Ocean City, New Jersey

I finally got time to wrote something! It's been so busy since I came back to Finland. But here are pictures from Ocean City, NJ. My host family and I went there for a week before it was my time to say goodbyes to people in Lititz and leave to the last AFS orientation. It's kind of like a thing in Pennsylvania that everybody has their "own beach" where they go for a vacations. The beach was super nice, even though you could tell that the hurricane Sandy had hit it couple of ago. Our beach house had such a perfect location, only two blocks away from the beach and the boardwalk started almost right at the end of the street.

Basically our vacation consisted of relaxing at the beach, good food, and hanging out on the boardwalk in the evening. My host dad's sister's family had flew from California to join us for the week. They had rented some bikes which made going around the city so much easier. And I can't find anything bad to say about the weather either, the sun was up almost all of the time and even I got a nice tan! 

Turtles!

On one day we went to the southern end of the island and walked through the state park. At the end of the path was another beach were we tried to find turtles, and so we did! There were bunch of crabs too, not so cute as the turtles.

We also did a little trip to Atlantic City just to see the area. Some of the buildings were really amazing. There is also a really big outlet store area, but I didn't find anything. Because I had turned 18 almost a week before the vacation, I had to do something you can do when you are over 18 in the US. So I bough lottery tickets! I did win a dollar, yay :D Overall I had a really good time there! What a great way to end my exchange year.

First week of summer holiday

This is how my summer holiday started...

Graduation parties!

Father's Day!

Advice: Don't have a bonfire if it's still more than 80 degrees outside

My 18th birthday!

Packing to the beach and home!

On Saturday we will head to Ocean City, New Jersey, for a week! I hope I'll have time to post pictures before I'll start my journey back to Finland. On Monday 30th we will drive to Harrisburg to meet up with other exchange students and then we'll drive to New York together. Then on Tuesday my flight to Helsinki will departure. I have couple of posts coming up when I'll be back in Finland, so keep up checking my blog!

Baccalaureate and Graduation

Wednesday night I went to Baccalaureate event. It was optional for seniors to go, but Concert Choir performed there, so that's why I went there. It is said to be the "religious" part of the graduation, even though it was held in the school auditorium. The event started with a prayer and then continued to reflections, performances of graduating seniors. They were all absolutely amazing! Warwick has a lot of talented people. Then we sang Glory of Love and Wind Beneath My Wings, which was then followed by a speech from a priest. It was a short event but I enjoyed it a lot because of the great performances.

These are the things I wore at Baccalaureate and graduation. A gap, gown, and stole of course. The red medal is for being a senior member in Concert Choir as well as the black and red pin. I also added my little AFS pin to the stole. The golden cord is for being member of NHS.

The tassel

The graduation was held in Calvary Church on Thursday evening. Earlier in the morning we had practice there to go through what happens in the ceremony.

Concert Choir seniors! Missing Mikkel and Kyra

Photobomb game

All the foreign exchange students in Warwick! Mikkel from Denmark, Luisa and Julia from Brazil, Nora from Austria, and Alex from Sweden.

Before the ceremony started everybody came downstairs to the gym to take pictures and to line up. The ceremony started with the band playing music while we entered into the church. First the principal had a little speech to open the ceremony and then four students had their speeches. Then they recognized the top 10% students and announced the valedictorian of the year. After that they recognized the members of different honor societies.

And then we foreign exchange students got recognized. We all went to the stage to receive American flags. Right after that we seniors of Concert Choir sang a song called Thankful. I absolutely love that song! I sang the tenor part with four other girls because there were not so many guys and they all had to sing the bass part. 

Just graduated!

Family picture :)

Because I didn't actually graduate from high school, they gave me a Certificate of Attendance. Like I said in the last post, my last name was spelled wrong at first, so I went to get it corrected :D I hope I can get the flag home without damaging it or anything! It was so nice that I got to be part of the graduation ceremony!