Birthday Time

Wow! I'm 18! and I have no idea where these past 18 years went 'cause I definitely don't feel like an "adult". So for my birthday I had three of my friends from Verviers over and Tara, the Canadian in my town, for dinner. We ate Raclette (spelling?), and it was SO delicious. Really one of y favorite meals. Though, you better not be planning on doing anything the est of the day because it's heavy and makes you really tired. But, its deliciousness makes up for it. :D Then they all slept over at my house becase the next day we went to Brussels to see New Moon! Loved the movie, by the way. It wasn't one of my favorite books, so it wasn't my favorite movie either, but it was still good, and it stuck to the book, for the most part. Of course, everythig felt in fast forward because they ca't possibly fit everything into a two-hour movie.

Trying to find the movie theater was interesting. We had directions but sill managed to get lost, lol. We saw these police officers pull over a car and we were next to a cathedral, so, we pretended to be really interested in the cathedral until they were done writing the ticket. Then we ran over to ask them for directions before they left. And they said, "go straight, then right". Well, to anyone wondering how complicated this could possibly be, there are 50 million rights and we had no idea how long to go straight. So we wandered staight for a while. Along the way we looked at several maps, with no revelation, and the preceeded to ask some pedestrians. Some of which spoke french, and one that spoke english. None of which lived in Brussels, so naturally that didn't help. We then proeeded to ask a store clerk who liteally played out the entire walk to he movie theater for us, turns and all. So we said, "merci" and went on our way. We did what she said, and voila! the movie theater! We were so happy we literally screamed. (We got a lot of strange looks, too.)

The lines a the theater are like none other, and europeans have no sense of the word "hurry". Once we got through the line, we got some popcorn and they gave us the option of salty or sugary. We all said simotainiously, "salty". (We eat  lot of sugar here on a daily basis.) Oh deliciousness, and themovie was great. It was in english, but had subtitles in french and dutch (or flemish). One good thing about really excited fans is they might actually shut up during the movie, lol.

After the movie got out, I had 15 minutes to catch my train, becaue my host mom hadto pick me up at a certain time because she was going out that night. So, no waiting an hour for the next train. (Remember, we don't know where the station is.) So, we speedwalk back through our steps and once wefound the station, literally ran to find my platform. I ran down the stairs just in time to see my train pulling onto the platform. Whew! So onc I got on the train, I filled out m ticket thing and went to sleep. I managed to go through a two and a half hour train ride without ever getting my ticket stamped. I'm really surprised they didn't wake me up. Now, if I were this kind of person, I could erase the markings and reuse that part of the ticket, but that's technically stealing, and I could never live with myself.

Needless to say that was a fun weekend, and very exhausting as well.

Now, a week later, I ate pancakes for breakfast! I was super psyched to eat pancakes! Life is pretty great a the moment, (except that my keyboard hates me and misses like half my keystrokes), but other than that it's great!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :)

Retreat, Paris, and Chez Tara

My school has a retreat for the seniors to go somewhere for three days with their respective class to get to know each other better. For three days I was surrounded by french 24 hours a day and no internet. At first I wasn't too excited about this retreat, but once I was there, I was excited. I knew it would be goo for me. This retreat involved me answering many questions (sometimes in french and sometimes in english) about myself: where I am and where I want to be, and me standing on a table to fall into the arms of my classmates. We did many other games and activities that might seem pointless, but they really helped me to learn about my classmates, and for them to learn about me. I now know everyone's name in my class, except for one. And I know it starts with an N, but I just can never remember it. Grr. :)

The day after returning from the retreat I headed to Paris for three days with the Rotary. It was so much fun too. On the way there, I didn't really know anyone, but I definitely made some good friends along the way. We visited le tour Eiffel, le musée de Louvre, le chateau de Versailles, l'arch de triomph. le cathedral de Notre-Dame, du shopping, etc. It was all awesome.

Upon returning from Paris I went to stay with Tara for 4 days. We made cookies, went shopping in Liege, and played perhaps a million games of Uno. Wednesday afternoon we had tea with the governor of the province of Luxembourg. That was fun simply because I got to see everyone again. They had pound cake too, it was delicious. I know that "the press" was the there and they interviewed a few exchange students. I wonder where this will show up. I'm not in an interview, but I am in the picture, so I'd like to see this. Today at Tara's St. Nicolas left candy in our shoes. Actually it's a marshmellow kabob and a clementine. YUM!! :D It was awesome. We were really confused at first though because we didn't know the story of St. Nicolas.

Apparently, St. Nicolas is usually December 6th and that's where he comes and leaves candy in your shoes if you're good. And it's for little kids. But he also comes like a month before too. I pleasantly surprised to find this out today. Sounds like 3 times the candy as normal, haha, Christmas, St. Nicolas, and today. When candy is involved, I will never mind being treated like a child. :)

Finally I'm back home to sleep in my own bed after over a week of traveling. It was a great week, but I'm super glad to be home.