260!

hey world! afraid i'm going to cut it short tonight because im really tired. this morning i went to dutch class and i think it gets more and more boring every day! today we learned about cell phones, what the heck. we took a quiz with questions like "do you have a cell phone" and then did a word find, yippeeeee fun. after that i came home and had lunch, then tried for a little while to work on my rotary presentation again. ahhh im SO SICK OF THAT THING! i will be very happy, and probably nervous, when i give it next tuesday. i got so sick of it i tried to take a nap, but ended up laying there for over and hour and sleeping for like 20 minutes in total. today was "crepe wednesday" (it switches occasionally with waffle wednesday) so for lunch we had like warm stuff and dinner was a sandwich (or i guess i had soup..) and PANNENKOEKEN (literally pancakes, but..they're crepes. trust me on this one. american pancakes = so not the same)!! i finished my soup, ate an awesome pancake with nutella and then decided i wanted to try making them myself. it was so fun! maybe i should open a store, haha. making thin pancakes is way cooler than making the thick flap jack stuff! sooo after that i was back to work on my presentation, which my lovely host sister reviewed through email and gave me lots of comments i could use/switch up with my wording of things. i ended up spending like two hours on the couch between both of my host parents with my computer sitting there helping me and "perfecting" it ;) i still have an hour or more to go with writing more things and making a few more slides, but then the goal is to practice practice practice this weekend so i can pronounce all this nonsense a little better. dutch can be a mouthful eh! but now i'm going to go to sleep...tired tired tired! thanks for reading! and whoops...happy one day late 37 weeks in belgium to me!

259!

wow, another day another blog. it seems like days are going faster and faster now. hard to imagine that two weeks from now (this exact moment as im writing this, actually..if all goes well that is) i'll be arriving in the sioux falls airport and going back to my life as i knew it at home. like i said before, i'm trying not to count down..but look how fast it's all gone. here i was 9 months ago, writing my first few blog posts that said the same exact things as now only in reverse. laying in my own bed again, still having to pack my suitcases, another adventure in my journey of life. every day is an adventure if you make it one! home will always be home, belgium will always be belgium. 259 days in belgium, and 2 weeks left. crazy. so enough of that nonsense, more about today! this morning i (reluctantly) went to dutch class..and we had a test. LOVELY.(not). actually it wasnt that bad! the class complained a lot though, because we went on a walk around town for like an hour then we had to come back and write about it using the past tense. i found it easy, and a walking was sort of refreshing although it was really windy. but some people were just party poopers! so hopefully i will get my test back tomorrow and let you know how i did. i think it was my last test in dutch class, ah! after that i didn't do much. i came home, because there was no rotary today. usually when there's a rotary meeting it lasts forever and then i go to school for like one class or not at all, because every other tuesday they don't have a last lesson. but when i got home i wasn't that hungry yet, because im sort of sick of bread and it's cold outside. soooo...my host mom showed me how to make soup! actually, i asked her what to do and then experimented myself. its really common (or from what i can tell it is..) to always have soup here. before dinner, after school, lunch..or whatever. but its not like chicken noodle soup, its like..freshly made vegetable soup. i remember my first host mom made really amazing pumpkin soup..ahh tasty! basically what you do is..take every vegetable from the veggie drawer in the fridge, wash them and slice them then put them in a soup pot on the stove..fry them a little then boil them for a while in water, add some bouillon then MIX IT ALL TOGETHER with a crazy soup mixer thing that makes it like baby food. actually, it tastes really good, and its relatively healthy as well. but what was unhealthy was eating cookies as i came home around midnight tonight...whoops? am i really going to try and study nutrition next year? haha! i'll work on that this summer maybe...or not. anyways! tonight my host mom and brother and i went to a really funny play! my was-going-to-be third host dad (but now i leave in may..) was in it and it was about a guy who found a suitcase full of money. parts of it were sort of hard to understand because they were speaking a flat ugly dialect of dutch from Turnhout. it's funny to hear but its really mumble-y so if i didn't listen hard enough then i didn't catch some jokes, but overall it was cool! what else for today...i decided to try washing my hair with bottled water, because i'm soooo sick of hard water here. it really didn't make a big difference, just a nice way to waste a couple euro's on a bottle of Evian. apparently the movie stars do it when they're on vacation, or so google says anyways. what i did notice though is that my hair is already getting longer..they may have weird water here, but now it grows like crazy. see!

but like i said. everything will be weird when i go back home. water, language, people, weather, absolutely everything. hmmmmm. love you all, thanks for reading!

258!

hello! day 258, what a nice, silly, surprising day. started out the morning by getting on facebook (its how i inspire myself to wake up..knowing that i can sit on facebook for 10 minutes before i have to get out of bed, haha horrible habit i know), anyways i turned on my computer and almost everybody's status was about osama bin laden. now that is REALLY weird news to hear when you're just waking up in another country. it's definitely a good thing that they got him, but although that solves everything that's not going to happen by just killing one guy. but what do i know, i hate talking politics. i just know that as an exchange student its weird news to see on facebook. soooo after that i ate breakfast and went to dutch class. i thought we had a test today, but actually its tomorrow. i would have rather had it today then it would be over with! but now i get to look forward to it tomorrow. after that i went with my host mom to tell my school i'm leaving (which they seemed less than interested in hearing, not even sure if they knew i went there..haha ironically my last day is friday the 13th, weird), then i figured out how to get a new belgian debit card for my last week because i lost my other one. whoopsies jamie! then i went to english class at my "real school" and it was also boring. everyone had to give a "book report" about a book they read in english and almost nobody had read anything. i can never imagine if i had to read a book for spanish class or something, that sounds impossible. but this is still a lot different. whatever. after school i went for a little while with my host dad to the big church in town to hear about the newly repaired organ. it's huge! inside there are over 2,500 different pipes! the guy told us about how they just spent the past year repairing/restoring it and it was interesting but a lot of technical words i didn't understand. oh well. here's a picture anyways.

the organ was cool and all, but the coolest part of my day was definitely something else. on sunday my host mom came home and said "jamie won the easter bunny"..and i was really confused, i thought..yeah, i just misunderstood her. then she said it again, and then a 3rd time in english. nope, i understood alright. but how is that possible? then she pulled out some yellow tickets that she got from the baker and told me that she won a giant chocolate bunny! of course i found this hilarious, but by the time we wanted to get it the bakery was closed. so today we went and got our rabbit. i can't stop laughing at it. its really a giant chocolate bunny. almost 5 pounds of delicious belgian chocolate!

what a pity that he would get smashed in my suitcase! guess we'll just have to make lots of hot chocolate or something. haha, thats all for today. thanks for reading!

257!

hello blog world!! glad you're reading on such a bright and cheery day like today. since the weather is just so darn nice, and since it makes me so darn giddy, i have a new blog layout! it's way better than the other one, in the sense that its colorful and fun and the other was just..pictures. i hope you like it as much as i do! but yes. happy may day as well! although belgians dont celebrate the first of may like we do with little baskets and playing ding dong ditch, it was still a nice day. back to business. today i woke up late because i was up too late last night..typical eh. then i cleaned my room a little and eventually made my way downstairs and had a banana. then i came back to my room, procrastinated on facebook and whatnot, then went outside for some belgian fries and hamburgers for lunch. if i could combine the hamburgers from america and the fries from here, my life would be perfect. actually, my life is already perfect..considering perfection is just a personal perspective of what you want it to be! anywho, i love being able to sit outside eating lunch with such a lovely host family and lovely weather! its hard to imagine that it is really so cold at home still!! you poor midwesterners. if i could send the sun i would! but other than eating and procrastinating (my two favorite hobbies), i also worked really really hard on my rotary presentation today. i'm happy to say that the first draft of everything is complete! check out my happyfaced webcam picture..

if that doesn't look like a girl whose completed something than i dont know what is! haha, anyways. the powerpoint is 90% finished, just a couple pictures i need to find still such as one of my dog (hint hint mom go take a picture and email it to me) and then it shall be finished. and my "essay" or "speech" to go with it (which will hopefully turn into just a guideline if i can memorize/ramble on eventually..) is also complete but needs major corrections! i feel like my dutch writing is not as good as my speaking, but thats normal. with a new language you usually are first good at understanding, then speaking, then reading, then writing..but i still think i did a good job. heck, its an entire presentation in dutch. with or without lots of errors im content! so this week my family will help me correct it and make it a little better then i can practice in the weekend then next tuesday i give it at the lunch meeting of the rotary! i'll try to get someone to film it because that makes for some good memories i think. last thing for today is a picture of course! a while back i bought these two little dutch flower pot things at the sunday garage sale type market. and when i decided to mail a box of winter things home, i stuck a few surprises such as cookies and the little flower things in there too. sooo my mom got the box and although its really cold still, three little "may flowers" peeked through the cold ground and she put them in her new little dutch pots :)

so happy may day everyone! getting a picture like this is way better than any may day basket filled with cheap candy that i could ever receive would be! goodnight.

256!

hey reader! happy day 256 in belgium to me! and happy reading to you! soooo another busy, decent weathered (that cant be correctly said, is it?) day here! this morning i got up early and went to a rotary/exchange student thing. it was actually a meeting for the outbounds (people who are leaving) for next year, but a few of us that are here and a few who are already back for a year or so now came with as well for "extra information" and whatnot. truth be told, one girl talked a lot about her experience in colombia, the councilors talked, and the rest of us sort of sat there waiting for it to be lunch time. well eventually it was lunch time, then we ate sandwiches and came back home. exciting eh? actually, i said one thing as they were talking about the rules (5 Ds)..they were like, in america you cant drink till you're 18. and i was like..um no thats wrong, its strictly 21. nobody believes me! because everybody here does it from like..12. whatever. but its cool to see the people that are going places and stuff! i remember doing that last year. an exchange year is such an exciting and sometimes stressful and long process to prepare for! its not like you just hop on a plane and leave. there's the plane tickets, visa, host families, school, blah blah blah. rotary does a good job figuring most of it out, but for the record...applying for a visa SUCKS. ok enough negativity. off subject rambling tends to be my specialty. after that i came home, sat outside for a solid 10 minutes, then went and got ready for the night already! tonight i went with my host parents, brother and sister to an opera in antwerp! it was awesome! it was from a flemish opera company that my host sister is interning at. it was in a really pretty hall...

and it was in GERMAN! with dutch subtitles on a board thing. between that and the english overview in the program, i could pretty much follow all of it. lots of..opera singing! haha. but the orchestra was suuuper good, and the stage was this double circular turning thing that we got to go back and see after the show. anyways, it was really nice of them to take me with and i'm very glad i got to see it! i think my favorite part of today was when we got home around midnight (the opera was 4 hours long!) and still were a little hungry...so we just start eating WAFFLES! haha belgium is awesome. thanks for reading, goodnight!