Belgium

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

posted by Chelsea @ 3:43 AM