Absolute Surrealism

I’m writing this in the airplane flying over the Atlantic Ocean. I honestly cannot believe that this experience is already over! I feel like I’ve been in Belgium for 2 months... Not almost 11... Yes, that’s right. 11 months gone already. I remember everything so vividly that it’s not possible that it was that long ago.

10 Favorite things about this year

10 - making new friends all over the world

9 - tasting new foods

8 - learning things about myself

7 - adding 10 new countries to my list of places visited

6 - having a little brother to wrestle with

5 - earning respect for not drinking

4 - using the excuse “I’m an exchange student. I don’t understand”

3 - living a new culture

2 - having two teriffic host families

1 - leaving Belgium speaking French almost fluently

10 Hardest things about this year

10 - not speaking French as well as I thought I would in the beginning

9 - not seeing my friends and family for a year

8 - trying to keep up my standards

7 - getting out of my comfort zone enough to speak even when I have nothing to say

6 - learning to understand that you don’t always get along with everyone perfectly

5 - staying strong when times got hard

4 - not being able to hug my mommy

3 - saying no

2 - saying goodbye again (but this time for who knows how long)

1 - leaving my new life in Belgium

Who'd have thought that I could feel this homesick while sitting at home with my parents...

It's a Small World Afterall

The HEAT of the Moment

Well. Let's start with exams...

my French exam went really well... as the teacher was reading the questions out loud I really felt like I knew the answers.

My social sciences test scared me. it was oral and i was really stressed. when i got there my teacer was so nice and i ended up getting 14.5/20!!!!! my teacher was really proud and said that of the americans in my age group im probably one of the most well educated as far as the belgian politics go.

my math exam was okay. i didnt study but i felt pretty good about it.

if i didn't pass my English exam i think we all have reason to fret.

i wasnt expecting to pass my history exam so i didnt try very hard. i definitely didnt pass it.

after all my exams i left for Prague!! it was such an amazing trip!!! we visited lots of castles and went on a bunch of tours of the beautiful city!! it was a great time to spend with friends for the last time. at the end it was so hard trying to say goodbye to people! we sang our exchange student song but everyone was in tears and it was just "pitoyable" (pathetic)

i had a couple of days at the house... or more correctly at other people's houses... saying lots of hard goodbyes and shedding a lot of tears.

now i am in France spending a wonderful (very hot) week with my best belgian friend Cha. the weather is insane... more than 113° F (45° C) we are having a great time; swimming, eating (of course), playing games in the candlelight, going on walks with the dog. At Cha's dad's house there is no electricity or water. it makes for a terrific camping trip!!

today it has cooled down a little from the rain we got last night and it's a good thing too. otherwise the heat definitely would have gone to my head!!

These last couple weeks are going to be full of tears and joys. Im so happy i got to have this experience. i have learned so much and i will never forget this year!!

It's a Small World Afterall

It Lasted So Long and Ended So Soon

It WouldBeSo Nice If SomethingWould Make Sense For Once - Alice In Wonderland

there are some things in this world that I should just stop trying to understand... For example. There are a bunch of exchange students who have already gone home starting in April... After 8 or 9 months here why give up now? why not

just live it up and make the best of the time we have here? We're with all these people we might not ever see again... How can people just willingly walk out on that?

I've gotten a lot of chances to hang out with my Canadian friend. In the beginning of may we went to the serres royales (royal greenhouses). They were beautiful. There were so many colors and the building was so intricate!

After that we went to the museum of natural sciences to see a dinosaur exposition. We were acting like little kids.

The Saturday before Mother's Day, my host family had a big family dinner. We were celebrating my host brother's birthday along with his girlfriend's and mine and of course Mother's Day.

On Mother's Day I went to an amusement park, Walibi, with the exchange students. It was a lot of fun. It's been so great to spend so much time with the exchange students but I'm still glad I have a lot of Belgian friends as well.

I have finally had the wonderful experience of someone thinking I'm Belge! In my night class we did a little skit thing to show off what we had learned in the class and I had to present it to everyone. After one of the other French teachers realized that I was in the class and said,"You're in this class? But you speak so well... I thought you were Belgian!" I was flattered.

I love my little host brother. Sometimes he can be a pain (what little brother isn't) but most of the time he's pretty sweet. He enjoys spending the afternoons in my bedroom with me. He just plays on my iPod while I do homework or mess around on the internet.

Last weekend was a crazy adventure... Parts of my weekend I wish I could experience again. But other parts... I don't ever want to re-live... Friday I took a train directly after school to Germany to see Jan (the German boy who is going to come live at my house during his Rotary exchange)... 1st part of the adventure... I almost missed that train. I met some Americans in the train. They were really cool and I had some great conversations with them.

When I got to Germany I met Jan's mom and little brother. They are such a sweet family. I really liked them a lot. We went for a bike ride on Saturday. We saw the whole town. We saw a castle. We also climbed the "Stairway to Heaven" on "Mt. Kilimanjaro."

I was planning on taking a train back to Brussels on Saturday night. My first train got to the station just on time. It took forever for it to finally leave though. By the time I got to my connecting train station I realized that I had to run if I wanted to catch my train. I ran as fast as my fatter-than-normal-exchange-student legs could carry me. I got to the right platform and saw my train I ran to the closest door which was already closed. I saw the conductor and started running and making signs for him to wait. He got in the train and right as I got to the door where he had been, the door closed and I had my hand on the train as it left without me.

I checked the boards to see when the next train to Brussels was... There wasn't one... I called my host mom and Jan. Jan said to take the next train back to his house and I could stay there one more night. My host mom said that was okay so I talked to the information desk to see if I would be able to get a new ticket for the next day. I took the train back to Jan's house. His mom helped me get a new ticket for the next day. She asked the man at the station how late my first train had actually been. It was 13 minutes late. I was supposed to have 13 minutes between the 2 trains... He printed off a new ticket immediately. I was actually really happy to have spent one more day in Germany with my future host brother.

Sunday afternoon I decided to go on skype to introduce Jan to my parents. I got my iPod to send my dad a text message and I saw the most shocking news I could have gotten. I had a text from my sister saying that my grandma had passed away. It was really hard being so far away.

Jan's parents said that they would drive my to Cologne so that I didn't have to worry about train problems again. When we got there we went to a cathedral and I was able to light a candle for my Grandma.

We went in to the station to wait for my train and they said that it would be 5 minutes late. Then they said 10 minutes... Then 20... Then they changed the platform and said it would be 40 minutes late. By the time it got to the station, my train was 55 minutes late. Then it took another 10 minutes for it to actually start moving.

Yesterday was my Grandma's funeral. I was there on skype. I was able to hear the talks and see the people who were there. It was hard. I wish I could be at home to comfort my mom.

School exams are starting soon. I should be spending the majority of my time studying... But finding the motivation to do it is hard. I feel like if I'm gonna be here I might as well be spending as much time as possible with my friends rather than sitting in my room studying for tests that might or might not count.

This last month is going to be hard but I'm going to make it great!

It's a Small World Afterall

A Birthday Celebration to Remember

So it's been a while since I've written and I've done a lot in the time that has passed.

1st during the week of Carnaval I went to Amsterdam with my host parents. We had a wonderful time. The weather was great and we rode our bikes around for 3 days straight. I really enjoyed that trip... it was the same days as the Rotary trip to Amsterdam and we saw a lot of the same things. We actually ran into some of the exchange students in McDonald's one day. It was exciting to see them there. I love the tulips in Holland. We didn't see them all over the country side but we saw a bunch in the little shops in Amsterdam.

I have not been motivated for school. I have a hard time wanting to do my best. Some exchange students and I were talking and someone said that this exchange is starting to get boring... As far as school goes I completely agree... I wish this could just be more of a vacation but that's not the point of an exchange. And the things we do outside of school are so cool that it's so worth it.

On the 27th of March we went to an Adventure park. We did ropes courses, a zip line and a crazy mine simulation. I had a ton of fun and met some more new people. While we were doing the ropes course there was a section where there were logs with a little green rope under them. I stepped on the log and said, "hey it moves.." then log spun out from under me and my arm caught on the wire cord. I had a huge bruise for about a week...

In the beginning of April we had a Rotary weekend near Namur. We talked to the future outbounds from Belgium about our countries. It was a cool experience. I wish we had something like that last year. Something for more than just 1 day.

My host parents and little brother left on the 6th for Ecuador to go visit their daughter.

I spent 10 days in a bus driving to Greece. We left Sunday the 10th at 5:00 pm and we drove through Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, and Italy. In Italy we took a boat to Greece. We had a lot of fun and we all got very close on this trip. It's hard to spend that much time with anybody though... by the end of the trip everyone was on edge just about ready to flip. There wasn't really any drama because people were pretty good about talking about there problems rather than exploding but it got pretty tense at times.

We didn't get to our first hotel until Tuesday night. On Wednesday we did our first actual visit of some beautiful monasteries. We visited for a few hours and then quickly we were on our way to the next city about 4 hours away... We ate dinner and went to the hotel and then had to go to sleep. We did basically the same thing the next day after visiting Delphi for a few hours. We then continued on to Athens where we visited for the whole day before driving on to Porto Heli.

Friday night we were staying in a beautiful resort in Porto Heli, right on the beach. We went swimming at midnight and had so much fun. Saturday we took a boat to Hydra, an island without cars. We spent the day there it was beautiful! That night we were at the same resort and we went swimming again.

A lot of people dyed their hair on this trip it was pretty crazy to wake up and see a bunch of girls who had been blonde the night before now with red or purple hair!

The next visit was Mycenae. Can I just say how beautiful Greece is... All of it! I just wanted to stare out the window the entire drive!!!!! I wish we could have spent more time visiting rather than in the bus.

On the 18th we went to Olympia. That was really cool to see where the Olympics really started and to imagine them so many years ago running on that field where I got to stand!

Right after the visit of Olympia we drove to the port and got on the boat. We had a 23 hour boat ride so I got to start my birthday on the boat. I was hoping to be able to celebrate that and really enjoy it but it wasn't what I expected my birthday to be like. I am now 17 it's crazy! So I decided that rather than being bummed for how my actual birthday turned out I'm just counting the entire Greece trip as one big great birthday celebration.

After the boat ride we had a 20 hour bus ride back to Belgium. I really wanted to see Switzerland so I talked to the bus driver and he stopped at a rest stop so that I could put my feet onto Swiss ground and officially say that I've been there. I would have liked to have slept on the bus but that was difficult... I probably got 3 hours on the bus.

I was sad to leave everyone after the trip. We had gotten so close in those 10 days cramped in a bus. I hope we can all stay great friends throughout all our adventures.

My host parents are in Ecuador till tomorrow so I've been at the house with just my older sister. It's been fun I really like her.

Friday night I went out downtown with a bunch of exchange students and got home at 6:30 in the morning and then at 11:00 I left for the beach with some more students. I tanned a little bit. It was soo nice. The weather has been wonderful lately. It's not normal for Belgium to be this sunny. Normally there's a lot more rain around this time of year.

Yesterday was Easter and it didn't feel like Easter at all because I just went to church (it was just a normal service) and then came home and had some friends over. There was a girl from Australia and a girl from New Zealand. They both live far away and would not have been able to make it to brussels in time for a big get together this morning. We woke up at 4:30 in order to get there in time... It was just for Australians and New Zealanders so I was able to come back home and sleep. For lunch I went over to my counselor's house. We ate a traditional Easter meal: Leg of Lamb, Green Beans, and potatoes. Dessert was strawberries. YUM!!! I love spring and summer foods.

Tomorrow school starts back up and I don't want to go... I hope that I can still have a little bit of motivation to get there... We'll see...

It's a Small World Afterall

Bittersweet: Like a BLOOD ORANGE!!!

I'm having such a wonderful time over here I just know it's gonna be so hard to leave... It'll be a bittersweet ending... no not ending... just a new beginning...

The weekend of the 25th, 26th and 27th of February, I went to a cousins weekend with my host siblings... It was fun to meet new people. We were at the very very south of Belgium. We were in a house in belgium but just in front of the house was a little river... this river marks the border between Belgium and France. We looked out the window and could see France on one side and Belgium on the other. We went for a walk and before we left we said, "do we wanna go for a walk in Belgium or France?" I went horse back riding. My horse's name was Noukia. She's a racing horse and she always wanted to run in front of the other horses... (I wanted to let her but I couldn't)

Today is Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras). This week is the week of Carnival (carnaval). Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday (Mercredi des Cendres). Today we went to Binche for the Carnival. Basically all it is is a bunch of people chucking blood oranges into a crowd of people who fight to catch them!!! At one point, I was on my friend's shoulders and I was able to catch some because there was this terribly tall man in front of us catching EVERY SINGLE orange that came towards us... In the end we got 32 oranges to split among 4 people (for those of you who aren't so great in math we each got 8 oranges). I had sooo much fun today!!!

I watched the movie the "Legend of the Guardians: the Owl's of Ga'Hoole" It was a really cute movie I liked it a lot! One of the songs, "To the Sky - City," made me think of me. The words are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgvTE3A0Ic

Dada, dada, dadadadadadada

Dada, dada, dadadadadadada

Shipwreck in the sea of faces,
There's a dreamy world up there,
Dear friends in higher places,
Carry me away from here,
Travel light let the sun eclipse you,
'Cause your flight is about to leave,
And there's more to this brave adventure,
Than you'd ever believe,

Birdseye view, awake the stars 'cause they're all around you,
Wide eyes will always brighten the blue,
Chase your dreams, and remember me, speak bravery,
'cause after all those wings will take you, up so high,
So bid the forest floor goodbye, as you brace the wind and,
Take to the sky... you take to the sky

Dada, dada, dadadadadadada
Dada, dada, dadadadadadada

On the hills of lore and wonder,
There's a stormy world up there,
You can't whisper above the thunder,
But you can fly anywhere,
Purple burst of paper birds this,

Picture paints a thousand words,
So take a breath of mist and mystery,
And don't look back!

Birdseye view, awake the stars 'cause they're all around you,
Wide eyes will always brighten the blue,
Chase your dreams, and remember me, speak bravery,
'cause after all those wings will take you, up so high,
So bid the forest floor goodbye, as you brace the wind and,
Take to the sky... (you take to the sky)

There's a realm above the trees,
Where the lost are finally found,
Touch your feathers to the breeze,
And leave the ground,

Birdseye view, awake the stars 'cause they're all around you,
Wide eyes will always brighten the blue,
Chase your dreams, and remember me, speak bravery,
'cause after all those wings will take you, up so high,
So bid the forest floor goodbye, as you brace the wind and,
Take to the sky... you take to the sky...(you take to the sky)

Dada, dada, dadadadadadada
Dada, dada, dadadadadadada

You take to the sky.

I think of the day my plane took off from the Salt Lake City airport and I embarked on my journey! But it doesn't stop there. It talks about chasing your dreams. That is something I LIVE BY!!! If I tell myself I wanna do something I DO IT!! And when it talks about a bird's eye view, that doesn't just mean the fact that your in the air looking down... I think it's saying open your eyes and take in the other cultures. It says "wide eyes will always brighten the blue." meaning that if you look at the world from a bigger perspective it's even better. I hope that I can open my eyes to all the cultures in the world and understand them better.

It's a Small World Afterall

My Life is a Song and Everyone's Singing Along

Lately almost every song I have listened to has fit in perfectly with something happening in life.

The other day I was looking on line for the lyrics to a Taylor Swift song when I found lyrics to one of her songs I'd never heard before... It was titled Daddy and I couldn't find the song itself anywhere...

Life's most precious treasure

"Parents"

They will forever

Live in the hearts

Of all who loved them

I may not be right next to you

To tell you how much "I love you"

I may not be right next to you

To give you a "Hug" of comfort Distance is a factor in our relationship

But you are in my thoughts

Everyday, from the moment I wake up

You are in my thoughts

You are in my heart

And you are in my prayers

as your Daughter

I will always be here for you

I am but a phone call away

And if you close your eyes and think of me

"Daddy I'm right beside you"

there's more to it than that but that was definitely the part that made me think the most of home.

I'm actually in the process of writing a song right now... (not the easiest thing to do) I just love how every song I hear fits so perfectly. I've always wanted to write a song... normally it ends up just being a poem and I never get the song part...

Music is the greatest thing in the world. Music saves my soul. Where words fail, music speaks. Music is what feelings sound like. He who sings scares away his woes. Music is my refuge. Play the music not the instrument. Music is the universal language of mankind. Life is one grand sweet song so start the music. Country music is 3 chords and the truth. Sing with your head up, not because you love the song, because you love to sing. Music is a prayer in the sight of God. Music is the voice of the soul. A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.

I've been having such a wonderful time over here and I don't wanna leave. I miss everyone back home so much but I can't imagine leaving my new life.

It's a Small World Afterall

Change: We'll Sing Hallelujah

Taylor Swift- Change

It’s just a sad picture,
The final blow hits you
Somebody else gets what you wanted again
You know it’s all the same
Another time and place
Repeating history, and your getting sick of it
But I believe in whatever you do
And I’ll do anything to see it through

Because these things will change
Can you feel it now?
These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down
It’s a revolution, the time will come for us to finally win
We’ll sing hallelujah…
We’ll sing hallelujah…
Oh… Oh,oh..

So you’ve been outnumbered
Raided and now cornered
It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair
We’re getting stronger now
From things they never found
They might be bigger, but we’re faster and never scared
You can walk away and say we don’t need this
But there’s something in your eyes, says we can beat this

These things will change
Can you feel it now?
These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down
It’s a revolution, the time will come for us to finally win
We’ll sing hallelujah…
We’ll sing hallelujah…
Oh… Oh,oh..

Tonight we’re standing on our knees
To fight for what we worked for all these years
The battle was long, it’s the fight of our lives
Will we stand up champions tonight?
It was the night things changed
Can you see it now?
When the walls that they put up to hold us back fell down
It’s a revolution, throw your hands up, cause we never gave in
We’ll sing halleluiah…
We’ll sing halleluiah…

Hallelujah….

On the 8th of January, I changed host families. I am now living with the Van den Hove's.

I really loved my first family and I had a hard time leaving them. I knew that it wouldn't be a problem for me. I have always been able to adapt well. But it was still really sad to say goodbye.

My friend Alyssa came to this family first and it was really hard for her to get along with them. This worried me a little bit when I knew that I would be coming here next. I never doubted what Alyssa said but I think the problems were just a difference in personality. I know that there are some personality types that really just clash. I have the personality that gets along with anyone. If you think of a rock in a stream, the rock is stubborn and will sit there for a long time. Then there's the water. It forms around the rock and keeps on flowing. Eventually maybe the water can get the rock to move. I think that I am the water. No matter what gets in my way I will do my best to go around it.

I have not had a single problem with this family. They are wonderful. My host mom is quite a bit like my mom in the States. I have 5 host siblings. The first 4 have all gone on exchanges. Edwin went to New Zealand, Aude went to Washington, Aymeric went to San Fransisco, and Allissia is in Equador. I also have an 11 year old brother, Quentin. He is amazing! We play basketball and all sorts of stuff. I think he likes having someone around he can play with.

We have a dog and a cat. The dog's name is Soda and the cat's name is Whisky.

I believe I am really gonna enjoy staying with this family!

It's a Small World Afterall