samk

Es el dos de marzo de dos mil diez. Hi! Thanks for the birthday wish for my mom! We had a lot of fun that night. The weather was aweful though so on the way there and back it was very difficult to drive, you couldn't see the roads. We had a couple days off last week thanks to the wonderful snow. The first day we had off there wasn't any snow but I won't complain. Sin embargo, el tiempo ha sido preciosa aquí últimamente. Se está haciendo hasta 50 grados. Mis mejores amigos son Alyssa, Taylor, Danielle y Sarah. Cada vez que tenemos el día libre nos gusta reunirse. La semana pasada, Taylor y yo hicimos panqueques y grabó con nosotros a bailar a algunas canciones. Luego nos fuimos a nadar donde desbastada mi diente, no le hacía daño si, pero parece divertido. What is your favorite time of the year? Why? Can't wait to hear from you again! Sam

Es el veinte y cuatro de febrero de dos mil diez. Heyy! Yes, our school was going to change its name. Luckily we heard back that we are not changing the name of the high school. Everyone was very upset about the change so the Bishop decided not to follow through with the change. Este fin de semana será la celebración de cumpleaños de mi mamá. Mis primos se llegue a mi casa. Mi mamá y mi tía han cumpleaños este fin de semana. Son hermanas. Vamos a Sandusky tener una gran cena. Sandusky is just a huge city near Fremont. It has a lot of shopping too! What are your plans for this weekend? I hope you enjoyed your break this week. What did you do? Hope to hear from you soon! Sam

Arànzazu Rodrìguez! Esto es Sam otra vez. Yo no estoy seguro si usted recibió mi última carta pero esto es un seguimiento. ¿ Como estás? Nado para mi escuela. Las prácticas comenzaron hace tres semanas. Yo lo quiero hasta ahora. Nuestra primera competición estará en unas pocas semanas. ¿Quiere usted nadar? Mis amigas Taylor y Desiree lo hacen muy divertido. ¿Qué le hace y sus amigos hacen para la diversión? ¿Quiere usted estar en casa o con sus amigos? Adoro estar con mis amigos. No me gusta Fremont mucho. Es pequeño y aburrir. ¿Qué es Ibaialde como? ¡Estoy ansioso por oír de usted! Eso es todo tengo para ahora. ¡Adiòs!

11/17/09 Hello Arànzazu! I'm still not sure whether or not you're receiving my letters so if you could write back that would be great :] Recently nothing much has been happening in Fremont. Next week is Thanksgiving so we will have a four day weekend instead of two. In America Thanksgiving is a holiday that celebrates the Pilgrims safe journey to America. The Pilgrims are a group of people who came to America to escape persecution in England. The Pilgrims then shared a three day feast with the Native Americans. Now we stay home with our families and have a large meal with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Normally a green bean casserole is also added to the dinner. Families have their own traditions. My family likes to watch the parades and cook together. Then normally on the weekend we visit my cousins and have another large meal. I'm excited to eat all the delicious food! Soon Christmas is coming and when that draws closer I will explain more about that later. That's enough facts for now! Right back soon! -Sam :]

11/24/09 Hey Arànzazu! I've tried sending the past two letters to the email address that my teacher has for you so hopefully you will get those. Thanksgiving is coming up this Thursday which is also our first day off for the weekend. Most schools in the area don't have school tomorrow but we do, typical. I am so excited for Thanksgiving because I cannot wait to eat so much food! It is the one day that you can eat like a pig and not feel bad about it. How's life going for you? Mine has been crazy. Swimming has taken up all my time. A normal day for me is school, homework, swim, homework, and then bed. We even have practices on the weekend and on certain days at 5:30 in the morning before school! The morning practices make me so tired throughout the school day. It's nearing winter now so we should be getting snow soon! I love sledding with my friends in the winter and having the possibility to not have school because of a snow cancellation. The winter also brings basketball season. Basketball games are a lot of fun since our school likes to dress up crazy for the games and cheer on our team! Does your school get involved in competitions like how we dress up crazy? Well, I have probably bored you to death with my rambling so I will wait anxiously to hear from you! Sam :]

12/01/09 Hola Arantxa! It's good to hear from you. I guess I was doing the wrong thing and I wasn't sending the letters to you by email, instead I was only putting them on Wikispaces. Oops! I'm happy that we are in touch now. I'm glad we are both swimming. I enjoy it when it's just for fun, but practicing can take a lot out of me. I've heard of handball before but I'm not familiar with how you play. I'd like to learn one day though. I see that you have gone to France, I have always wanted to go. It looks so beautiful in pictures. You're very lucky. The only places I have gone outside the states are Cancun, Mexico and Niagra Falls in Canada. I'd think you would love the United States. If you ever plan on going, I'd recommend New York City. It is large, busy, and full of life. The thought of Japanese being easy is a shocker. I'm struggling to understand Spanish so I doubt I could learn Japanese. Now to answer your questions... 1. What are your favorite music groups? My favorite would have to be Secondhand Serenade or Mayday Parade. They are both sort of alternative groups, they definitely are not pop. I must say that I do listen to pop music at times, it just depends on my mood. 2. What type of books do you read? And what style of movies do you like to see? My favorite book series is the Twilight Saga. Pretty much everyone here is obsessed with those books, but they are amazing. I also like the typical teenage books about like high school for example. Other people's points of view on life as a teenager amuses me. My favorite types of movies are horror movies. They normally don't scare me, but I tend to find them addicting. 3. Do you play on a team? I have played many sports. The sport I mainly like is volleyball. I have played for seven years. This is my first year swimming. And I ran track for two years. I also played softball, basketball, and took dance lessons. For fun I like to ride horses and teach other kids how to ride. 4. What are your favorite subjects? This is a tough question. I used to love English but it now has become less enjoyable. So, I would have to say my favorite subject is math. Right now I am taking Pre-Calc which is just a minor version of Calculus. I'm not as good in Pre-Calc as I used to be in Algebra 2 last year. That was my favorite class. Now I'm supposed to write to you in Spanish. I apologize for how bad I am at this... El Día de Acci ó n de Gracias está sobre y comí mucho. Mi familia y yo comieron mucho pavo. Fue delicioso. Estaremos comiendo pavo para semanas. El sábado mis primos vinieron aquí. Fue agradable verlos. Ellos viven en un pueblo llamado Findlay. Es 30 minutos lejos de aquí. El Día de Acci ón de Gracias es siempre divertida con mi familia. That's all for now. Hope to hear from you again! Sam

Es el nueve de diciembre. Hola, Arantxa! I'm good, thanks for asking. How are you doing? I'm glad that you like my music. Music is my favorite past time. There is always something good to listen to no matter what mood I am in. Every morning while I get ready for school I like to listen to music to wake me up. Since Christmas is nearing we are beginning a service project we call "Reach Out". We all have to bring in 8 food items and before we leave for Christmas break we box up the items and take them to families in our town that need food for Christmas. It's our way of helping out the community. The freshmen go to the grade schools and read to the little kids. And the sophomores go to the nursing home to sing to the elderly. I'm not sure what the juniors (my class) is doing yet. I have heard about the bullfighting in Pamplona. That seems so scary. I actually have a fear of being anywhere near bulls. Their horns are so large! Maybe one day we will take another vacation and I will try to see the festival. It sounds like fun! Adios! Sam

Es el quince de diciembre. Hola, Arantxa! I don't remember whether or not I sent my last letter to you so I think I will resend it. Sorry if I did and now you have duplicates. This may be the last letter I send you till after Christmas break. We will be out of school until January 4th. There is only ten days till Christmas and I am so excited! This year my parents bought me a new laptop since my old one is slow and about ten years old. I got to choose my own and I can't see it till the 25th. It's driving me nuts! Christmas is my favorite time of year. Last Friday I stayed home with my mom and we decorated the Christmas tree and then Sunday we wrapped presents. Next Tuesday is our last day of school until break. For this last week we will be taking a lot of tests since the teachers want to pack in as much learning as they can. It's cruel. Another part of this time that I actually like is sledding. I live on a hill so when it snows it can be so much fun to sled with my friends. We also love to have huge snowball fights! The snowball fights can get intense. The one thing I dread when it comes to this time of year is exams. It is horrible that we can come back to school after such a nice break and then have to study for hours on end for a huge test on everything we have learned so far in each subject. Exams normally are two days long. The exam for each class lasts about 1 hour and 30 minutes. It is awful! Do you take any finals throughout the school year? One thing I do like about exams is that is means the year is half over! Adios! Sam

Es el cinco de enero de dos mil diez. Hola Arantxa! ¿Còmo esta? Yo contento oir que usted quiere "Twilight". ¡Es mi favorito! Quiero los libros y las peliculas. Yo los leì mucho. Mi Navidad fue muy divertida. Comì mucho con mi familia. Fuimos a la casa de mis primos despuès de Navidad. ¡Adoro mi familia! Wow, that is a lot harder than I thought it would be to write a few sentences in Spanish. After Christmas break I seem to be in a slower mind set than before. I am not ready to be back in school. Our break went too fast! It was about a week and a half long. It is snowing so much here! I love the snow, I just hate driving in the snow. It is very scary because I feel like I have no control over the car or where it's going. Hopefully Thursday we will get 4-6 inches of snow. I really want to have a day off even though we just got back from break. The only bad thing about the massive amount of snow coming our way is that it is coming throughout the day when we are in school which means we will finish the day of school and then have to drive home in that! I am looking forward to sledding and snowball fights with my friends. As I said above I absolutely love Twilight. The entire series was amazing. I think the third book was the best. The first movie was pretty good but I think the second was even better. I agree with about the entire female population that Robert Pattinson (Edward) is gorgeous! He is part of the reason I love the movies so much. ¡Adios!

Es el veinte de enero de dos mil diez. ¡Hola! Exams are over, and that was why I didn't get to write to you last week, sorry. I love talking to a person in another country too! It's interesting how we are so far apart and can learn from each other. And your English is just fine. I can understand you perfectly. I struggle so much with Spanish. There are so many ways to conjugate verbs! I wish my parents would have taught me how to speak Spanish when I was younger so it wouldn't be so difficult now. I hope you get more snow! Right now all of our snow is melting which is sad. I haven't gone sledding yet either which is even sadder. We had a mini blizzard here (in my standards) it was awesome but we still had school even though the roads were so horrible. Ahora tengo escribir a usted en español. Soy emocionado por el verano! Es muy lejos pero yo todavìa soy emocionado. Yo no puedo esperar el calor. Este año que quiero ir a la playa por una vez. Deseo que podamos tener tiempo tibio como usted hace. And you were right, I look forward to hearing from you too! ¡Adios! -Sam

Es el veinte y seis de enero de dos mil diez ¡Hola! I'm sorry that I'm a little late with this letter! Sorry about using "tu". I'll try to remember. So today we used skype with your class again. I didn't get to speak yet which I am really nervous to. We are only speaking for about 5-10 mintues and I feel like this may be difficult. I'm excited to get to see you! And yes, I am planning what I want to do this summer. I'm thinking of lifegaurding for the local Rec Center. I am going to be taking classes with some of my friends this spring so that I can hopefully get the lifegaurding job. What are your plans? I don't have too much time today to write. I have to go to swim practice soon... yay. I hope I get to meet you through Skype soon! ¡Adios! Sam

Es el dos de febrero de dos mil diez Hey! I'm really excited for this summer. I love sleeping in! That is my favorite part of summer. I don't think I am going to play volleyball this year. Although I love the sport, it's getting to be extremely hard... not worth it. Ahora tengo hablar español otra vez. Mi profesora me desea preguntarla cómo le hace aprende el mejor? Visualmente, entrega en, etc? I learn best from doing hands on activities. Actually performing the experiment allows me to remember it better. So we won't get to speak through Skype? I think we may be talking to other classes from your school, that's a shame. Goodbye for now! Sam

Es el doce de febrero de dos mil diez Hi, It's okay if you don't write much because I haven't been writing much either lately. Swim is almost over so hopefully I will be able to find the time to do all of my homework without scrabbling around at the last minute. I thought I would get your opinion on something... This past week there has been a lot of drama around our school. The Bishop (who is in charge of our Catholic Schools) approved that the name of our school would be changed next year, which is the year I graduate. Our entire school and alumni has been going crazy about this. We love our school and we realized that changing the name would take away the tradition and cost a lot of money to redo our school. Adoramos nuestra escuela. How do you think your school would react to this? ¿Estarían sus compañeros de clase enfadados? ¿O no cuidarían ellos? ¡Aprendo mejor con música también! Nosotros no hacemos mucho con música aquí, pero cuando estudio quiero escuchar mi música. Bye!