Once upon a time, there was a girl named Emma. She was an exchange student in Hannut, Belgium. One day, while she was at school, the bell rang for lunch time, like every other day. But on this day, when she went down the stairs and through the hallway to the lunch room, she was greeted by a huge mob of people! She did not understand why all of the people were in the hallway, but she joined the mob as it seemed to be her only option. She pushed her way through to the center, and then all of the sudden, she felt her feet lift off the ground as all of the people around her pushed together so that there was no air between them. She found herself moving without walking, and she laughed as she realized that she was being pushed through the crowd by the crowd itself. Eventually, the doors to cafeteria opened and she went inside with her friends and sat down for a nice lunch.
The End.
I'm serious, I have never in my life experienced a crowd like that. Not even in Disney World on New Years (which is a terrible idea, don't even think for one second that it's worth it). Not even like New York City! It was seriously like a heard of cows. Kudos to Madame Vanesse for coming up with that analogy.
Other than that, school was average today. After school, I went home and watched a few episodes of the wonderful series "The Nanny", and then my host family and I went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Cue a night of terrible jokes, crude humor, and lots of laughs. This was the first time I had been to Chinese restaurant while in Belgium, and I love Chinese food in the States, so I was ready to be picky. We walked in, and it was obvious that my host parents knew the owners. It was all of us for dinner: Karine, Philippe, Benoit, Damien, and me. We were seated at a round table with a lazy susan in the middle and very pretty pink silk napkins folded into cool shapes at our seats. Much classier than the sketchy Chinese joints in the States. We got our menus, and I immediately searched for orange chicken. Seeing that there wasn't any, I decided to go with wanton soup and orange duck. I had never tried duck before, so I knew this was going to be interesting.
First, the brought us the "imperatif", which is like the appetizer. It was those cool styrofoamy chips and we each got a cocktail of sorts. I'm not sure what it was, but it was red and had some sort of fruit on a sword in it. It almost looked like a white strawberry. Of course, Damien being the wonderful host brother that he is, told me that it was a testicle. Classy. Being smarter than that, I ate it anyway and it was good. The drink itself was VERY sweet, though the alcohol wasn't that strong. But I didn't much care for it.
Then they brought us our soups. Like I said, I got the wanton soup. Taste-wise, it was very similar to the soups I've had in the States, though there wasn't any of that wonderful green leafy stuff in it. But the wantons themselves were very different. They were still stuffed with pork, but they didn't have any form. They were just balls of meat wrapped in noodle. And they looked a little bit like brains. Of course, Damien didn't have anything to say about that. Benoit got a spicy soup that I tasted, and the Belgians must have a really sensitive pallet, because I don't like spicy and I didn't think it was bad at all.
After that, my host brother were brought their next course, because they had each decided to get a little something extra in between the soup and the entrees. Damien got some sort of seafood dumplings and Benoit got a dish that had vegetables on it and then something that looked like a rectangular egg roll. I had a bite of it, and it wasn't very egg roll-like, although it was good. But then Damien asked me if it tasted like pubic hair and I was laughing so hard while being so disgusted at the same time that I couldn't eat anymore of it. And he asked this in English too, so my host parents couldn't understand why I was all of the sudden in hysterics. Mature, really, I know.
Then our entrees came. They put them all on these hot plates on the lazy susan, and we each took what we wanted. Turns out that orange duck is nothing like orange chicken. It's not breaded, and the sauce is very thin. And it's very fatty. But I still took a couple pieces, trimmed off the fat, and it was actually incredibly tasty. It melted in my mouth and the flavor was good. I also tried some fried rice, which was delicious, and I had white rice too. I tried this other dish that was more like the orange chicken I'm used to. It was chicken in that special breading with an orange sauce, but the flavor wasn't orange. I'm not sure what the flavor was, but it was good. And then there were these pork things, almost like ribs. With bones. So not much meat, and a lot of fat. And very difficult to eat with a fork and knife. But I tried. My host dad then asked me why I had left so much food on my plate, and I told him it was the bones and the fat, but he took them and ate the fat and scraped every last morsel of meat off the bones.
During all of this there was a lot of conversation and a lot of awkward moments, and a lot of laughs. But none so strong as what was about to come.
After they cleared away the entrees, they brought us shots. In shot glasses of course. And the shot was clear. So my host brothers tell me to look in the bottom. Turns out that it is normal to have some sort of erotic image in the bottom of your shot glass. But of course, I would get the worst one that you can get. Benoit's was of a girl. Doing... Things. But it was not a photo, it was a drawing. I don't know what my host dad's was. Mine. Mine was different. Mine was a photo. Of a man. Naked. Holding his... Package. I'm sure you can imagine my reaction to this. Then my host family asked me if that was the first time I had seen that. Seriously, what is the right answer to that? I had health class in high school... But I said yes and then they laughed at me some more and we all just laughed about it for the rest of the night. But really, talk about awkward. And now I'm home, ready to go to bed, and laughing to myself.
What a day.
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