Joyeux Noël!
Does it being really foggy count as a white Christmas?? :)
Merry Christmas everybody! I thought I'd bring you up to speed.
I've finished exams! Yay! I only had to take four but that's ok. It was really nice, all of my teachers made me special tests except one. One of them was a test on Saint-Nicolas and I was pretty happy about that. Another teacher brought me two different texts, one in English, one in French and I had to translate from whatever language it was in to the other. The other one was an oral exam for French and I was freaking out about it. We had been learning about psychanalyse so I was going over my notes and everything then there was a misunderstanding about the time so I was even more freaked out... anyway, all she did was ask me about the Oedipus Complex (which I knew) and then about my experience in Belgium. Then she gave me a list of books I could read in French. And then she gave me a bisous, which isn't normal for a teacher to give to a student, and you should've seen the looks on my friends faces. I was laughing pretty hard after that.
So for the first story, I had pebbles thrown at my window in the middle of the night for the first time, although it wasn't as romantic as I thought it would be. Guillaume had been babysitting at a neighbor's house when he came home and someone left the key in the door on the inside and therefore he couldn't get HIS key in the door from the outside. Luckily for him, I was up in bed reading. I thought I heard someone call my name then decided I must be hearing things. Who would call my name at 1 in the morning? Then I heard something hit my window and thought I must be really tired or something. Then it happened again so I decided to check it out. I don't think there was a moment where Guillaume loved me more than when I opened that window.
Friday night was the family Christmas party and that was pretty fun. Beforehand, the Jacques had told me that the presents are given between the aunts and uncles and to the godchildren, which was a nice way of saying you won't be getting any presents yet. So we ate our nice food (just in case anyone was wondering, foie gras tastes like vomit) and then came time for the presents when one of the aunts came up to me and gave me a little gift. I hadn't been expecting it and it was so nice that she thought of me! Anyway, I met another crazy old great aunt who ONLY drinks Coke. At first when they told me I thought they meant that she doesn't drink alcohol, but no, she only drinks Coke. Even for breakfast.
Saturday I went with some friends to see a movie, Eragon, it was pretty good and now I want to read the book. But besides that we didn't do much.
Yesterday was the big Christmas part. We went to mass, I was a little disappointed it wasn't the midnight one but that's ok. Mass was around 6 and finished at 7ish so we went home and started helping make the dinner and appetizers. We had caviar, foie gras and some other fishy things for the appetizers, all of which I tried, none of which I liked. :) For the dinner part we had this platter of raw meat, which I was woozy enough around, and a lot of fish but thankfully they put some chicken for me. It was really cool actually, we had these little basket thingies and we put the meat in it then put that in this boiling water (?) with noodles and veggies in it and it cooked. I don't know what kind of... thing it was exactly but there were shrimp and some bigger thing, it kinda looked like a cross between a shrimp and a lobster, I dunno, it was gross, it still had a head and eyes and antennae. I was bad enough with the raw meat and then Gaëlle took advantage of the fact I can't handle raw meat OR seafood and waved the raw thingy in my face. I won't like, I was dry heaving a little bit. And I think Gaëlle almost peed her pants.
From dinner we went on to open the presents. I got a nice little comic book that's kinda like Calvin and Hobbes because I guess Belgium is famous for comic books like that. It's actually pretty funny. I was very happy about the presents I gave my family, I love giving presents. I think Gaëlle is very excited about her new Panic! at the Disco cd. So I think today we're just gonna chill, play some Yatzee and stuff like that.
Joyeux Noël à tous! Je vous aime!
Bisous,
Chelsea
That was a scare...
So on Wednesday it was an early out Wednesday just like any other, so I went to Liège to hang out with some friends. Everything was totally normal until later that night when I was walking home I got a text from Kirsten saying that Belgium had split in two. I was freakin' out! I didn't know what to think so I started running home to see the TV and what was happening. There have always been and probably always will be tensions between the Francophones and Flemish but things weren't SO bad. Nobody was expecting it, everyone thought it would take something HUGE to do it just cuz no one knew what to do with the German speaking part, etc etc. So when I walked in the door I pretty much ran into the TV room so look at the report and then below it, it said "C'est faux" and I was just like um... what??
I guess some TV station had been planning this for months. On the TV Guide it had what's normally on on Wednesday's and then was interupted by a "special bulletin" about Belgium splitting up. They said that the Flemish had declared independence and the king had left the country and everyone believed it. And by everyone, I mean everyone. Like all the Belgian emabassies in foreign countries...? Yep, they thought their country was no longer a country and had no idea what to do. Now everyone is just REALLY pissed off at that station. Appearantly they wanted to do it just to provoke talk about what would happen if the Flemish actually did secede, but I think all they did was anger a lot of people and drop their ratings, but ya never know. That's about it for now,
Bisous,
Chelsea
One more picture...
There are a few people in specific who will probably think this is hilarious, I'm pretty sure you'll know who you are
Amster-freaking-dam
An Amsterdam weekend... wow. It was great! On Friday night my friend Kirsten (red head in before blog) invited me to stay at her house cuz it's closer to the train station and I said yeah that'd be great! So on Friday a few of us went to see Little Miss Sunshine (loved it), we went to check out the Brussels Christmas Market and saw a huge ferris wheel and we were just like um... we have to. So we went up and got a nice view of the city and it was pretty cool. Then 4 of us spent the night at Kirsten's. It was a really nice chill night we just hung out a talked. Then we had to wake up at 8 to be able to get the train station on time cuz me and Joe were both going but of course I slowed things down a little bit.. whoops. We ended up sprinting for the tram but got there with about 30 seconds to spare. Then we took a 3 hours train ride to Amsterdam, just some good times on that train.
Once we arrived we pretty much had absolutely no idea where we going but Joe seems to have this amazing sense of direction where he can figure out where everything is even in a city he's never been to. First thing we did was check out some of the souvenir shops but most of them were full of dirty crap so we went outta those then checked out the floating flower market, which was pretty cool. We were cheapos and got bread, meat and cheese at a grocery store for lunch, but that’s ok, I think it’s an exchangie rule that lunch is always that. After that we explored the city a little bit... or more like we were searching for the Anne Frank house in the hail then ended up running into the Van Gogh museum instead and decided to go there. It was amazing! For those of you who don’t know, Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters, if not THE favorite painter. I was so excited. Unfortunately, they didn’t have Starry Night or Night Café but I was perfectly happy with the collection. They did have his 2 famous flower paintings, Sunflowers and the purple ones, I forget what it’s called, Bedroom, and one of his most famous self-portraits. I won’t lie, I was in shock. I was just like “Wow, I’m standing right in front of a Van Gogh painting. He really sat in front of this canvas and painted on it.” It was a cool experience for me. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed, like any other museum and therefore no pictures. I'm disappointed too.
After the Van Gogh museum we did a canal tour and it was so beautiful, on all the bridges they put those little lightbulbs that I love so much on the circular part... if you know what I'm talking about. And everything was all decked out for Christmas so that was pretty cool. We went to our hostel, which I was pleasantly suprised about how good it was. I mean it was no 4 star hotel but I was expecting a little crap hole. It was a Christian one and everyone who worked there was a volunteer. That night we ate some Chinese food... sssoooooo good! It had been a while since I had some good Chinese food. Delicious! Then we went bar hopping until about 0130 cuz our curfew was 0200 and honestly I was pretty tired so I had absolutely zero problem with that.
We woke up the next morning at 0730... ouch. We got free breakfast and hot showers at the hostel then headed out to the Anne Frank House. Amazing once again. I've always been really interested in that time in history and it was surreal. I feel like I need to reread the book now. Once again, no cameras :( but I highly reccommend going to both the Van Gogh and the Anne Frank house, if anyone just happens to be in Amsterdam for a bit. Then everyone wanted to go to the Heineken beer museum and I kinda didn't want to but had to cuz everyone else did. It was actually pretty cool, they had some really fun stuff to do. There was this place where we could be Heineken DJ's, or sit in these really cool chairs that were like circles so we just lounged with a big TV in front of us and we watched commericals and they even had this thing where we became a bottle of beer and went through the process. With admission we got 3 beers (or Pepsi's in my case) and a bottle opener. I didn't have any regrets at all about going, it was really fun too.
For lunch we had Subway... it was so good. I don't think there are words. Then afterwards we had Ben and Jerry's. Again, so good. Um... that's about all I can think of right now and I think Guillaume wants the computer so I'll just write again whenever.
Bisous,
Chelsea
I love Brussels
Ferris Wheel
Pretty Amsterdam
Me and canals
Heineken happy? I dunno
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Bycicle Repair Man!
It's been a while...
Sorry to those of you who read this (does anyone?), I haven't posted in a while. I've been a little busy, exams are coming up and I think I actually have to pass them. I just HAD to prove I wasn't an idiot and do good on the normal tests. It's good cuz I can finally express myself for the most part but I'm past the point of being able to say "je ne comprends pas" and getting out of homework. Oh well, it happens. Last weekend I did this thing called Karting with my family, it was pretty fun. It was kinda like the family reunion for my dad's side of the family. It was kinda like go karts, only it went on forever, like a couple hours and we had teams and drove in shifts. This weekend I met what I thought would be my third host family but is actually my second. Yeah, they seem super super cool. They said that if I ever didn't feel like going to school I didn't have to and that I have a whole floor to myself in the house with my own bathroom. There's a 13 year old boy and another 16 year old girl who lives there, which could be either really good or really bad, but I'm hoping for the best.
This weekend was the Exotic Dinner, where all the exchanges students cook something from their country for everyone else to eat. Me and my friends made pulled pork and I won't lie, it was delicious. Everyone loved it. Oh! I almost forgot, Saint Nicolas came this morning! And no, Saint Nicolas is not Santa Claus and if you call him that the Belges WILL kill you. He normally comes on the 6th but my family is really busy and today was the only day we were all there in the morning, I guess he likes us that much. So I'm kinda tired right now and can't think of anything else to say so I'm gonna go. I'm going to Amsterdam next weekend so I should have lots of pictures then.
Lots and lots of Belges
The Americans, Michael had just cracked a joke and that's why Marissa looks like that, lol
Bisous,
Chelsea
