I (Flora) arrived one week earlier then Joy, so I had a little more time to get used to everything!

When I arrived at Anna, Amy and aunt Carolyn were waiting for me at the airport. After we picked up all my luggage we went to a restaurant to eat something. When we were done we went to Chuck's house (Chuck is Amy’s boyfriend). The house was really pretty and it had a pool so we relaxed the whole afternoon and got to know each other a little bit better! Because of the jetlag and talking English the whole time, I was really tired so I went to sleep early. The next day we went to the Cardinals game, that is the best baseball team of Missouri! I thought it wasn't really fun and the game took forever. After the game we went out for dinner before we were heading to Mexico. As soon as we got home Anna showed me around, but it was already dark so I couldn’t really see anything.

The next day was pretty busy, in the morning I had tennis practice for 3 hours, I went home to eat lunch and after that I had to go to the high school for my schedule and there Amy got a text that I could go to cheer practice later that afternoon. After cheer practice Anna picked me up to go home, because the family was coming over for dinner.

The rest of the week looked kinda the same. I took care of the last things before school started and I had a lot of practice.

I (Joy) arrived august 17 at the airport of St. Louis. Linda (my host mom) and Justine (a friend) were waiting for me with a big sign that said ‘welcome in the USA Joy’. it was really cute. After I got my suitcases, we went to Columbia to get me an American phone number with unlimited data, text and calls (finally!). When this was fixed, we went to cheddar's to eat something. I had something with chicken and I almost ate it all, even though I didn’t really like it. My parents raised me well (love you!). Around 5 pm, we finally got home and Linda showed me around the house. I unpacked all my stuff and made my room more off myself. After everything was done, I sat on my bed and started to cry. I finally realized this was going to be my life and because it was all still so new, that idea was pretty scary. After like 2 minutes off crying Linda knocked on my door and came in. She asked if I was crying but I blamed it on my allergies. Apparently Nyesha was sitting in the living room. She was a kid Linda took in the house last year. She visited us from her college because she wanted to meet me. After a little while, Nyesha took off and I went to bed.

The next evening Flora and Anna came over. This was the first time we saw each other in the US!

August 21 was our first school day and that was pretty weird. School in America is way different if you compare it to school in the Netherlands, but we’ll explain more of this in a separate blog post!

On Friday August 23 was our first game. It wasn’t an official game so we didn’t have to wear our cheer uniforms. It was really fun but we didn’t know all the cheers so that was a little embarrassing at some moments. After the game we went to Joy’s house with some friends to watch a movie, but that turned into a Dutch concert. It was a lot of fun! After this we went to the soybean festival at the square. This was a festival where they celebrated soybeans, because producing them is a huge thing here. We had so much fun that we decided to have a sleepover at Haley’s house (Haley is Anna’s older sister en Flora’s host sister). The next day we had to wake up early because we had cheer practice at 11 for competition. Flora left early to go to Saint Charles, while Joy went back to the festival to go in some rides at the fair. The next day we had cheer again for the whole day.

August 27 was Flora’s birthday, but she wasn’t really excited about it because she wanted to celebrate with her friends and family at home. In the evening we went to the country club for diner. Some friends came as a surprise. Even though it was still pretty hard for her, we also had a good time at the party.

On Friday August 30 was our first official game we had to cheer for! That meant that we had to go to school in or cheer uniform and had to wear our bows in our hair. We were a lot better at the cheers then the first time.

This weekend was Labor day. We were planning on going to the lake, but that was canceled, we changed our plans, so on Saturday we went to Columbia and ate at Texas Roadhouse. Our host moms told the waitress that it was our birthday so we had to sit on a horse saddle and had to yell yeehaw. It was pretty awkward but also funny and we got free ice cream! Who doesn’t want that. After dinner, we went to a shop. They said was really good but it wasn’t really our style so we just walked around and watch a few things. When everyone was finally done, we went to the Columbia big shopping mall. Even though it is a pretty big mall, we didn’t really like the stuff they had. It was too expensive or not in our style. That was disappointing because we had a lot of expectations.

On Sunday we had a sleepover at aunt Carolyn's (Flora her host aunt) house because we had that Monday off from school. Anna, Justine, Lexie, Flora and Joy all stayed over. First, we ate some pizza and picked out some movies. We also did some face masks. It was a real girly sleepover! We went to bed around 2 am. Justine slept on the couch, Anna and Lexie slept in one gast room and we slept in the other. Because Flora forgot to turn off her alarm, we woke up around 7 am (pffff) but fell asleep again shortly after. At around 11 am, we all woke up. When we got upstairs (we slept in the basement), aunt Carolyn got us all these cinnamon rolls, bread and cornflakes ready to eat. That was super sweet. After we got all done, we went to our homes and had a relaxing afternoon and made our homework for the next day.

The next week was only a four day week, but nothing really special happened. On Friday we had a football game again. The weather was way better than the week before. So the band was performing and the ambiance was way better than we previous games.

This was all the important that happened in our first weeks in Mexico, MO. In our nest blog post we’re gonna tell about homecoming week.