114!

thursday, day 114..and i feel really bad telling you that i'm so tired right now! i'm stupid like that, i will sit all day on the computer and put my blog in the back of my mind then finally start writing just as i'm going to bed. i'll try to improve on that someday. but anyways, about today. nothing exciting today..language school was really boring, shocker there! then i came home and did absolutely nothing all day. i cooked some swedish meatballs (from an american packed my mom sent me!) tonight since my host parents were gone. oh a funny thing about today was that i finally drank a rootbeer from my drawer of american food and i let my host brother try some too of course..he hated it! said it was like bad tasting sparkley water..hahaha. other than that i think i've been sitting all day on my computer planning my day in Brussels tomorrow with 4 other exchange students. i think it will be really fun! i booked a hostel and we are going to try to go to the christmas market too. here's a link to that if you want to see why we're so interested in going, haha. http://www.christmasmarkets.com/Belgium/brussels-christmas-market.html it looks pretty cute, but exchange students tend to find other things to do as well. i'm sure we won't be bored! i'll make a fake blog tonight that will eventually be my blog about tomorrow, so i won't really have anything interesting on here till saturday..super sorry about that! but i'll be off having a nice adventure in brussels with exchange students, so you should be happy for me, haha just kidding. but thats all for now, thanks for reading!

113!

hey world. you'd think since the unlucky number 13 is in "day 113" that it was a bad day, but no, in fact it was very nice! in fact, im still in awe about how quickly i can become homesick and unhomesick..its incredible actually. so language class keeps getting more and more unbelievably boring..you can't even imagine! its a pity really, because i loved my other teacher and was so encouraged but now i find myself in a sort of holiday-ish language slump of sorts. i tell myself that after christmas vacation i will kick myself in gear and finish level 2 successfully but right now thats just not happening. i don't think i'm doing poorly, in fact on my first level two test (remember..each dutch level=3 small tests and 1 exam) i got a 20/20! after the boring dutch class manuella (from brazil..you should be familiar with common names in the blog b ynow!!) and i walked to a place near the station and ate lunch. after eating our sandwiches and courtney (from south africa!) coming eventually as well we went with our district youth exchange chair-lady to St. Truiden which is like a 2 hour car ride! thankfully i took adramamine and slept a lot of the way there..it was nice. oh! and our extremely nice district lady gave me a late birthday present that was really really nice..burberry sport perfume and lotion, just had to share a picture with you so you can see her generosity through the computer, haha.

she also bought us three turnhout inbounds fries and chicken fingers at the frituur on the way home tonight too! heres just a reminder picture of what the frituur looks like, in case you forgot!

but she picked us up and we drove a wile then finally went bowling! bowling was fun, got to see all the other district 1630 dutch speaking exchange students! bowling and real english speaking is always nice. turns out i'm not too bad at bowling (compared to everyone else, and everyone else was really bad too)..i think i got second place both games. hooray! heres a picture from bowling..canada, usa, usa, south africa. they're great people, seriously!

but if you think that's impressive, you should have seen my first SKIING LESSON tonight!! i got home around 7:30 from bowling, talked to my host mom a bit then got ready to go attempt to not fall during my first skiing lesson. i was extremely scared but it all turned out alright. if you know me at all you know that i have a problem with not being perfect at everything..so thus skiing was a big threat (as are most new things, sometimes). i'm not really a sport-loving person at all..i mean i'm not lazy but i can honestly say i am involved in zero sports! is skiing even a sport? whatever. it was all fine. i can't say it was FUN but it was nice to meet a challenge that i could face. so i got on some gear and skied on the wet carpet thing..learned the basic pie shape, and a little swerve turning movement things. the instructor was really nice, kept saying i'm a natural but i think thats just because i was with another guy and he was really struggling..i mean really, really struggling..kept holding the bar and at one point he rammed into the back of me.. i felt bad but whatever. so now i go back six more times before we leave on the 1st of january. i'm really happy it wasn't super hard and i didn't fall..but i'm sure i'll regret that comment later when its really hard. i actually think my few years of figure skating as an elementary student helped me out today, so big shout to my mom for putting me through that ice skating stupid costume wearing crap as a little kid ;) but now its time for bed..only three hours of language class then its the weekend for me! thank goodness for the school having exams! goodnight and thanks for reading!! :)

112!

hello my faithful readers! happy tuesday, or whatever day you are reading this. nothing exciting happened today, to be honest. but first i will start out with a couple nice webcam pictures of me and my favorite doll. sometimes i get bored and take pictures with her, is that normal?

she's traveled around the world with me since i was like..born, and i think it's important i give her some credit. her name is squeaky baby and she squeaks if you press her belly. anybody who knows me will surely know of this doll..and of course you probably all think i'm weird now. but whatever. so about today! i went to boring dutch school, then actually did something not normal for lunch i guess. all the exchange students are now required to go to EVERY rotary meeting (every tuesday at lunch) for the REST OF THE YEAR! ah!..thats a lot more meetings. it's actually a good thing for me because tuesdays have always been my really boring 2 hours in the library days. so thus i'm not too upset about it! plus we get to eat lunch there..including dessert, and thats a hell of a lot better than bread every day, no offense belgium. anyways..it gets me out of an extra hour in the library because it lasts about an hour and a half plus a car ride there and back..so i can't complain. so i only sat in the library for about an hour today, not too bad. then an hour of math (reading my book time) and an hour of expression. my class starts their exams (what i would normally call "semester tests") tomorrow and thus ends my full school schedule till after christmas break. i am only required to take 2 exams by the rotary, so i chose english and nederlands (not the language class, thats something different..but the equivalent of our "english class"). the teacher of the nederlands (okay dutch in english but whatever) is really nice and she is even making me a special test to take! i gave her some of my homework from dutch class so she can see what level i'm on and hopefully the "exam" goes well then..but thats not until next week sometime. until then i just go to language class and come home. except for tomorrow, tomorrow is a busy day. language class, bowling with the rotary exchange students, then my first ski lesson! but more about that tomorrow. i'm extremely tired and need to get some sleep for my busy day, you think? thanks for reading!!!

111!

okay, hello world. day 111, a much better day than yesterday. truly sorry for my stupid blog, but i think its good to write down so i can look back once i'm back in america and say..why the hell was i homesick? or something like that. anyways. today i didn't go to language class due to a bad night of sleep and a massive headache. i made my way out of the house around lunch time and found my class like normal. today we had lunch in a really weird place..the hema, which is like..walgreens meets hyvee or something. i bought some hair clips and ate lunch in the same hour, is what i'm trying to say. nice change of scenery though!then we had two hours of english where we learned really really weird things...words about death and stuff. for example: suicide, hell, obituary, etc. extremely weird if you ask me, maybe they should work on basic vocabulary and get their tenses straight before they learn words like "posthumous" (which for the record is a new word i learned today..see its even too hard for me!).oh well. the next class i usually just go to the library but good thing i didn't because we got a surprise visit from sinterklaas and his black slaves! actually it was just a few teachers that came in and threw crackers at us but it was still cool! something excites me when i see sinterklaas, like i'm 5 and seeing santa i suppose. then we each got a little chocolate figure..and i laughed because i got a little naked boy.

i think its supposed to be the little peeing boy in brussels, but this is like a PG chocolate version or something. so today after school i came home and sinterklaas had been here too! and you'd never guess what he brought me! well let me start by saying we set our shoes out last night with whatever we had that was close to a carrot (we were out of carrots), some sugar cubes, and normally you set some beer out too i guess? all for the sint..like setting out milk and cookies for santa. so we came home and there were little mandarin oranges, a giant speculaas cookie, and notes in our shoes! seriously you would never believe what was in the note..it was a "voucher for a trip to Barcelona with my 2nd host family"! wow..what a good sinterklaas! as if belgium is not being generous enough by getting to go to Austria the 1st week of january skiing with my first family, why not throw in a trip to Spain? gee, sure makes yesterday's blog look stupid! so anyways...i must go shower now and get to sleep. but thanks for reading, and sorry my blog posts are sometimes so up and down ;)

PS: thanks everyone again for reading...my blog is over 7,000 page views!!! amazing!

110.

110, and probably my toughest day yet. watch out, because whatever i have to say tonight is not going to be very positive and inspiring like i try to normally write..i'm sorry for that. recently we have decided to speak almost always dutch in the house, which is fine i guess. i really didn't think it would stress me out this much but it might be just a combination of things. we went to a play tonight (a christmas carol..the one with scrooge. speaking of which, i feel like scrooge myself right now. bah humbug.) and since i knew the basic outline of the play i decided to actually pay attention and just ended up translating the entire thing in my head for over an hour and thinking way too hard. afterwards we sat with my third host parents and its just weird the amount of stress i felt having to not speak english. my host brother kept saying "nederlands nederlands" and i just wanted to cry because i'm trying as hard as i can, i really am..and sometimes i just can't say what i want to say and its absolutely frustrating. please believe me when i say that i'm trying as hard as i can to learn the language, i really am. it really sucks when trying your hardest isn't good enough for people. nobody here understands because they all speak dutch, french, english, german, hell..my family even says random words in italian and greek all the time. as americans its beyond normal for someone to only speak english..in fact its probably weirder if you speak more than just english. its useful, yes of course, but its not common. which culture is right? where do you draw the line and point blank tell someone "hey, unlike you i didn't learn three languages in school..this is really challenging for me and i'm trying my best"..when are you supposed to say that? and even if i say that, nobody can feel the stress that i feel because they've seen other languages all their lives. while calling my dad for some consolation he of course made a joke about asking them next time what a paradiddle or a flamacue was...something totally FOREIGN to most people! anyways, im home now and i took a really long shower thinking that would help but here i am still crying and frustrated. its really stupid actually..and probably quite selfish as well. if you really do give what you get then i must not have gave very much today..stupid eh? well thats about all i have to complain about for now. sorry about that. goodnight.