Living with the host family

The day before Yesterday I met with my host at the Menlo-Atherton school. His Name is Cole and he was very nice and welcoming. We ate together with all the other Danish students and their hosts.  After eating, we drove home and I met his parents, they were also so sweet and welcoming. Then they showed me my room and bathroom. Cole had some homework he had to do, so his parents and I watched the college basketball finale and discussed the plans for tomorrow. It was getting pretty late and we all decided to go to bed. Yesterday I woke up and ate breakfast with Cole and his mother. Then we drove to school. The school was actually a lot like Danish school. But unfortunately it was boring at times because I couldn’t really participate. Cole and I had to leave school early because he had a lacrosse game. I was really lucky because I got to watch the most anticipated lacrosse game against their rivals from Menlo, a private school, and I got to watch it from the team bench. That was really cool. Menlo-Atherton beat Menlo and everyone was very happy. Then we went home and ate dinner and after that, since Cole had homework to do, Cole’s mother drove me over to another Danish student. It was really fun to see how another student lived with their host, after a couple of hours Cole’s mother came and picked me up and drove me home. Then we talked a little and after that we went to bed. Today I had a morning and a school day similar to yesterdays. After school Cole had Lacrosse practice so 3 Danish students and I went home to another Danish student and her host. It was really fun. We played table tennis and talked about our experiences at the school and with our host families.  At dinner time Cole came to pick me up and we had to go to a team dinner with the lacrosse team. It was very fun we ate pizza, played pool and foosball and then we drove home because it is my last night together with my host family.

Written by Jonas

What is San Fran without shopping?

Right. So while the title for this post is pretty misleading since shopping is so unimportant in comparison to all the awesome stuff we have been doing here in California, i just couldn't travel here without going shopping aswell. I have bought so many cool things including sick t-shirts, 2 pairs of Converse, some Nike running shoes, Levi's jeans, Abercrombie underwear just because i can and some Adidas track pants. If you ask me though, The coolest thing i have bought is definitely the flower jacket from Zara. It was only 95 dollars, which i believe is nothing considering the amount of SWAG it brings to the table. I have been wearing it for a couple of times to School and i promise you, the American students had nothing on me. As i also mentioned in my last post, a lot of people have also been complimenting it, which i think is so cool. It is obvious that the compliment was not meant for anything else than the jacket, i am still just a pale white kid from Denmark who looks like a  match on fire or a cheap Macklemore fanboy, thinking he owns the whole place but in reality doesn't have a single coin of street cred. But i mean something is better than nothing right? Oh well, at least i really like this jacket, i think it fits my style pretty well, since it has a nice pattern with some sweet colours too.

Written by Arne Emil

Menlo Atherton vs Viby Gymnasium

So we have almost reached the end of our visit here at Menlo Atherton High School. Together with Emil we have been following Peter for almost all his classes, of which some of them we have in Denmark too, like physics and english but also subjects we have never encountered in our country, classes like computer animation and latin! It varies from class to class how much we could actually interact with the lessons, but the teachers have been really good at making sure to put us to work, when it was possible. It has been really interesting to see how their classes work, how the teachers do and also what kind of relationship the teachers and the students have. In comparison to Denmark there is actually a lot of similarities but obviously also things that are different. First of all, in Denmark, the students will raise their hand if they have something to say or if they want to answer the teacher's question. In The US, or at MA atleast, the teachers will pick the students out at random, so in that way, you can't just come unprepared to class and expect to make it through class without the teacher realising it. I think this is really something the danish teachers could learn of, since it is most often only 50% or less of the danish students who actually involve themselves in the lessons on a regular basis. Another big difference is that the American students have to have classes whether it is High School or home schooling which is also very Commons over here. In Denmark, primary School is the only thing that is mandatory, education-wise, so Danish students can technically drop out any time they want to, of course it is not well seen but still. For this reason, the American students will get detention if they leave class without a proper cause. I think it is nice that you have responsibility for your own education in Denmark, but i think it sometimes encourages students to stay away.
For the most part, this post has been about very serious and somewhat bigger questions about the school system, so I'd like to end up talking about the students here at MA. Already the first day, Peter introduced me to his best friends. They were all really kind and welcoming and thought it was really cool that we came here. In addition to just Peters friends being very cool, all the students we met for different classes were also just really interested in our trip, and no matter if we hadn't spoken with them earlier they would just come up to us and ask us different things and there was surprisingly many people who came up to me and complimented my new jacket which made me really happy! I am not used to have "strangers" so to speak give me compliments, it is just an unusual thing to do in Denmark so that was really sweet!
When i get the chance to borrow a computer i will update the post with some pictures!

Written by Arne Emil

Math Class - graphs. We had the same topic last year so i can follow most of it.

Another picture from class, this time we had latin!

Amerika paranoid efter 9/11?

Hey guys and girls! It has been a couple of days since we arrived in San Francisco but the whole trip has got to be on the blog. That is why we want to write about the experience of arriving in the U.S. as a non-Citizen, and how their safety measures are kind of extreme compared to what we are used to in Denmark, in the first post on the blog.
First of all it should be mentioned that the safety in the U.S. airports are top notch. We felt that ourselves when we arrived in San Francisco. The first part of the safety rutine involves taking prints of every finger you want to bring into the country. Then they take a foto of you with a small webcam, and ask you about what intentions you have with your visit to the country. We also had to have been previously approved by ESTA which involves, saying that you are not a rapist, a terrorist and that you have not been involved with espionage or nazi-Germany and if that wasn´t enough we got handed a list on the plane where we should write if we had something in our luggage that could damage their ecosystem, like snails, meat or dirt. Who brings dirt in their luggage..? Oh well, at least not us, and we didnt run into problems on our journey through the airport security. But there were others who did. The danish-brazilian beauty from 1.d, lived in Mexico with her Family as a child. They often went to the U.S. but the Young and clumsy Isabella accidentally threw her important papers away, so she from that day on, from the border patrols database point of view, never left the U.S. We (the editorial department) will, however, point out that we do not blame Isabella for this and that we are sure that everyone that age could make such a mistake. This has caused her a lot of trouble everytime she enters the U.S. and this time was no exeption. Linda had therefore prepared us, and said that we could expect several hours of waiting time. We were very sad when we saw 5 big, Black, bald men carrying her into the backroom. To our amazement, it only took 8,5 minute before she was back so we could proceed our trip to Adelaide hostel in San Francisco. We are convinced, that it is Isabellas charm, beauty and brazilian accent that made her avoid a questioning. To round off, we would like to conclude that the safety of the U.S. is safer than what safe is and we would like you to think hard about the title of the post.

P.s. We spoke with Isabella today, monday, and she told us she is single (and ready to mingle).

Written by Jonas and Arne Emil

The danish-brazilian Isabella who were held back in the airport.

Meeting up with the Diller family

It is now the first day at school and we are right now in the middle of english class. We are following Peter and his classes for the most part, in the morning block he had a test though, so we had history class instead. In this very moment they are having a semi-test so i thought this would be a good time to fire up a post to the blog!
This post is not going to be about the school though. Okay maybe a little, but I'd primarily like to talk about the host family meeting-event we had yesterday. We left the hostel monday morning at around 10 o clock, where a bus picked us up. We drove to Muir Woods, which is a national park and after that we took the long drive down to Salinas, to visit the Steinbeck Museum. Prior to our trip we had a master class about John Steinbeck, so it was an obvious conclusion that we had to visit the museum. We were at the museum for about an hour and then we left for Menlo-Atherton High School to meet up with our host families. I am living with the Diller family consisting of Peter, Nathalie and Jeff. Peter has a sister as well, Lauren, but currently she goes to the University of Oregon, so she doesn't live at home
We are 2 students living with Peter, me and Emil. We both have our own room and our own bathroom too. The house is just enormous. In the backyard there is an outdoor jacuzzi, a pool and a tennis court where you can play basketball as well. On the terrace they have a table tennis table as well. There are 2 garages, of which one of them is built into a man-cave for Peter and his friends., where they can play Xbox and fusball. In the other garage Jeff has his new Tesla and an old but well tended and great looking Corvette. In total the family has 5 cars (that we know of). I just find that pretty amazing considering most danish families only have one car.
Nathalie, Jeff and Peter are all really cool. They are very accomodating and they always make sure we have everything we need and even more. There is no awkwardness, i actually feel like i have known them for much longer than i have, which is just fantastic. Nathalie is a full-time housewife and has come up with several ideas for things she can take us to, for instance, The Facebook offices and Peters baseball game at wednesday. I am really looking forward to that, but also spending the days with the family in general!

Written by Arne Emil

Picture taken from the backyard, you can pretty much see the house in it's whole, only missing the garages in the back.

We had the great opportunity to try out their outdoor jacuzzi the first evening with the family!

Introduction

Now there are only 38 days left before we start our journey to San Francisco! Today the 25th of February we had another meeting which mainly was about creating this blog but we also had to find a partner for the presentations we are going to work on. The presentations are about mainly about things related to our trip for instance you could choose to write about Alcatraz, downtown San Francisco or Silicon Valley, but we chose to team up for this task as well and picked Berkeley University. We think these presentations is a cool initiative and we will be able to get some kind of prior knowledge for places we are going to visit. That will definitely come in handy if we are going to any museums or other venues that have some history attached.

We are traveling directly by plane from Kastrup Airport to San Francisco. Because of the time difference (California is 9 hours behind Denmark) we are able to take off at 12.25 and arrive at 14.45, even with 11 hours of flight time. We will probably be smashed the whole day, but it is important that we get a good night's sleep so we are ready to INVADE San Francisco the next!

We couldn't find any good pictures of us - the blog-authors - together but these great snaps will do!

Jonas to the left and Arne Emil to the right.

By the way, apart from going to the same school, we are also classmates!