109!

hi blog readers! one hundred and nine days in belgium today. nice sleeping in saturday..followed by some early afternoon cereal and tv watching! eventually i wrapped my host brothers birthday present, washed my bed sheets, attempted to clean my room, and most importantly..made banana muffins!! the muffins are really good, the room improved a little, sheets are fresh, and i think the host brother liked his new stick bag and brushes for drumming..at least i hope he did anyways! tonight we went to a restaurant since it was his birthday..it was really fun! it started out only normal but all the sudden SINTERKLAAS and two of his black slaves show up..awesome!

i can't explain it very well but if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas it will tell you all about him. basically, he's the dutch equivalent of santa (although they have santa too?) that comes the night of the 5th of december and gives you candy and chocolate or something!! since i'm american and have never seen this guy before, i wanted to take a picture with him..which of course he was happy to do. but then someone said something about me having to sit on his lap so all the sudden here i am, in some restaurant in belgium, sitting on sinterklass' lap..life is definitely more exciting here, no?maybe life is just what you make it, i haven't quite figured out which way it works. but i think he's pretty cool..especially when he shows up randomly at restaurants and gives you crackers (not sure what thats about..) then i think he probably had a beer with his black slaves then moved on to the next place. as if that wasn't cool enough..we had lots of good food too! champagne (it was a birthday after all..), cheeseball things (i don't know how to say it correctly in english without making it sound like carnival food), a big steak that i couldn't finish..with fries of course, and ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert. woah lucky us! after dinner it was still funny because my host brother kept throwing snow balls at the car. apparently for there to be like 3-4 inches of snow right now is just ridiculously uncommon..go figure right? the girl from south dakota comes and gets a really harsh winter..hah! i don't think its that bad, in fact, i kind of like it. but it is cold, thats not so nice. anyways, after we got home we made a snow man!!! it was so awesome, making a snowman in the dark! its probably the biggest snowman i've ever helped make..i can only take credit for the head, half of the middle, and the goggles on his face..the giant bottom, buttons, and nose were all from vincent. we even had to lift the middle part up on a ladder to set it on the bottom..it was so heavy!! he's also wearing a bucket as a hat but i'm not sure if you can see that. anyways, it was just really nice to make a snowman. i think i probably got really annoying because i kept laughing! so that was today, i hope your day was good as well! because we all know that it's always nice to have a good day...that being said, its time for bed (oh man i'm rhyming), so..goodnight!