Quick update

I don't even remember when I last updated, but a lot of things have happened since. The biggest things, in chronological order, were: a break up between Isaac and I, winterfest, I got a new boyfriend, valentines day, Tech week with The Crucible and TCAPs. I'm not gonna talk about all these things right now, but I just felt like writing a little bit.

I don't think I have mentioned the play the drama club is doing this spring, so I'll give you a quick synopsis. It is set in 16th hundred and about the Salem witch trials, as well as (if you read between the lines) about the Nuremberg trials and the red scare. I play Elizabeth proctor (the wife of the main character) and she is one of the two main female characters. It's great to be back with the drama club, but it is also a hard play with a lot of words and wording we aren't used to. On top of that we are trying to do a slight Massachusetts accent, since that is where the play takes place.

We started tech week (off book and tech stuff is added) last week and we are currently doing drama 5houra each day after school (4-9) so needless to say, I am quite exhausted. The play opens this weekend and we have three performances.

The thing about tech week is that it triggers a lot of different and often contradicting emotions. On one hand every body is tired which leads to stress which turns into frustration over the slightest thing gone wrong. On the other hand we are all excited to perform the play, and on the third (yes, during tech week you have at least three hands) it means drama club will be over last week, and for all the seniors and me, this will be our last play together, so we don't want it to end yet. It's very confusing.

On top of tech week all the freshmen and sophomores had to do TCAPs. It is state testing that all students have to do. So whilst my brain was slowly getting closer to explode with memorised lines and lyrics (we have a choir concert two days after the last performance) I also had to take two hour-long tests a day for 5 days. The language part wasn't bad at all, so it didn't take too much brain activity, but the math was horrible.
Before I left everybody told me that I should continue taking math over here, but since I don't really like numbers, I ignored it. I can now say that that was a really bad idea. The overall thought I had during the math teat was; I can't math.
I would stare at a problem and recognise that less than a year ago I was tutoring someone in this, and now all I can think is that the numbers look like hieroglyphics. I could even remember the excat class I learned this in, just not what I was supposed to do.

The only good thing about them were that we got these tickets if we worked for a certain amount of time, and by the end of all the tests there was a drawing where we could win grand prices and I won an iPod! So it wasn't all bad.

Today we are doing an assembly with a scene from our play for the entire school, and I'm slightly nervous since yesterday was the first time we were really off book with this scene, but I'm sure it'll be alright (we were supposed to be off book earlier, but like I said, there is a lot of words and weird wordings, so that didn't exactly happen)

I'll leave you with these pictures I have taken lately :)

Until next time
- Malene

Gunnison Community Center

Today we decided to go to the Gunnison Community Center as a family. Since Jeff is working it was just us girls. The center has a rock climbing wall, a pool, game hall and a tumbling/gymastic hall. Since it's winter we decided to not go in the pool.

Rock climbing is just as fun and harder than I remembered. I conquered the number 2 path (the easiest one, but let's not tell anyone that) so I felt very accomplished. After climbing we went in to the tumbling room were the girls met up with some of their friends and tumbled, and since we weren't allowed to play on the fun bars and beams, I decided to practice my ballet. Considering it starts up again tomorrow, it was probably a good idea.

When the girls were done with tumbling around, we went to a nearby ice rink and rented some skates. This was my favorite part of the day. It's been a while since I skated last, and I almost forgot how much I like it. Thankfully I haven't forgotten how to not fall. Riley and Audrey had never been ice skating before, and thanfully the rink had these help thingys so they could stay up. Audrey loved it, Riley not so much. We stayed for about an hour and then we went back to the center for a bit more tumbling.

After the girls were done tumbling, we went and got hot chocolate at a nearby cafe, and then we headed home.
- Malene

(This is written on the blogger app, so there may very well be typing mistakes since my phone keyboard is quite small)

Date night

Today I went to Mitchell's house with Isaac and had new years dinner. Mom (That is Mitchell's mom, but everybody calls her that) made stroodle (hope I spelled that right), roast and potatoes, and it was really good. While we were waiting for the food we played rock band, a game I haven't played since my SFO days, and it was really fun, right untill the x-box decided not to play anymore. Then we played some card games.

After food at Mitchell's me and Isaac went on a double date with Orion and Greta (the original dinner plans). We went to this asian restaurant in Buena Vista and had sushi. Now sushi isn't something you come across often in Colorado, especially not good sushi, so it was really great to have it again. At the restaurant their was a band playing this hapoy, dancey music anno 1950. They sounded really good, although they were a bit too loud for a small restaurant. After dinner we all went back to Isaac's and watched stand-up.
Today was a good day :-)
- Malene

New years eve

Happy new year everybody and welcome to 2014! Before I left I was told that new years eve isn't quite as a big deal here, so needless to say I wasn't all that excited for it. But my new years eve turned out to be really great. I spent it with my friends Aaron, Orion and Greta and of course Isaac.
I watched the boys play x-box (my walking skills in Skyrim are still questionable, so I let them do the playing), they tried to teach me Risk, and succesfully taught me a card game named Bullshit.
Because I am used to a bigger party we went and got partypoppers and sillystring from walmart, and Isaac's mom had a little bit of fireworks. A couple of minutes before midnight we all gathered in the living room and watched the countdown from times square and at 12 I got my first new years midnight kiss. Righy after we all went out and set of the fireworks (a very small battery and a smoke thingy) and then we watched Mariah Carey sing in the new year. My curfew had been extended to 1am and I went to bed around 2. Like I said in the beginning it was a pretty great new years eve, and if it has anything to say about 2014, then the next year is gonna be awesome!
- Malene

Halloween (Old post that I refuse not to finish)

Thursday the 31st of October it was Halloween. Since we don't celebrate it in Denmark, it was my first time and it was awesome. At school it was allowed to wear costumes, which of course me and my friends took full advantage of. I was a vampire (I found cheap teeth at Safeway and a cheap dress at Walmart) and I seriously think that there should be more days where you can wear costumes to school.

After school I went home for a bit and then we went to one of Christi's friend's house for a halloween party. Seeing all those little kids in their costumes really made my night. Especially a mini Captain America and Spiderman who repeatedly tried to kill me. Their lack of wood bullets and stakes made this a hard task. I guess that's what you get for dressing up as a bad guy :-)

After the party trick-or-treated a bit with Riley and Audrey, and then I walked to safeway to meet my friends. We ended up being a much bigger group than originally, which just made it that more fun. We also went trick-or-treating, and though it was a bit awkward at first, I soon realized that it wasn't frowned upon, and joines the fun.

A tradition in Salida is the Thriller flashmob where a bunch of citizens (including my choir teacher) dress up as zombies and do a dance to the Michael Jackson song Thriller in the middle of the street. It was pretty cool.

After we finished getting candy from strangers, we went to Aaron's house to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show. Since I have only watched this alone before, watching it with other people (especially people who know all the responses and words to the songs) was pretty awesome. We sang along, Aaron's mom told when to say/do what and everbody got up to do the time warp. One of the beat things though was heckling the storyteller/crime investigator guy with neck jokes. At first we all did it, but in the end we realized that nobody could beat Adrian, and we all just listened to his great, and quite inventive, heckling :-)

This was another one of those nights where I just sat among all these people I get along with so well, and thought how happy and lucky I am to be here. It truly was a great first and last halloween.
-Malene
(I have pictures and they will be uploaded when I get on my computer again)

"We are a school district of distinction!"

On the (insert date I am no longer sure of because I am really bad at updating this blog) we had a district wide assembly in our high school gym. Up until everybody was in the bleachers, no one really knew what was going on. The teachers had just been told to make sure that their students were present, and that second hour would start late. It was referred to as “The mystery assembly”. It turned out that the entire school district had been judged to be in the top 10 or 16 % (or something like that) of Colorado school districts. To be honest, I wasn't completely paying attention, there was a lot of people saying a lot of things, but the gist is that the all the teachers are really good at teaching, and the students are either clever or good at learning. One of the speakers made each school yell out “I am a student of distinction” the teachers had to yell “I am a teacher of distinction” and then finally everybody yelled “We are a school district of distinction”. This means that if you really wanna understand the effect of the ! In the title, imagine a gym full of kids from age 3 to 18 occupying all the seats on the bleachers and the floor screaming at the top of their lungs.

I must say that this distinction of our school doesn't really come as a surprise for me. At some point before the district assembly, we had an assembly for the school. We have had a couple of those so far, every time to honor the sports. This assembly was however for the academics. By the end of each quarter honor roll is announced. There is two different “levels”. The first is when you had a GPA (Grade Point Average) of 3 -3.4 and that is called honor roll. The second is called Honor distinction roll which is when you have a GPA between 3.5 and 4.0. About ¼ of the school was on the honor roll, and got called up to the stage to get their diploma. This seemed like a lot to me, but as it turned out, it was nothing. More than half the school was on the honor distinction roll, me included. I think that it's great that so many people have good grades (A 4.0 is straight

A's) but it seems like it kinda defeats the purpose of Distinction if most people get it.
If anyone is interested (Hello, mom, dad, grandma and granddad) my grades as I'm writing this are straight A's. Don't worry, event though I don't need the credits, I still care about my grades and do my schoolwork ;D

String Quartet and poetry slam (old post I just got around to posting)

Thursday (many Thursdays ago) in choir instead of singing like normally, we went to the auditorium to watch a string quartet perform. It was eight people (Two quartets) from Colorado symphony that cam and performed for us. It was really a middle school performance, but since we are in choir we got to watch as well. They played two songs each and then a song all together. Before each song the woman explained a bit about the composer and the history of the song, and how they were different from each other, which was interesting but probably a bit too much information. The songs they played were really good and it sounded very beautiful. I was very amazed at how fast they can move their fingers!

My creative writing class and I (and some more people from the school) went to Western State university for a poetry day. We were divided up into groups with other schools, and then we went out to 4 different workshops. It was the creative writing class at the college who taught us, and they performed some of their poetry too. It was really fun and we learnt a lot about different types of writing.

The college students performing poetry

Me and Tylea got a bit creative in one of the workshops