snow everyhwere

Haha, anyone heard my wishes for snow one month ago! We got so much snow in the last days, that I really don't know if I've seen so much of this white stuff before! Due to this snowy weather schools are closing – American people love to panic – and so it happened that my hostchild had her third or fourth "snow day" since the beginning of January... It starts with a phone call of her school around 5am (!!!) in the morning. Today I answered it and an electronic voice told me what I already knew. :D

When Sophie visited me from Wednesday night to Sunday noon, we also enjoyed walking around in the snow, but we did a lot of other things, too! It started with an unforgettable visit of the Empire State Building on Thursday night! I've never been there, on the city's highest building. It was totally freezing outside, but we didn't have to wait to get up and the view was incredible. Just a few seconds after I said "Sad, that we don't have snow today." I saw the first snowflake, and it started to snow, haha! So beautiful to see New York from above AND in snow... But the snowflakes couldn't find their way down to the streets, when we got back to the ground, there was nothing.

Upper Manhattan

On Friday we had a famous "Frozen Hot Chocolate" of *Serendipity. I've never heard this name before, but Sophie's Hostmum recommend it and so we tried to find it, curious about seeing it! :) I definitely have to go there again in the summertime... ;-) Afterwards we had nice walk through the Central Park that looked kind of mystical in the Twilight!

Frozen Hot Chocolate and Creme De La Creme Cheesecake!

Central Park

Beautiful...

Sophie & me :)

the famous Ice Rink...

We were a little lazy on Saturday and stayed in bed almost the whole day. Talking, watching a DVD, sleeping. :D At night we drove to New York again to go out for dancing. I had free tickets for *Webster Hall, a disco in Lower Manhattan. It was a nice evening and I really enjoyed dancing, but the guys there were really ...ugly? ...pushy? ...annoying? They tried to grab our hands or touched us and couldn't understand that we didn't like that, grr!

Sophie, thanks for a really nice time! I miss you!!!

studying for my upcoming college course "intercultural communication"

Back to the snow... When I took pictures on Tuesday during snowfall (they call it snowstorm here) I thought it was a special situation, but this morning I really had to clear my way through the snow and sometimes it reached up to my belly! Ok, I'm not really tall, but this is kind of mean, because I'll be the first one who disappears when the snow grows higher in the next days!! =/

our house during the snowstorm on Tuesday ;)

i love it :)

our front door

looking up...

a backdoor

We have a new box of already mixed cookie dough in our refrigerator and my hostchild loves to bake cookies after dinner! You just have to take out that stuff with a spoon and put on a plate, very easy!! Haha, tonight it's the fifth evening in a row! So cute... I'm going to eat my cookie now! :) Good night, Germany!

busy busy busy

Hello all together again!

My past week was really busy – and so will be the next two weeks, too.

If you remember, I told you I found an interesting college course I was considering to take. Well, I registered for a weekend college course at Manhattanville College and the class will take place on the last weekend of January. It's about cross cultural communication and when I read the information about it I was completely sure that this is the topic I really wanna do for my last college course! Unfortunately it was a little expensive, but I'm getting all my credits I need to finish my au pair year successfully, yeah!

Moreover I booked the tour through Florida in March! It's so exciting!!! I'm going to travel from Miami to Key West, Key Largo, Everglades National Park, Orlando, Cape Canaveral and Fort Lauderdale. Suntrek is the company that's organizing the tour. After that eight day trip I'll stay on more day in Miami, and – I can't really believe it – I'll be there during Spring Break, hahahaha! :D

My hostfamily was in Texas from last Thursday to Monday and I was about to be alone in our house for four nights! That's so scary! But for Friday and Saturday night I invited friends for sleeping over. We had a lot of fun with cooking dinner, watching movies and dancing on Friday night. :) Romina and I visited the beach for sunset on Saturday evening and watched movies at night. Sunday morning we woke up early to see the sunrise. :)

the sun is hiding behind the trees ...

Today I'm awaiting my friend Sophie from South Carolina. Do you remember how I told you about my travel to South Carolina in August? Yeah, now she's going to visit me in Connecticut and I'm looking forward to four wonderful days with her. :)

Talk to you next week again!

halftime

Hello all together!

I hope all of you had great start in the year 2011. :-) Oh yes, I had a perfect New Year's Celebration in New York with my boyfriend. We celebrated in a rooftop bar in New York with an amazing view over Manhattan. Of course, the tickets weren't cheap, but we enjoyed free food and free drinks the whole evening and found ourselves dancing on the beautiful decorated dancing floor. How I missed dancing!! Around midnight we were standing outside on the upper floor, holding a glass of noble champagne in our hands and looking at the Empire State Building. Fortunately we were able to see a little bit of the fireworks from the Times Square, where thousands of people celebrated New Year by standing around in the cold. :D

New Year's Celebration!!!

Christmas Holidays before were completely wonderful. I enjoyed the time with my hostfamily and my boyfriend and we hat a lot of fun. When we were sitting at the dinner table on Christmas Eve talking about former au pairs they counted my name for the first time in their chronology, which was an incredible feeling for me. I'm proud to be one part of their life now and I'm also really proud that I stayed in the USA for almost six months. YES, the first half of my year abroad is done on Wednesday!! From now on I will count down the remaining days!! :-)

Christmas sweets

Time to think about all things I still wanna do and I realized they are a lot! xD I still have to do further thirty hours in a College and I guess I found an interesting course for me. I will tell you later about that! Moreover I wanna travel to Florida in March and my hostparents already told me which week I can go on vacation. As soon as all my travel plans are done I will let you know. :-)

Let's talk about all the experiences I have made in the past weeks. My boyfriend and I had our anniversary on December 26. Unfortunately or fortunately (I don't know, it's both :D) there was a BIG snowstorm mixed with flash and thunder on that evening. But that didn't stop us from driving to New York by train to go out for dinner. We took one of the last yellow cabs that was still on duty and the driver was making fun of the crazy situation. Indeed New York was completely different. There were just a few people out on the streets which were covered all over in snow. When we left the taxi we had to hold our faces down, because the windstorm was pushing snowflakes around us and our legs disappeared in snow. When I tried to look up I could see the skyscrapers disappearing in the snow and in the dark sky. New York was scaringly quiet. I'll never forget this moment! Anyhow we made our way through several streets and finally found a good restaurants, one of New York's best steakhouses! Dinner was perfect!! Afterwards we fought our way back to Grand Central, but made a short stop in front of the Rockefeller Center to see the famous Christmas tree. :-)

during the snowstorm at the Rockefeller Center

From January 2 to January 5 we travelled to Washington DC. What a fantastic city, but not as breathtaking as New York. :P We visited the Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, World War II Memorial, Washington Monument, White House and United States Capitol, shopped in the beautiful Georgetown and watched four of the numerous Museums: American History, Natural History, Holocaust and Air & Space. :-) One of the best experiences was the view from the top of the Washington Monument in the four significant directions of Washington DC: 1. White House, 2. Lincoln Memorial, 3. Capitol with the National Mall and the Smithsonian area (the world's largest museum complex) and 4. Thomas Jefferson Memorial, where we didn't walk closer to.

Lincoln and me, haha...

Washington Monument in the background

Korean War Veterans Memorial

:-)

in front of the White House (the closest you are allowed to go)

Georgetown

the Capitol

Washington DC by night

the White House, looks soo small

the Capitol and the National Mall with Smithsonian area (all the buildings around are museums!)

On January 7 my hostfamily came back from Argentina, where they stayed for twelve days and my boyfriend flew back home to Germany. :-( I miss him, but I'm also confident to see him again soon, because I have only six months left and time is flying so quickly! Darling, I love you!!

On Saturday I accompanied my friend Irem to the airport, because her friend from Germany was leaving, too. Yeah, the last weeks were busy with visitors for everybody. :-) On Sunday I met my friend Romina and she showed me a really beautiful beach in Old Greenwich, a town next to Darien, and we had so much fun walking around, taking pictures and looking at the New York's skyline!!!! When I saw the Skyline coming up on the horizon I was totally speechless! That perspective was absolutely affecting – to see the ocean and the big city together! I felt like in a dream. This is all I wished for when I had the dream of one year abroad and it truly came true!! I definitely can say New York is my second home, but I still can't believe that I have the chance to be here!! Just incredible!!

jumping alone

jumping together

New York's Skyline on the horizon

close up of the skyline

Where's my darling? :(

Talk to you soon! Hopefully every week from now on, I will try it! :-)