December
A month ago it was Thanksgiving. Penny and I made a turkey. Penny also made pumpkin pie. I have never tried pumpkin pie before but it tasted good. I made some Mizerja (polish dish) and Bob and Penny liked it :) We also dressed the Christmas tree and took out the Christmas decorations.
Svenska julkalendern from Emilie
Some weeks ago it was Black Friday in America. Black Friday is when stores have big sales over one night. Heather and I wanted to do the whole Black Friday experience so we woke up at 3 in the morning and went to Fond du Lac to do shopping. It was a fun experience to go shopping during the night. We were both really tired but it was fun. Then we ate breakfast at Starbucks and we went back to Heather's house and slept from 7-11am. Then in the afternoon we went back to Fond du Lac to see Catching Fire in the Cinema.
The last weeks before Christmas break I had so much to do. I have basketball practice everyday after school or a game either at school or in an other town. Basketball is fun and I think I'm improving. Two weeks ago at a game I got tripped and I sprained my ankle, so that was not fun... My ankle was all purple and swollen :(
The last weeks I had a lot in school. My hardest class is AP Biology. Sometimes I have a hard time understand because the teacher speaks really fast and uses hard biological terms, but it's not that bad. The Algebra 2 course is a lot of homework but it's not that hard. In Choir we just had a Christmas Concert. In English we just finished writing a theme comparison paper comparing Macbeth and The Crucible. In PE we have played basketball, indoor hockey and volley boll.
Last weekend it was the Benzschawel Christmas party. Bob's family is big so they meet before Christmas so that they can all celebrate Christmas together. The party was at the Chilton Hotel. It was a lot of people there and lots and lots of food. I made some Swedish gingerbread cookies for the party and everyone liked them. Everyone though that the cookies were really really thin... Americans usually do everything bigger and better, haha. They also usually put frosting on the cookies. After we ate and swam in the hotel pool we played some big Jenga, so that was fun. Kate, Bob's daughter from Chicago came to visit and it was very nice to meet her :)
This weekend I slep over at Heather's house with Karissa and Veera. It was a lot of fun. We had our gift exchange and we did some scarfs. I got a Monsers University Blanket, some basketball tshirts and socks :) Karissa tought us how to arm knit scarfs. It was a lot of fun. In the morning Heather and I made some Swedish pancakes for Karissa and Veera. They all liked it and I didn't burn them so that was good.
Here in Wisconsin the weather is different than at home. Right now we have 30cm of snow and -10* Celcius while thereis no snow at home... The last weeks it has been really cold some days. Some days it was less than -20* Celcius... Yesterday apperently it was said that is was a storm (they named the storm Alice). It was snowing all day and it was very windy. Penny took some great photos of me in the snow :) Sometimes we see turkeys outside our house which I think is really cool because we don't have wild turkeys in Sweden (I think…)
The 26th of December I'm going with my friend Heather and her family to a cabin. There we are going to ski, ice skate and go snowmobiling. It's going to be so much fun. I'm also going to spend New Years Eve there.
Basketball!
This is my third week of basketball. Three Mondays ago I went to my first practice. It was scary but I survived! The first two practices were really hard so my whole body was very soar. We have approximetly 1,5-2h practice every day after school. The first week we also had practice both before and after school. I had to get up at 5 in the morning because the practice started at 5:55... The first week was a really long week. All the girls on the team are really good and because I just played basketball when I was little and the American girls played basketball in Middle School too. Veera (the other exchange student) and I both started basketball and we are the worst once on the team... Hehehe... But we are improving ;)
The second week we had our first game. I didn't think that our coach would let me play but I got to play the last 48,6 seconds of the game which was at least something :) I was very nervous because there was over 100 people watching the game and when I came on the court people screamed my name which made me even more nervous. We lost the game.
This week we also had one game. This game I got to play a total of 4min. I got to shoot two shoots and of course I missed them both, but otherwise my coach said I did good :) We won this game which was nice. Tomorrow we have another game.
Rachel, Lily, me, Veera and Sara (from left) before our first game. We are not suppose to have our pants that high up, but we took this photo as a joke... The jersey and the pants are so big on me...
A very bad quality photo of us during our first game taken by Karissa.
The schedule for December...
My name is Aleks and I'm 17 years old. 
