Joyeux Noël !

Joyeux Noël à tous !

So for Christmas in Belgium, all the festivities are on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is more like "recover from last night" day. So on Christmas Eve my family drove up to Liège because the entire family lives in Liège, well except for us. We all gathered around and had wine and "muchies", many different appetizers after the Christmas Eve service at church. After a while we called Pauline on skype to say hello. We ate dinner at this huge table that sat at least 25 people. We had shrimp and bread with jams, and many different meats that you cook at the table, some salad, ratatouille, and ice cream or crême brulée for dessert. It was so delicious! I have a few pictures but not many, and I'll upload those in a bit. Everyone opened their gifts in mass chaos, but it was so fun. And since there are so many family members they do a secret santa thing. So after dinner we handed out the secret santa gifts and once you open it, you have to guess who gave it to you. Around 2am we left to go my host grandmother's house to sleep for the night. Needless to say, I slept so well that night! All the  chaos and French is truely exhausting. The next day we had leftovers before heading back home. Once I got home I called my family on skype and had like a second Christmas. Everyone was gathered around the computer opening gifts. Oh so much funness! I'm still recovering from all the festivities but it was well worth it.

I'm not really doing anything for New Year's mainly because the party I would be going to is going to be based on drinking and getting drunk, which is obviously not my cup of tea. So, I'll be chillin at home with my host family. Nothing special. And I realized recently... I can't watch the ball drop from Times Square this year!!! That's like tradition! It's gonna be so weird not seeing that this year. I will do my best to watch the London parade to see all my friends march! I'm excited to see that.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Laura

O, Christmas Tree

It's Christmas time!! Finally! I'm so excited, you have no idea. It's nice to finally see Christmas things start to go up around town. I even saw some lights lit in the city today while walking around after school. When I got home, the people delivered our REAL Christmas tree! It's so cool to have a real tree for a change, though I do love my fake one. :) Then we set it up and decorated it with lights and ornaments. And it looks AWESOME let me tell you. Or rather show you...

 

I love it! It's an awesome tree.

Plus, I just realized this, it's my 4-month anniversary in Belgium! That's awesome and scary all at the same time. In a sense it feels like it's been an eternity because I haven't seen my friends or family, but in another sense it's like "where did the time go?" I remember them always telling me before I left that you would start to have dreams in French after about 3 or 4 months. Well, they were totally right. Dreams in French are scary, because I wake up and have no idea what just happened or what anyone said in the dream, including myself. Yet it's completely awesome because it made perfect sense at the time. It's an experience that is clearly hard to explain.