On the 22nd, I went to Namur with my friends Callie and Cameron to hang out and finish up some Christmas shopping. My Norwegian friend Cecilie's host family left her home alone for a few days (her host grandma lives next door), so they told her she could have friends over to keep her company. We bought a few bottles of sparkling wine and took the train over to Cecilie's.
Cecilie's house is really nice and fair sized too, especially for a Belgian home. It was one of those nights in which hours pass of doing pretty much nothing in rhetoric (I used the word rhetoric right, right?), but was somehow so much fun, just talking, laughing, running around the house, etc. At one point some of my friends were begging to watch a movie, so I opened the Scream 4 DVD I got for my host brother and told him the wrapping came off when I tried to remove the sticker (no big deal).
(it was a morning photo)
Probably part of what was fun about it was just being able to hang out with friends all night, or at least late. I miss doing that because usually in Belgium, you take the train to meet up with friends somewhere and then everyone has to go home for dinner, so you get home around 7 or 8 and just end up doing nothing until you go to sleep.
On the 23rd, we woke up, made breakfast, and then I left with my friend Ana. She invited me to a Christmas concert at a church with her friend. There was a really good soloist who sounded like an opera singer, and a lot of the songs were sung in English.
On Christmas Eve, I woke up early (for Christmas break that is) to meet up with my liaison, just to talk about my stay and how things were going. We went to McDonald's cause were cool. Around dinner time, my host mom's brother Dominique came over. It's hard to explain what we ate, but in the middle of the dinner table, there was a small grill where we melted cheese, heated up sliced meat, and ate it with bread. Then Dominique got out a special Christmas cake and we ate it with wine. We did all this while listening to Christmas music by Michael Bublé and Frank Sinatra.
My host mom knew that I usually go to church on Christmas Eve, so she sent my host brother to come with me to Midnight Mass. It was nice. We sang the French versions of common Christmas carols, like "O Holy Night" and "Angels We Have Hear on High".
When I was younger, I would always be the first to wake up early on Christmas and I would run back and forth between everyone's bedroom bothering my family until everyone was out of bed. This year I slept in until around 11:00 and when I went downstairs, I realized my host mom and host brother were still asleep, so I just went back to bed. An hour or two later I heard people coming inside, so I started to get ready.
It was nice to have the whole family over. It was somewhat similar to Christmas Eve, just with a lot more people. We started off sitting around the couches in the living room and eating some hors d'oeuvres including small pieces of salmon, tiny square sandwiches, and mini quiches. Then we had a simple entrée with roast beef, potatoes, and vegetables. And finally, we had cake and wine again, although this time I decided to have a second piece. I got a major stomach ache, so I went upstairs and Skyped with my family for a couple hours. I had been with my host family and their extended family for the past six hours, anyways. I got a little bored after a while, but to keep myself from getting homesick, I reminded myself that Christmas in the U.S. can be pretty boring too after presents are opened:)
In addition to the specialty foods I gave my host mom and host grandma for Christmas, I got my host mom a DVD of La Mélodie de Bonheur (The Sound of Music) because I wasn't able to get her anything for her birthday because my ATM card got eaten. We all watched it tonight.
Tomorrow I'm heading to Germany for four nights! I'm taking the train to Cologne and then staying at Jonas' house in a small town outside of Cologne called Sankt Augustin. I get back from Jonas' on the 31st, and then I'm most likely heading to Brussels for New Years Eve.
Well to all my friends at home in West Michigan, it's apparently a little colder there than it is in Belgium so I hope you can make through another Michigan winter without freezing you're derrière off.
No comments:
Post a Comment