Friday August 24th at 4 o’clock my alarm went of and we went by car to Schiphol Airport. At 8:30 I would fly from Amsterdam to Atlanta. Everything went quite relaxed with a suitcase, which weighed 22,9kg (max 23kg). The first flight was around 10 hours sadly I slept very badly; I sat next to a woman which had a to many wines. Which was not as chill as I hoped. So I watch some movies: Love Simon and Lara Croft. After the first flight I went in Atlanta to my gate with a train, my next flight would be Atlanta to Des Moines. This flight was 2/3 hours, which I slept fully. In Des Moines I got picked up and when I arrived in Marshalltown, I directly check myself into my room. The first few days there were no classes and practices. I had a pretty tough time because the jetlag and the American food.

Now I am writing this it is October 21th in around 6 weeks I am coming home for Christmas. I am really enjoying being and living here. It could be a little bit lesser windy, but I can handle it. So I live now in a “dorm” that is an apartment. This apartment I am sharing with 3 other girls, Grace (American), Cora (American) and Clara (Spanish). Cora and Grace are sharing a room and bathroom and Clara and I share a room and bathroom. With the four of us we have a kitchen and a living room. Clara is not only my roommate; she is also my teammate and a real point guard from Barcelona Catalonia (Spain).

My basketball team is 9 girls, which 4 Spanish and 4 Americans. I would post some photos in the photo album. A normal day for me starts with breakfast (7:30), classes, lunch (11:00-12:30), classes, warming up, training (3:30-5:30), cooling down and dinner (5:30-6:30). At 2:30 I go to our Athletic training room were I prepare myself for a practice. In my case that is a heat pad for my upper back and my shin finishing with some stretch exercises. After the practice I am doing a cooling down, which is 4 rounds jogging around the court then every other day an ice bath or ice packs/bags, for my back and left shin. Mostly we go directly to dinner after practice.

The classes/subjects I am following now are: Basic Athletic Training, International College Experience, Sociology, Taping, Personal Wellness, Principles of Sports Management en Weight Training. My grades are very good except from Sociology. This is a little bit a hard class for me, less international students, a lot people in the class and a lot of theory. For the first test I prepared very well, but after 10 minutes the teacher took my paper because he thought I was cheating. Which hurt me, I could not repeat the test which made it only worse. I had to accept it, the rest of my grades luckily shows that I don’t need to cheat to get an A.

A typical day sounds boring if I read it like this. What is vey good is that we have a lot of activities happening on Marshalltown Community College (MCC). Each Wednesday we have “Grocery Bingo” where you can win snacks and also we “Tiger Trivia”. Our sport teams are called Tigers. On Thursday night we have each week another activity which is organized by an student: Fifa tournament, learn how to make Serbian pancakes, film evening etc. On Friday’s we have every other week a kind of international meeting: “Fish”. A family from Marshalltown organized this and the international people from Marshalltown come and internationals from MCC. We have dinner and we are playing games. Farther do we have a 6 sport teams in Marshalltown so each week there will be games in our activity center. Our soccer team is doing it very well, there are 2nd national ranking. They become 1st in the state and are now going to the National Championships.

Outside the activities from MCC we also do some things ourselves, because staying on campus is getting boring. For example: going bowling, going to Wallmart, the taco truck etc. This weekend I did 2 special things, Saturday I refereed 2 games for 8-9 year olds and Sunday i went to the New Hope Church because I was curious how that was. They were very thankful that I came, but I don’t know yet if I will go more often.

Also I survived my first tornado I few weeks ago. I was just making my study hours on a Sunday night from 6-9 in the study hall because as an athlete you have to make 4 study hours a week. After 30 minutes a teacher comes in and tells us to go to our apartments. If the alarm wills sounds then we have to go to the laundry room. In our apartment it was pretty busy, a lot Spanish speaking people. The Americans are used to it and were quite calm. After some pizzas and less sleep everything was okay and the tornado did not affect us. So Monday we just went to school like nothing happened.

If you have question of you just want to talk some time, let me know. The time difference with The Netherlands is 7 hours later so in The Netherlands it is 7 hours earlier then it is in the USA. If you want to send me a letter or and postcard I have an address. I am really enjoying it here!!

Love happy Lotte