131!

merry day after christmas! hope you all had a wonderful time yesterday. today we got up earlier than i would prefer (um...before 11), had some cereal, then went to my host mom's sister's house. does that make it a host aunt and uncles house? i have no idea. but there was all the family that was also here yesterday so i guess belgium sure values their family time around the holidays..and in general too i think. so anyways. the kids split away from the adults and went sledding instead of walking in the snow, and it was not as bad as i expected. normally things aren't half as bad as i imagine them to be at first, go figure. anyways! here is me with my "host cousins" i guess you could say...before we were off to do some sledding.

notice the oldschool wooden sleigh..sledding here is like pushing babies is here. traditional. babies usually don't have strollers, they have carriages. as it is with sledding...i've seen so many more people with a little sleigh than a plastic thing, but today we had both. sometimes i even see people pulling their children to school on a sleigh, its ridiculous. so we spent maybe a half hour here then decided it was too boring and moved on to seek better hills. seriously, this hill was like 1/4 the size of larsens hill in brookings!

instead of finding better hills, we found close to nothing and ended up walking for a solid hour in the snow eventually finding our way home. quite a few times i made my host brother pull me on the little sleigh while we were walking, it was slightly humorous...just sleighing my way through a forrest in belgium! so when we got home i was offered to go in the sauna with my host mom and her two sisters. i had been warned the night before that it is no swimsuit-wearing matter, but wasn't fully prepared for what was to come i guess?! now, lets get a little background information here. at home the use of sauna's is pretty limited..there are some at spas, hotels, country clubs and things like that, but as for people having them in their homes its really not common. in fact, most of the time there are even signs that say "bathing suit required"..haha. needless to say, the more-than-casual stripping down was a bit shocking, and the feeling of warmth was as well. i think thats the first time i was actually warm in belgium! but i wimped out and stopped a few minutes early, oh well. but if i learned anything i learned this: europe has no shame. so that was my sauna experience, oh boy! for some reason i just cant picture my own aunts and mother doing that...hahaha wow. tonight we had kebab, it was good and really greasy. typical kebab..yum. but now im home and i need to go to sleep, tomorrow we are going to IKEA in HOLLAND! hooray! goodnight!