Again more than a month went by. Two holidays, snow in New Mexico and some cool activities.

This time I decided to write in English. I think that it is nice for my family and friends in America to read my blogs too. And because I have been speaking English for the last 5 months it should not be too hard. I am not sure if I am going to write English from now on, so let me know if you think I should write in English or Dutch next time.

Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States. People come together with family and friends and have great meals with things like turkey all day. The day after thanksgiving is called black Friday, and the Monday is called cyber Monday. This means that everything in most stores is on sale. It is fun to see how people almost get in a fight to get the products they want.

We spent our thanksgiving with friends of my host family. We had a really nice traditional thanksgiving dinner, we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and some other typical thanksgiving food. We also played some games, and we had fun. After that I went to my ‘second American family’ Hunter’s family and we played some games like pool, darts and monopoly.

Last month I also went to go visit one of the New Mexico historic high lights, the Gila Cliff Dwellings. It is a national monument, built around 1200. The people who used to live there built their houses in the caves to protect themselves. Everything that is left is now a national monument. It was a little walk and it was pretty cool to see all these handmade houses, after that we had a great lunch with some hotdogs and s'mores on a campfire. So it was a great day!

This year is different then the most years in New Mexico, it’s a colder winter then normal and that means more snow. Because everybody goes to school by school bus or car, school gets cancelled really quick. So far we have had already 2 schooldays cancelled and 1 time 2 hour delay. When school gets cancelled you can sleep the whole day, or you can go sledding and have fun in the snow, that’s what I did! We went up in the mountains and sled down in some tubes and put the tubes behind the car and start driving.

A little while ago I wrote about the basketball team, I was not good enough at all to play. For the past few weeks I've been the basketball manager. It basically means that you help the coaches when they need anything and during the games I usually film the whole game. So me and the other 2 managers get to go on all the trips for tournaments and games. 3 weeks ago we went to a tournament in Albuquerque, and we will have some more games and a tournament the whole season until the middle of February.

Just like in the Netherlands do we have a two week break around Christmas and new year.

At the beginning of the break we had a Christmas party with the two other exchange girls. We had dinner, and everybody brought something to eat from their country. So I had all kind of different candy from ‘sinterklaas’ from the Netherlands. We also made a original dutch apple pie, which was delicious. We played all kind of fun games and we did a present gift game

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(making the dutch apple pie)

The 23th of December, me Linda (my host mom) and Stephen went to sunrise in Arizona for a day of skiing and snowboarding! We were really excited and it was the perfect day because if you dress up as a Santa clause you got your lift ticket for free! So of course that’s what we did. We left early and where out at the slopes the whole day, it was great to be snowboarding in the USA!

December 24 Christmas eve, and December 25 Christmas of course. It’s weird not to be with your real family on these days. But because of my American family (and friends) it is not too hard. A nice thing about an American Christmas is that people do a lot of presents. We all bought presents for each other and we had a nice Christmas with nice meals too. A difference between America and the Netherlands is that in the USA is not a second Christmas day, it’s just one day.

Today is the 31st of December. I want to wish everybody a wonderul new year!