March 22nd

Hye Y'all,

Wow, It's been a long time since I've had some time to write something on this blog.
I've been so busy lately!
But I'll tell y'all what I've been up to.

In January, we went to New York, I've posted a little bit about it, but not quite everything.
So here we go:
The night at the Rockefeller center was awesome ! It was really cold though.
But we had a great time up there.
The morning after we went to the empire state building. It was really cool to see New York up high during daytime.
In the afternoon, we went to Madison square, and the Moma museum.
We saw some of the greatest artist in the world, which was really cool !
I'm so glad we went there.At night, we went to the central terminal, the big trainstation :)
Offcourse, we lost the way under the ground.
At night, it was time to go home, which was really sad. The address we had to go to was written on the internet. We walked all the way over there, but apparently they wrote the wrong address on there. Offcourse we had no idea..
Luckily some other megabus stopped by and volunteered to pick us up. We arrived at our bus just in time.

We arrived in Washington DC around 5 o'clock in the morning. We had 4 hours to spend there. We decided to go for a quick breakfast, and after that take a cab to the white house. So we did, and at 7 o'clock in the morning we were standing in front of the White house. It was AWESOME ! I was so happy to see the white house.
We had to hurry back to catch the next bus home.

At January 17th, school started again. My new classes this semester are Calculus, Spanish 2, Choir, Fitness, Accounting and psychology.

February 8, we went on a ski weekend with the youth group from my church.
Friday night, when we arrived, there was a band playing, and a girl talking about religion and all that.
Saturday, we could snowboard or ski all day long. I had a blast, it was SO much fun !
Saturday night, we had a program again, which was also on Sunday morning.
After that, we had to go back to Harriman, Tennessee. Too bad, cause this weekend was so much fun !

From then on, Autumn, Mason and Payne went with me to the karaoke every Thursday. Every week, we have so much fun there ! That's definitely one of the most fun things to do here. Because we can only get to the karaoke around 8, we usually go to the Lincoln bar afterwards or do something else.

On the 3rd of March, which was going to be a regular Sunday.
We went to church, had lunch, and after that we went to the band concert from Bruce and Diana. When we came home, I noticed that there were strange things standing in the kitchen. I thought it was kind of weird. I wanted to go to my room, to put my purse away.
But suddenly the whole living room was full with all of my friends.
I can't believe Diana and Bruce organized a surprise party for me! It was SO cool !
I had a lot of fun that night ! I'm never going to forget what they did for me :)
To bad we had to go to Youth group afterwards. Luckily, Denis, Jonas and Mason came with us. It was Awesome ! I've never had so much fun at a youth group before, Haha :)

A week later, on Saturday march the 9th, my parents were going to come and visit me.
I was so nervous ! We cleaned all day, and finally, around 5pm, it was time to go to the airport and pick them up.
I wasn't expecting a hard time, but we all had to shed a tear :) From happiness off course!
After that we went and got our car rental, and we went to Wasabi together.
Andrew, Christina, Brayden and Addyson were coming too. I was so excited !!

Sunday morning, we all went to church. Mom and Dad were kind of nervous I think, but it was fun. It all went fine. Afterwards, we went to the Mexican.
Then it was time to leave Harriman, and take off to see some new cities.
Sunday night, we visited Nashville, the country city :) We went to Broadway, and had a lot of fun!
Monday, we went to Memphis. In the afternoon, we visited Graceland, Elvis Presley's home. After that we went to Beale street. It was very quiet in Memphis, so we went to be fairly early because we had a big drive to do the next day.
On Tuesday morning, we left to New Orleans. It was about a 6 hour drive, which obviously took us a while to get there.

My dad asked me if I wanted to drive a little. DU-UH !
So I drove a while in the state of Mississippi and Alabama. It felt so cool :)
When we finally arrived in New Orleans, we went out for dinner, and after that we went straight to Bourbon street. We loved it, especially my mom, lol :)
Wednesday, the main activity was the Swamp tour. It's a kind of boat tour in the Swamps of Louisiana, where you can spot Alligators and a lot of Turtles, Snakes, and strange birds.
 It was really cool, we saw a lot of Big Alligators ! Whoop Whoop

After that, we visited some Plantations, such as the Oak Alley plantation, where the Movie Braveheart was recorded. It was beautiful!
Thurday we visited the French Market, an walked around in the French Quarter.
We tasted some Alligator, and we had Beignets at the famous Café du Monde. It was super ! Our last evening, my mom wanted to go back to bourbon street. We had a lot of fun !

Friday, we had to drive all the way back to Harriman, where Bruce and Diana would be waiting on us. We had Pizza all together. After that we talked a little more and went up to bed, it was a long day !
Saturday morning, Diana made a huge Southern breakfast for us. It was delicious !
We decided to take a drive together to the great Smoky Mountains, and after that it was time to say goodbye again. Too bad they had to leave so soon. But they gave me a great week, and we had a blast!

The first week of school was very busy. I had some exams to make, and I had a lot that I had to take care off. I'm happy it's finally weekend.
Tonight, Bruce will be home again, and we'll all have dinner with Andrew and Christina's family. Btw, They're expecting a new Baby, I'm so excited for them. But at the same time, It's sad to think that I'll be far gone by then.

Slowly but surely, It digs to me that there's only 7 weeks of school left before graduation.
That means, only 7 more Karaoke's to go, only 7 more Rotary meetings to attend, ...

So now I'm going to enjoy the time that I have left, and make every second count !
Seeya later Alligator ;)

January 6th

Hey Y'all, 

How's everyone doin' ? 
Everything is amazing here ! 
The hometour was really cool. We saw 11 totally differend houses, and all of them were decorated in a different theme.
Sundaynight we had a homeowner party. Most of them where a little older than I was, but Jane was there too, so we had fun together. 

A week later, our church had their churchprogram from the children and youth group. We practiced this for months now, and actually, we all did really good. 

At christmas time, we made like a 1000 cookies for our guests, because we had an open house on Christmas eve. At 7pm, there was the churchservice, and after that we opened our house for the community and friends. That was a lot of fun ! 
On Christmasday, we had bbrunch with our family, and after that we opened presents. I got a necklace, wich is really pretty :)
Brayden got a Thomas playtent, and together we played in his tent for quite a while :)

The second day of Christmas, we had to leave for New Orleans. Rachel Goldston came with us. We had a blast ! It was a really fun holiday. We went to a cooking class to learn ho to make Gumbo, we went to the french Market, we went on a swamptour looking for alligators, we did a plantation tour, we ate a lot of good food, ... :)

2 days after I had to leave to New York with my other exchange students. 
So far, we visited Central Park, the Museum of the Native americans, ground zero, times Square, the plaza hotel, chinatown, little italy, statue of Liberty, and so on. 
We are having a blast here. Tonight we're gonna visit the Rockefeller center. Hopefully that will be cool too ! 

Hope you guys are having fun too ! 
Ciao, Sara

December 8th

Hye Y'all, 

I've had some amazing times again since my last blog update, so I will tell you what i've done since my last message.

Offcourse, It was Thanksgiving :) Diana teached me how to make a traditional thanksgiving   meal. Offcourse, we made the turkey first, cause apparently it has to be in the oven for about 6 hours. That was amazing.

And offcourse, we stuffed it and made a thousand other side dishes to go wih it :)
The whole family came down to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. I think we all had a great time, and we had plenty off food to eat the rest of the week as well. 

Around 8 o'clock in the evening, Sandy came and picked us up to go black friday shopping. 
We were all ready for some good deals in the middle of the night. But I didn't expect so many people. And they were going crazy. We saw the mot crazy things happening in the stores. 
Around 4 O'clock in the morning, we gave up, because it was just to crowded to do anything in there. But arund 8 am, we were ready to head out for another day of shopping :)

The next week, we went to a University of Tennessee college football game together with our family. 

And believe it or not, we won the first game of the season :)
I had a really good time there, and I learned a lot about the college football. 

After the football game, we all went to a fundraiser for a childrens hospital, wich sold a bunch of differend christmas trees donated by all differend kinds of people and schools. 

After that wonderfull day, we all had dinner at Wasabi's, a Japanese Steakhouse. 
That was really cool, because they made the food right in front of your face. 

This week Diana and I went to a Manheimm Steamroller concert in Knoxville. I was surpised how good they actually were. It was really fun, and we had a great time together :) We had dinner together as well, in downtown Knoxville. 

And Last but not Least, friday we had a concert in he Princess theatre in Harriman. It was from a Nshville artist, named Erica Lane. She was amazing, and I loved her pretty voice. 

This weekend is the hometour, where everybody opens their house to let other people see how they decorated their house. I hope it's gonna be fun, and I'll keep you all up to date. 

I'll see y'all soon, If not, I wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year ;)

Sara

November 19th

Hye Everyone,

It's been a while since I've posted my last post, so I guess I needed to write a new one for you guys.

I've done some amazing things so far, and it only keeps on getting better here :)
Halloween was really cool. We were sitting on our front porche while all the children came up to get some candy. They were all dressed so cute !
Diana and I dressed up as well, and we had a great time.

November the 6th, it was election day. My classes were cancelled, so we were just hanging out at school for the day. It was a very exciting day !
We were watching television till late that night. When it became clear who the new president was, we all went to bed. The next day, everybody was kind off sad, because everybody in Tennessee wanted Mitt Romney to win the election.

I really wanted to shoot while I'm in Tennessee. So Parker picked me up on a friday, and we went shooting. Molly accompanied us. I had a great time. I didn't really did a good job, but that's ok, cause I had a great time.

We also had a bondfire this month. Jane also came with us an together we to the goldston's house. We ate American Hot Dogs, and they learned us how to make Smore's. It was a cracker sandwich, with melted marshmellows and chocolate. It was delicious !
After that we played Hide and seek in the dark.

Last week, there was the Gala with live auction. We all dressed up, and had dinner at the Gala. That was really cool. Especially the live auction was really impressive !

Last week was also Addyson's first birthday. We had a party at her house. She received lots and lots of gifts. I hope she had a great time.

This afternoon, The roane Choral society had their Messiah concert. And because Diana and I am singing in Roane Choral, we had to e there as well :)
I think it went really well, and the band sounded great ! It was an amazing afternoon.

Next week will be thanksgiving. We did all the grocery shopping this thursday, and we bought a turkey wich weights 15 pounds. That's gonne be the best thanksgiving ever !
Hopefully Diana wants to teach me how to make a turkey for thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to meet some new family members, and have an amazing time with the whole family!

Next friday will be black friday, so Sandy's gonna take us shopping in the middle of the night. I'm looking forward to that !

And next weekend, we will go to my first college football game. UT ( University of Tennessee ) will be playing against the University of Kentucky. I'm really looking forward to that ! My Orange outfit is ready, and the face paint is ready to get out of the box :)
It's gonna be an amazing experience :)

I'm gonna have an exciting next month, and I will keep y'all posted on what's happening in my American Life :)

See you Next Year,
Sara

October 30th

Hye Y'all,

This is probably the last message I'm going to write before Halloween and the Presidential elections.
This is an exciting time of the year for me, because I'm doing all this crazy stuff that I've never done before :) Wich is off course Awesome !

First of all, It's been almost a month now since i've posted my last blog message, so it's time for some new exciting things to tell.

On our fall break, we went to Atlanta, because we wanted to see some skyscrapers. We visited the Coca-Cola factory, the Cnn buildings, the Zoo, and the Aquarium. That was really cool.
At the end of our Coca-Cola visit, we could try all the differend coca's around the world.
Off course we tried them all, and we all came out with serious stomach aches :) But we had a great time though !

The Cnn was really cool too, because we could see everything behind the scenes, and we saw the television anchor working, wich was really cool :)

The Aquarium was also pretty awesome ! We saw sharks, an albino alligator, a dolphin, and a lot off other cool things. We had an amazing time there !

On the way home, we stopped at the korean market, because the korean exchange students wanted to pick up some Korean groceries. We were there during lunch time, so we decided to have lunch there as well. I didn't really knew what it all was, but eventually I ordered some noodle soup.
It was really good :)

Last week, Sandy( our coordinator) and Jonas ( Danish exachange student) came with me to the airprt to complain about my luggage. They couldn't help me after all, but after all we had a good time :) After all that we had a free dinner from Sandy's Cousin :)

On friday, we don't have classes, so we decided to do something fun :)
We were going to pigeon forge to go in the windtunnel and after that we were going for a horsebackride.

The windtunnel was really awesome ! We had an amazing time, and we're definitely going to do that again ! It was really cool that we could just fly somewhere in a tunnel :)
We were going to do horsebackriding as well, but we were a little to late to do that.
Instead, we were on our way home when we saw a sign that said we could go for a helicopter ride.
Offcourse, we went in there and signed up for it.
That was SO cool ! The helicopter did some weird moves ( in my opinion) but we had a really good time !

Other than that we went to a band competition, wich was really cool ! They did a great job, and I had an awesome time there !

Tomorrow it is Halloween, wich I'm really looking forward to ! I even have a small costume :)
It's gonna be great ! ;)

And offcourse next week will be the presedential election :) That'll be great ! I'm really excited about it, and I'm looking forward tothe results as well ! It's gonn be an interesting day !

Hope y'all are okay :)
Kind Regards, Sara

October 3rd

Hye 'Y'all '

That's right, I start to speak fluently 'Tennessee's'. And I like it :)
Well, I don't exaclty know how long it's been since I posted my last message, but I'm just gonna go ahead and tell about all the fun parts this last few weeks.

First of all, I'm doing really good in school *Happy me*.
I'm relieved that school's going so good, so that I can have a lot of free time :)

Okay, then the food, Omg, that's so good :)
I ate a lot of new things these last few weeks.
First of all, I ate my first real American Hotdog, with a real bun and everyting :)
Then, second of all, the hamburgers are delicious. Everyone I had so far was extremely good :)
Next, I have a chili dog for the first time in my life. It's a hotdog with chilisause on top of it.


Sloppy Joe's
 

last week, I had 'sloppy joe's'. The main idea is that you take a hamburgerbun, and fill it with chili. You can eat it with either french fries or chips. Both are acceptable, I can tell ;)
And last of all, Today we ate something weird, but it was so good !
We ate fried green tomatoes, and crawfish etouffee. I really loved it !

So far for all the new food, we also did some awesome stuff.

2 weeks ago, Bruce and Diana took me on a 'convertable' trip. We went to ozon falls, and ate together at the mexican restaurant. We had a great time.

Then last week, we went on a roadtrip together. Saturdaymorning, we went to the scottisch dandridge music fest. We had some scones with strawberries, and fish and chips. We listened to some awesome bagpipes. After a while, we went on to the greek fest in Knoville. We ate souflaki, greek baklava, and some other good stuff.
In the evening, we went back, and took a drive in a fancy neighbourhood in Knoxville.


Tuesday, we went to the karaoke with Sandy and Jane. We had a great time, as usual.
Now the presedential debates are on the television, so I better watch and pay attention:)

Sunday, I have to sing alone in church. It's gonna be the first time for me, so I'm kinda nervous already. I hope it will all work out well.

Well, Im gonna go to bed, 'cause tomorrow will be a big day. It's Andrew's birthday, so we're going to knoxville. And I have class at 8 o'clock in the morning .. :(

Ohw yeah, I got invited in a girls weekend in Chattanooga with some friends from my church. I'm really looking forward to that. And I think it's gonna be a great weekend.
In 1.5 week, we also go to Atlanta for the weekend. That'll be fun as well !

Hope you are all good back there in Belgium ! Miss you guys !

Bye, Sara x

September 17th

Hye everyone,

It's been a while since I posted some things in here, so I have a lot to tell :)

I've been doing some crazy stuff since my last blog update. School is been a little harder, especially the American Government class. It's hard to follow, but I'm doing the best I can.
During the weekend, we're having some awesome times with the exchange students and the people from my church.
Last sunday, I went Whitewater Rafting with the people from my church :) It was awesome ! It was the olympic rafting parcour. It was really cool, and I met some new people there :)

Cumberland Falls, September 15th
 

Last week we also went to the Karaoke, wich was really nice as usual.
Friday I went to lunch with a lady from my church and had lunch at KFC. After that the exchange students came to my house, and we went swimming. It was a nice afternoon !

Saturday we went to Cumberland falls with the exchange students and Sandy. It was a great day. After we went to the falls, everyone fell asleep in the car :)

We picked some dinner up at the Sonic drive in, and after that we went to Sandy's house.
When we arrived at Sandy's house, we went to her neighboor Mike, who is Jonas his hostfather.

We watched some television, and when we went back to Sandy's house, Quinten, her husband, showed us some guns ( not loaded). It was really cool !

It was amazing to see all these awesome guns :) We were really into all the gun-things, so he's going to take us to the shooting range sometime :) Or we can go hunting with him, wich would be really cool to do !


Sunday I went to church as usual, and in the afternoon we had the youth meeting, wich was really fun !
In between I colored my hair, wich was kinda funny :) It was a messy job, but I did it ! And it looks decent.
We sang some christmas songs, and we played some weird instrument :) wich was really funny !

After the youth meeting we had dinner together with the church community.

Diana, Bruce and I went home and watched some television afterwards.
That was my exciting week :) Hope there will be a lot more of these weeks

Kind Regards,

Sara x