A Day With Rain, But A Day Without Tears.

Today was much much much better than the past few days. It was day without tears. I was actually quite chipper today! And for good reason. I got a lot of things taken care of today that needed to be taken care of. We went to the city hall type building and confirmed my new temporary Belgian ID so I will be officially Belgian for the year! Then we stopped by the school and dropped off the paperwork that they needed and proceeded to the Academy of Dance and Music where I signed up for my dance classes that I will take while I'm here! From what I could understand (hehe) I will dance three days a week, taking both "danse classique" (ballet) and "danse jazz" (jazz). I am so excited to start dancing again! It is definitely something I miss.

On the note of dance, I started the process of applying to colleges for when I get back next year. The four schools that I have decided to apply to (so far) are New York University, MercyHurst College, Point Park University, and Baldwin-Wallace College. My major, though, is different depending on the college... For example, for NYU I am applying to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study so I can study theater and dance AND photography! That is really my dream school. It is ideal and I can study everything and get a degree in a major that I control. For MercyHurst, I am applying for their dance program. At Point Park, I will either audition for their dance or musical theatre programs, and at BW, I will audition for musical theater. It's really great because these are schools are extremely cooperative and working with me to do DVD auditions because of my situation. The MercyHurst people are especially cool :)

So today was Attack-Of-The-Crazy-Bugs Day. This morning I went for a run (2.5 kilometers in 11 minutes!! That's over a mile and a half! I was proud of myself) and on the way back I started to feel kind of sick so I stopped and sat down on a bench for a few minutes and all of the sudden I felt a pinch on the back of my ankle. I thought it was a prickly plant that hit me but then it really started to hurt so I looked down and it was just a tiny little red dot but it killed! Then all of the sudden everything started to go to a blur and I passed out the sidewalk, hitting my head on the cold, black pavement.

Just kidding. It was a fire ant. But it really did hurt. Then I was walking back and a freaking huge fly just rammed itself into my forehead. Lovely. And then later I went with my host mom to visit another family and there were tons of flies all over the place! They have horses and I felt so bad because the horses were just covered in flies, and they lined their eyes. It was really gross actually... But basically, the flies were crazy and everywhere. So it was Attack-Of-The-Crazy-Bugs Day.

I met another girl my age today, Manon. She will be at my school. She was very nice and I was so proud of myself because I was able to understand almost everything she said to me in French! My comprehension has improved so much. I still don't speak very well, but I think it's mostly a level of confidence because in my head I know what the sentence would be, but I can't spit it out because I'm afraid of being wrong. But it will all get better once school starts and I'm forced to speak it.

Food of the day: French fries. Which aren't actually French. They are totally Belgian and they are fantastic. "Frites" en français. I don't have much to say food-wise today because that is all that was really interesting... Dinner consisted of pork and salad with "les frites" which, like everything else here was delicious :) Oh I did have an eclair after lunch which was absolutely fantastic :) Anything with Belgian chocolate in/on it is wonderful.

Tomorrow I go with the other exchange students to Brussels to visit the Royal Palace and Parliament so that should be very interesting! Hopefully I'll have some great pictures to post! Bedtime!