Got home yesterday after a long trip, happy for being able to come home and see my loved ones, happy because I had a wonderful trip with the most amazing exchange students, happy because I was sad it was over. I will miss you all.
Check the new pictures uploaded below.

See some day,

Fred

The new world!!

San Diego – JUN/24th 

Today we stated our day with the Midway Aircraft Museum in the San Diego harbor, which was used during the war in 1945. We got to see how the crew lived there while fighting in the sea, how it was operated, and the most interesting point was seeing the jail used as a punishment for those who were gambling or breaking the rules. Also, we were able to experience the feeling of flying and shooting other planes in simulators.

After 2 hours in the museum we left to go to lunch at a "beefe" which was pretty good by the way. Later we drove to the world famous San Diego Zoo to spend the rest of our afternoon. In the zoo we took a bus tour to get to know more details about the zoo and it was neat to see the polar bears. The pandas' exhibition had a long line because everybody wanted to see them. Even though some of us thought it was going to be like the rest of the zoos when we first got there, we all thought at the end that it is a really special and cool zoo to visit.

Unfortunately we went to Denny's for dinner again. It's really hard to think that almost 2 weeks have flown by so fast, but remember: "This is not a goodbye, it's just a see you later."

Tomorrow we're going to head out to L.A. again and stop at Laguna Beach to enjoy some time at the beach. 

You know you love us,

Xoxo – Jessica Zarzar, Mayara Taglietta and Anni Hagenah.

10th Day - Grand Canyon

Friday, July 22nd

Grand Canyon

Today we saw one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
That was probably the most exciting and interesting day of our tour. We got on the bus at 8.30 A.M., it took one hour to get to the national park of the Grand Canyon. Everybody were super prepared, we had sun glasses, sunscreen, since it was 103 degrees... And of course LOTS OF WATER.
We took a shuttle to get to the hike and as soon as the shuttle stopped everybody was amazed by the the beauty of the HUGE Canyon. Everyone, or almost, brought their own flag to take lots of awesome pictures. Some of us made it all the way to the bottom of the hike, some other just stopped to the first rest area (weak teenagers). The whole hike was around 1.5 miles each way; without a doubt the hardest part was definitley the way back up. For some people was harder, for some easier... but we all made it at the end. The beauty of the Canyon is hard to describe in just a little paragraph, but it was for sure a breathtaking experience. Everyone was ready for luch,we were ”strangely” hungry and exhausted. After lunch we watched the Grand Canyon movie in I max.
We took more pictures at the bright angel spot, once again it was amaizing. In the evening we all got to the ranch to get all the red dust and dirt off our pretty faces. For supper we went DOWNTOWN Williams, a huge cowboy village of maybe 3 thousand souls. We watched a cowboy show in the middle of the road. We then enjoyed an awesome bbq at Route 66. We all sang old country songs with a country singer from the village afterwards.
Now we swim in the pool, play basketball or just hang out, because our corfure got extented until 12:30, the latest one ever as a gift for our good behavior.


Stefano, Laura and Nico

"Check the trip pictures"

West Coast 2012 From Robert:

4th Day - Venice Beach, Santa Monica and Santa Barbara

Saturday 16th

The day didn’t start out good because we had 3 students that got sent home.
Fortunately the day got better and the first thing we did was going to Venice beach. The
most impressing things were cute stores, some of them selling marijuana for medical
purposes, a skate park and of course the beautiful ocean. Another amazing thing was the
street artists, who performed different talents. One of the groups danced and involved the
people around it. Everybody was impressed by them doing stunts like jumping over people
or spinning on their heads.
After we took tons of pictures on the beach, we continued to our second stop – Santa
Monica. Santa Monica was beautiful the atmosphere was just amazing! The water was
freezing cold but we got our feet wet anyways. Time past by and it was almost noon when
we stopped at Denny’s. We had to wait a long time to get our lunch, but the food was
delicious. During this long time, a few people went to a machine where we won a small
stuffed pig. We were really excited about it and named it Ihana.
Doesn’t Santa Barbara sound amazing? It did to us and the pier filled our expectations. It
was just gorgeous. We walked all the way to the end, where all the souvenir shops were
located. As we entered the bus, we got ready for a longer drive to our hotel. On the way, we
stopped for dinner – in our favorite place - Buffet or a Beefay. Jumpei started a little food
fight by throwing pudding at David.

8th Day - Drive to Las Vegas

Early in the morning we left the Yosemite national park and went on a long ride through the desert with
our destination LAS VEGAS!!

From California we switch the states to Nevada. After a 5 hour drive we reached Sizzlers, where
everybody was very excited for the lunch. Once again everybody loved “Biffet”! With stuffed bellies we
finally got after an other 2 hours to our hotel close to Las Vegas. From the hotel we went to a souvenir
shop, and then to the famous Hard Rock Café Las Vegas. Afterwards we went to the Bellagio hotel,
where we didn’t miss the fountain show of course. Under those circumstances we just miss a wedding,
but in the end we even had those. (: Congratulation to our two Chaperons!

After an exciting day full of joy we drove back in the already dark Las Vegas. A moment nobody should
miss in his life. After a promise that we will all come back here again, as soon as we turn 21 years old we
enjoyed the pool in our hotel instead of the numerous strip clubs downtown.

5th Day - Monterrey and Carmel

Saturday 16th

The day didn’t start out good because we had 3 students that got sent home.
Fortunately the day got better and the first thing we did was going to Venice beach. The
most impressing things were cute stores, some of them selling marijuana for medical
purposes, a skate park and of course the beautiful ocean. Another amazing thing was the
street artists, who performed different talents. One of the groups danced and involved the
people around it. Everybody was impressed by them doing stunts like jumping over people
or spinning on their heads.
After we took tons of pictures on the beach, we continued to our second stop – Santa
Monica. Santa Monica was beautiful the atmosphere was just amazing! The water was
freezing cold but we got our feet wet anyways. Time past by and it was almost noon when
we stopped at Denny’s. We had to wait a long time to get our lunch, but the food was
delicious. During this long time, a few people went to a machine where we won a small
stuffed pig. We were really excited about it and named it Ihana.
Doesn’t Santa Barbara sound amazing? It did to us and the pier filled our expectations. It
was just gorgeous. We walked all the way to the end, where all the souvenir shops were
located. As we entered the bus, we got ready for a longer drive to our hotel. On the way, we
stopped for dinner – in our favorite place - Buffet or a Beefay. Jumpei started a little food
fight by throwing pudding at David.

7th Day - Yosemite

Tuesday the 19th, many people's favorite day of the trip so far. We left our previous hotel at 8 o'clock in the morning and started a solid 4 hour drive with one short break. The ride was not so exhausting since the view by the road was the most amazing so far, and as a matter of fact many people spent those hours sleeping. When we arrived the national park, we saw a couple of huge waterfalls. And this was just the beginning. We drove through a valley between huge cliffs, and as a Finnish person I would call those mountains. The view from the bus was just breath taking.

The bus dropped us off at a little village in the valley, close to the tallest waterfall in the US. Everybody gathered their stuff and we walked to a picnic spot that was a mile away from the village. The picnic area was by a beautiful stream that came down from the mountains, and the water was crystal clear and super cold. After our nice picnic we decided to walk in the stream, take pictures and even go swimming. When you got used to the cold water (=your body got numb) swimming felt really nice and refreshing, since the air temperature was close to a 100°F. We threw football around, laid in the sun, and just had a great time at the stream. After a couple of hours we decided to go to take a closer look to the waterfall.
The coolest part of the day was probably the visit to the waterfall. The waterfall stands at 2425ft, and watching the water falling from the skies just makes the time stop. A handful of us climbed up the big rocks to get a closer look to the bottom of the waterfall, and I have to admit that after climbing up to the little pond on the bottom of the fall, we felt pretty exhausted. All of us got some great pictures, and eight of us climbed up above the pond and got a perfect view of the valley and the surroundings. The climb to the cliff took a little longer than we excpected, so we got back to the bus at the last minute. We drove for fifteen minutes and stopped at a scenic overlook of the valley. We took a group picture and some awesome individual pictures (like us) and after that we went to have a biffee (=buffet) dinner. We arrived at the hotel around nine, and swam in the pool for half an hour. Everybody was in their rooms by curfew (except us, because we are the bloggers=cool).

By: Joona, Robert, Prinze/Derick, Sharp

6th Day - San Francisco

For today, we went to the awesome city, San Francisco.  At first, we had a surprised to be separated to 2 different groups. So, we visited Alcatraz, hard rock café, and china town. Today, it was cold because of stupid wind. While group A (the best group) visited the prison situated on the Island, the other group B were shopping till we met at the Hard Rock Café to eat and switch the group. So, literally, we saw many rooms for prisoners which only had bed and toilet. It makes us to be speechless. We were overwhelmed. It is so good to learn about it though. And we also enjoyed the ride to the ferry.

Afterwards, we had awesome lunch at our favorite restaurant hard rock cafeeeeeee.  Not  buffetttt!!! Lol

As said before, we switch after lunch and had two hours and half free time. Therefore we use most of our time shopping and touring around downtown San Francisco.  I think we made a lot of good deal at shopping today. Crazy boy from Belgium said he got 6 t-shirt for $20 today. We were kind of upset after free time,  that is because our coordinator Frederico was totally late. We love you :D.

After all these adventures, we drove direction a nice point of view to the Golden Gate Bridge where we could admire the scenery and take memorable pictures!!

Next stop were headed to china town for dinner. Good food and friendly atmosphere were present all meal long.  And we stopped Walmart to get some food for picnic tomorrow. We are so excited for tomorrow, too. It will be so much fun!
Jumpei and Thomas.

3rd Day - L.A. Tour

The day started not looking too good for an exciting day outdoors in LA. The weather wasn't the best. We left the hotel at 9AM (actually, 9:11AM, because our friend Batuhan, from Turkey, took too long on his morning shower) towards The  Walk of Fame. Between souvenier stores, museums of all kinds, restaurants and other atractions kept us pretty busy for 2 hours. This was short lived as we had to move on to greater things and places that we still had to see.  The observatory was great and the famous Hollywood words formed part of the video that was taken made us feel like apart of the exclusive famous stars that roam this place. We had some free time at the observatory to take pictures and enjoy the view. The sun was shinning and the weather was great, perfect to keep going on our tour around LA. We headed towards the Rodeo Dr., in Beverly Hills. 1 hour was enough time to wonder around the wealthy places and expensive stores. All the walking around made us really hungry, so we went to a restaurant to get  some food, relax and talk about hour day. After we rested and ate, we headed to our hotel, where we still had some free time to enjoy the pool and our friends. Fun and excitement are the words that I'd use to discribe our day. Excitement because we visited many famous and different places, and fun for being sorrounded by people we incredibly got along in only a few days. The Wes Coast Trip is still surprising us, and we know there's a lot more fun coming up. By Francisco Zanetti

2nd Day - Universal Studios

Today was our second day on the AMAZING west coast trip! This morning we went to the Universal Studios in L.A. As soon as we got in the bus, we were already excited for the day. When we saw the Hollywood sign on the mountain, people just started screaming. It was a special day, one of our friends, Cona, from Chile, turned 18 today. On the bus everyone sang Happy Birthday, even in different languages, pretty cool, right? In the beginning it was kind of chilly and cloudy, but it got warmer and sunny later.



The sun "followed" us for the whole day, that's the reason that many of us got a sunburn.
All 52 of us went to the first ride together "The Transformers", a new ride that just came out two weeks ago. There was basically no lines, so we got the chance to go to every single ride in the park. For instance, the Simpsons, a simulation ride, The House of Horror, that made everybody shake and scream like a baby (F.Y.I.: even our coordinator, Marissa, didn't go to it), Shrek 4D, Jurassic Park, and many others. The highlight of the day was the Studio Tour, where we saw how movies are made and visited real movie's set. It revealed the secrets of behind the scenes (such as Desperate Housewives, King Kong 3D, a bunch of westerns movies, etc.), which, for many of us, "ruined" our imagination. They showed us how, nowadays, technology can completely change anything.
We also watched some shows, such as the Special Effects, that was very cool and thought us how some special effects are created. Another show was with animals and had some famous animals, like the one in "Marley and I" and in "We bought a Zoo".
At the end of the day, it was a fantastic day, and we all had a lot of fun!
Julia Valente (Brazil), Stefano Susini (Italy), and Margo van der Veldt (The Netherlands).

1st Day - Disney Land

…Some other dreams of us came true.
In a day of magic…

…Where, you say?...

Disneyland California!
We worked hard for this one moment! Yesterday we all arrived from different states all
around America to enjoy this last main event from our exchange year together. From
strangers to friends all across the world came together for this trip. Our experience and
stories from our exchange year brought us together.
This morning we all expected to wake up to the Californian sunshine but as a surprise we
found a cloudy sky! But that didn’t keep us from looking forwards to our daily program.
DISNEYLAND!
Our childhood dreams came true. After only half an hour drive we arrived at the parks:
California Adventure Park and Disneyland. The first ride was the Tower of Terror, which
is one of the most exciting rides in the Disneyland. The waiting was worth it!
After that, we stopped at a really nice bakery to have lunch.
The next attraction, we went to, was an airplane-station. We were sitting in hanging
chairs in front of a huge screen. We were flying over some of the most famous natural
attractions in California. It was just amazing and a lot of fun!
We didn’t miss the water attraction either. There, we were sitting in a round boat and got
very wet! It did not matter because the sun was shining and we were dry pretty soon. We
managed to buy some souvenirs and take pictures with some Disney characters before we
moved to another attraction. The next attraction was the Pirates of Caribbean, which was
a lot of fun as well. After that, we were standing in line for the Star Wars attraction.

Another cool attraction was the ride in Indiana Jones. We were sitting in a truck and
drove around through different scenes that were played in the movie.
Right after that, we went to Disney again to have dinner and went to see the final show
with fireworks. It was awesome! And Tinkerbelle and Dumbo flew in the air!
Disneyland was closing soon and we went straight to bed after driving back to the hotel.

It was such a fun day and we enjoyed every second of it!

..Disneyland, where dreams come true….

Selina, Annisa, Greta, Annika and Margo

WEST COAST 2012 has started!

Coordination meeting prior to students arrival

Exchange Students living in USA from all over the world are meeting today at the LAX Airport in Los Angeles (CA) to start one of their biggest adventures on the Exchange Year - the West Coast Trip! For the next 14 days, exchange students will live together traveling around USA and visiting unforgettable and exciting places like Disneyland, Universal Studios, San Francisco and its landmark (the Golden Gate Bridge), Santa Monica, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, San Diego and much more! Follow our blog to keep posted on what's happening at the tour...

WEST COAST - Coming soon!