The last Friday was the last day of this semester and like in all other schools, there was no real class going on. Our principal Mr Montgomery organized a field day. The word field day is a very open term, so I will run you through the day so you can get an idea of what our field day was like. In the morning we had to go to school but didn‘t have any class. First period we just stayed in our classrooms and played silly games, second period after the announcements students were released and there were different events to attend in school. For instance, there were video game tournaments in some rooms, movies were shown and in the cafeteria students could get free snacks. Me and Jacob went to the robotics room (fun story: I was the only girl in that classroom) and played minecraft with some nerds. We stayed there for about an hour and then went across the street to the movie theater to watch the new star wars movie. First, we got some snacks from Kroger to smuggle into the theater. Then, we went to the theater. The seats were extremely comfortable, which was good since I slept through half of the movie.
After star wars ended, we left school and went to some stores to buy the last christmas gifts. It was only about 2 in the afternoon but nobody was at school anymore because the school doesn‘t take attendance anymore. While shopping, I started to kinda feel bad, which turned out to be the beginning of a cold. I didn‘t wanna eat anything, so we went to Smoothie King instead. In the evening, I had two parties I was invited to; Natalie‘s birthday and a Christmas „party“ with debate. Both of it was at the same time but naturally I went to the debate gathering, since that‘s where I know more people. I asked Ximena, who was also invited to the birthday party, to bring Natalie the gift I originally bought for her and at about 7 o‘clock my host dad drove me to the debate „party“.
I arrived a bit late, so everybody was there already. We played some UNO and another game about silly laws and had some soda. The whole thing took place at Justin‘s house. He has three dogs, which are extremely adorable. My favorite one was called Ringo, he was a very big dog and kinda reminded me of a Berner Sennenhund. So as you can tell by that statement, I was mostly petting dogs that evening.
We also did a white elephant, which is a type of gift exchange. Everybody brings a gift and then draws a number, the number determines the order in which people can choose gifts. Number one starts and can pick any gift and unwrap it. Number two then either chooses a new gift or steals number one‘s gift. If a gift gets stolen 3 times, it‘s frozen and whoever‘s got it at that moment gets to keep it. This way, everybody ends up with a gift.
I brought a big, fluffy pillow for that exchange and not trying to brag, but it got stolen many times, so it froze. What can I say, everybody likes fluffy pillows. Some of the gifts were inside jokes, such as a beheaded baby doll that somebody found in the debate room or just simply a stone wrapped in paper. I ended up with a few face masks and hand sanitizer, so I was alright. Gretchen on the other hand (my bf‘s sister) got the doll that was meant as a joke and was very upset about it ;(
At about 10:30 pm, the hosts decided that the party had to come to an end, so we all called our parents and waited to get picked up. After the event I was obviously very disappointed, since that is not how I expected a „party“. My host dad even agreed that it lacked alcohol and thus was boring. So yeah, concluding, the debate gathering sucked. And unfortunately I found no trace of real high school parties like in movies. Everybody here says that high schoolers here don‘t attend parties and then get to experience it for the first time in college. I‘m kinda glad now that I‘m not an American teenager……