And This Is Why Blogger Sucks...

Ok so I was all ready to get back on track with a blog a day, and then Blogger freaks out and doesn't work on Thursday. Then Friday, it freaks out again on me and deletes half of one of my blog entries... This was yesterday. My host brother so very kindly asked me where my blog post went and I went on my blog and realized it was just gone. Not on my page at all. So I go into my drafts and it's there, but half deleted. And then I go on this morning and the whole thing is back like nothing ever happened. So I don't know what's going on but here I am, ready to blog again.

I realize that I posted on Wednesday, but I did not actually post about Wednesday and something actually happened that day! Wednesday we had the "Marche de Solidarité" at school. Which is pretty much a support walk that they do every year for some cause. This year it was for Haiti. The couple weeks beforehand, we collected money and recorded it on a blue sheet of paper that I conveniently lost, and then we did the walk on Wednesday after our first hour class. We walked by class around Hannut for about two and a half hours, talking, singing, just having fun. It was really nice out and the sun was shining, so it ended up being a pretty nice couple of hours, even if I hadn't really been looking forward to it. After we got back to school, we each got an apple and a water bottle and just chilled all together in that weird cement courtyard. Then I was supposed to go to Namur, but things got messed up and I ate lunch at Eduardo's house with his host family and went back home where I took yet another walk. It was nice with the sun. Thank you, Belgium, for not having the typical crappy weather lately!

Thursday was an average day. Nothing of importance. We went to school, ate cookies with Madame Vanesse, left school, and I had dance. Fun fun fun.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th. And it was a horrible day. Typically, I don't believe in all that Friday the 13th crap. But yesterday was just bad. Thursday and Friday I found myself in a nice little bout of homesickness and just plain loneliness. But Friday was definitely worse. I was in a bad mood all day, just sick of everything. Sick of school and french and people and being away from my family and adjusting to a new host family and getting fat and losing my ability to dance... Just all of it was piling up and on top of it all, I've been thinking about Nick sooooo much lately. I don't really know why, but he's on my mind all the time. So yah. All that together, you have a very sad and depressed Emma. Yes, I cried. Yes, I locked myself in a bathroom stall for the last 20 minutes of lunch because I couldn't handle being around people. Yes, I cried to people over Skype. And yes, I managed to calm down and pull myself back together. In the end, Manon and I had a great talk and I felt much better after talking to her. We spent the evening together watching "Mulan" in French. It was great bonding time, not gonna lie.

Today I woke up at 6 30am. I don't know why. I was upset with myself. So yes, I was tired today. I went to dance this morning as usual. We're working on our numbers for the recital in June. Remember those weird fabric tubes that I used for that one performance that I did a few months ago? Yah we're using those again to be clouds in one of the dances... I don't really understand, but I'm getting the impression that the classes are combining to do a sort of play/story line something... Anyways, afterwards I went home and chilled with the fam for a while. That afternoon, I got ice cream from this adorable little place in one of the adorable little villages around Hannut. Apparently there is this guy who makes all these different flavors of ice cream by hand. He is really really friendly. For example, Kriek ice cream. Not a joke. I didn't try that one though. I had speculoos and praliné. They were de-lic-ious. Again, there was sun this afternoon, which was lovely. And there's a nice little garden with trees and benches that looks out over the country side right next to the ivy covered building that houses the ice cream shop. It was perfect, sitting on one of the benches, the breeze blowing through the branches above our heads, looking at a blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds. *sigh*

Anyways, I spent my evening with Philippine, making cookies for her big communion party tomorrow and chatting about tons of different stuff. The cookies came out pretty good, although I still can't figure out why I can't get them to taste exactly like they do when I make them at home... Who knows. But for now, my bigger concern is sleeping. So goodnight world!

Sore Day And The Cookie Mountain

Can anyone guess what day comes after exercise day? You guessed it! Sore day! Ok, truth be told, it wasn't that bad. My arms were really the only part of me that was in pain. My legs ached a bit and my chest and shoulders too, but my arms were horrible. But Talia and I stuck it through and after our very easy morning, we went for day 2.

Our morning consisted of our English exam. The exchange students had to give a presentation of everything that the class had covered over the course of the semester. This pretty much included topics like why language learning is important, why English is important, the different songs they studied, "A Christmas Carol" and the presentations that some other exchange students had come to give. The prof gave us the first 2 hours of the exam time to prepare while the rest of the class was taking the first part of their exam. So Eduardo, Talia, Mikayla and I worked on the presentation. We had decided to put on a little skit where Talia was the teacher and us three were the students who were in an English class. So we wrote the script and then at the beginning of the second half, we put it on for the class. And it was a big hit! We even got some laughs. And afterwards, the prof could not stop raving about it. She thought it was absolutely excellent. She used the word "extraordinary". Go us! So I think we passed.

We finished our skit in about twenty minutes and then the three girls went over to the GB to look for a pumpkin for Mikayla. We couldn't find that, but she bought some Pringles and I got a little pasta thingy for my lunch, along with some Christmas cards and a new white out. We then went over to the café to eat our brown bag lunches and relax before Talia and I were scheduled to be at the gym at 1pm.

Around 12 20, Talia and I started heading over there. We stopped at the GB again to grab a water bottle, and then we were back on our way. We got there close to one, changed, and then had another run through of the circuit, this time with a guy showing us around. He had us do basically the same things as yesterday, with just a few changes in the exercises and adding a machine or two. At 2pm, Géraldine, Talia's host sister, came up to the gym to join us and do the workouts with us. We stayed until almost 4pm, and I have to say, I had a blast! We had fun talking and joking and laughing with the gym guy, even though I thought I was going to die from time to time due to my very sad lack of arm strength. Tomorrow, we do just cardio.

After we finished at the gym, I went home to begin my next adventure: Cookies! I decided to do cookies for Christmas gifts to my friends at school, and I spent the entire evening making two batches of my famous chocolate chip cookies. You see, in the States, every year for Christmas I make chocolates. All different kinds. Peanut butter cups, peanut clusters, chocolate covered marshmallows and pretzels with different sprinkles, all kinds. My specialty is a chocolate covered pretzel rolled in peppermint pieces. I was a pro at my chocolate making. Even my molds were special. I had all different colors of chocolates and I would make the molds very artistic. The teddy bears would get red hearts. The snowmen were white chocolate with orange carrot noses, colorful hats, scarves and buttons, and black for the eyes and mouth. I was very meticulous about my snow men. I even had little paper cups for the clusters that had holly leaves on them. And then I would take a bunch of the chocolates and put them in little cellophane bags with snowflakes or Christmas trees or holly or whatever decoration on them and tie them up with red and gold Christmas cord. They made wonderful gifts and everyone always loved them. But since I'm in Belgium and they don't seem to be really into that kind of stuff and there's no cake/confectionary store nearby, I went for cookies. Also, all the Belgians rave over my cookies, so why not? I made them a bit smaller too. And since Belgian appliances are considerably smaller than American ones, I could only make nine cookies at a time. Talk about time consuming. But I spent the time in between batches talking to my friends back in the States, catching up with my sister and trying not to raise my arms too high.

By the time I had finished all the cookies, which was after dinner (that pasta dish that my host dad makes with the shrimp... The whole ones... That you have to dismember yourself... The ones that stare at you), I had formed a small mountain from the 143 cookies that I had made. Of course, occasionally Benoit would come downstairs and steal some, and I ate way too much dough and cookies and chocolate... Kinda defeating the purpose of today's workout, but I confess and I will try harder to get back on my diet!

However, the fun did not stop there! I then spent the next couple hours making little satchels for my cookies out of red napkins and plastic wrap and tying them up with gold ribbon with Christmas trees on it. But then I ran out of plastic wrap. So I put a paper towel on top of the red napkin and wrapped that up instead so that the red was on the outside. But then I ran out of paper towels. So I used foil. But only for like two or three of them. In the end, I had forty satchels ready to take to school tomorrow. And now I'm in bed after a lovely hot shower and I'm ready to sleep.

Oh and my host dad wore his red pants today.

Bonne nuit!

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

Nothing particularly exciting happened today, but like I said before, I'm trying to back into the habit of daily blogging, so here's my little tid bit for today.

By the way, did everyone enjoy my little French post yesterday? I have to say, I'm pretty proud of it.

Today, we continued exams. I took the religion one this morning, first thing when I got to school.

OK PAUSE. I need to rant about something here. THE BELGIANS DON'T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE. Ok I got that out there. This is seriously something that is driving me bonkers. Ok first of all, they drive slowly to begin with because it's winter. But there's no ice on the roads. Not even snow. In fact, this morning it was above zero Celsius which means that it's not even freezing temperature. So the roads were completely clear. But they were still crawling. And then, oh baby, it started snowing. My host mom immediately dropped speed down to about 40 kilometers per hour. For those of you back in the States, that's about 25 mph. OH MY GOD. Nobody ever drives that speed in the States. Ever. EVER. I swear I was going to tear my hair out. It took everything in me to keep from yelling "ALLER!!".

If you couldn't tell, I'm a little stressed lately.

It has also hit me recently that I am actually living in Belgium. Obviously I already knew that, but yesterday when I was making cookies, I had my first conscious moment where I felt truly at home in my host house. The good part about this, I really finally am almost completely comfortable where I am. I truly feel at home here, and I am really no longer intimidated by my host dad. That's an accomplishment, trust me. The bad part? I leave in less than a month. Yessir, in a few weeks it will be time to change families. That boggles my mind. My exchange is creeping along, but at the same time, it's going so fast. Next weekend, I will have been here four months. Crazy!! But then the other thing I was thinking about was that it's probably a really good thing that I am leaving right as I am feeling homey. A good thing? she says. Why, she's crazy! What is good about that? Well think about it. How difficult was it for me to leave my house? How much time did I spend missing my family and being sad? Well if I stayed in the same house all year, it would become my home. And then I would have to do all of that over again when I leave in August. So I guess it's good not to get too attached to one place. Our heart can only be pulled in so many directions.

I got totally off topic here. So about that religion exam... I'm actually pretty confident with it. I answered all the questions that were necessary and I knew what I was talking about for almost all of them. They were all short answer, so by the end of it, I had written three pages worth of French. Which, a couple months ago I would have thought an impossible feat. But I am proud of myself and of my work.

On the downside, I received zero out of ten on my last geography test. And that, boys and girls, is why Emma Clark opted out of the geography exam.

Apparently I'm going to a Chinese restaurant this weekend.

My cookies were a big hit today.

I'm exhausted and I need to go to bed.

I'm ranting now and this is getting extremely random.

Bonne nuit!

Pour Mes Amis Aux États-Unis

Ok, on y va... Je connais quelqu'un aux États-Unis qui a dit à moi que je dois écrire quelques fois en français. Alors, c'est pour vous. Pour rester avec le thème du français, je vais écrire aujourd'hui de mon progrès avec le français.

Je suis pas contente avec mon français maintenant. Je ne sais pas si c'est possible, mais je me sens que mon français et pire maintenant qu'avant. Et ça c'est triste. Il faut penser trop quand je parle avec mes amis belge ou ma famille d'accueil. Et c'est vrai, je veux parler correctement, mais ces dernier jours étaient horrible avec le français. Je comprends tout, ça c'est pas un problème. Mais mon accent est moche et les conjugaisons sont pas tout à fait correctes. Je pense, et c'est logique, je parle anglais trop. Et je suis ici pour apprendre le français, donc, pourquoi parle anglais? Parce que c'est plus facile. Mais si j'ai voulu facile, pourquoi j'ai fait cet échange ? À cause de ça, Talia et moi avons décidé de ne parler que le français. Ce sera très difficile, mais c'est vraiment nécessaire. Si je ne suis pas fluent à la fin d'année... Je ne veux pas penser à ça maintenant.

Aujourd'hui, je n'ai rien fait spécial. Je suis allée à l'école, et car il est le mercredi, c'était une demi-journée. Mais j'ai réalisé aujourd'hui que je suis très fragile, et je vais me casser à tout moment. Comme aujourd'hui, je ne sais pas pourquoi, parce que normalement je suis la plus calme pendant le première heure avec le Père Boly, mais aujourd'hui, je m'ai cassé. Je me suis senti vraiment stupide et je ne peut pas faire ça. Et j'ai crié un peu. Pas de tout les choses impoli ou mauvais, juste frustré et fâché. Mais ça va. Je vais essayer rester calme et contente. Mais c'est vraiment difficile, parce que tout m'énerve à ce moment. Hier, j'ai trouver que je dois porter les lunettes pour la reste de l'année parce que j'ai développé un allergie de mes lentilles. Donc, je ne peux pas les mettre. Si j'en veux, j'ai besoin d'aller chez médecin pour les nouveaux. C'est chiante, ça. Et c'est cher. J'ai payé pour mes lentilles aux États-Unis et maintenant, j'ai tout les lentilles pour un an, et je ne peux pas les utiliser. Rawr. En plus, je déteste mes lunettes.

On va inscrit à la salle du sport à Hannut. Talia et moi. On allait y aller demain, mais Talia est malade, donc c'est pas possible sauf si j'y vais toute seule. Ah bien. Je pense ça c'est tout. Oh j'ai fait des cookies aujourd'hui. Vous connaissez, avec les "Hershey's Kisses". Oui. Mais sans le beurre de cacahouète. C'était juste les cookies du sucre avec le Kiss. Ils ont un bon goute. Mais c'est pas vraiment le goute je veux pour les cookies du sucre traditionnel. Alors, je vais essayer encore une fois. Mais maintenant, je vais coucher parce que je suis crevée. Bonne nuit.

Cookies And Shrimp Eyes...

I'm still having a hard time motivating myself enough to write posts. But I think my reasoning is acceptable. It's just a difficult time and it's difficult to write about things other than death and despair.

However, I must plow on.

So I will write about my dining experience last night, because I really enjoy writing about food. Last night, I sat down to dinner and was served fish that had been baked in a casserole with some leafy greens and a cream sauce. It was wonderful, big fillets of white fish that had been simmering in a delicious white creme sauce and was just covered in some sort of green vegetable. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it was so warm and comforting and just yummy. Then my host dad served me some pasta with it that was in a lighter sauce with shrimp and other vegetables. I could smell it all up in my room while they were cooking and I couldn't wait to eat it. My meals are always good here but every so often we have something that just knocks my socks off. And I look forward to those days! And last night was, for sure, one of those kinds of meals.

Until I got about halfway through my pasta, turned over a piece of shrimp and was stared straight in the face by a pair of black eyes. My heart must have jumped up out of my chest and ran away and I think I might have stopped breathing for a couple seconds, I was so surprised. But I contained myself and gave no visible reaction. (I'm really good at that) That's when I realized that the other big piece of shrimp that I had been saving still had it's head and it's little legs and there were pieces of shrimp antenna scattered throughout the dish. I guess I hadn't been paying very close attention to what I was eating because this was quite the realization for me. Which is actually odd, because I'm very picky about things like that. (Things like fat or gristle, or... shrimp antenna...) Again, I made no reaction and just was very conscious about what I was putting in my mouth and just left the shrimp on my plate.

After dinner, I took my plate into the kitchen and shared my surprise with Karine, who immediately took this opportunity to broaden my culinary horizons. She chuckled at me and bit and then showed me how to eat the shrimp. Turns out you have to deconstruct it yourself. Which means pulling off the head, pulling out the little legs and peeling off the shell. Which I don't mind doing, but let's face it. I'm American. We buy our shrimp pre-mutilated. So I ate my shrimp then and it was really very delicious. But then I realized that if you deconstruct the shrimp yourself, nobody has cleaned it, so it hasn't been deveined... For those of you who don't know, that "vein" that runs down the back of shrimp that you're supposed to remove? Yah, that's not a vein. That is the digestive tract. So I then realized that I had eaten that and was thoroughly disgusted. Again, I'm picky about stuff like that. But I just tried to shove it out of my mind as I enjoyed my Liègois dessert. It's like pudding, but it's coffee flavored and has whipped cream on it. And it comes in a convenient little cup, like Snack Pack :)

Life is continuing as normal. I go to school, come home, go to dance, run, workout, talk to people, write letters, etc. Today I made cookies, yet again, and I'm sure they'll be gone by tomorrow afternoon. The Belgians love 'em. It makes me feel good about myself.

I hope everyone enjoyed my food blog. I mean, come on, what's more important than food??

The Best Sleepover Everrrrrrr

My host dad wore red pants today.

Today was an average day at school. I had quite a few hours of study because a lot of the teachers are gone on the retreats with the students. So that was pretty boring. But it was also good because I managed to write a whole 2 and a half page long letter to my French teacher back in the States. All in French! I was really proud of myself. Yes, thank you, I know I'm amazing.

Just kidding.

Also, an interesting tid bit, Mikayla found that she was wearing the same shirt as Edwardo today. Just a button down shirt from H&M, but we found it very amusing and decided that it was picture worthy.

After school, Mikayla came home with me and we stopped at a woman's house to get some fresh vegetables. It was pretty cool because it was like a grocery store in this woman's backyard. Interesting right? I thought so. Afterwards, we stopped a bakery where Mikayla and I each picked out some delicious little cakes for a snack. When we got back to my house, we ate our cake and then decided to make ourselves useful by introducing the Belgians to the wonders of pumpkin seeds. They never eat those here. My host mom conveniently had decided to make pumpkin soup part of our meal this evening. So Mikayla and I spent a while removing the goo from the seeds and then threw them in the oven for about a half hour. And they were delicious. My host family was amazed.

We then spent some time in front of the television and computer, watching MTV in French and not understanding anything, but being a little bit shocked and appalled at how disgusting MTV can be. No surprise there. We then had dinner, which was pumpkin soup, followed by a meat with the delicious Liègois sauce over rice with beetroot (I don't expect anyone to recognize that. We don't seem to have it in the States. It's a vegetable) in a cream sauce. Wonderful dinner. Although right after dinner, we discovered that my eye had turned a lovely shade of red. And was beginning to hurt. So I took out my contacts and took off my makeup and I have no idea what the problem was/is, but it's slowly returning to normal.

Mikayla and I then decided it was time to put my expertise to work and make chocolate chip cookies. Which turned out PERFECTLY. I am the best. Well, at cookies at least. Arnaud, you'll be glad to know that these won't make you cry. They are perfect slightly warm with cold milk. Even my host mom agrees. Hopefully, there will still be some there for us in the morning.

Now, we are going to figure out which movie to watch, and then it's bed time. Tomorrow, we're thinking French toast for breakfast. Yum. Bonne nuit.

The Fort, Retreat, And Purple Pants

Today, I came downstairs to breakfast to see that my host dad has a pair of purple pants. And he actually wears them. I just thought I'd share that with the world.

Today was my first day on "retreat". Except it wasn't really a retreat. I went with my two friends, Manon and Flore, to a primary school and helped out with the kids at school. Since it's Wednesday, we only had a half day today. Tomorrow and Friday, we will go back and we will have full days of school to help out with. I had a good time though! I love little kids, and they tend to love me too. The only thing with young kids in Belgium is that I don't want to speak French to them because they are so young. They won't understand anything I say when I make mistakes because their little minds don't know how to fix my errors and comprehend what I say. So I kept pretty quiet today and didn't say much. But I still had a good time and still had little cuties holding my hands and giving me hugs. It was fun!

In the afternoon, I went to a fort with Rotary. I wasn't originally going to go, because I thought I would be at the retreat all day. But then yesterday we found out that it was only going to be a half day, and I ended up being able to go after all. I wasn't really that psyched to visit and old war fort, but I figured hey, it's a chance to see the other exchange students, right? It was a very long tour that included a very very long, steep set of stairs, and I can't say it was incredibly interesting, but they fed us fruit pies afterwards and it was a good chance to catch up with the other exchange students, so overall, it was a good time.

Then came the train fiasco. Which isn't much of a fiasco, but basically we all were waiting for a train to take us back to Liège and it was supposed to come at 6:22. Well 6:22 rolls around and no train. Then before you know it, it's 6:25. And then 6:30. Finally, one of the conductor guys told us that we could get on the other train that had been sitting there for a while and it would take us to Liège. So we all piled on that one and waited another ten minutes before finally taking off towards Liège. But of course, because of this delay, Mikayla and I had missed our second train to take us back home. Luckily, a couple of the Australians knew of another train that would take us to the same place, so we were still able to get back to the station around 7:30, why my host mom picked me up and took me home. I ate dinner (chicken, salad, chocolate mousse) and now I am writing this blog. Which I realize is not as detailed as I normally do things, but I'm so exhausted and I have to get up earlier than usual in the morning, since I have to be at the school at 8:00 instead of 8:30. So goodnight and see you all tomorrow!

P.S. My host family is totally obsessed with my chocolate chip cookies. Karine is buying me more chocolate to make another batch and is using them as bargaining chips to get Benoit to clean his room.

I Am Betty Crocker

Our schedules changed today. So now my Monday consists of the regular hour with Père Boly, étude, two hours of Gym, Français, Histoire, and Math. I'm really enjoying my gym classes here. Back in the States, I was totally unathletic and I couldn't play any sport to save my life and I was just the awkward girl. And then something happened. I don't know when, and I don't know how but all of the sudden, I do not suck! I can run well, I can catch a ball, and people want me on their team! It's wonderful. I thoroughly enjoy my two hours of gym every week.

This was my first Histoire class here. Because before the schedule changed, my two hours a week of Histoire were during my classes with Père Boly. So I was never able to go. And I was deathly afraid that the prof was going to hate me. But he was totally understanding and it was all good. Plus, I sat next to my good friend Maxime, who is the best and lets me copy his notes and explains things when I don't understand. Yay for having friends!

I decided today that I was going to treat my host family to a little taste of home. So I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. Homestyle, with that famous Nestle recipe. Now I will admit, the Europeans definitely have us beat on most food. The bread here is to die for and the cheese is fantastic. Not to mention that everything is five million and one times fresher. BUT if there's one thing Americans know, it's the sweet tooth. We make the best cookies, and that's all there is to it. But American cookies are very different from anything here. For one thing, using baking soda is practically unheard of. I was lucky to find it in the store. It is also slightly difficult to find chocolate chips. My host mom thought I would have to take a chocolate bar and just cut it up. But we ended up finding a bag of those too. And vanilla extract is not a common household item either. But I was able to find everything I needed and made some delicious chocolate chip cookies! I have to say, they were better than the ones that I made with Manon. I'm not sure what was different, but even once I started making the dough, I could tell that the consistency was right on and everything was going to be great! They baked perfectly, came out nice and fresh and then cooled into that perfect, flat-topped cookie that everyone knows so well. I had mine while they were still warm with ice-cold milk. It was heaven. And my host family thought that they were fantastic too. Score one for Emma!

My host mom graciously returned the favor with a wonderful traditional Belgian dinner. It was some sort of meat over rice, topped with a sauce Liègois. Basically, it is made from this really thick syrup that is made from pears and apples. I had some straight, and it wasn't bad, but it was very strong. Almost like molasses. I couldn't just eat a spoonful of it. But in this sauce, it was delicious. We had it with some cooked pears and it was wonderful. And of course, my cookies for dessert :)

I forgot to mention something about France in my blog yesterday. It's very important. In France, at least where we were, they don't have a cup of coffee in the morning. They have a bowl of coffee. I'm serious. We sat down to breakfast, and I thought the bowls that were set out were for cereal or the fruit salad, but no. They poured entire bowls of coffee for themselves and drank it like soup. It was so interesting. I don't understand how a person can drink that much coffee. Insane.

Now I am Skyping with my family and then it is off to bed with me. Bonne nuit!

Les Cookies, Au Naturel (Oh And College)

I'm back in my normal house. Where the internet connection works :) After doing a lot of research on the problem, I found that it is a pretty common issue with Macs. Some routers just aren't compatible. And at first I was crushed. My Mac has betrayed me. I thought they were perfect. I guess not. But then I realized that was stupid, and it's not that big of a deal. That's life. There will always be a problem with something. Thank God it's just an internet connection and not something more crucial to life!

However, that did mean that I couldn't post on my blog last night again, and I apologize to my faithful readers (though I'm not sure if you exist... Do you exist??)

Yesterday was Wednesday, and that means a half-day of school here in Belgium. And I have decided that that is the single most ingenious idea for the school systems of America that I have ever heard of. Because I finished school at noon yesterday, I was able to a lot of things with my day. Productive things. I ate lunch with my third host family, did my daily Facebook check (with the help of an ethernet cord), sent a few emails, worked on my college apps, wrote 5 college essays, made cookies with Manon and Philippine, ate dinner with the fam, and watched MTV and House in French.

The cookies were quite an operation. I got the recipe for good old-fashioned American Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. Apparently, it is not normal to use baking soda for cooking in Europe. Also, chocolate chips are uncommon, the vanilla extract is like a thick goo, and the butter is different. Not to mention that "packed brown sugar" is impossible when you have to use a scale to measure things out in grams. So even though they were delicious and the Belgians enjoyed them immensely, they were not quite the same as the cookies that I used to make at home, and I was slightly disappointed. But I got over quickly because they still tasted fantastic.

The other thing that I noticed: I was eating cookies here, from a box this time, and I turned the package over to look at the Nutrition Facts. Thing is, they don't put Nutrition Facts on anything here. Ironic, isn't it, that in the States we put that on things because we are supposedly concerned about our health, but we're obese and in Europe, where there are no Nutrition Facts, people are thin? Anyways, there was no Nutrition Facts. But there were ingredients and there was a set in English. And do you know what was listed as being in those cookies? Milk. Eggs. Chocolate. Flour. Sugar. Vanilla. Etc. Not hydrocarbonpolyglycerinbicarbonatjkfjdksaljfhsglajsdf. I was amazed and impressed.

In other news... College is stressing me out. So far I have picked out four that I will apply to. My top choice is NYU. I have about eight essays to write for said colleges, plus filling out the common app. PLUS because I am in Belgium and want to pursue an audition-based program, I have to make a DVD while I'm here of my dancing, singing, and and acting skills. Ugh. It's a lot of work and it is difficult for me to handle right now. BUT I did get a lot done yesterday and it makes me feel a little better.

P.S., I went down to dinner just now and Campbell's tomato soup. It was definitely the taste of home and now I am happy :)

I am now off to dance, and afterwards, I will crash. Bonne nuit!