The music concerts

Hi! Because of yet another snow storm I am now trapped in my house while the wind outside is having fun and we have yet another snow day because of bus cancellation. So I finally got the chance to wake up late at 11:30 and draw and paint. Now I'm just having a ball finishing up a drawing of my favourite actor... if your are new to my blog, you wouldn't know that I love drawing and painting, and that is what I do in my spare time. 

Okay, yesterday and thursday the week before we had school concerts as I am thinking I mentioned last week too. We performed for elementary school children who we tried to make interested in music at High School. So Senior Band, Jazz Band, and JazzAttack played. And because I'm in both Senior Band and JazzAttack I got to perform quite a lot. I don't have any pictures unfortunately, since I forgot my camera... again! I think I'll have to take more pictures. This can't go on! 


Anyway, we played several songs, here are a few of them:
Senior Band: 
- Gimme some Lovin'
- Land of thousand Dreams
- A 'The Lion King' medley, that sounded a bit like this. It was fun to play the conga drums to this...!!
- Raider's March (from the motion picture INDIANA JONES, this was epic awesomeness)


With JazzAttack we were singing:
Satin Doll by Duke Ellington
Blue Skies by Irving Berlin
And I love her by The Beatles
Keep Holding On by Avril Lavigne in that Glee Version which I don't really like... but we had some good soloists... 


I liked playing with a lot of my friends, and I also got to know some new, which has been nice of course.  This was a small little blog post, and I'm not sure I'm going to post more this month. I have a concert to go to, and other small things that makes the rest of the month a bit hectic. And then I'm thinking I'll change the look of the blog when we approach March, since it hopefully going to look more like spring soon... 


Finally I would just like to say: Support the countries in the middle east for their right to a civilized country with freedom and democracy! They are fighting for something we fought for 100-200 years ago, and deserve it just as much as we did. 
Peace from here;
Bella

This is how it STILL looks like here... but a snow-blower is always a good thing

How is it going?

Hello fellow readers and writers! I've decided to let you know how my second semester is going so far. For now it has been a blast. I start out in the morning with music where I'm getting taught to play the clarinet. It is a nice, but big class. Luckily they are all some really nice people. I really enjoy it, and I feel that I just get better understanding music by not only playing the piano and singing. Even though it is still hard for me to reach the high notes on the clarinet. I just managed a B. I can also play the Canadian national anthem 'O Canada' and 'Imagine' by John Lennon. 

Second class I have gym with my friend Lindsay, who is awesome, and we're kinda just having fun. Right now we have a basketball unit, but I really do not like basketball... Anyway, I am excited for playing more games, especially Badminton, Volleyball, and Squash!

I've met a couple of new people that I'm hanging out with at lunch, which is nice. I mean of course I like to talk with the same people as before, but new people are always interesting! I am starting to get busier and busier at lunch too, running back and forth to a lot of weird stuff.

English is the hardest course for me; all that grammar and all that writing! But I decided before I got here that I wanted to write more English. I feel like that was a smart decision, because it really challenges me in a way that my first-semester subjects did not. I don't talk with a lot of the people in this class, but it is okay, since I seriously need to focus on the subject. 

Okay, the last and the best period of the day is PEOPLES GYM. It is a class where I have gym with people from the special needs - classes (this classes at the school for disabled.) There also co-op classes for this. It is very interesting and reminds me a lot of a summer camp that I used to be at every summer in Denmark. It is just the feeling of doing something good for yourself in a social way that makes this class good. You know you will feel good by having fun yourself and sharing it with these awesome people. And to try to be a role model is a healthy thing too; I am certain I will learn tons of practical skills of this class. 

I think it was last Wednesday we had a Reach for the top competition. If you haven't read my blog before; it is a trivia thing where we answer questions. We won 3 out of 4 battles, so I think we did okay. I think we are currently number two in the tournament. I am very happy that I can contribute to answer some questions that my partners can't, so that I also feel as though I'm a bit important. It's mostly geography questions, society questions, art questions, and some others I've been able to answer. 


Thursday I went to some concerts with the music department of our school. I was singing with JazzAttack and playing percussion with Senior Band. Unfortunately Senior Band played songs from the Lion King, so they are now stuck in my head. Since I only had about 14 days to remember the lyrics and harmonies of most of JazzAttack's songs, I had trouble remembering bits of the songs. Good thing that miming is one of my specialities. 

Oh and did I tell you that I am going on a music trip to New York City in May? If not, well now you know. I am getting very excited! Especially because it is with all my hilarious music friends! I'm indeed very grateful for this opportunity, and I can give all the credit to my wonderful music teachers. They wanted me to go, and they've been very nice to me. Today I was in the U.S.A just crossing the border to get my travel visa, so that the poor music department wont have any problems with me when we are travelling to New York. This also led to a little bit of shopping since everything is so incredibly cheap in the U.S. compared to Canada. It kinda reminds me of crossing the border from Denmark to Germany and get cheap candy. 

I've now come to the conclusion that I really don't want to go home. Of course I want to see my friends and family again, but the people at my school and the fact that I can almost just do what ever I want to do makes me want to stay. I don't want to start Danish high school. But I do realize that Denmark is where I belong and it is my homeland. And that is where I'm supposed to get a proper education for the next three years. My Denmark-counter says 133 days till I come back to Denmark. It is too short a time. 


This is a beautiful song we are singing in JazzAttack. It has grown to become one of my favourites. I thought you should take a listen. 

Dog Sledding + New Schedule

Hello guys. So a new blog post it is!
Last week has been very busy, and everything started out Tuesday where Nina, a German exchange student, the two Aussies Madeleine and Amy, my Canadian friend Lindsay and I drove up to Monkton, Ontario to drive with a bus far up North in Ontario with a whole bunch of exchange students from all over the world: Norway, Germany, Austria, Holland, France, Belgium, Ecuador, Australia, Japan, Brasil, Finland, and of course Denmark which I represent. It was quite interesting to listen to so many accents. It was a long ride and we finally ended up on a hotel where we stayed for two days to have a mid year orientation and an extra dog sledding orientation where we learned how to harness a dog, pack the sled, etc. Here are some pics from the hotel where we just had fun, and we enjoyed the seldom happening of more people from countries all over the world gathering: A moment of epic awesomeness.

All the exchangees in one crowded hotel room

A stop to Mac'cies is good for a long ride to Algonquin

Thursday morning we went to the dog kennel with oh so many dogs. We got split in to two permanent teams that wouldn't see each other for the three days we were gone. My team got two guides called Adam and Adam who were really awesome and very enthusiastic. They instructed us in more dog sledding things, and then Lindsay and I got our sled which we packed easily. Then we got our dogs, and since I am not used to dogs I definitely extended my limits. And now there is no problems with me and dogs anymore. Our dogs were called Bean, Kanook, Jinny, Merv, Austin, and Suzuki. And then we went off. It was a wonderful feeling, and it wasn't as difficult as you might think. The only important words were: "Gi (Right,) Ha (Left,) Easy, Ready? Let's go, Wow (stop.) Our lead dog were Bean and Kanook, they were small but incredibly fast.


When we finally arrived at the camp we had to cut a lot of lumber and other chores. It was quite funny to cut whole trees and actually use it directly in the stove. When it got dark we had to make a camp fire, and this is where my skills as a scout comes in. First try and a huge fire was already burning without any use of paper :-) We slept 15 people in one tent; it was a big tent but it was still crowded. This lead to a warm night not worrying about freezing, but it was also very uncomfortable so I did not sleep very well.

Lindsay with our small lead dogs Bean and Kanook

Adam our guide cutting down wood

Nina (Germany) breaking through the ice so we could get water from the lake

Pierre (France) pulling the sled like a dog, Reynaldo (Brazil) enjoying

My awesome scouting skills... or not

I do realize this isn't the best picture of me, but at least you can see how crowded everything is in the tent

Next day we got up and got awesome breakfast. Well, at least a lot better than expected with pancakes and sausages and of course maple syrup. Yummy. We then started getting the dogs ready to Day two. It was a hard day for the dogs, but the land scape was amazing and I got to take some good pictures. Here are a few examples.

Here is Reynaldo eating lunch on a frozen lake

It is very nice with a few creeks that are actually not frozen.  

Some of the small trails. This is taken as you would see things from the sled.

Anyway, we got bak to the camp and I made dinner with a girl from Norway and Lindsay. After dinner we played a game the guides calles 'Man Hunt.' I really do not have the time to explain the rules, but it was funny and I made our team win the last round. It was a bit cold though, to crawl around in the snow at 10 pm. We got quite late in bed because we talked so much in the tent. When we finally decided to sleep, it did not take a long time to fall asleep. I slept much better than the night before.


The last day was almost as good as the others, the only thing annoying was the thought of getting home. We were sledding all the way back to the dog kennel, said goodbye to the dogs, and drove with the bus to the Guide's offices. We got nice chili con Carne and changed into regular clothes. It was nice and we got the chance to say 'thank you' to Adam and Adam. We also took some group pictures with them.

This is most of the students just after the last sledding

This is my seperate group with Adam and Adam. You can see now that we are not afraid of wearing t-shirts in the cold.

The trip on the bus back to Monkton went quickly, but because of snow storm (of course, we are in Canada) my host family, Nina, Yuki (Japan), Madeleine (Australia), and I had to stay in a Bed and Breakfast which was actually really cool. It turned out that it was a PERFECT B&B. It was covered with flowers, dolls, pink curtains, dresses, books, statues, etc. I can't really describe it, but it was like going in to a combination of a museum and a girl's dream. The next day (Sunday) we finally got home to Oil Springs.


And yesterday I started my new semester. My new schedule looks like this:


- Period 1: Instrumental Music. I play clarinet.
- Period 2: Grade 12 Gym mix (Girls and boys together)
Lunch
- Period 3: English grade 11 (This is the subject I fear)
- Period 4: People's Gym. (Gym with the special needs classes)


I finally joined JazzAttack, a singing group at the school, and it seems like we have a lot of concerts to perform. So I am going to be quite busy catching up with the others.
Oh and all the pictures above are taken from other exchange students, since I only brought a disposable camera for the trip.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm, gonna try with a little help from my friends
Ooh, I get high with a little help from my friends
Yes I get by with a little help from my friends,
with a little help from my friends

I have found the most awesome people in Canada. Thank you guys! And cheers for now.

152 days left!

Half of my exchange year has now passed. It is quite strange to think about it, but it is also a feeling that comes with a warmth in my little heart. I realize how secure I now am here in Canada. I do no longer fear for new, strange things because this - this is my reality now. Denmark is a foreign country that I can talk more about than my friends. Canada is my home for 6 months more - and I am going to have the funniest six months I could imagine :-)
When two Australians arrived at my place yesterday here in Oil Springs as an arrival place for them, I realized that their faces were the exact same faces I had 6 months ago. The same confusion, the same excitement, the same feeling. It is quite funny to think back now - to see how much has happened. My first school day, god, how confused I was! I couldn't figure out how to get around on the big school, which is no longer a problem for me. Or the first week where I did not know where to sit at lunch. I remember that very clearly, but that is luckily not a problem anymore, either. But now I start to think "Wait! This means that I have little time left here!" And so I do. But as I mentioned above, I will use this time in the best way possible.
I just wanted to make this blog entry before I am going dog sledding. As I said in my post last time, I am very excited. The people there - the other exchange students - are so incredibly nice, and it is going to be a blast. A cold blast, but a BLAST.


Today I have to follow the World Cup in Handball 2011, where Denmark is in the final against France. I do realize that I just wrote that 'Denmark is a foreign country' for me now, but it IS the finals, and it IS the World Cup, and so I have to. :)


Hugs from me to you, spread the message about love and understanding, and support the Egyptians for their right to freedom!
Bella

Joining band and a snowfest

Hey girls and boys! 
I am sorry that I really haven't written that much in January, but it is so difficult to find the time now that we are approaching exams. And I really shouldn't be writing this post since I have to make an assignment for Monday and also study for a final test! But I will do it anyway! (Especially because I am sick and can not focus on anything else...)


Since my last post I have joined the School's Senior Band. It is all very exciting; even though I am just playing percussion right now while we are playing The Lion King. The rest of the people around me are the best; they are so nice and awesome! And luckily I am friends with some people in my little village that have their drivers license and can drive me to school early in the morning for practice. Good thing that they are in the band too! 

Uuh. What else has been going around... Oh yes! I think it was Tuesday I performed my last assignment for Drama with my wonderful group. It got a little bit messed up in the end, but I think my scene went OK and all around I was pretty satisfied. The play was called "A Thing of Beauty" and I played this rich woman who believes she knows absolutely everything about art. (Which she of course do not, since she thinks a piece of driftwood is made by Picasso...) It was quite a hilarious character, and I enjoyed it. 

This is Eddie (quite a funny musical fella') who played the main character in our play. He has an obsession with beards if you wondered

So wednesday I just wrote my final test for my Vocal Class and I think I did well. I was kinda freaking out about the test before, but then I did some studying with my wonderful teacher (who I just HAD to choose for next semester) and now I think I did allright in the test. Thursday was the day of my Final vocal performance where I sang a Danish song (in english) called Open Wide by Tina Dickow. It is quite a good song, here is a link if you are interested... Tina Dickow - Open Wide I'll see if I can upload my performance for you guys when I get the video. form my friend Rachel who recorded the video and also played guitar for me. She has been amazing


Today I went to this thing called a 'Snow Fest.' Even though I am sick, I still went out in the cold to see cool statues in snow and ice in -16 degrees celsius. Yep, it's pretty cold right now. Anyway, here are some pictures from it.

This was the coolest statue, unfortunately it wasn't done when this picture was taken, and when it was done I took a pic with another camera (of course this statue was made by a Canadian...)

People from the states coming over to make some snow art 

An ice-slide for the children (and me.)

Pretty sight! :) 

I think this is all for now. The semester is soon ending. It will be strange to make new friends in new classes, but also exciting of course! I think mostly I will miss my Foods Class and my Vocal Class. But many of the people I will meet some where else in the activities at the school. Cheers!!  

And so the school starts...

I know this is quite a random post. But I thought it was about time, now that it has been 14 days since I last wrote a post. It is not that I have done anything particular this week, nope. I have only been working on my ISU (it is like a final project for a class) and been busy with homework and stuff. I have to admit; it has actually been a week with a little bit of home sickness. It hasn't been bad at all, but I maybe think it has been the worst so far. I guess it is because of boredom of the homework! But now when I look at it; it will be better soon after the exams I think. 
Soon half of my exchange year has passed and now when I think about all the stuff that has happened, I realize how much I have 'grown' inside and how much has happened. When I got here first I didn't expect to get friends that quickly, but I am very happy I did. I have got a lot friends now. And what I like about that is that I can turn to different 'groups' of the school whenever I want to. I find myself in a very lucky position where I can talk with everybody without problems. This is achieved because I really want to talk with everyone and I do not only stick with the same people all the time. 
My friends are generally all older than me, about 1-2 years older than me. This means that they have their G2- driver license and can drive me around (if they are willing to of course.) In the beginning it was a little bit strange I think, but then I have realized that this is where I fit in.
To be on exchange isn't easy all the tme. I sometimes feel left alone, but luckily I have a nice host family, and some really good friends here to cheer me up. For that I am deeply grateful. 
I should really finish my ISU today, so I think this is all for now. I promise I will write a blog entry about my final performance on thursday in Vocal Music where I am playing the song "Open Wide" by Danish singer/songwriter Tina Dickow. In about 18 days I am going Dogsledding with the rest of the YFU exchange students and my friend Lindsay who could go dog sledding because there was three spots left on the trip. So yeaa, I am very excited for a lot of stuff! Cheers for now!

Christmas Holiday

Hello everybody! I hope you had a nice christmas/hanukkah/or just random holiday with everything that belongs to it (and of course a good start in the new year.) Myself? Well I would say it has been great to try something new this year by celebrating christmas the 25th instead of the 24th. The magic all started the 24th actually, when I went to the evening church service with my host parents. I was not really in the 'christmas mood/spirit', but after singing Silent Night with a candle in my hand I suddenly felt all warm and comfortable in my little body. I was prepared for waking up the 25th opening presents from Santa! But - I have never tried to celebrate Christmas Eve eating snacks and partying without a pork roast, dancing around the christmas tree, or opening presents. So it wasn't a christmas as I am used too. 

To me christmas is a time to think about others. Canadians are extremely good at charity and fundraising. This picture is from a day I visited a house playing music and having a light show for a good course. 

Christmas Day I woke up (actually quite late) and ran down the stairs to find my christmas sock full. Actually it was so full that there was a box of presents beside the sock... Apparently Santa thought I had been nice in 2010. I don't really know about THAT, but I just know I was very grateful. The best present in my sock was the many oil pastel colours I got, and I have been experimenting a lot with them. This was my second try:

I know it is not good yet, but at least it was a try. Haha. Anyways, YES, it is a picture of a Canadian landscape. (Though not from Ontario.)

During the day I had fun with the new stuff and family and friends came over to say merry christmas. Some stayed over to eat the christmas dinner. We got turkey and all sorts of good stuff together with the danish dessert, Ris Ala Mande, which is a rice pudding with almonds. After this I could finally open my presents under the tree, I got lots of stuff! (I do not really have the time to list it all.) 


The rest of the holiday (though it is not over yet) I've spent with friends and family. I made a gingerbread house, went to the cinema twice, been ice skating, sledding, had another exchange student over, read german books, etc. 

A gingerbread house close-up

The Gingerbread-team

New Years Eve was spent at my friends house. Of course I forgot my camera for this event, so you wont see any pictures. The only thing I can tell is that it was a nice evening with lots of laughs, and for counting down to the new year we were watching the countdown at Times Square in New York. I think this is all for now. Hope you guys are all set for a new year with lots of adventure, love, peace, harmony, and without thinking it is the last year to live in because of 2012. 

Happy New Year!