A Note On Fluency

So these last two days, I have absolutely nothing to write about because I have been sitting at home, sick. But I think I need to just get out some of thoughts, as I do every so often. This time, my topic of choice is language, and speaking it.

I have been told by different people that it is possible to achieve fluency of a foreign language by the emersion method within three months. Actually, Miss Courtney Burnside over there at Baguettes, Berets, and Mlle Burnside just blogged about this particular topic a few weeks ago. My point is that I will have been here for three months on Thursday, and there is no way that I have reached fluency. However, I do believe that fluency is upon us. I cannot say that I have yet dreamed in French, even though basically every other exchange student that I have talked to has, and I don't quite think in French yet either. I feel very behind on the whole process. However, I do find that words that I didn't know that I knew, I hear coming out of my mouth. And there are times when I speak without thinking, freak out, but then think back over what I said and realize it was very correct. These are all obviously steps to fluency.

But fluency comes differently to different people. For example, the majority of people achieve comprehension first. But my dear friends Brittany finds that that is the hardest part for her. And then there is whole conundrum of reading and writing. For someone like Talia, who has never studied French formally, this is the hardest part for her, while for someone like me, I would rather write than speak because I almost always write correctly because I have more time to think. The hard thing about becoming fluent is having the chance to practice. Because, sure, you can talk to your host family or your friends, but it gets to a point where they don't want to listen anymore because you have such the urge to speak correctly that you speak slowly and back up sometimes to correct yourself. Of course that gets aggravating! And then you realize that and you want to give up. But you can't. You force yourself to keep trying and you continue to be rejected, even though you know that in the long run, your French will be better for it.

Well, that's my personal experience anyways. It can be quite disappointing and a little discouraging, but like I said. You can't let it stop you. I know that by the end of this year, I will speak French almost the way I speak English. That prospect is wonderful, and I cannot wait to achieve it. And although people say things about becoming fluent in three months, I guess some people would say I'm "fluent". I understand just about everything that is said to me. "I can get by and hold everyday conversation. People understand me when I speak and I am able to joke and laugh and understand nuance. So I guess in a way, it's also about how you define "fluency". For me, I define it as speaking easily, without thinking. So have I reached fluency after three months? Not to me. Do I think I can get there? Definitely. In fact, I think by the end of month four or five I will be at a point where I can call myself almost fluent. But I don't want to make any rash judgements.

For now, I'm just going to continue to try to write my English novel, speak French, and absorb as much of the language as I can. Well, first, I'm going to sleep. Bonne nuit!

I LOVE TECHNO!!

Friday, I spent my day just laying around, because I have been sick, and I was recuperating. But that night, I ate pasta with those shrimp again... You know, the ones I talked about before where I have to deconstruct it myself? Yah I have a real problem with those, even though they're delicious...

Then yesterday, Saturday, I went to dance in the morning, where I discovered that I will be performing at two special performances. One here in Hannut and one in Brussels!! I'm very excited about this :) Then I went home, showered, ate some really delicious cheese, and then got ready for the event of the evening: I LOVE TECHNO!!

Around 6:30, my host mom drove me into Hannut, where I met up with a bunch of other kids from school, plus a whole bunch more that I didn't know, and we all piled on a big bus (Greyhound style) and traveled the hour and half to Gent, where I LOVE TECHNO was going to be. The bus ride was a lot of fun! We spent it talking and laughing and taking pictures. I met some people that I didn't know before and had a lot of really good conversation. I even met someone who had gone to the States the year before for a few months. The guy who had organized it went around the bus, too, and passed out these bags that had flyers and such in them. They conveniently had chips in them, which was good because Talia and I hadn't eaten any dinner. They also contained condoms, which I found very interesting and I just pretended they weren't there...

About halfway there, we stopped at a gas station. Gas stations here are not shady like in the States. So everyone got off and people were buying beer and such. Talia and I then realized that all we had had to eat was chips, so we bought food. And what did we buy? A loaf of bread. That's all. So we munched on the bread for the rest of the drive, and the person who had organized the whole thing passed out our tickets. We left our bags and our coats on the bus and went out into the cold. It wasn't that bad, and it was only about a ten minute walk to the building, but there were puddles and I ended up with wet feet :(

We got into the building, and it was HUGE! There was a sort of hallway with a red carpet and tons of chairs and really cool lighting and atmosphere. That led into an even BIGGER hall where there were the bathrooms and a couple performance spaces, food, and places to buy tickets for drinks and food. It was obviously the most well-organized event that I have been to yet. And it should have been; there were 40,000 people there!

Off the giant hall, there were five other rooms, each labeled with a color, and there were different DJs and bands in each one, and they changed every so often. Also, everything was in English. Interesting. And water was free. PLUS! We spent the night going into the different rooms, listening to the bands, dancing and just having a lot of fun! Talia and I even met up with our friend from Rotary, Matheus. He is also and exchange student from Ohio, and we spent a few hours with him, catching up, dancing, and me screaming O-H! And him responding with I-O!! It was just endless hours of techno music and dancing. Pretty sweet, huh?

Around 2am, I started to get really tired and my feet were hurting, but by 3am, it was all ok and I was back to dancing. By the time 5am came around, we were getting food and we sat down and just chilled. I started to doze off.

At 5:30, it was time to go back to the bus. We left, and it was raining. With no coat. So we went quickly, but after ten minutes, we realized we were going the wrong way and had to turn around. So it took us fifteen or twenty minutes to get back to the bus, and by that point, I was soaked, exhausted, and freezing. I put my coat on and ate a little bit of bread and then my eye started acting up. So I took my contact out and was half blind the whole way home, but it didn't matter because I had my eyes closed most of the time. Which was good, because later, Talia told me that someone had puked on the bus, and if I had been awake, I wouldn't have been able to handle it.

We got back to Hannut around 8 and my host dad was there to pick me up. We drove Talia home also, and then stopped at a grocery store. I stayed in the car because by this point I really was not feeling well, and the car ride was not helping. We got back to the house, and I was starting to feel really awake. I went upstairs to take a quick shower, because my feet were disgusting, just like after KickAss, and people had been spilling beer on me all night. (It wasn't that bad, don't worry!) Then I went downstairs, had a bowl of Special K, and realized that I could probably make it through the day and be ok, even though I didn't. I went up to my room, watched an episode of Frasier, and made myself go to sleep. I was sleeping by 9:30, and I didn't wake up until 5:30. It was beautiful. Although when I woke up, I was five times sicker than before, and now I'm hacking up a lung every few minutes. But I did write a good 2500 words for my novel today and had some quality Skyping time with my sister.

Overall, I'm really really happy that I went to I LOVE TECHNO. It was so much fun, and even though it was tough at the end and I'm sick and exhausted, it was worth it!

Thanksgiving, Three Weeks Early, In Belgium

So it's November eleventh, and I just finished having Thanksgiving dinner at Mikayla's house with her, Talia, and our three host families.

We have been planning this for a while. I have wanted to do a Thanksgiving dinner with my host family since I left as just kind of an American experience. I'm experiencing and living the Belgian culture. Why shouldn't I open the eyes of my host family to a little taste of the States? At least the delicious parts... And today, it happened.

Last night, Talia slept over my house. I did not have class yesterday due to teacher absence, and today was a day off for the whole school because it is celebrating then end of World War One for Belgium. And we have off tomorrow too :) So this morning, around 10 30, Benoit, being the wonderful host brother that he is, drove Talia and I over to Mikayla's to begin our day of preparation for the Thanksgiving feast.

We got to her house and chilled for a while, sharing videos we had "Stumbled Upon" and just chatting. We went down to lunch, ate lasagna and talked with Mikayla's host family. After that, the fun began. We had a whole menu to prepare, and not a whole lot of time to do it in. Our original menu consisted of:

Turkey

Stuffing

Mashed Potatoes

Green Bean Casserole

Corn

Salad

Cranberry Sauce

Yams

Crescent Rolls

Gravy

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie

We were pretty proud of our menu, and had everything all planned out so that we would be able to make it all. Until... We found out it's actually very difficult to find a turkey in Belgium. So instead, we had two chickens. That was probably the biggest disappointment of the whole experience for me. But there was nothing we could do about it, so we kept plugging away. And then we found out that we didn't have any corn, because garbonzo beans had accidentally been bought in place. So no corn. And my mom had put a couple cans of cranberry in the mail. You know, Ocean Spray cranberry in a can. The kind that keeps the shape of the can and you slice up? Yah, it's my favorite Thanksgiving food. But since it was a holiday, there was no post today. So I didn't get the package. So no cranberry. No crescent rolls either, so we settled for Bisquick biscuits, since I had some Bisquick from the English store in Waterloo.

So we started our cooking off with the stuffing and the pies. Talia went to work cutting up a baguette, and I began peeling apples. Which, out of the eight that I had, only one was a tart apple. But that's ok. Mikayla was getting the rest of the things together for the stuffing and they were making progress quickly. We were all working very hard and thing were going great. The stuffing was coming along and my pie was looking fantastic. We had originally had a little problem with oven space, but we quickly resolved that and found that it wasn't going to be necessary to go to Mikayla's host grandma's house to bake some things. So I put my pie in right away and since the stuffing was done, Mikayla went straight to the pumpkin mixture that she had made by hand from an actual pumpkin the night before, since pureed pumpkin in a can doesn't seem to exist here either. That pie came along quickly too, and pretty soon we had the apple pie out of the oven and the pumpkin one in.

Then it was chicken time. After a couple calls to Mikayla's mother via Skype, her and Talia figured out what they had to do to prepare the chickens. I stayed out of that whole mess because I have a problem with raw poultry and I can't handle the prospect of salmonella. Yes, I'm insane and yes, I know it. So I got going on the green bean casserole. Pretty soon that was good to go and we were swapping out yams for casserole and got the chickens in too. The yams got peeled and covered in brown sugar and butter, and I started making my own french fried onions, since those don't exist here either. Those got put on the casserole, and then the pumpkin pie went in the oven. Before we knew it, we had yams ready for the oven, chickens baking, two beautiful pies, and a green bean casserole. But there was still so much to do.

We continued to finish the yams, peel potatoes, chop vegetables for salad and mix up Bisquick. At some point in there, too, we had changed and made ourselves pretty for the occasion. Mikayla's host dad came in and checked the chicken for us, and when they were done, he carved them. We were carefully timing everything out for when we had to throw things in the oven to reheat, and when I had to make the mashed potatoes.

Around 7 30, our guests began to show up. But because this is Belgium, everyone had some champagne and snackage before the meal. We didn't end up eating until after eight. But we had a little disaster before that...

In an attempt to reheat the gravy that Mikayla had made, the flour in the gravy had somehow cooked and our gravy became this lumpy, disgusting substance. We tried everything to fix it, but nothing worked. We even scraped out some of the extra and had another batch, but that got screwed up in an attempt at reheating also. So we didn't have gravy at our Thanksgiving dinner either. But we couldn't worry about that too much. We took all of the food out to the beautifully set table, and sat down to eat. We explained everything, and all of our guests tried all of our food. And the verdict? They loved it! They really really enjoyed our meal, and so did we. The conversation was good, the ambiance was great, and the food was really delicious, even though it wasn't quite the traditional Thanksgiving dinner that we're used to in the States. The only difference was that they didn't completely stuff themselves and then flop down on the couch to undo the top button on their pants, though I probably could have if I wasn't worried about cultural differences...

We cleared away the plates and brought out the pies. And those were a huge hit!! I was pleasantly surprised to see how much everyone loved the pumpkin pie. It was a total success. After we were all finished eating and talking and laughing, Talia and Mikayla and I cleaned up, and then we took a few pictures, said our goodbyes, and now I'm here and it's almost 1am and I'm so exhausted I'm falling asleep at my computer.

I hope you enjoyed by Thanksgiving post, because I did!

What am I thankful for? This crazy experience in BELGIUM!!!

A Wonderful Weekend With Mlle Burnside!!!

Well it is Monday. Thursday, Courtney came, from France, to visit me!!! And let me tell you, we had an absolute blast!

The fun started Thursday afternoon, when I met Courtney at the airport around 3pm. As soon as we saw each other, we ran up to each other and, disregarding European tradition, gave each other a huge hug. But one wasn't enough. We had TWO giant hugs! Which, I have to say, I've been needing for a while now. It was just so wonderful to see someone that I've known for more than two and a half months. No offense, friends of Belgium, but I really needed someone from home. I think my host mom thought I was nuts. But I introduced them and everything and then we were off, back to my house.

On the hour long car ride back home, Courtney and I talked about school and life and just everything in general. We spoke some French and some English and discovered that we're at about the same level of French speaking, which we were both pretty relieved about. Once we got home, Courtney and I headed up to my room to drop off her bag, and my host mom left for a bit to go do... something which escapes my mind. Regardless, we made up her bed and I showed her around and then I realized that I never ate lunch. Of course, it's four o'clock already, but I really needed to eat. So we headed down to kitchen and I made myself eggs in a nest with cheese and Courtney and I sat the kitchen table and just talked each others' ears off for the next couple hours. We talked about our families, news from back home, deep stuff, the usual.

Eventually my host mom got back and drove Courtney and I into Hannut for dinner and some Belgian culture. We ate at the good old Mister Patate, and we ordered the giant, artery clogging "Baguette au Mister Patate". Which is that same sandwich from a couple posts earlier. I'm sure you all remember. The baguette with two hamburgers cut in half and stuffed in there with lettuce, french fried onions, and cocktail sauce. We also got two small fries and I had a water. Which was tiny and cost me an outrageous amount of money, but that's ok. We soon found that we really should have ordered one fry, because a small is not a small. But we split the sandwich and ate our fries and all was good. I felt bad throwing away so many fries, but it was really just too much fattening food. Again, I wouldn't say that sandwich is particularly amazing, but it was a fantastic way to show her real, true Belgian culture! :)

After our meal, we headed over to the Copain, as is normal, and sat ourselves down on the super comfy couches. It just so happened that a few of my friends from school happened to be there too. And of course, they were the crazy ones. So Courtney got to meet my truly insane friends, who kinda hit on her, but that's ok! It was a super fun time. I ordered her one of my favorites, and we just sat around and spoke French with our (new for her) friends. Eventually, Talia came to meet us, and then slowly but surely, the Belgians began trickling in. Around ten, they all left to go to a Discoteque, and Courtney and I took the opportunity to walk around the town a bit. I showed her my school, the places we hang out, and where we sat in the middle of the town, sipping champagne out of plastic cups for Aymeric's birthday. We got back to the Copain right on time for my host mom to pick us up, and headed back to my house for a good night's sleep to be ready for the rest of our wonderful weekend!

The next morning, we woke up decently early, got ready, ate breakfast, and caught a train out of Waremme to spend the day in Liège! We spent the 30 minutes train ride doing what we do best, talking. Upon arrival in Liège, we caught a bus to the center of town, and then began our crazy shopping adventures! Because we are both poor, we did not focus too much on shopping just to buy whatever we saw. We had a couple missions, a present for her boyfriend and a dress for her, but mostly, we just wanted to have fun. So we quickly came up with the brilliant idea to copy outfits on mannequins exactly and have our own little fashion show in the dressing rooms, complete with sneakily taking pictures of our insane outfits, and mocking European fashion a bit... And yes, I confess, this was all with the intention of creating a bomb scrapbook spread when we got back to the States... Crazy, aren't we?

Soon our plan to copy mannequins became just dressing weirdly and creating a montage of this furry vest trend that has hit Europe by storm. We ignored the weird looks we got from people as we took our crazy picks into the dressing rooms, complete with shoes and accessories. We stealthily took pictures of our outfits, sometimes waiting ten or fifteen minutes for people to leave. Yes, we are that committed to scrapbooking.

Eventually, we decided that food was a necessity, and paused our adventure for some serious refueling. Since I don't know the food of Liège very well, we just stopped at a corner bakery and got some pieces of chicken pizza with veggies. Cheap and delicious :) But we couldn't stop there, because regardless of whether or not I know the food, I do know the waffles, and it was imperative that Courtney tasted the best waffles in Liège. So we stopped at my favorite waffle place and each got that waffle that I talk about all the time. You know, the one stuffed with chocolate? And needless to say, she really did find it to be the best thing she had ever eaten. Mission accomplished! Well... one of them at least. We then continued on our shopping antics, and we did end up finding the perfect present for her boyfriend. Which I will not reveal, in case he for some reason stumbles upon my blog and reads this :P We even stopped in a SuperDry, which is probably the most American store I have seen in Europe so far. But it's ridiculously expensive. So what did we do? We put together the most American outfits that we could, and added up the prices.

My outfit added up to be 443 Euros. Not joking. Here's the breakdown: Tank top, 39. Jeans, 95. Sweater, 95. Sweater over, 99. Coat, 115. Ridiculous. But I'm not going to lie, I really liked that sweater...

After we were shopped out, we decided to check out the "Foire" that was taking place in the heart of Liège. Basically, it was a street fair. We walked through it once, surveying what we had. There were tons of stands selling food, fries, waffles, crepes, candy apples, chocolates, etc. Then there were some rides and some games and a fun house or two. We paid attention to what we saw, deciding what we wanted to do and spend our money on, because things were not cheap.

But before we did that, we headed over to the GB grocery store quickly to grab Courtney some chocolate covered waffles to take home with her, since that is the closest you can get to a true Belgian waffle without buying one from a street stand. We also bought some pears and a couple drinks since we were parched and it was cheaper than buying anything from a restaurant. Of course, we thought we were absolute geniuses for coming up with this plan. But, this is Europe. And you know what? Europeans like using glass bottles with lids that do not twist off. So we had a dilemma. There we are, sitting on a bus stop bench, eating our pears, unable to open our bottles. We tried everything! Keys, rings, everything. Eventually, we had to go back to the store and buy a bottle opener. But no, we couldn't buy just one, we ended up buying a pack of three, because it was cheaper. So now, we each have a bottle opener and we have an extra, if anyone is interested.

After that little adventure, we went back to Foire to commence our decisions on activities. We decided to ride the carousel with the young children. Yes, we are little kids and heart :) After that, we decided to leave the Foire for a little while and get some dinner. So, we headed over to one of my favorite pizza restaurants and got a Hawaiian pizza with pineapple and ham, which we split. We then went BACK to the Foire to get our desserts before heading to the train station. Courtney had tasted one, and couldn't resist. She got a waffle. But not just any waffle. She got the king of waffles. A huge Brussels-style waffle, covered in chocolate, and topped with three dollops of chocolate whipped cream, and three of vanilla. Then more chocolate. And then strawberries. And they wrapped it up in, get this, a little blue box. Direct quote from Courtney: "It's like the Tiffany's of waffles!!"

I searched all over that Foire for the Speculoos crepes that I had seen a sign for. But I didn't see them anywhere. So I ended up getting a candy apple since I've never had one, and they don't seem to know what caramel apples are here. Which is a shame. But they call them "pomme d'amour", which I think it lovely :) It means "apple of love".

So we headed back to the train station, and sat and ate our treats. I tried that waffle of Courtney's and oh baby. We'll never be able to eat Eggos again. Oh and my candy apple was pretty good too. We caught the train home, my host mom picked us up, and we went home and hit the sack to be ready, because the weekend was only halfway over.

Saturday was our Brugge day. We got up nice and early to catch and 8:30 train out of Waremme. We met up with Talia and got on the train, and at Landen, Aymeric joined us, and we all rode that train for about two and a half hours to get to Brugge. But it went fairly quickly as we were talking and joking and just enjoying each others' company. Once we got there, we relied on Aymeric to get us into the heart of the city, as he was the one who spoke French and Dutch. Turns out, he had only been there once before, like me, and didn't know where he was going. So he stopped a few people on the street, who were very nice and pointed us in the right direction. It took us about twenty minutes to get into town, and right away, what do we decide to do? Eat.

We stopped at a frites stand and got some fries with sauce and just sat on benches in the Grand Place and ate our food. Courtney loves Belgian frites. But then again, who doesn't?

We then started walking again, and since I was never able to get the Speculoos crepe, we stopped in at a little bakery and I made Courtney get a little gingerbread man, who was actually not gingerbread, but Speculoos. Belgium strikes again! She loved it! Plus one more point for Belgium.

We continued walking a bit and then Courtney and I decided that we should be touristy and do some sight-seeing. So we took the opportunity to take a boat tour. We paid about seven euros each, and climbed in a little boat with a bunch of other people and our guide took us along all the canals that run through Brugge. It was absolutely gorgeous.

The thing about Brugge is that it's a very touristy area. So everyone that works there speaks a million languages. Our boat driver said everything in English, then French, then Dutch, then German. So luckily for us, we were able to understand. But we spoke English the majority of the day, though I seemed to be unable to say "thank you" and always said "merci".

By this time, it was time to find a restroom. Which is practically impossible. We ended up wandering into a random building, and when we went in, a man handed us a couple of flyers about a food show and told us that if we paid for one, we got the second free and we could taste everything. We didn't really listen, but took the flyer anyway and found the bathroom for Courtney. But by the time she came out, we had decided to look into this thing. So we talked to the woman at the desk, and we found out that for five euros, we could go in and sample all the food. So we figured, why not? So we paid our five euros (2.50 each) and entered into the show. What it ended up being was a bunch of stands with people selling their food and offering free samples. So we went around and tried some different meats and cheeses. One woman was sampling soup broths, some were sampling chocolates, one had mustards, and one man had crepes. Everyone immediately spoke Dutch to us, but we always politely asked them to switch to English. Which they did seamlessly. I was jealous. We had some conversations with some of them, which was fun. We were slightly disappointed at the end, because there was not much, and it only took us maybe ten minutes to go around the whole thing.

But then on the way out, a woman stopped us and asked us if we had gone up to the second floor already. We both just stopped and said, second floor? Turns out there was a whole other room and whole other floor that we had missed! So we turned ourselves around and that's where the real fun started. We had conversations with the vendors, both in French and English, and sampled some really fantastic stuff, including champagne, crepes, full size waffles, more cheese and soup, breads, butters, candies, etc. One man who offered us soup right away asked us, "Are you here by accident?" And he said in that way and we knew that he knew that we were not there to buy things, just to get some (almost) free food. But he laughed and joked with us and told us that by the end of it, we wouldn't be hungry and we would be drunk. Which was hysterical. And when we went to another stand, the man was offering little samples of cocktails and when we came up to the stand, he just looked at us and said, "You're drinking soup?", with that kind of "really..." look on his face. And he shook his head, and then let us choose which cocktail we wanted to sample. At one stand, we tried Turkish delight also. Which was good, but I have to say, after watching Edmund betray his family for it in the Chronicles of Narnia, I expected it to be better. By the end of that, we were stuffed full of delicious food, and very satisfied with our 2.50 meal. All because Courtney had to pee...

After the food show, we walked around the town, going into souvenir shops, buying postcards, and meeting a bunch of Americans. It was like a radar. When I heard American English, everything had to stop and we had to go over and talk to them. And I bought Courtney some of my favorite Belgian chocolate. We walked through a pretty path by the water for a while, and eventually ended up back in the center of town where we went to work looking for a dress for Courtney. We did find a stunning pick for her, which again, I will not disclose in case Chris is reading this ;) And I found THE cutest pair of shoes ever. They were 85 euros. And I would have bought them too. Thank God they didn't have my size...

Around six, Courtney and I and Talia and Aymeric decided it was dinner time. So we went to a little Italian place and they split a pizza and Courtney and I split pasta. It was quite delicious. After dinner, we, of course, stopped at a waffle stand and the girls got Brugge style waffles. Because let's face it, they're different, and the ones at the food show were Liège style! I actually prefer Brugge waffles. And yes, they were totally delicious. So Courtney ate four waffles in two days. And she only had a few of the prepackaged ones to get her through the rest of her life... I don't know what she's going to do! We're addicted.

We caught an 8:30 train back home, and I ended up sleeping on the train. But from what I heard, some interesting stuff went down with some Scottish people...

Benoit picked up me and Courtney and Talia at Waremme. Aymeric had gotten off at Landen. We dropped Talia off and her house, and Courtney and I went back to mine. We headed right upstairs and stayed up until 2am talking, swapping pictures, and sharing YouTube videos, cause that's what we do. Then Sunday morning came around and we were absolutely exhausted. We got up around 7am, got ready quickly, ate breakfast and got out the door for the hour long car ride to the airport so Courtney could go back to France. We saw her off with huge hugs, and my host mom and I went back home. I proceeded to sleep for a few hours, trying to ignore the huge car race that was happening around our house, eat lunch, sleep some more, and then work on my novel. Then the internet went all funky and I spiratically (sp?) Skyped with my family.

This weekend was an amazing huge success! Courtney and I had the time of our lives, and it was absolutely wonderful to see someone from back home. It was a blast, and it took me a good hour to write about it! It's probably the longest blog post yet, but it was totally that awesome! Wonderful, wonderful weekend with Mlle Burnside!!

The French Are Coming!

Well, more like Courtney is coming... And she's American. But she comes tomorrow and I am so excited! We are picking her up at the airport tomorrow around 3pm and we are going to spend the whole weekend together. It's going to be really nice to see someone that I know from the States I think. I have Talia and Mikayla, but it is going to be great to see someone that I have been friends with for years instead of months... No offense guys, it's just not the same.

Today I went to an outlet mall with my host mom, her goddaughter Philipine, and Talia. Karine wanted to take Philipine to pick something out for her birthday. The thing about outlet malls here is that the discount prices are not all that discounted... All the stores are pretty high end and not really my style. So needless to say, I didn't buy anything. Talia and I just went into each, looked through the very limited inventory, and left without even picking anything up. So yes, that was a bit disappointing, considering I really still need a coat. But the walking was nice because the weather was decent today and Talia and I had good conversation. Not to mention that we all got ice cream also. Well, gelato. I got tiramisu flavor. Yum! But it was shocking at the first bite how sweet it was. I'm going to get so fat here...

I also received a package from home today. It was fantastic! It included my Dazzler sweatpants, my sheet music, peanut butter, Halloween candy, and some other stuff. My daddy wrote me novel of a letter, and that was wonderful to read. I really miss my daddy...

Talia is spending the night tonight. We made dinner (mac n cheese and Hawaiian oven pizza). Right now, she is raiding my closet while I continue writing my novel. I'm progressing well I think. I have about eight pages and 4,250 words. 27 days, 45,750 words to go. But pretty soon, we'll be crashing for the night, as COURTNEY IS COMING TOMORROW!!!

Ok, excitement building. Must sleep. Goodnight!

Novels And Films

I do not have school this week. This week, the entire country of Belgium is school free :) Honestly, I could not tell you why we don't have school this week, but if I could, well, I would.

Today, I went to see my first film in a movie theater in Belgium. I met up with Brittany around 2:30 in Liège and my host mom drove us into the center of town. We then went to go find the theater that Brittany had looked up online. It was called the Souvenière. I thought I had seen a sign with the name when we were driving, so we went that direction. We found the sign with the same name, but when we looked at the building, it was dingy and dirty, slightly rundown and not very promising. Not to mention there were papers all over the door saying something about a sports center. Realizing that I had been mistaken, we asked a Belgian for directions. She was very nice and showed us the way. It wasn't very far, and on the way there we noticed that the street that we were on was called Rue de Souvenière. So then it made sense why there were would be multiple things with that name.

Once we found the theater, we went in and attempted to purchase two tickets for "Despicable Me", which is a brand new release here in Belgium. And of course, it is in French here and is called "Moi, Moche et Mechant". Which translates literally to "Me, Ugly and Wicked". That made me laugh.

Anyways, we get up to the front of the line, and the woman at the register calls out that there are only five places left for "Moi, Moche et Mechant" (it just doesn't roll off the tongue the way "Despicable Me" does, does it?). So I figured we'd be fine and I bought my ticket. Little did we realize that at the same moment, a family of four was purchasing the rest at the next register over. So when Brittany went to buy hers, there were no more left. Sad and defeated, we weighed our options and finally decided to see "Social Network". It's a movie about the history of Facebook. And it was going to be in English. Plus the ticket for that one was cheaper, so once I exchanged my ticket, I got some money back so that was a definite bonus.

We now had an hour to kill, so we went to go find some food. We went into the café that was attached to the theater, but after realizing that we had no idea how that worked, since nobody was coming to our table to ask what we wanted, we decided to leave and walk around. We got a piece of pizza somewhere and then went over to my favorite waffle place where we split the pizza and a chocolate stuffed waffle. We then headed back to the theater and went in for our movie. It actually turned out to be quite good. It was in English, with French and Dutch subtitles. Ever so often, I would read the French ones, and understand them. But the thing was, they didn't match up very well to the words that were actually being spoken. Again, this goes back to the whole issue of there being much more expression in the English language. But I'm not going to get into that rant again. I think another big part of it was that the actors spoke very fast, and it would be almost impossible to keep up with the movie if they tried to put everything into written words. But the movie was very funny in English, and there were many times where Brittany and I would find something hilarious because we understood the American jokes and such and nobody else in the theater would laugh. But that is ok. We had fun!

After the movie, Brittany and I made our way back to the train station, she took her bus home and I caught my train. I came home, ate dinner, and then came up to my room where I continued working on my next big project:

My book.

Yes, I am writing a novel. Why, do you ask? Because it is National Novel Writing Month. And I have signed up on nanowrimo.org where they challenge you to write a novel in a month. Yes, 30 days, 50,000 words. That is the challenge. And I have become an official participant. So far I have about 1700 words. I'm not entirely sure what my plot line is yet, but when I read the guidelines, they said that the writer shouldn't worry too much about it. The plot line will come. It's about just writing. Cranking out a novel. It doesn't have to be perfect. They encourage you to muffle your inner perfectionist and editor and just write. This is about quantity, not quality. It's a first draft. And with the way it's going so far, I actually quite like my first 4 pages :) I think if it continues like this, I could have a decent novel by the time it's done! I'm quite excited!

But I must sleep soon. Bonne nuit.

La Toussaint

Today is November 1st. In the States, this is "All Saints Day". Here, it translates to "La Toussaint". This is the day where we remember all of those people who have died and we celebrate their lives.

In honor of this day, I went with my host family to my host grandparents' house. But this time it was the parents of my host dad. I really did not want to go, though, because last night I found myself really not feeling well during dinner, to the point where I stopped eating entirely because my body was screaming at me. I went up to bed and when I woke up this morning, I still wasn't feeling well. It was a really weird stomach ache that came in waves. Just the thought of doing things or going places or eating (cause I was hungry) caused my body to yell NO at me. So I wasn't feeling like going to a lunch where there would be plenty of food that just looking at it would make me queasy... But I went anyways, met the family, and had some smalltalk conversation before the meal. The crowd consisted of me and my host parents and brothers, my host dad's parents, uncle, and a cousin (who, by the way, was wearing PURPLE PANTS) and his girlfriend. I spent a lot of time talking to her. She was very nice and we talked about a lot of different things. It was kind of hard for me though, because everyone kept offering me wine and food, but the very thought of it made me feel queasy. And I felt like I was being very rude, but nobody seemed to understand that I just really did not feel well. Although my host grandmother did give me some sort of herbal remedy medication...

Luckily, by the time we were ready to eat, I was feeling decent enough to take small portions and eat a full meal. We started off with a vegetable soup. Then we had a sort of meatloaf that had bacon on top of it, cauliflower, another sort of vegetable who's name escapes me (we do not have that in Parma, Ohio), cooked pears with a sort of cherry jelly in the middle of them, and of course, frites. Overall, the meal was very good. We finished it with a cake that my host dad had made that had pears in it. That was delicious, as usual.

After dinner, we spent a little time talking, walking around the garden, and trying not to freeze to death in the cold Belgian air. Then most of us went over to the church around 3pm for the Stations of the Cross. I understood nothing, but I recognized the Hail Mary and said that prayer a few times to myself. We then went over to the cemetery, and that's where I about cracked.

Cemeteries here are so different from in the States. Obviously, they serve the same purpose. But walking into that cemetery, first of all, it was quite a bit smaller. But the graves were not. Not by any means. Every single one was raised out of the ground, with giant plaques coming out of the ground, intricately carved with the persons name and different figures and designs. Most were marble and some had huge cross statues as well. Some had the pictures of the people on the tombstone as well. They were huge and beautiful and detailed and just overwhelming. Not to mention that every single grave was COVERED in flowers. Just covered. And I don't mean people came by and dropped a single rose. I mean HUGE bouquets of flowers everywhere. People had also put plaques with messages on them on the graves. It was astounding. And nobody in that cemetery was crying. Everyone was having conversation, smiling, and praying for their loved ones. It almost made ME cry, because it was just seeing how much the people really do care about the people that they lost. They have mourned the loss, and now they celebrate the life that they lived. It was amazing. I can't even really describe how it made me feel because it was all just so new to me. I am used to going to cemeteries, walking around quietly, solemnly, grieving. Crying. Searching through tiny little stones that are flat against the ground, maybe with the occasional forgotten flower tossed towards it. This was so far from that... It truly was a celebration of life and remembrance. Overwhelming. And beautiful.

And now, I sleep well, knowing that the ones that I have lost, that I love, are happy in heaven with God. And I think fondly of them, and celebrate their lives.