Nouvelle classe

Well I finally got around to changing classes from quatrième (sophomore year) to sixième (senior year) and I would say things have already been going a lot better!

(Here are some pictures of the campus from the school website)

Last Monday was the first stay of school after Christmas break and my first day starting class in sixième.  I went to school early to meet with the vice principal and make my new schedule.  I have most of the same courses that I had before Noël, except I started taking Spanish and I also have fewer hours of the courses I had before.  Just incase anyone wants to know:

Monday (part of the reason I signed up for Spanish was just because my Monday schedule was so pathetic)
1) -
2) -
3) English
4) -
5) Spanish
6) -
7) Gym
8) -
9) English

Tuesday
1) Geographie
2) History
3) Math
4) Math
5) Religion
6) -
7) -
8) -
9) Science

Wednesday (half-day)
1) French
2) French
3) Math
4) History

Thursday
1) French
2) Geographie
3) Science
4) Science
5) -
6) Socioeconomics
7) Socioeconomics
8) Gym
9) English

Friday
1) -
2) French
3) Socioeconomics
4) Socioeconomics
5) Math
6) -
7) Spanish
8) English
9) Religion

The first day was weird because it was kind of like starting all over again - new classes, new building, new people, and new teachers (other than my English and French teachers).  Once again I was the new American exchange student, so a lot of people come up to talk to you. The only difference was that this time I had already been in Belgium for four months so I was actually able to respond to people, rather than giving an awkward smile and saying "sorry, I don't understand" five times a minute.  There's one other exchange student in my grade from New York named Ashley who I ate lunch with the day before.  She's really nice!  The first day, my gym teacher was absent and my English teacher was gone during the afternoon so I just went home after lunch.

The second day was my first full day of school.  I stayed in my homeroom for lunch this day to meet some of my classmates.  Most students are very nice and inviting!  I spent my lunch hour playing a card game with a group of about six people.  At first I had no idea was I was doing, but I got the hang of it after a while;)  Usually I have three hours of break on Tuesday afternoons, but some of the students taking English class went to see a play put on English Theatre Company, a group that puts on plays for English language students.  It was some comedy play about Shakespeare called Halcoyn Days which was extremely cheesy (but I admit, a little funny).

A little while after school on Monday, my host mom called me downstairs to say hi to one of her friends that stopped by.  She brought her daughter with her who surprised me by introducing herself with pretty good English.  It turns out that a couple of years ago she was an exchange student in Michigan!  She lived in a small town outside of Kalamazoo called Constantine.  Somehow she didn't even make it to Grand Rapids that year, but she did see Lake Michigan when she went to South Haven (to any exchange students who may be reading and have never heard of any of those cities, screw you).  Anyways, my own mom's friend owns a friterie (basically local fast food joints that are very popular in Belgium and specialize in French fries) outside of my town so we drove there after school on Wednesday and my host mom bought me lunch.  It was really good!

My cold was getting really bad on Wednesday so I just stayed in bed all day Thursday and watched Jurassic Park (which is getting rereleased in 3D this spring!!)

Finally Friday was my was my last day of school.  Three of my new classmates invited me out for lunch with them so I went and had a good time.  After school, I was ready to go home and rest after a long week, when some of my classmates asked me if I wanted to go to a bar with them.  You bet I was down.  As soon as we got there, a bunch of other people from school started coming in.  It turns out that they all get together every Friday after school.  The bar was pretty small and we ended up filling up the whole thing, so anyone else that came went to the bar across the street.  Before long, everyone left to the other bar except for me and about seven other guys, so we had a few more beers before eventually joining the others.

We got to the other bar and I sat down at a long table with about twelve people.  I was invited to sleepover at someone's house with some other guys so I was planning on doing that.  Well all the Belgians seem to like to drink in pace with one another.  What I shouldn't have done was try to keep up with their pace.  I had a few too many beers for an American so I decided to go home early and sleep and told them I would stay longer the next time:)

I still don't speak fantastic French, but my French has gotten 100 times better since I got here four months ago.  I couldn't imagine during the first few months that I would be able to eventually go out and converse almost entirely in French for the night!  I'm curious to know how well I'll speak it when I leave in July.

On Saturday my friend Will invited me to go to a party in a town called Habay-la-Neuve.  It was a party that his liaison invited him to.  Here are some photos taken with my crappy iPod camera:

Originally our friend Evan was gonna come was gonna come with us and then we were gonna walk to his house after the party to sleep, but Evan got sick and couldn't come.  Evan's host family was nice enough to let us sleep over anyway, but that mean we had to find it ourselves- it wasn't easy.  We left the party at 2 and started walking.  We had to rely on  the directions that Evan texted us, which wasn't easy because apparently street signs aren't all that common in Belgium, so we started off walking in the wrong direction for a half hour.  After spending another half hour walking back to where we were, we asked a few more people which way to go and eventually the directions started making sense.  We finally got there around 5 AM.  I had never been so happy to climb into bed in my life!  Neither of us were well prepared to walk around for three hours in the snow in the middle of the night below freezing temperature, but hey, it builds character.

Evan's host family has a cabin-like thing in their backyard so we slept inside of that- it was cool.  The next day we mostly just lazed around the house watching the movies we could find, like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda.  Evan's parents sent him boxes of Mac & Cheese through the mail and he shared some with us.  It was amazing! Best food in the the world and first time I had it since I got here.

Now I'm just going through my second week of school in sixième.  I was feeling pretty homesick at one point today, but for the most part I'm holding up well.

Hope everyone else is doing alright too,
Keaton