I am sorry again for not writing my blog in a while. My last two weeks are coming up, and i still have 3 months left to write about. I hope you guys enjoy this blog.

Februari passed by. We had tennis practice everyday for 2, maximal 4 hours. Getting ready for more tournaments coming up.

The first week of March I visited "the city of rocks" this is a national park with gigantic rocks. It was unbelievable big and it was great to have a typical American meal in the outdoors. The same day we also visited the hot springs which were very relaxing.

Following week, second week of March, might have been one of the best weeks I've had. We traveled to California with another family. Not just to see the beautiful state, but to see the world's best tennis players play at the so called, Indian Wells tennis tournament. We stayed in a hotel nearby and had access to tournament for three days. It was an indescribable feeling to walk around in the perfect weather and be able to see great tennis all the time. We got to see the best of the best play in the greatest stadiums. Because I was able to support the Dutch players in Dutch, I got to talk to them or even take a picture. We had to travel back to silver city over night because we weren't allowed to miss any school or practice that Monday because we had to play tennis against another school on Tuesday.

The end of March it is was Easter. Hunter took me camping with his whole family. We were out in the woods with a big group, playing games and eating great food made it a good Easter.

In the beginning of April Stephen and his family took me fishing at a beautiful lake, called: elephant butte. We rented a boat and caught some nice fish.

April was a month were we had a tennis tournament every weekend. We played every Friday and Saturday, so we traveled all over New Mexico and stayed the night in a lot of hotels. We did a decent job over all as a team. The last tournament in April was a district tournament where you can qualify for the state tournament. Me and my doubles partner (Hunter) and my other friend (Lazius) were the only ones from our team who qualified for the state tournament.

My sister had decided that she wanted to travel to the USA. We picked her up from the airport the second weekend of April. It was weird but really cool to see her again after 8 months. It was even more weird to talk Dutch again. We showed her a lot of stuff in New Mexico and she got to teach and experience a lot at the elementary school with the little kids.

Prom is the biggest school dance of the year. This dance was in Aprl. Everybody dresses up matching their dates, and usually have a nice dinner. Everybody goes to prom, and our school had a so called "casino night" after prom till 4am. We played games and gambled to win cool prices.

The first week of May was the tennis tournament we had worked for all year. It was a big honor to represent our high school at the state tournament with two of my best friends. Only the best tennis players out of the state, who qualified are able to play at state. Me and Hunter played doubles. We didn't play our best the first round, but we pulled out the win in 3 sets. The next day we played the Quarter final. We started off strong, but couldn't keep it up the whole match and so we lost. It was sad because that was our last match ever and we wanted to make it further. But we are still in the top 8 doubles teams in the state, so we have something to be proud of. It was emotional to realize that was gonna be our last tennis trip, we had a great season with a cool team. And the best coaches!

After the state tournament me, my host mom and my sister stayed an extra day inalburqurque. We visited Santa Fe, this is the oldest town of the USA. It was a little but beautiful town with a lot of art and native Americans. We also made our own little tour in ABQ where we saw some of the highlights from the tv show, Breaking Bad.

Every year in the beginning of May, there is a big bike race in and around silver city. Racers from all over the world come to silver to practice for races like The Tour the France.

Halfway through May we finally had our last school days. Which of course means graduation for the seniors. Graduation is a really big deal here for all the kids who finished high school. Me and the two other exchange students had the chance to speak at graduation. There were a lot of people and I feel honored that I got to talk. After the official part of graduation everybody has parties, I went to a couple parties and it was a lot of fun.

The next morning me and my sister had to wake up early. We left the house at 6AM and traveled to the Grand Canyon with my host mom. We spent one night in a hotel and one night at a camp ground. I can't describe how big and amazing the Grand Canyon is. My sister and I walked an 8 mile hike down the Grand Canyon.

My time in the United States is almost over, June 4th I'll go back to the Netherlands already. I'm not really excited to leave because I enjoy hanging out with my friends and doing fun stuff now school is over. I don't even wanna thing about how hard it is gonna be to say bye to everybody here because I don't know when I'll see everybody again. Of course it is gonna be great to see all my friends and family in the Netherlands again. But till that time I'm enjoying every second I got left.