, where notthing really happens. Such as this. It was a completely average day. I got used to almost everything around here. It's good to have a grand adventure, but it's also good to rest for a while. 

Hungarian revolution of 1956 and our last practice

23rd of October, Thursday

Today is a national holiday in Hungary. We honor the people, who took part in the Hungarian revolution of 1956. It was a spontanious revolt against the soviets, and it was more than two weeks when the revolution was ended with a soviet victory. It's a schoolfree day. We remember it at school with a smaller show or presentation, that one class from 10th grade performs. 

  Today was also our last volleyball practice. It was just one hour, we played some volleyball in four teams, but we got bored in half an hour. Our last team huddle was led by me, with a "Hajrá!", the Hungarian word for "Let's go!". Then we turned our uniforms in. 10 was a good number. Feels strange, that  next year, someone else will have it. 

  I forgot to write an entry. This was the first time I did that too. So I actually wrote this on the schoolbus, on the way to school the next day. 

Longest I've been away from home

22nd of October, Wednesday

Today, I've been here for two months and 1 day. That's 1 day longer than my South African visit, which was - at that time - the most time I've spent away from home. How do I take it? I'm homesick. I don't deny it. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I even miss my school. But time flies, and barely anyone can keep up with it. So before I know, it'll be the 6th of August, 2015, and I'll be standing at Rochester International Airport, wondering where that 1 year went.

  I woke up to Christian pop music blasting from the living room. The only interesting thing that happened in school was when I looked at my agenda, and saw, that I was supposed to pay the AP exam money at the end of September. After an hour of worrying, I found out, that everything's fine, I only need to pay it by December.

  Kim picked me up at Rotary. It's amazing, what she does for me. She takes care of things so well around me. For example, she just found a hairpiece for choir, and she even asked for a dress too. Something I half forgetten, half don't know how to do. At the meeting, I showed everybody a video about Hungarian inventions (like the computer, the ballpoint pen, the Rubik's cube, the Ford T model, soda water, binoculars, matches and helicopters, and so much more). They seemed to enjoy it a lot. (I'm attaching a link, in case you want to watch it at home: Hungarian inventions video) I also announced, that I was between decisions on what profession to choose for the rest of my life (no pressure), and if they have any aquaintences that are in the field of performing, I'd love to meet them. I could barely leave from the club, everyone was telling me about someone they can arrange me to meet! That's why I love Rotary! If you engage anyone, the whole world will be your friend. 

  I didn't have practice today. I spent my evening and afternoon quietly, just resting. I'm conserned about my grandma. She's still in the same conditions. It's a pain, to always think, that a loved one is at the other side of the world, and she's not well. 

  From now on, I'm going to break my own personal record of the most days I've been away from home, every day.

Sad day

21st of October, Tuesday

We used Ipads in Psych. Yes, Ipads. It blew my mind too. I've heard of rich American schools being able to afford a lot of Apple products for the kids, but I haven't experienced it yet. We could never dream about something like this at my school at home, the school can barely afford heating in winter. Mrs. Brockman is out for the week, she hurt her back. I finished my French project in the meantime. 15 minutes before the end of the class, I was called down to the athletic office. The athletic director gathered all the senior volleyball players to talk to us, to see if we were ok. There was very little crying involved. We also found out, that there won't me a scrimmage on Wednesday either. No real closure. She felt so bad,she gave us a consolation mug.In PE, we did a fitness test, how many sit-ups and pushups we can do, how flexible we are, things like that. It wasn't really difficult.
  I spent the rest of my afternoon at the library. I emailed my Mom, looked at some universities and finished some of my homework. Practice was fun, despite the sadness that took over the last one. We just played, listened to some music.
  When I got home, I recieved some horrible news: my grandma was in a hospital again. I really wish I could be at home. I wish I could be with my family and support my parents. But I'm not, and I can't. We'll figure out some way to talk about things, and have virtual hugs and kisses.
  To take my mind off of things, I did what an average American would do: I watched TV. There were a bunch of sitcoms on tonight, so I could really just not concentrate on anything. Today was one of the worse days. 

No sectionals

20th of October, Monday

Another monday, another start of a week. The only interesting thing that happened today at school, was in Creative Writing class. We had to make a zombie survival guide. We made our own zombies, we could ddecide what abilities they had, how they behaved, how to fight them, what to do in case you get bitten. I overheard some people's ideas about fling zombies, invisible zombies, nice zombies. I wrote about our society. Zombies were the modern day zombies on their phones, not taking part in real social life, only in the social network. If anybody's interested, I can send a copy. I couldn't get my hands on the bumper sticker short story yet, but we did get the this I beleive themed work graded. I got a 24/25, which is pretty good. Ms Domm said that I should work on my choice of words, but otherwise, it was magic!
  I finished almost all my homework at the library after shool. But I couldn't finish the French project. It involved a lot of drawing. At practice, everything was good and fun, untill Coach P gathered us around and told us some sad news. We couldn't go to sectionals, because we played one too many games this season, and the state rules say no. Poor Coach was really hard on himself. The senior girls cried on the corridor. They were really depressed. I tried to cheer them up, but they snapped at me too. Now that was a bad feeling. I wasn't as dreary as the rest of my team, but can you blame me? I have no idea what sectionals are like. They could be really awesome, or they could be way too competitive, I wouldn't know, I never experienced it. All I could do was to cheer my team up, who took it really hard, but that attempt failed too. I felt bad for the Coach too. He blamed himself, but there's only really the situation to blame. Practice ended early. Herb picked me up, and we went the Wegman's to buy some feta cheese and kettle corn. We got home by 7. I wanted to finish my French homework, but I fell asleep at 8:30. 

Breast Cancer Walk

19th of October, Sunday

We went on a Breast Cancer walk this morning with the volleyball team. We met at the perking lot at Athena, and I got a ride from Dube's parents. There were a LOT of people. all dressed in pink, maybe with funny pink accesories. It was a mile walk in the downtown of Rochester. This was my first time there. The streets were closed and the mass of pink people took over the city. It was incredible, how people, complete strangers can support each other so much, just by walking alongside each other, for a cause they all believe in. I was thinking of my friends, who have struggled with sickness, but were brave to face it. It was also really fun, hanging out with my volleyball friends, despite the cold weather. I had to put my winter coat on, but luckily, it didn't rain or snow.
  I haven't attended a walk for anything. I've never heard of something like this in Hungary, we support foundations in a much different way. When we pay taxes, we can choose to give 1% of our taxes to a foundation that we pick. In the time that tax is due, the whole city of Budapest becomes full of billboards, asking for people's 1%. But maybe I've missed the advertisements for Breast Cancer walks.
  It was like an hour long, and then we went back home. Dube's parents dropped me off at the church, where Herb and Anne were (it's Sunday, so of course they're there). I sat in for the last 15 minutes, then we went home.
  We stayed at home the whole day. I took care of my homework, watched 22 Jump Street (it was super funny, but this annoying kind of humor not everybody appriciates. It was very much like 21 Jump Street). I even studied for maths. But I haven't talked to my parents. :( Maybe sometime when I'm at home, and they're still awake.

Cornell University

18th of October, Saturday

Today we went to Cornell University. It was a 2 hour drive to Ithaca, where it's located.  It was homecoming weekend, so we bought tickets to wacth a football game. This is actually Herb's college. He's very proud of it, because it's an Ivy League University (It's an association of famous colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Darthmouth). It's a huge and beautiful campus. Herb gave us a nickel-tour all over the place.
  We started off at the bell-tower. It's in the centre of the campus, it's a beautiful tower with a wide view of Cornell. We listened to a concert wich, from the top of the tower was pretty loud).
We went to an interesting art museum as well, then we headed to the stadium. By the time we got there, it was really chilly. We sat down with a blanket on our laps, and watched the game. I'm not that big on watching sports, neither is Anne, but Herb and Sun enjoyed it a lot. It was going really slowly, and I knew that, because Herb didn't want to stay for more than a quarter. We left the stadium, I was wrapping myself into the blanket (with Micky Mouse symbols on it), so I was a funny sight in the crowd of red and white Cornell T-shirts.
  We went back to the Cornell store, Herb wanted to buy some University merchandise clothes, I got a post card and a pin for my blazer. We walked over to the college town, just to see where most of the students live. It's a cute little place. We got some takeout from a chinese for dinner, and continued our tour in the car. Herb drove us around, showing us the houses he lived in and the main sights. We got to Taughannock Falls just in time before dark. It's a beautiful waterfall, one of Ithaca's main attractions.

House visit and my knee

17th of October, Friday

Today was interesting. Mrs. Brockman, our French teacher was absent today, so she gave the substitute teacher some exercises for us to do. I helped my classmates with them, and kind of took control. In Creative writing, I read my eavesdropping story's final form to the class (we had to eavesdrop inpulic, write it down and write a story around it). The we were given a one hour assignement: we had to create a story around a bumper sticker. The teacher gave us a list of funny examples, such as "Denial is NOT a river in Egypt", and "Lost cat? Look under my tires". I chose the one that said: "Sorry, but I haven't been the same since a house fell on my sister" (the reference was taken from The Wizard of Oz), and I wrote a hilarious story around it. When I get it back, I'll type it, and give it to anybody who's interested.
  I went back home in the afternoon to clean up my room. There was a Rotary house visit scheduled for today's evening. Just an obligatory check to see if I have a bed and nice living conditions. So my room is super clean now.
  I went back to Athena for practice, but in warm ups I twisted my knee. I had to sit out most of the practice. I'm OK, I'm tough (for those of you who don't know me). We were having fun, playing competitions for prizes. I joined despite my accident in the 6th round. It was miserable, not being able to play and have fun. But I did, so I was happy. I came in like 4th to last, but I was just glad I got to play.
  Ryan's mom gave me a ride to Herb's school, where they had a pasta party. I didn't feel like eating, so I talked with some strangers about movies for like half an hour. Then we went home. We arrived just in time to let Brad in. He came to inspect the house. He looked at my room, and we talked with the whole family in the living room. We joked around, discussed a bunch of things. Herbie (Herb and Anne's son) came by too.
  I was in the newspaper again! There was a short article about the Rotary club's dictionary distrtibution to children. There was a picture and a cute little paragraph of me.

Last game of regular season

16th of October, Thursday

I woke up at 6:15. My bus leaves at 6:28 every morning. Some miracle happened, and I got ready in 10 minutes. I don't know how I did it.
  The only really interesting thing that happened at school was in Psych. We had to make a neuron (sensory cell in the body) out of a Twizzler (piece of string liquorice), a York candy (mint and dark chocolate) and some sort of powder. We had to be creative.
  The rest of the day went by. Our regular season of volleyball ended today, with out game against Eastridge, West Irondequit. It was an away game, we left at 4. I did lines for the JV game, I had 2 calls, and that was about all that happened. JV won by the way. Then our time came. We won the first match. Coach P put me in at the end again. I had a hit (I could hear my team cheer behond me like crazy), but I also had a two-touch. It was going kind of well, untill I had to serve. I've never served in a real game before, and I was bad, even in practice. But the first time I served, it went well. The second, not so much.
  The next match was good too, we won that. But we lost the third. Coach put me in at the middle, but Brooke wasn't there to help me with directions, and I was completely lost. I walked into Lexi several times (being really tall has it's ups and downs). And when my serving time came, we were at 22:24 (the opposing team had the 24), and I messed up my serve. I got into my own head, put pressure on myself. But it was OK, at least I experienced that too. We won the fourth match, thus winning the whole game. We celebrated out victory, and this season by going to Wimpy's. It's funny, how many new restaurants I get to know with my volleyball team. I had a taco wrap (a taco and a wrap at the same time, how could I have missed that?), but I only ate half of it. We had a good time, and we were happy for our win.

Senior night

15th of October, Wednesday

Today, students took practice SAT tests, so the whole school turned upside-down. I had a Psych, but the rest of my classes were cancelled. Either because the teacher was supervising the exam, or there were too many kids missing. So I had 7 study halls.
  At 11:50, Larry picked me up, and took me to a meeting. There were very few people compared to the last meeting. I sang the national anthem, completely off-key, and I think everybody noticed. To my defense, our anthem is very difficult to sing, especially if you're alto or bass (I'm alto-1).
  At 2:30, the seniors at volleyball (including me) got together, and had a lunch at Friday's. This was my first time there. We had a good time. Afterwards, we went back to Athena for our senior night. The juniors and JV decorated the gym with the posters we made, the posters the juniors made (Lexi made mine, it's super cool, she looked up the hungarian flag and personalized it. I think I got the best one). We signed each other's posters with cute, inspirational paragraphs. When the JV game ended at 5:45, we sat down, and celebrated senior night. 108 people came to cheer for us. Friends and family. Well, in my case my host family. Also some Rotarians came too, Kim, Larry, Al, Tracy. We were given flowers, our pictures were taken, it was very ceremonial. Then the game started against HFL. They're a good team. They beat us in 3. Shame, especially, that it was senior night. Everybody played, except for me. Seniors always play on senior night, it's a tradition. But the coach forgot about me. I was very upset, but I only took it out with my horrible singing in the shower. I was dissapointed, because I invited all those people, for nothing. I wish I could have played, but things happened the way they did, and I'll have to live with that.
  After the game, the seniors sat down again, and the juniors presented their speeches, that they've wrote for us. Mine was written by Lexi, but presented by Sammi (Lexi has severe stagefright). It was really cute, though, what she wrote. I cried, but at least I wasn't the only one. We had cake, with our picture printed with frosting on it, it was pretty cool. Then we took all the posters down, and took them home. 

Senior poster

14th of October, Tuesday

School started again. In Psych, we started neuroscience, in English, we started Frankeinstein and in PE we did yoga. The latter was actually pretty good. A yoga instructor taught the class about all sorts of basic things. At home, in Hungary, I went to yoga twice a week, so I did have some experience. No wonder the exercises were easy and familiar to me. It felt refreshing, to do yoga after 2 months.
  After Select Choir, I went home. I started working on my senior poster for volleyball. There are a lot of senior grade related projects this week. Senior posters are posters with your name, number, personal decorations and pictures on it. They'll have some sort of role in tomorrow's Senior Night. The others finished theirs on Friday, and I had one day to do the whole thing. While I was beginning in the afternoon, I talked to my best friend from home, for the first time since I'm here. It was good to hear from her. She just passed her first driver's ed exam. That's probably what I would have done, if I hadn't been an exchange student.
  We had a game against Churchville, that we lost. I was planning on going to Walmart, to print out the pictures I chose yesterday, but when we got there, the printing section was already closed. So we had to have it done at Rite Aid. I worked on the poster till midnight. I think it turned out pretty good. (judge yourselves, picture attached).
  Earlier today, I sent Tony the picture I chose from all the ones we took, and he edited it to it's final format. I think it looks awesome.

Senior pictures

13th of October, Monday

Today we celebrated Columbus Day, by not going to school, which I was fine with. My first thing in the morning was to bake muffins for my family for taking me to Toronto as a thank you, and for Tony, who offered to take my senior pictures.
  Herb took me to Tony's at noon. He has a big house, and his full basement is dedicated to his art. He has amazing work with portraits and airplanes, that I've seen. He has a bunch of lamps and canvases that reflect light. We took over 100 pictures of me, all different ways I had to hold my head or hands. It was very difficult, but thanks to Tony and his artistic eye, we made some great pictures. Once we were done, he showed me and Herb how he photoshops the photos too.  
  Today was our last pasta party. It was at the Harnishfeger's house. Ellen, Brooke Harnishfeger's mom loves Halloween, so their house was already decorated. Everywhere you turned, there was a mask, or a scary statue looking at you. At one point, Brooke's dad dressed up as a horror movie character, and started scaring everybody. We had a lot of fun.

Toronto II

12th of October, Sunday

We had a hard time finding the Toronto Zoo. It was also on our city pass so we figured, why don't we go? We looked at the pandas, giraffes, rhinos, but the most entertaining was the polar bear cub. 

  After the zoo, we spent a little time in the Royal Ontario Museum. It had a nice Korean and Chinese exhibition, but otherwise wasn't as interesting as the rest. But at least we used all 5 tickets in our city pass. We spent hours in the Eaton Centre. It's a huge mall. Ladies will understand how women can get lost in there. I didn't buy anything, other than a cup of coffee for Herb.

  We had dinner at Signs. It's a restaurant I've been wanting to go to since July. It's run by deaf people. It's supposed to raise awareness of the deaf culture, as well as to create jobs that would be normally impossible to find. We had a lovely Ukrainian waitress, she signed slowly, so I understood most of what she said. I've been preparing for quite some time for this. I borrowed a book from Anne, amd learnt the basic words and expressions. I could introduce us and make (extremely limited) small talk. The restaurant itself was gorgeous. It's brand new, modern, creative. The food was absolutely delicious! I had a thai chicken potato appetizer. It's like  a luxury restaurant with normal prizes. It's fun to order food signing (there's a cheat sheet), and there's no judging if you mess up (personal experience). So we had an amazing dining experience there.

  On the way home we stopped at Niagara Falls again. It was raining, and everything was cold, but it was beautiful. The whole waterfall was lit up with different colours. We arrived just in time for a firework show too. I was soaked within minutes, because the mist came up all the way to the viewing pavilon, forming a cloud of light rain. But I didn't care about it. I was mesmerized by the beauty of it. 

  Getting back to the US was easy, thank God. We arrived to Skycrest drive at 1 am. This was an incredible weekend. I had an amazing time with my wonderful host family. We bonded over this trip more than we have in the last month (and believe me, we have). We made a lot of pictures that I'm going to upload. 

Toronto

11th of October, Saturday

I woke up to a fresh cup of Tim Horton's coffee and a breakfast muffin. Herb got up early to get some Canadian breakfast. Our first stop was the CN Tower. We got our Toronto Passes (a ticketbook to the most important sights in the city), and we were the first to go up. The CN Tower is a 457 m tall TV Tower, that's open for tourists to see the city. You can see all the way to Rochester, across Lake Ontario! It has an open air balcony (which was freezing cold because of the wind), and a glass floor too. It can make you dizzy, just to look down at it. Sun freaked a little bit out, me and Herb joked with her about it. We spent about an hour there, just looking at the city in the shine of the morning sun. The weather was amazing, luckily.
  Our next stop was Casa Loma. It's the only castle in North America. It was built by a rich businessman, who has a very sad story. Henry Pellat brought electricity to Toronto from the Niagara, but the town took it away from him. Then he made a comeback with airplanes, and those were taken away from him too. He died a poor man, but he made history. Casa Loma was his residence. It's pretty, and built with good taste.
  After the castle, we visited a Hungarian restaurant!!! Yes, it was original Hungarian with Hungarian decoration, waitresses and menus. I spoke Hungarian to a stranger for the first time in almost 2 months, and I only made 10 grammatical mistakes! It felt weird. I was not in my element. But we had great bean and goulash soups and filled cabbage and debreceni sausage. I didn't realize how much I missed Hungarian food. I only had foreign stuff since I've been here, even the water tastes different. But this kitchen had genuine Hungarian specialities. As it turns out, there's quite a bit of a Hungarian community in Toronto. They have their own deli, butcher, everything.
  We also went to the Science Centre. Hungarians might know the Csodák Palotája (Palace of Wonders), which is very similar. It's an interactive science museum. It was quite fun, to stand in front of a giant tree, be in a room with no sound, see how I'll look like when I'm 70 (picture below).
We stayed till 5, and by that time, we were very tired. We walked a lot. We went back to the hotel, and I fell asleep right away. I woke up 3 hours later.
  Toronto is beautiful. It reminds me of Philly. I haven't seen one building, that I would consider ugly. It's modern, lots of skyscrapers and a lot of glass. I could live here. 

Birthday - Niagara Falls

10th of October, Friday
I woke up at 9:30. Waking up to thinking "it's my birthday" is pretty happy and positive. I called my Dad's aunt, Nanó, who was born on the same day as I was, only 80 years earlier. I wished her a happy birthday, and she was really happy to hear from me.
  I got a gift card from Herb and Anne and a coin collecting book from Sun. I also got a package from Hungary, from my parents. I opened it while we were skyping. We called each other at 11, which is 5 pm in Hungary. I was born at 5:12. They had cake for me that they ate while we talked. I got  abunch of stuff from them: a phonecase that looks like my cat, a Budapest T-shirt, candy and a pendrive with a lot of videos and pictures from home. We talked for 1,5 hours. This was the first birthday I spent away from my family, abroad. I missed them a lot today.
  I finished packing and I had time for a Switched at Birth episode too. Herb came home, and we left at around 2. We picked Anne up at her wokplace, and went straight to Niagara Falls. Crossing the border to Canada was a piece of cake. And after we did, I saw the Niagara Falls for the first time! It was magnificent. It's been a dream of mine to come here, and I finally did. It's beautiful, huge and breathtaking. It wasn't as loud or cold as I expected. We took a lot of pictures. We stayed there until sunset, then we walked over to Clifton Hill. It's a hype city right next to the falls. It's like the Las Vegas of the Ontario. Lots of neon signs, a Ferris wheel, arcades, restaurants, millions of attractions. We had a celebrational dinner at the Rainforest Café. It's decorated like a jungle, with robotic animls and waitresses dressed like explorers. The food was good too, I hada  steak. At the end, Herb asked our waitress to do something funny for my, so she lit a candle in an ice cream, and loudly asked everybody at the restaurant to wish me a happy birthday. It was kinda funny.
  We walked a little bit, looking at the cool stuff there was to see at Clifton Hill. Including aan open air mini golf course with dinos, a vulcano and a house that's upside down. We walked into an arcade and played 60 tokens away. Apparently, I can shoot a laser gun and can swing a samurai sword pretty well, who'd have thought? We only won 118 tickets, that was worth a Canadian keychain, a zombie fingerhat and 3 jumping frogs.
  We got into the car and left for Toronto at 10. We got there at 11, and we settled in to Marriott Hotel. It's pretty fancy, I can't complain.
 This day was an absolutely amazing birthday! Although it was sad, that I couldn't spend it with my family, I had an amazing experience not many can have. It was a great and happy day. A lot of people wished me happy birthday, and I feel lucky to have so many friends!