September 23 was the start of homecoming week. This is a week where it is all about the school spirit with everyday another theme to dress up in. On Friday is a homecoming game and on Saturday is the homecoming dance.

The theme for Monday was Monster U, that means that you wear something from a college (college apparel). We were both wearing a Missouri state shirt that we borrowed from Anna, because we didn’t have any college apparel. All our classes were normal, but after school we had mini cheer clinic. This means that little girls from preschool until 5th grade come to the high school for a cheer clinic. This was fun, but it costs a lot of energy. We had to teach all the girls 3 different cheers and a dance. They performed that later that day during the JV football game.

On Tuesday everyone was wearing country clothes but we didn’t have that so we were just wearing our normal clothes. After 6th period we had to go help in seminars because it was Tys Lue day. This is a day were the whole school does community service to honor Tyronn Lue who is from Mexico, Missouri and also did a lot for the community. Flora helped a class making dog toys and Joy helped a class with reading to little kids at an elementary school.

On Wednesday we had to wear our class color. For us that meant red, because we’re seniors. This day we saw our first school fight after lunch! (omg bucket list item). In the evening was the powderpuff game. This is a little tournament were the girls play football. Every team represents one class. The seniors (our class) won. This was pretty exciting, because that means that our class won every powderpuff game all their four years of high school.

On Thursday, the theme was ‘you got a friend in me’ (dynamic duo). We were too lazy to go shopping for it, so we decided to wear our Travel Active shirts, braid our hair and paint Dutch flags on our face. After school, it was a little chaotic because we had to move the cheermats down for the next day. After that we went to Kayleigh's house to make cookies for our football players and later that night Joy spent the night at Flora’s place, because her host mom wasn’t home.

Friday was definitely the most fun day of this week. We had to be at school at 7:30 am to prepare for cheer. At 7:45 am we had to be at the science floor were we had to wait for the band to come up. When the band arrived, they started to play music and walk around the hallways of the school. We followed them and danced to the music. When we got outside, everybody circled around the flag. The band played the anthem while they raised the flag up in the air. After that, we danced one more time to ‘the fight song’ and moved to the sportscomplex were the assembly was at.

During the assembly some boys (they were escorts) gave speeches about the homecoming queen candidates. After that, the cheerleaders had to perform. We did a part of our competition cheer, which was really fun to do. When we finished our performance, the students played some games. At the end of the assembly we had to do a cheer to hype up the crowd for the homecoming game. After this we had to go back to our class. Because it was the game of the homecoming game, we got out of school early (at 00:45 pm).

We had to be back at 2:30 pm to get ready for the homecoming parade. This is a parade where a lot of school clubs and sports make their own float. We walked from school to the square (downtown). After that we jumped on the football float which brought us back to school. From there we went home again.

Later that day we had to be at the football field at 6:15 pm to get ready for the homecoming game. This was really exciting because there was a big crowd! Our team was playing really good and we won with 62-6! After the game we went to Denny’s, this is an American diner, where we ate some typical American food. We got back home around midnight, but we had a lot of fun so we hung out for a while after.

On Saturday was the homecoming dance. We were really excited for that so around 2:30 pm Joy and Kayleigh came to the house of Flora and Anna to get ready together. At 5:00 pm we left to Centralia (a town close to Mexico) to take some pictures in a garden. After that we drove to Columbia with Anna, Kayleigh and Keyon to eat at olive garden (the bread sticks there were so good, omg). Around 9 we arrived at the dance, but this was pretty boring so we left after 30 minutes to Joy’s house to watch a movie. It was fun, but we were all really tired, so most of us fell asleep during the movie. It was an exciting but exhausting week. A real American experience that we can get off our bucket list now!