Marga's USA Adventure: In Which I'm Blue and See Dinos

Ah! I'm back! Let me just quickly explain why it's been two months since I wrote anything.

So, I left off at homecoming. After that, we had Halloween, and then...the play. *Imperial March starts playing*

Yes, the play took over my entire life. You'll hear plenty about it of course! I recorded some footage for a video a few days before the premiere, but I haven't been able to edit it yet! It's coming though!

After the play we went to visit Andrew's (host dad) father in New York City for a few days (yes yes, I'll write about that too), and then my laptop screen broke, so I couldn't write anything at all! I only got it back a few days ago, and now my mind is set to rolling these blogs out as fast as possible. BEGIN!

Let's start at Halloween!

Of course, Halloween had been a thing for about a month. All the stores were full of pumpkin-related items. The pumkin spice latte was back at Starbucks. Spooky Scary Skeletons was playing on repeat. Everyone was ready.

Karen got down the Halloween decorations, so the front of our house was decorated with fake spider webs, a skeleton and carved pumpkins! Yes, Sam and I got to carve a pumpkin!

The day before Halloween was Senior Costume day at Freeman! All the seniors got to go to school in costume, and some of them took it very seriously.

(from top to bottom: Kellie as Anna and Ellie as Doc Brown)

And then Halloween was upon us! Of course, I had a costume: the TARDIS from the British TV show Doctor Who. For those of you who don't know, this is a time travel machine, disguised as a blue telephone box. Obviously.

In the evening, Sam and I went out trick or treating around the neighborhood. Sam was dressed as a cyclist. This meant that he was wearing bright orange, and his bike helmet. We got a ton of candy.

After trick or treating, it was time for the Halloween party I was invited to! It was at my friend Mary Bess's house. Mary Bess has a karaoke machine in her basement, so all the parties held at her house always involve a ton of karaoke. Needless to say, it was a great party.

So now we get to the part where the play takes over. The rehearsals had been going on for a while, but about 10 days before the play premiered, Hell Week started. Hell Week is exactly what it sounds like. Hell.

Usually, rehearsals would be from 4 to 7. Which is kinda long, but it's still fine. During Hell Week, rehearsals are from 4 to 11. Which is very long. It was very weird, because on the one hand you're really tired and you're at school from 9am to 11pm so you're barely home, but on the other hand, you're surrounded by your friends.

(Some of the friends! From top to bottom: Zach Fox, Franklin, Angus, Claire. Please notice the beautiful fake moustaches on the boys)

After Hell Week though, we got to actually perform the play! We performed it 3 times, Thursday through Saturday. It was so much fun!

The crew set up a board with all our headshots on it in the main hallway, which looked really awesome!

Okay, this is going well, on to the next holiday: Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a holiday on the fourth Thursday of November, and it is the holiday of food. It means that you get the family together, and eat foods like a) turkey b) stuffing (which you eat seperate from the turkey for some reason) c) marshmellows and sweet potato (which is a sugar bomb if there ever was one) and d) cranberry sauce.

Another key part of Thanksgiving is that you eat leftovers for at least another week, because there really is a lot of food.

Unfortunatley, Andrew was up in New York with his father during Thanksgiving, so it was just Karen, Sam and me. It was still great, though we probably would have had less leftovers if Andrew was there.

A few days after Thanksgiving, we followed Andrew to New York! We left on Monday around 11 am, and after driving for approximately 7-8 hours, we finally arrived. On Tuesday, Karen and I spent the morning walking around Bayside, Queens, which is where Andrew's dad lives. We walked past an NYPD station, and Karen asked me if I wanted to go in and take a picture with a New York police officer. I had to think about this for a while, but eventually I gave in. Eventually we found a police officer, and I pushed Karen forward so she could ask him for a picture. He was super excited, and went inside to get his hat, and came out with another police officer, who was also very excited for the picture.

After the picture, they offered to give us a tour of the station! We saw the cells, and the place where they do roll call, and where they map out all the crimes that take place in their area. The police officers said that 'there aren't a whole lot of crimes though, because it's mostly old people and Koreans, but yesterday we had a car robbery, so that was exciting'.

The next day, we went to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. We spent all day there. The Hayden Planetarium is part of the museum, which is where Neil DeGrasse Tyson works. We were hoping to meet him, and Andrew suggested I tweeted him, which I did, but he didn't respond. So no Neil DeGrasse Tyson for us. We saw some really cool exhibits though, but the museum is just so enormous! We had to see the dinosaurs though, and we did!