Please not Alaska!

In previous years I have introduced several states on my teacher's blog. I've included North California, where the 2012 film Hunger Games was filmed, Montana and its national parks, Tennessee, the birthplace of country music and Hawaii, the newest of them all. This year the honour goes to Iowa which gets its name from the Ioway tribe.

Why Iowa? Not because there is a town called Norway, not because of the 100 000 farms or the fact that it's as flat as Danmark. It's the home of my favourite author, Bill Bryson, and the to you probably more known actor Ashton Kutcher. More importantly though, it's the current residence of my daughter, Wietske!

Wietske hugging her baby sister
 goodbye at the airport last August.

She is spending this school year as an exchange student in the south-eastern part of Iowa, a region called Quad Cities. A great opportunity for her and at the same time a source of information for me! It's real interesting to follow her daily activities in the home of an actual American family. She has swum in the Mississippi, been shopping at Wal-Mart, taken cover from a tornado in the basement and experienced a lockdown due to a school shooting incident. All typical American things ;) 

When she enlisted the program, she didn't get to choose a state and for a while she was truly worried that they'd ship her off to Alaska. Luckily she ended up in a more central location. If you could live a year in the USA, where would you like to settle down? Your task for week 10 is to write about your favourite state and reason for your choice. Try to use American sources like www.infoplease.com or awesomeamerica.com, and steer away from Wikipedia.