Endet das eine, beginnt das nächste - Abschied nehmen von Cedar Rapids

🇬🇧In Thailand, a largely Buddhist country, graduation almost always takes place on Thursdays. For me, too, this Thursday was a kind of graduation, because it was the last day in my temporary family, which has really grown on me over the past days and the last day to collect experiences in Cedar Rapids. On the one hand I was sad and on the other hand full of euphoria for the following days in Chicago.

I started the day with a mixture of these feelings.

As on all other school days, I got up at 6:30 a.m. to be at school on time at 7:40 a.m.. Then I walked through the front doors of Washington High School for the last time to class. According to the schedule, Vincent, Matti, Keno, Alex and I were supposed to have Woodworking. We went to the room and unfortunately found out that there were no classes during the first period. Therefore we went to the orchestra rehearsal, where we have listened to several times in the past days.

 In the second period, we went to Japanese class. There we were received very friendly by the teacher. After the announcement, it was our task to introduce ourselves and explain why we are at this school. The students, who were all of different ages, were very interested in this. All the tasks to be solved, such as a quiz, were unsolvable for us, since we lacked the basic knowledge of the Japanese alphabet. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting class.

In the following block we had P.E., where we were introduced to the game of kickball, which reminds us of the German 'Brennball' and has a similar game structure as baseball. Then we had lunch at the 'Warrior Café'. We already knew the menu of the day from the announcement, because the principal always announces it. After the lunch break, which is always eagerly awaited, there was another 20 min. of sports.

In the fourth and last block, the choir rehearsed for the stateauditions the following weekend. It was always very impressive to listen to them and also today they could deliver flawlessly in my opinion.

At 2:50pm I had to leave. I met my exchange student at the parking lot, then we picked up her little brother and drove to their home. I think it is very nice that they integrated me into their family life during the last days and I can't take it for granted. Arrived in 'my' room, I faced a rather complicated task ... Packing suitcase🥴, and so that possible things from the merch store ( named cotton gallery) can still find space in my suitcase. (Thanks for the tip @MissG). The Merchstore had opened today especially for us and we had from 5-7pm. time to browse in it.

Afterwards my exchange student and I went to McDonalds. There, the counters were different than in Germany, but especially the sizes of the dishes. On the way back we had to hurry because we had to pick up her father to go with him to Washington High. There the 'confrences' were held tonight, which is called „Eltern-Lehrer-Kind-Gespräch' (parent-teacher-child-talk) at our school. It was pretty boring because my exchange student seemed to do everything right in class😉😂. The AP worldhistory teacher who held this talk was very friendly.

 After we got to the school, we decided to go to the Italian restaurant 'Olive Garden' to have dinner together one last time. We enjoyed the time again and I think it was a nice ending. It's pretty weird to leave in just a few hours because I was just starting to settle in. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to Chicago and hope that at least there the time won't pass by so quickly.

written by Charlotte