Belgium

Part 2

After I got back from Paris, I arrived in Brussels to find out that the day earlier one of the controlmen on the train got held up and all the workers were on strike and I had no train home. I had to call my host mom to come pick me up and I HATE having to ask for rides so that really sucked. I pretty much unpacked my bag from Paris, put in new stuff for my trip to England and went to sleep. then I got to wake up at 430 inthe morning because I had to be at school at 545 in the morning for the bus. Benoit was not too happy about driving me there and I hated asking again.

So off I went to England with my class. We were in the bus for about 3 hours until we got to Calais and we got on the ferry for a little bit then had a LONG time in the bus again. We filled many hours on the bus playing BS and go fish. We finally got to this castle, Hever Castle. In all honesty, the castle wasn't amazingly intersting but it had some pretty cool grounds. There was a normal hedge maze but also a water maze where there were a bunch of slabs of concrete leading to a tower you could get to the top of. Some of the slabs moved when you stepped on them and they sprayed water all over, the point was to not get wet, a little obviously, but most of us did it anyway. Then we went to meet our host families, which wasn't a huge problem for me considering I'm a little used to them by now and they spoke English. Me, Marie and Oussima got called off the bus to meet our host mother who was this typical cute English woman. She only lived with her husband at the typically English house and when we walked in we could smell the pasta sauce and it was so good. Another thing that happened once we walked in was the phone rang and we had to go back and change host families. The only girls that were left were a group of 4 and she had 4 beds, and we were only 3.

We drove back to the meeting point and met our new host mom, who wasn't even English and one of the first things she told us was that she didn't like noise. Great. Oh well, it didn't work out too badly. Her husband was another supporter of the Chelsea football team so we got along pretty well. My name has seemed to work out for me while in England, I'm just hoping I don't run into some crazed Manchester United fan sometime. They also had a six year old boy who I thought was cute at first but soon realized that he didn't shut up and understood why the woman hated noise.

The first full day in England we visited Stratford, Shakespeare's city. I enjoyed this a little more than normal cuz all the tours were in English and I didn't have to really listen to understand. We visited all the Shakespeare houses, there were 5 of them I think. The day after that we went to Oxford, which I wasn't especially looking forward to but was actually pretty fun. The shopping there was great and I found this Little Miss Fun shirt, from those books that probably no one but Gramma knows I'm talking about. When I saw the shirt I almost had a stroke cuz I had completely forgotten about those books I used to read in Washington when I was little. We visited two of the colleges of Oxford and I was VERY pleased to find out that Harry Potter movies had been filmed in the two colleges we went to. The Great Hall was based on one of the refectories in one of the colleges. The other one is a little more complicated and only people who really know the movies will know what Im talking about (man, sometimes I really feel like a HP nerd). So, ya know the part in the 4th movie when Malfoy gets turned into a ferret by Moody in that little courtyard? Well I was there :). Made my day.

The last day we went to London and I was really disappointed about how little free time we had there. We went to the Tower of London which was actually very intersting, I hadn't gone there last time and I was glad I did. It had a bunch of really intersting mysteries that happened there. I was mostly disapointed cuz I wanted to show some of my friends from school who are really into good music the Camden Markets but we only had about 2 hours of free time and that would not have been enough. Tant pis.

I got back to the house Friday night at around midnight to a text from my host mom telling me that the Rotary said I HAD to go to a Rotary weekend the next day. Like I had zero choice. I was a little bugged cuz I knew I would be changing on Monday and wasn't sure if I'd have enough time to pack. So I went to the camping thingy and did absolutely nothing besides take out the garbages, set the table, play cards and read a little text from The Alchemist in front of everyone. I got home Sunday and packed all my bags and realized how sad I was to be leaving the Denis. What really broke my heart was the look on Clement's face when I told him I was leaving Monday night. I won't lie, I cried when I left. But my third host family welcomed me with open arms, I guess they had some serious problems with the last girl that was here. I don't quite know the details but my new sister Margaux told me that Micha, the other student, had spoked to her twice the whole time she lived here and my host mom, Anne-Marie, never wants to see her again.

So my new family is the Romain family, we live in Bièrge and I just realize now that I haven't asked for the address yet, I'll get that ASAP. There are 4 boys and one girl in the family, one of the boys in studying marine biology and English in England and the boy on exchange is in Beverly Hills. The guy is really lucky but I kinda feel bad for him cuz his view of the Us is going to be so distorted it's ridiculous. The two boys that live here are Mathieu, 24, and Julian 21. The girl is Margaux and she's 14 even tho she looks like she's 16 or 17. My parents are Bruno and Anne-Marie. There are a ton of animals in the house and I've actually been missing pets a lot. There are 2 dogs, 3 cats, 2 birds and a few gineau pigs.

School was a pain in the neck to get back to after 4 weeks of vacation but hopefully I'll get used to it soon enough.

I tried to put a little song from the Shins in here, dunno if it will work or not...

Bisous,
Chelsea

posted by Chelsea @ 4:31 AM