Red Land Presents...

Here is a video of the marching band playing our show at our most recent competition. We have new uniforms but you can't really tell. See if you can spot the points where we speed up way to much... Also I'm the big bass drum at the end of the line

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rysUptIGZfE

lots and lots of love,

Luke

Death Stalks Among Us

As it stands now the alleged pandemic is very close to home. More and more people are being struck down with Das Schwein. Apparently on July 17th the World Health Organisation stopped recording individual cases of H1N1 but in the last count I could find there were 1748 confirmed cases in Pennsylvania and four deaths.
Now when I say it's close to home I mean it. The other day at Crossroads Middle School which is just across the road from my school there were two hundred students absent and they were sending an average of twenty students home at the end of every class, and even at my school there are noticeable gaps in the student body. I'm not certain how many of these were cases of Swine Flu, but I do know that at least some proportion of them were as someone I know caught it.
It's really hard to gauge how serious it is as what people say about it varies so much. I've heard alternately from a lot of different people that if you have it in you're in hospital sick as a dog barely able to move and isolated in quarantine or that it's not that much worse than a cold, plus everything in between. The only thing we really hear from school is WASH YOUR HANDS, WASH YOUR HANDS so I'm really not sure what to think about the whole thing although it's hard to argue with the fact that there have been multiple deaths from it...

Also I joined the lumberjack club, biatch...

Lots and lots of love,

Luke

Be Gentle!

Okay before I begin... I know I'm completely useless when it come's to photos so from now on the camera is going to stay strapped to my wrist, hopefully...

So I had Homecoming in the weekend *flinches under rain of abuse for not having pictures* and it was a rather unusual experience.
"an annual school or university reunion for graduates" thank-you google dictionary... Basically it's this semi-formal dance that is allegedly a chance for alumni of the school to return and say hello but as far as I could tell there was a distinct lack of graduates. Except for my date, heh. It is a date dance and the vast majority of people took a date, in fact I'm relatively certain I didn't come across anyone going who didn't have a date. I took a friend of my host-sister's called CJ, who is rather cool.
When I say semi-formal I mean that you still dress up but generally speaking the dresses are a lot shorter and not everyone is wearing a suit. One tradition involved that I hadn't come across was the corsage; which is a little bracelet of flowers which the boy is supposed to buy for the girl. Nancy sorted this out for me but then I left it in my date's fridge while we were at her house getting ready, but fortunately neither of us really cared and she hadn't even wanted me to get her one. For some girls however, it is much more of an issue and in the days leading up to Homecoming I heard several girls bitching about how they'd had to sort out their own flowers because they knew their dates would be to useless to do it.

Now I'm sure you're all assuming that Homecoming is just like the ball; but you would be wrong. From what I can tell the ball has a lot more in common with prom (which is at the end of the school year)than with Homecoming. Homecoming is just held in the gym at school and is purely a dance (plus it only costs about ten dollars) and my god, nothing prepared me for the dancing. Everyone was grinding on everyone else and there were even big trains of it, it was truly a sight to behold and I have to say I'm kinda glad that CJ wasn't into that. It was funny to watch though, especially when you see a guy who must be at least six foot five dancing with a girl around Clare's height.

Also I saw Where The Wild Things Are and it is pretty darn shweet. Go see it hen it comes out.

Sorry for the short post but there's not really all that much to write about, feel free to ask though, and once again I'm really sorry for the lack of pictures...

Lots and lots of love,
Luke

What?

Here's a little fail I made/found that you guys might like. It's a small town near where I had my exchange student camp a few weeks ago, and that ain't coon as in raccoon.

Lots and lots of love
Luke

Some Nasty Things

Some of you might actually have heard about this but most people around these parts seem painfully unaware. The G20 summit was recently held in Pittsburgh PA which happens to be about a two hour drive away from me and there was a large amount of protesting by "anarchist groups" in the city. They began a march towards the conference centre where the summit was being held and were told by ranks of riot police that their protest was an illegal assembly and that they would be teargassed if they didn't desist.

This however, is not the horrific part of the story. As well as assaulting the protesters the riot police also beat, arrested and teargassed Pittsburgh University students who were on campus and just happened to be casual observers in the wrong place a the wrong time. Is it just me or is that a little out of control? And as I stated earlier hardly anyone even seems to be aware that it happened, watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etv8YEqaWgA

About a week and a half ago at school this girl suddenly came in with this ridiculously huge pink/purple mohawk. I'd seen this girl before and previously she'd had really long beautiful brown hair and then she just shaved the sides and dyed it. I saw it and was kinda like ok that doesn't look that fantastic but that's pretty gutsy, especially at Red Land High School. BUT THEN, I was walking behind her and she started talking to this guy at his locker and he just looked and her and went "that's embarrassing" and walked away from her so she followed him (and I did to) and she kept trying to talk to him and kept saying that he was her best friend and why wouldn't he talk to her and he wouldn't even look at her he'd just shake his head say "that's embarrassing" and keep walking. It was all very sad...

This one is a little raunchier so smaller children should perhaps not be perusing this one... So the other day in English I left to go to the toilet and I went into a cubicle and the guy in the one next to me WAS HAVING A FRICKING WANK, I could hear him gasping and flapping away the whole time I was in there and then there was an incredibly awkward moment when I was washing my hands and he came out and we met eyes and just quickly looked away while he grabbed some paper towels and hurried out. I really wanted to say something but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, it was just so weird. Come on though, can't you show just a little self control? Instead of having to go rub one off in the school toilet at like twelve in the afternoon? Jeeze...

lots and lots of love *sigh*

Luke

...This One Time At Band-Camp

First of all I would like to apologise for this incredibly late post, it's a combination of having been really busy and being a little apathetic heh. Anyway, the main topic of this post is as the more intellectually inclined amongst you may have guessed; marching band.

Marching is probably the most demanding thing I've ever done. I have to put so much time into it, I have two three hour practices every week and then gridiron games every Friday night where we play before the match or at half time and then we sit in the stands and play when our team scores. Then we have practice on Saturdays from nine till five but I have to be up at about five-thirty to go and get breakfast with the drum-line, then after practice we have competitions with other marching bands, after the last competition I didn't get home till one on Sunday morning.

On top of this time commitment it's also physically tough. You may or may not have seen the pictures which are now up on facebook but I have to carry a gigantic bass drum strapped to my chest the whole time. Now under normal circumstances this wouldn't have been so bad, but on top of that I have to play it, and walk... in time!! Now this may not mean a lot to some of you but to give you an idea of the marching speed I have to march in time at up to 192 BPM, basically that's rawlz fast..

Now the bad has apparently been going since March and I didn't start till late August and as such I missed band camp *sigh*, but I'm pretty proud of what I've managed to pick up in the time I've been involved. Before I go any further I'll explain how the band is organised. It is divided into several sections; woodwinds which is composed of flutes, clarinets and saxophones; brass which is trumpets, sousaphones, mellophones and trombones; the colour guard who essentially run around waving flags and fake guns; and the drumline. The drumline is divided into two further parts: the pit, which is set up at the front of the field and contains xylophones, marimbas, vibraphones and various miscellaneous percussion instruments; and finally the battery, which is what I am part of. Four bass drums, two snares and one set of tenors. One important fact to note is that the pit doesn't move but the battery marches with the rest of the band.

At practice we arrive at around quarter to six and help the pit to set up and then we get our drums and head off to warm up. Until recently after warming up we would go out to the car park and learn drill. Drill is the actual marching, and comes in the form of sheets of gridded paper (in our bands case 109 sheets) which show a top down diagram of how the band is arranged on the field. We head out into the carpark and find our dot (which is wherever we're supposed to be on the field), mark it with chalk, march between that and the previous dot a few times, and then rinse repeat, rinse repeat. To begin with this was quite an issue as when I started they'd already learnt the drill for the first two and a half movements and so I had to learn it by following around the guy in front of me, not the most efficient way of doing things but I've got it now. After this we practice the drill we just learnt with our drums on and playing the corresponding music and then the whole band comes back together for ensemble practice. At the moment however we no longer do drill as we know the entire show.

Our show is entitled "Serengeti" and has this rather cool African theme. It's made up of four movements: sunrise, gazelles, cool shade, and brush fire and rain. As the show is built around this prominent African type thing percussion plays a rather important role. In the pit as well as the more traditional instruments there are djembes, congas, bongos, some freaky little plinky hand piano thing and some others which slip my mind... Meanwhile out in the field the battery (that's us) generally end up playing cool little groovy rhythms, especially in movement three, which is crazy fun to play.

As much fun as band is, it really does feel like some kind of crazy cult analogue; once your in your in and that's it. Skipping practice is a HUGE deal even if it's for legitimate reasons and quitters are more or less totally ostracised. On top of this each section of the band has it's own little rituals, which is kind of cool but also a little odd. I can't speak at length about any other sections little traditions but in the drumline there are several I can comment on. Every Saturday before practice (almost) the entire drumline goes out and gets a huge breakfast at this diner by school, and there's this one kid who never shows up and he gets a LOT of... flak for it. Most of the little rituals rear their heads a the competitions however. When we pay at competitions we have these little wrist flair things called gauntlets which are taped onto our uniforms and after every competition the tape is added to this ball of tape (which is allegedly twenty+ years old, but I could easily believe that) only a little smaller than my head and this HAS to be done. Also while we're waiting to go on we all huddle into a circle and say the lords prayer and then we shake hands with each other and say 'good morning',

I'm not sure how the one came about. Finally while we are waiting to go on and the band before us is playing we're not allowed to face the stadium.

To go with these there is also several rules that everyone is supposed to follow while in uniform: no swearing, no running, and sort of just no silly-business in general.

While I hope this has been interesting and informative for you all. If you have any questions or anything about it, ask away. Also if I could direct you to facebook where the are some pictures of band, I'll also try get some video or something.

Once again sorry for the radio-silence but I'll make it up by doing posts to sink a battleship today.

Lots and lots of love... FROM AMERICA!

Luke

May We Remember...?

The other day was 9/11, so apologies for this slightly belated post. It was kind of interesting to see how the day is treated in the country that it happened in, because I mean, in NZ it's not really a big deal, It's sort of something that happened long ago and far away. Here that is not quite the case. September 11th has been officialy commerated as Patriot Day, and although there is no day off for it there are certain things that must be observed. Any flags flown from homes or goverment buildings must be flown at half mast and there is a moment of silence at some point during the day.

Also in psychology we watched a movie called '102 Minutes That Changed America' which was essentially pieced together footage from various sources that covered (funnily enough) 102 minutes starting just after the first plane hit the World Trade Centre. There was some unsettling stuff in that video that I'd never seen before, but the two that got me the most were shots of people jumping out of the buildings and falling ALL the way to the ground and the huge dust cloud.

When the first tower collapsed it sent this gigantic wave of pulverised concrete and debris flooding down the streets of Manhattan and you could see people running full tilt down the streets with it following them but tey would just be enveloped. Once particularly eerie sequence was some guy with a camera running down the street away from the cloud but it catches up with him and everything turns this horrible murky brown.

As far as respectfulness and honouring the day goes it's to varying degrees, my psychology teacher made a huge fuss out of it but I suppose that's fair enough. People at school though seem a little nonchalent about the whole thing but I can sort of understand why. They were all seven eight or nine when this happened and so it's a little hard to summon up the kind of horror that people who were older at the time must have felt when it occured, they remember, but only just. Some people said they didn't even know what the World Trade Centre was at the time (neither did I), a lot of the staff refer to it as 'your generation's Pearl Harbour' but it's not really, it's THEIR generations Pearl Harbour because they are the one's who are able to identify most strongly with the tradegy, most of them wouldn't have been alive (or if they were they would have been of a similar age; 7, 8, 9) at the time of Pearl Harbour (December 7th 1941 if anyone's wondering, but you could always ask Harry) so they would have been similar to people my age in regard to 9/11.

Also I thought it might be more of a big deal in Pennsylvania because of the hijacked plane that crashed in the field but I'm prety sure it never even got mentioned

Ok I'm done with that convoluted ramble, I hope you can undersand what I'm trying to get at. Also I know I obviously didn't take the pictures but I felt like I had to put SOMETHING up.

Lots of Love

IT'S A BOMB!!

Hello again everyone!

Time for a new update. I'm now into my second week of school and so far it's been a rather interesting experience. My school is called Red Land High School and is one of two high schools in the West Shore School District, the other being Cedar Cliff High School and APPARENTLY there's a huge rivalry between the two.

Annnnyway, I figured seeing as I'd already passed school in NZ I may as well take a whole load of subjects that I wouldn't normally take an as a result I've ended up with: mass media I and II, German I and II, English IV, psychology, photography and 20th century history. Paolo, this should interest you, you're no longer the only one who has preferential blocking. When I went to select my subjects most of the rest of the school had already done theirs and the 12th grade guidance counseller (who fulfills more or less the same role as Ms Kilian) shifted people out of classes so that I could take what I wanted, I feel kind of guilty but o well, they'll live.

I don't have any pictures of the school but I will get some so don't stress to much, however, one thing I can say about the school is that it is, for lack of a better word; prison-like. The entire 1300 student school and their myriad classrooms is contained in a single brick building, but that brick building is huge. It consists of two storeys and houses around 60 classrooms, a library, pool, gym, tech block, everything.

Adding to the prison atmosphere is the fact that once you're in, you're in, the doors lock behind you when school starts at 7:37AM and you can't leave the building, apparently this is something to do with bomb-threats and someone was telling me that last year the school was evacuated every second day for a mont because of some kids fucking around and making false bomb threats. Lunch is eaten inside in the cafeteria and there are four different lunches; I have first lunch at 10:30 which is kind of lame because I'm not hungry... Also, iPods, phones etc are confiscated on sight anytime, including lunch and flex (which is similar to study period but MUCH more restricted). You can only go to the toilet once or twice a day and this requires a pass from the teacher. It's strict, especially compared to ye olde' WSC, but I'm getting used to it.

In the corner of each class hangs an American flag and every morning at the beginning of the first period the entire class stands, turns, faces, and says the pledge of allegiance while the American national anthem is played over the loudspeaker. Luckily I myself don't have to take part in this activity as at this point in time I am on a bus to my first class which is outside of school grounds. Another thing which is taking getting used to is getting up at five to six in the morning to get a ride to school with my friend RJ, but in the afternoon I come home on a big yellow schoolbus! which I shall also get a picture of.

Now, for the answer to the question I'm sure you've all been dying to ask: ARE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL STEROTYPES REAL?!?!?1!?!! And the short answer is yes, to a certain degree.

For one thing, my school looks more or less exactly like the kind of schools you see in the movies, and the two accurate sterotypes I've come across are that football players are arseholes and that cheerleaders for the most part are annoying and girly and wear to much make-up. Now, bear in mind that when I say accurate I don't mean that they are spot on but you can definately see where they came from and how they are perpetuated, some people fit them perfectly, others a little but, some not at all, also I've been called a scene kid more times than I care for, but by people who have no clue what they're talking about anyway.

That's all for now, but once again feel free to leave comments and ask questions or send me emails or whatever!

Lots and lots of love

Everything's Bigger In America

The other day Julie and Joey (sister and her boyfriend in case you forgot) took me to BJ's which is like a big wholesale place sort of like Gilmore's. So I decided to buy a big thing of eighteen packs of fourteen pieces of gum (which cost like six bucks US) and a box of ninety-six Reese's Peanut Butter cups which I then discovered are 37% fat; it's ON! There's also a picture of Sebastien who is just an unfeasibly huge cat...

-START TRANSMISSION-

Hi there everyone!

I've finally got round to setting this blog up. I shall try and update it on a regular basis (once a week or so) so that if you're interested you can have a look at what I'm up to, just so that I don't have to send out mass emails to everyone all the time, although if you do want an me to email me you just send me one and I will reply.

I thought for my first post I would just give a big general fill-in on the trip over, what it's like where I live, who I live with etc, etc, so here we go!

The trip over was pretty horrible, twelve hours from Auckland to LA, although the seven other Kiwi kids were pretty cool, however, when we got into the airport three of them got held back in immigration for three hours because they forgot a rather important visa form, silly children. For a while we didn't think they were going to get through but after several messages from a scary Mexican guy who worked at the airport they managed to come through.

After that little setback we went our separate ways to our various gateways, except for Emma (the other NZ student flying into New York) and I who had to sit in LAX doing sweet FA for another seven hours until our flight. About twenty minutes before we boarded though we ended up involved in this minor fiasco in which twenty or so Italians for some reason didn't have boarding passes and made it onto their flight just as the doors were closing.

Anyway, Emma and I flew into NYC which took another five or six hours. I was quite annoyed because as we flew in we couldn't seeanything at all, but oh well.

Once we got to the airport we went our separate ways as Emma was being flown to upstate New York right near the border of Canada while I was sent to a hotel to wait for my bus which was due in about twelve hours. We weren't allowed to leave the hotel so once again I'm kind of annoyed that I barely got to see New York at all, but oh well. When I first got there I went to get breakfast and ended up sitting at a table with these six or seven intimidatingly beautiful Norwegian girls who just sat there speaking Norwegian well I sat there feeling very awkward, my Norwegian not quite being up to scratch and all. But there must have been close to a hundred AFS students at the hotel waiting for various busses and most of them were lame and formed these tight-knit little national groups; the Norwegians were particularly bad. There were about twenty of them and they spent the whole time sitting in a corner together speaking Norwegian and tap tap tapping away on the really flash Apple laptops they all had. I did my best to mingle though (I was the only Kiwi so I didn't really have much choice anyway) and ended up in this cool litle multinational group consisting of myself, a Flemish boy and girl, two Danish girls, an Italian girl, and an Indian boy.

As I say we were trapped in this hotel for about twelve hours but then the time to catch my bus finally rolled around. There were approximately ten of us on the bus to Harrisburg/somewhere else but for the most we all just fell asleep and didn't talk. On the way out we drove though a part of the Bronx, and my god, I am so glad I don't live there; bombed out buildings, graffiti, homeless and destitute, poverty, pollution, it was pretty depressing. However as we left the city we drove over the George Washington bridge, which was incredible.

Now in a hotel in Harrisburg for our orientation myself, Kaja and Anja from Norway, and Victoriano from Chile are met by my host sister Julie and her boyfriend Joey (who both volunteer for AFS) plus another AFS volunteer called Bob for our orientation. Basically what this entailed was stern emphasis of the rules of AFS (no drugs, no driving, no hitch-hiking etc), a warning to Victoriano and I that apparently American girls are VERY aggressive and a reaffirmation of how we'll only get out of this experience what we put in, which seems like a fair enough statement.

After this we were picked up by our host families; Victoriano was staying somewhere in Hershey (yes, as in Hershey's chocolate, it's about a forty-five minute drive from where I live), I honestly cannot remmber where Kaja went but Anja lives about a five minute wak from my house and will be going to the same school as me, so I've been hanging out with her a bit.

Anyway, once the other three had been picked up Julie and Joey took me home to meet the rest of my family. Now before I go any further I would just like to state that I am the fifth AFS student they have had, and there is a little wall of fame type thing just outside the kitchen with pictures of all of them, a photo of which I will attach.

So, I live with my host-father Drew Hagerty, my host-mother Nancy Hagerty, my host-sister Julie Hagerty and their two cats Sebastian and Daisy. Sebastian is incredibly huge, as in beyond belief, if you thought Buster was a big cat (those of you who know him) you know nothing of big cats, and then Daisy is incredibly old clocking in at sixteen.

They/We live in a moderately sized house on 35 Bobby Jones dr, Etters, Pennsylvania, although the Etters bit is a little confusing as we actually live in Valley Green, Etters is just the name of the post office, go figure... Valley Green is... I'm not quite sure what it is, it's sort of like a developement with just houses, or like a detached suburb of Harrisburg (the capital of Pennsylvania) which is about a ten minute drive to the north.

They're all really nice and have made me feel really welcome, Julie and her boyfriend Joey in particular who have taken me out a lot and shown me things and hung out with me and just generally been really great.

After I'd been here for a few days my host-parents also took me and my Norwegian friend Anja to a baseball game, first American thing w00t! It was so much better than cricket, kekeke. It was good fun though, and the Amerians get really into it all, stamping and screaming and singing and carrying on and such. I would NOT like to be the guy who has to catch the balls that the batter misses though, because the pitchers throw SO fast, and not a bowl or anything, they just throw it really really hard.

And check out what I found on the way to the baseball!!

I've also been drafted into the school marching band. A few days after I got to my host family a boy who lives two houses down called Greg (who looks unsettlingly like Jesse) had a little graduation celebration thing and my family was invited so I went along and spent a bit of time hanging out with Greg and his friends, most of whom were a part of the Redland Highschool marching band (although two or three of them had graduated). It somehow came up that I played drums and they all started trying to convince me to join because someone in it had just broken their ankle and was effectively going to be out of action for the whole season. I'd just like to note as well that Greg is an incredible snare drummer, I would say that he is probably better tha Walter (for those of you who know who I'm talking about) and he's all of like eighteen or nineteen. Anyway, I told them I probably wasn't going to do it but then a few days later Greg just turned up at the door and was pretty much just like "I'm taking you to band practice tommorow" so I was kind of like well I may as well go once to see what it's like and it could be a good way to meet people to. So I went along to this band practice with him and it actually turned out that it's really fun and it seemed like they really wanted me to join so I figured I may as well.

Although, doing this is probably the biggest commitment I've ever made to anything in my life, there are practices from 6 till 9 every Monday and Thursday, then we play at football games every Friday evening, and then have pratice and competitions on Saturdays from 9 in the morning till 5 in the evening. Normally this would be quite an issue for me, but the way I'm looking at it is that it's a great way to meet people, it's fun, and also it'll be done by the first week of November, so that means two months of intense band with not much else but then I come out of it with a whole load of friends (hopefully) and I still have the other ten months of my exchange to do everything else I want to do.

Also, in my first four or five days I somehow managed to lose six kgs, I'm back up two but I'd like the other four back, go figure...

Well that's all I can think of for now, I've probably forgotten things but hopefully you get the gist of things thus far, and I apologize for this post's obscene length also :D

Lots and lots of love