54!

hello all! today was a nice sunday in belgium. after waking up sometime around noon we had our typical sunday brunch of rolls and whatnot only this time we made eggs too, it was neat! so after breakfast/lunch we got ready and i went with my host mom (katrien!) to Lier. it was maybe a half hour or so away in the car and it was a really cute little town! i took a few pictures while walking around and then we stopped and had a beer, haha..cherry of course! it was nice to enjoy the sun because after today everything is back to the mid-50s..winter here we come, great. so here are a few pictures from today, i'm not sure how to explain what everything is exactly but they're just pictures of a typical town in belgium, i guess!

doesn't it look like fall here?!? pretty!

what's weird about belgium is that its crowded, but not like a big city....so there will be traffic jams, small cars, houses close together, but nothing like sky scrapers and stuff. hard to explain i guess..but for the amount of people that live in this tiny country you don't feel that it is very industrial or something. anyways after we got back from walking around Lier my family and i went to the chinese restaurant! chinese here is cool because it's fancy chinese compared to the kings wok buffet in brookville! it's like guadalajara fajitas meets hu-hot or something. take a look!

now i am going to shower and go to bed..another full week ahead of me. definitely looking forward to the fall break in the beginning of november!! can you believe i've been here almost two months? crazy. thanks for reading and talk to you tomorrow, bloggers!

53!

today was a much-needed fun, crazy, beautiful saturday. i'm wondering if i wrote that first sentence correctly, but i'm not sure..english is not a priority at the moment! anyways. early morning today..woke up at 5:15 to get ready, eat breakfast, pack a lunch, and bike to the train station. of course it was still dark and very chilly! luckily there are lights on my bike, and i used the cool flashlight Hartz gave me when i walked outside to find the darn bike and open the door to get the silly thing outside..not so easy to shove a bike through 2 doors when its almost pitch black outside. but nonetheless i biked quickly to warm up and made it to the 6:45 train.

when i got to the brussels station, of course i couldn't resist a little chocolate croissant and a mini espresso, right? who can blame me!!!! I'M IN EUROPE! instead of the freshman fifteen, i'll take the Belgian 15...(no metric system use here please)!

oh i suppose i should mention where i was going on this early morning train..today there was a rotary exchange student gathering thing in Namen in the south of Belgium. it takes 3 trains and about 3 hours to get there, but it was well worth it. we all met and listened to RULES and things about the trips we are able to take through the rotary. personally i am sick of hearing the rules and even more sick of hearing the exceptions to the rules such as.."no drinking. but...you are in europe so go ahead, it wouldn't be right to have cheese and bread without wine, so just don't get drunk"..it is very contradicting and makes it awkward for everyone. anyways, after that we walked around town eating our packed lunches for an hour or so then took a beautiful boat ride for 2 hours. it was beautiful for two reasons. one: the first hour or so i was TERRIBLY motion sick, sitting in the sun, just ate lunch, rocking on a boat with singing latinos..just not my kind of afternoon. two: after taking dramamine there were many pretty houses along the river, such as the ones pictured below.

after the boat ride the day was over for the rotary stuff, so a few friends and i decided to stay and explore the town. a lot of people were going to Brussels but since we are smart we figured you can always easily go to Brussels, so we came all this way so we might as well stay in Namen! plus it was a really fun, clean, cute city and it was sort of refreshing to hear people speak French. we walked around and had some good conversations about life back in the USA, life here, and how we're dealing with it. i was with two other americans and a canadian, but his life appears to be about 80% the same as in the US, so i don't think he cared that the three of us girls were constantly chatting about American things. anyways, after walking around for a few hours we decided we needed a drink! so of course i had my lovely cherry beer at some quaint "cafe":

then after our relaxing drink (haha i sound like my mother or something) we decided to go to PIZZA HUT!!!!! the pizza was really similar to pizza hut at home, and i actually really liked it..but it was very different to eat thick, greasy pizza when i am just getting used to the authentic thin crust stuff we usually eat. b

ut hawaiian pizza is always a favorite of mine so yummy yummy pizza in my tummy, right? one of the better parts of the pizza hut was the PANNA COTTA for dessert..aka unflavored white gelatin with raspberry sauce, but it's still humorous to me that you can get Italian dessert at a pizza hut..belgium is funny sometimes.

sometime while shopping i dropped my phone and the battery fell out. usually not a big deal with my blackberry at home but it is not a good thing here! if you shut down your phone or take the battery out, you need a PIN number to make it work again!! lucky me my pin number was at home on my night stand so my phone didn't work all evening! i was so scared i would have to take the train home alone, and then maybe even miss it because our first train was almost 40 minutes late..but by pure luck i found courtney and manuella (other exchange students from my town) and we got on the last train to Turnhout. they were just coming home from Brussels, and it was some dumb luck that i found them and didn't have to ride trains alone at night with no working cell phone! so i used the self timer and took a picture of us at the station. notice we are all wearing black tights, seems to be a popular trend here. also notice my jacket, my high-quality PLEATHER jacket i bought today. 30 euro, can't complain. real ones are at least 250 euro...so what do you do. i compromised, i guess.

i guess i don't know what else to say about today, other than the fact that i worried my family a little bit when i didn't respond to any of their texts and randomly came home right around 1am! but here i am, alive and well, and i had a very, very nice day. :)

52!

TGIF!!! today was an okay, normal, nothing special friday..but i liked it! i will start by sharing a picture of me wednesday night at my host mom's band practice..i'm sorry i didn't share it earlier, but at least i didn't forget totally!:

anyways, school was painfully boring today. our schedule changed and now i have FRENCH on friday mornings, and the whole time we were there the teacher spoke french. i'm sorry but i don't know dutch, let alone french. to make matters more complicated sometime after french i had german, so i just went to the library. while in the library i returned my checked out copy of J.D. Salinger's "Catcher In The Rye"(which i read in about 4 school days), checked out "The Great Gatsby" and then proceeded to take a nice calm nap. I must mention that the bell at school is not a buzz, a ring, or a humming sound. it is a pleasant 4-toned "dum dum dum dum" sound that is really nice to hear when you wake up from your nap in the library! anyways..after lunch we had gym class, which of course i was dreading! we had to run really far of course and i didn't like it. the only thing pushing me through that class was the fact that i didn't have to be with the other foreign exchange student for two whole hours...you have no idea how much faster i ran when i thought about that! then we had geography and school was done. after school on fridays some of the people in music (all grades) go to the irish pub..so i went with a couple of my friends and had a cherry beer, ha ha! :)..then i came home, looked at some boots online and then my host brother and i biked to the FRITUUR since it is junk food friday. keep in mind the frituur is the place that fries everything, so this is what i ate:

it was a "small" thing of french fries (you should see the big one!), and a bunch of random fried balls! one was cheese, a few chicken, a couple with noodles in them, things like that. isn't belgium fun? and now i am getting ready to go to bed, because i have to be at the train station around 6:30 tomorrow morning..there is a big rotary student event in the south of belgium! thanks for reading and talk to you tomorrow!

51.

day 51. not one of my favorite days here, exactly. almost fell asleep in language class, met my friends for lunch, then proceeded to have a headache the rest of the day. i'm thinking my headache was partly caused by the new kid in my class that i am anything but fond of. something about him just makes me cringe, i'm not sure if its his obscure attitude or arrogance, but i just flat out don't like him. i'm trying to keep an open mind but it is not working!!! anyways, my headache has continued throughout the evening, even after some ibuprofen..so i am going to go to bed. on a positive note, the weather looks pretty mild for the next few days. definitely feels like fall, leaves all over and everything. real school all day tomorrow..and gym class...running about 4-5 miles..GREAT! thanks for reading :)

50!!

day 50 has finally come! i would like to say that so far i have been enjoying myself, learning a lot, and i believe i have finally become comfortable with my surroundings. i'm not sure if time is going slow or fast or if time is really passing at all. belgium is sort of a fantasy land where i am living for this year, and i like it that way. reality will always be back home in brookings but don't take that in a manner which suggests i am not living in the moment here, because that simply is not so...i just don't feel like this quaint belgian life of mine is REAL, concrete, solid, or what have you. i really like it here, so far everyone has been above and beyond nice to me, and i definitely appreciate that. i don't know if i've quite determined what my perspective of this whole adventure is exactly, but i think i'm figuring that out. anyways, what i mean to say is..i am having fun, i like it here, and i think i will have a nice year. moving on now! i have nothing extremely exciting to tell you about today..just that i tried to take a couple pictures to show you what i do every day! i took a picture (with the self timer) while eating cereal..so here you go! now you canfeel like you are here with me every morning while i eat my special K!

after that i get on my bike for about 10-15 minutes, depending how fast i want to go, then i arrive at language class. i also sneakily took a picture of class just to show you what it's like. everyone comes from different places and i am the youngest one there. i am also one of the few with blonde hair and blue eyes..which is a little weird for me. sometimes people ask me why i ever left the USA, because its supposed to be "such a great place"..which it is, undeniably, but belgium is just a temporary stay for me..which also makes me feel a little weird! its hard being a young, blonde, american girl sometimes...hmm!

anyways, after class i usually ride my bike to my real school then continue my day of "learning"..except on wednesdays i only have language class. so today i came home, took a 2 hour nap, watched desperate housewives via iTunes, then ate dinner. we had some kind of sausage which was similar to a ball park frank (haha) and sauerkraut! then there were also mashed potatoes. i really liked it! now i have to go to band practice with my host mother. she is in a pop-rock band with some other people and i am going to play the drums with them. i will blog about that tomorrow probably because it might go pretty late! thanks for reading and happy day 50!!