Chili cook-off

17th of January, Saturday

In the morning, me and Kim, we cooked chili! Officially, it was me, but I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without her. This was my very first time making chili. You see what I experience because of Rotary? The reason we were cooking, was a Rotary chili cooking competition party in the afternoon. My crockpot full af chili con carne à l'Hongrie turned out to be really spicy, but it was still successful, considering that this was my first try.

The Masiellos took me to the Rotary Lodge. We had such a good time, just talking, having fun and eating with my Club. I think 40 people were there. The chili entries were great! All had something different and surprising in them. I didn't even notice that 6 hours passed by. This is partly why I love being with these people.

  In the evening, Del and Linda took me home. They live 1 minute away from me, just down the street. 

  I had a lot of fun, thank you, Rotarians! You're the best!

Cheerleading competition

13th of January, Tuesday
My host sister, Sydney is the cheerleader captain in the Athena Varsity team. They had their first competition today. Me anD Kim, we went out to HFL high school, to cheer for the team. My very first cheerleading competition. It was very impressive, I have to say. I always saw cheerleaders in the movies, but I never saw a routine in real life, so it was very unexpected.

  American know, Hungarians don't, how difficult of a sport it is. It's like syncronize gymnastics with tumbling, lifting, flip-flops and jumping. Many times, I forgot to breath, the tension was so high. A lot of people fell, which seemed frightening, but they just got up, and continued.

  I was sitting with the parents, who were the cheering for the cheerleaders. We brought a bunch of noisemakers. I was shouting and shaking a tamborine. The Trojans were great. They were very energetic and their routine was impressive too. They got second place, which is still pretty good.

  Now, I can understand why they portray cheerleaders in movies and the beautiful and mean popular girls in school. They couldn't be further from the truth. These girls go through a lot. These competitions are not just physically but emotionally difficult too. Injuries happen all the time, and if someone is not timed perfectly, or doesn't do what they should, the whole thing falls apart. That's a lot of pressure. 

  Afterwards, we went to a sportsbar to celebrate with a quick light dinner. Some parents and four of the girls came. 

  This was a very interesting experience for me. Cheerleading is an important part of the American culture, I'm glad I can experience it through the competitions.

Coming back to the club

14th of January, Wednesday

Just like every Wednesday, I went to the Rotary Club meeting, but now, it's been a month since I haven't seen my Rotary-family. Everyone seemed so happy to see me again, which made me really happy. I brought them some chocolate from Hungary. I presented two kinds: some Christmasy parlour candy and a Sport bar. Surprisingly, the people got crazy over the parlour candy. I expected completely different outcomes. Nobody praises a parlour candy in Hungary, like in America. And this one was cottage cheese-lemon flavoured. (Otherwise, it's usually jelly, or marzipan, or truffle or strawberry or joghurt flavoured). But hey, I'm happy they enjoyed it!
The other exciting thing that happened, was that we inducted a new member (yay). Haha, see how I say "we" inducted a new member? I feel so at home with this group, I often forget I'm just an exchange student.
  For dinner, we went over the Syd's grandparents' house with her. Her grandma loves cooking Hungarian foods, so I have a feeling I'll be visiting them a lot.

First Anything Goes rehearsal

12th of January, Monday

Today was the first day of American school for me in 2015. The new bus stops right in front of our house, which is very neat. It feels like I'm behind on so much schoolwork, but I'm actually not.
  From 2 till 3:30 we had a rehearsal for Anything Goes. This was a first for me, second for the others. Everybody had to be there, because we were practicing the song before and while the bows happen. Funny, that we started the last thing on the show.
  Navaasi and her mom took me home.  They live literally 2 houses away from us. 

My new host family and home

11th of January, Sunday

I haven't written a lot about my new host family, the Greenauers, though they play a very very important role in my adventure stories.

My hostmom's name is Kim. She's very funny and mom-like. She has a great sense of design and fashion. I can see that in her selection of clothes, and how she decorated her house, but I'll get back to that.

  I have a host sister named Sydney. She the same age as I am, and she's a senior at Athena too. She's the captain of the varsity Cheerleading team. I think she's really cool and funny. My host brother's name is Kevin. He goes to MCC and he works a lot, so he's not at home a lot. All of my host family members are so busy.

  Their house is so beautiful! It looks like the houses from movies. Nothing's just laying around, everything has its place. It's very modern and the design of everything matches.

  My room is awesome! I have a huuuge bed, I have so many outlets (which make me happy, because I can plug my laptop and gadgets in). Yes, it's the coldest room in the house, but I don't mind. 

  The family has 3 cats too. Jabba is my favourite, he's black and white, and he has a dot on the left side of his nose. He likes to sleep at the end of my bed. His brother is Wiezy. He look exactly alike, but the dot on his nose is on the right side. The third cat's name is Cody. He's black with yellow eyes and he always looks very angry. All three love to eat, they always hang out in the kitchen.

Unpacking

10th of January, Saturday

I slept so well on this comfy mattress. I woke up at 11, and I went downstairs. Tommy brought us Dunkin' Donuts coffees, yay!
My main goal for today was to unpack my several suitcases, but I'm still not finished. I have made great progress though. This is even harder now, that I have more stuff. Sometimes I just want to be homeless, then I wouldn't have to worry about having too many stuff.
We went shopping to Wegman's, but that was all the time, that I spent outside the house. I kept hanging out with the family, who are really interesting and funny people. I want to get to know them, but my room is still a mess. Responsibilities!

Two weeks in Hungary

These are the things I did, and the things that happened to me in the two weeks, when I came back to Hungary to rediscover my birthplace.

28th of December, Sunday

I didn't sleep all night, because I slept 9 hours during the day. I instead watched some movies downstairs, for 7 hours, till my family woke up. We watched The Penguins of Madagascar together, which was really funny.

  We went over to my sister's place, ti have some late family Christmas. Some of my cousins and second cousins joined us. I was too busy playing with my mischieveous little nephews. One of my second cousins is a chef and he made us some deer steak, and we had some of the bean soup, and filled cabbage tooo. Amazing dishes, great lunch. We only stayed a couple hours. Then we went back home to rest for a while. 

  At 7 pm, me, my parents and the neighbor, we went to my Grandma's apartment, and moved some of the leftover furniture. The place is now on my Mom's name, and she had it painted. Almost everything was cleaned out. It was much better this way, nothing really reminded me of my Grandma. I did take a mug though. 

29th of December, Monday

In the afternoon, I went into the city, to meet up with my best friend, Noemi. Another friend of ours, Marci, came along unexpectedly, but I was happy to see him too. We went to drink some hot drinks and later we walked a lot in the cold. I felt glad, that I was with them again. Noemi was an exchange student in England for the second half of the schoolyear, last year, and Marci was an exchange student in Minnesota for the full year. He kept asking me about stuff, that he encountered, whether I know them. 

30th of December, Tuesday

Today was my Grandmother's funeral. It started at 9:45. It was freezing cold, I had 7 layers on. But I didn't care about that really. The ceremony was beautiful. Surpringly lot of people came. It only lasted 20 minutes. The priest talked about her life, then her ashes were spread. It was very sad. But it was closure. 

31st of December, Wednesday

The whole day, I spent talking to Noemi, deciding, where we should go for new year's. We ended up going to a friend's party, in the suburbs of Budapest. There were a lot of people and friends there, who were surprised, that I was there. Some of the reactions were truly hilarious. 

We talked and danced all the way through. By 3 am, I had such a headache from the insanely loud music, I went to sleep. 1,5 hours later, everyone was sleeping. 

1st of January, Thursday

BUEK!

I got up at 8. I didn't get a lot of sleep, but at least I got half of a mattress, which was more than most people had. Almost everybody else slept on the floor, in sleeping bags. The first thing I ate obviously, was lentils, it's supposed to bring luck for the year to come. Me, Noemi, and two other friends of ours, we left early. There was supposed to be another party, but we quit. 

  In the afternoon, we went to the movies, and watched the new Hobbit. It was sooo good! I read the book, but there were still surprises in it. 

2nd of January, Friday

Me and my Mom, we shopped for boots. I got two pairs. 

I tried shopping for shoes in America, but the selection is really bad. Everything good seems to be online. 

3rd of January, Saturday

We visited my dad's aunt, Nano today. She's 97 years old, and she's the closest thing I have to a grandma now. She was born 80 years before me, to the day. We found this out, when she was celebrating her 90th, and I was celebrating my 10th birthday. We had a cake together, with a 100 on it. 

Because my Mom works at the Oprah House as an event organizer, she had to work today. There was a song night, which I could attend. It's an event, where a talented singer sings a few songs to a smaller crowd of people. There was a winetasting beforehand. It was pretty awesome. 

4th of January, Sunday

London, my parents' exchange student painted my hairtips purple today. I think it looks really cool, my Mom disagrees. We watched Into the Woods, the new Disney musical with Meryl Streep and a bunch of other famous actors and actresses. I liked it up to a point, where the story just broke in half, and from then, became worse and worse. The songs were pretty good, and the costumes and special effects were beautiful too, But what is all this worth with a messed up story?

5th, 6th and 7th of January, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

First day of school in Hungary. I went in, just to see my classmates and to see what I missed so far. Some people were still surprised. For the second time in my life, I was happy to be in school. The building is still a dump, and the people are still fun. The classes were relatively easy, I guess I was expecting, that by now, I wouldn't even be close, to what they learnt. But truth is, I think I'll be ok. Hopefully.

For two more days, I visited my high school. 

8th of January, Thursday

I packed my suitcase, which was just acceptably overwheight. 

We visited Nano again. We didn't stay very long, but I was glad, that I saw her before I left. 

We went to have my last dinner in a Thai restaurant. The food was great as always.

9th of January, Friday

My plane was leaving at 9:15, we were at the airport 2 hours earlier. This time, nobody cried. We knew, that these 7 months aren't going to be that bad, and it will be over soon. It was still really sad, to hug my parents goodbye,