Nouvelle famille d'accueil

I've already changed host families since I last blogged.  It happened two weekends ago, and it happened pretty quickly too.

Two Fridays ago I went to the bars in Marche after school, like any normal Friday.  First I went out with my friends Mathieu and Jeremie, and then I went to another bar to meet up with Ashley (the other American) and some of our school friends.  We socialized for a couple hours until people started getting picked up, so I went to a friterie with Ashley and hung out with her until her host parents came to pick her up.

Later that night my host mom asked me if I had any news from AFS about the change.  I told her that I had been talking on and off with my liaison and that it would probably happen in a week or two.  I was wrong.

The following day, the doorbell rang and I was surprised to see my host family's liaison, Marinette.  She sat down with my host mom and I in the kitchen, talked about the fact that I had found a new host family, and then shocked us both by saying that I would be moving the next day.  Really I had the choice, but there wasn't really any reason to wait any longer.

I spent my last night at the Lenoir's having a family dinner.  My host aunt came with her husband and daughter in her mid-20s, and my host grandma's sister had already been staying with us for the past week.  We ate rabbit.  Caroline's brother-in-law works in the wine business, so he would always bring a few bottles along with him too.  The night went really well.  It got a little bit emotional at times with my host mom saying, "you'll always be our American son", which was really nice, and like I said before, I was happy to leave on good terms.

On Sunday, I finished packing up my bags and cleaning out my room until Marinette came to pick me up around 5 P.M.  I thanked them for hosting me for six months, and my host brother told me that it's not an "adieu", meaning that you'll never see each other again, but an "au revoir", implying the contrary.  After all, I had to go back two days later anyways.

So off I went with Marinette, driving for about 15 to 20 minutes until we got to a tiny village called Masbourg.  Outside of Marche-en-Famenne (population of 17,400) is a small town called Nassogne (population of 5,200).  Masbourg is just a small village next to Nassogne with only 200 people.  Masbourg is so small, it doesn't even have it's own Wikipedia page (okay it does, but only on French Wikipedia).  Unlike Marche, Masbourg has no cafés, bars, stores, restaurants, etc. Aside from houses, there's nothing other than a church and an old primary school that turned into a community center.  I guess it's just like a tiny suburb.  It's in a very comfortable area with a lot to do outside, and luckily I got placed with great host parents who told me to never hesitate to ask if I need a ride anywhere.

Masbourg in relation to Marche-en-Famenne

General location in Europe

I really didn't know anything about the family before I got there, other than that my host sister Marine is in the grade below me and my host mom is a Dutch teacher for kids in primary school.  When Marinette and I went up to the door, we were greeted by my host parents Patrick and Laurence, and shortly after my host brothers Thibaud (14) and Sacha (10) came downstairs.  (Marine was at her boyfriend's, but came home shortly after).  Everyone was extremely friendly right off the bat!  Marinette had been their the day before just to check out the house and the family, and then she just talked a little more with my host mom before taking off.

My new host family's house is a duplex.  We live on the right side.  First I thought it looked a little small, but as soon as I walked inside, I already loved it.  It doesn't feel small at all inside, and it goes back a ways too.  Laurence said that a lot of people tell her they think that the house has a very cozy feeling to it, and I probably couldn't agree more.

After Marinette left, they took me upstairs to show me my room.  I'm staying in Thibaud's room and he's sleeping in a bedroom in the downstairs hallway that has curtain as a wall.  Thibaud was nice enough to give up his bedroom for a few months and I told him that we could always switch if he wanted to, but he seems to be pretty content with anything.

Last Monday was my first time going to school by car since I went to register for my classes on the first day.  Most of the time so far, my host dad drives us in the morning on his way to work and my host mom picks us up in the afternoon.  Otherwise we take the bus, which isn't a problem because AFS pays for my bus pass.  They don't have school buses in Belgium, but the buses are pretty much 100% full of students.

As I said, I had to go back to my old host family's house two days after I left.  My old host mom Caroline paid my cell phone bill too late several weeks before and my phone hadn't worked for almost a month.  She tried calling the phone company a couple times, but they weren't very helpful so I insisted that we should probably just go into the store.  We were going to try to fix it the day before I left, but we had to wait for some bank transcripts to go through so she told me to just come by the following Tuesday.  When I arrived on Tuesday, Caroline was in a different city at her boyfriend's house, reminding me why I wanted to change families in the first place.  But luckily her brother Dominic was there with my old host grandma, and they were nice enough to take care of it with me.  They took me to the store and after dealing with customer service for a while, the employee told me that my phone should work fine by the next morning, and it did.  It started pouring when we got back to their house, so I just studied there for about an hour until the rain stopped and I walked back to class.

Every Tuesday evening in Masbourg, there's free badminton at the community center.  I went last week Tuesday with my host brothers.  There were about ten people there, seven of us being youth, and the other three, middle aged.  With ten people being 5% of the population, that's not so bad!

First Thibaud introduced me to everyone as his exchange student from the US.  One of the adults started speaking to me in French and another man told him in French, "you have to speak in English!" Thibaud responded, "no, he speaks French," and I reassured them that I understood what they were saying.  I laughed because the idea of an American speaking something other than English must be shocking for them.

One of the adults was a woman and she started speaking to me in English.  She explained to me that she was from the Netherlands and had only moved to Belgium eight years ago.  Even after eight years of living in Belgium and taking French classes, she's still better at English and says French is incredibly difficult.  Anyways, she asked me where I was from in the US.  I told her Michigan.  Most people here won't know a thing about Michigan other than it's name.  Not only did the Dutch lady know where Michigan was in the US, but she knew about Grand Rapids and Holland due to the heavy Dutch immigration there.  Apparently she even has some family that moved there.  It's cool to be able to talk to people who know about the place you came from!

Last Friday was just another normal Friday in Marche with friends.  I don't live within walking distance from the bars and cafés anymore, but my host parents told me they're happy to give me rides whenever I need them to, so my host dad came to pick me up around 7.  Before I left, my friends told me to go to a birthday party the next day for a guy at my school named Guillaume, or "Dik-Dik"as everyone calls him by his nickname.

Before I left for Dik-Dik's party on Saturday, my host family set up some hors d'œuvres and got out a bottle of champagne as a toast to welcome me into the family.  The first couple days after moving, I was exhausted and a little on edge just because I had to deal with another big change, but my host family really did a great job helping me to integrate quickly!

Thibaud was at a friend's house during these photos:

 Me, Xavier (Marine's boyfriend), Marine

Marine, Me, Sacha, Laurence, Patrick

After dinner, Patrick took me to the party.  Most of the parties in Belgium start around 8 PM and last until around 3 in the morning.  The driving age in Belgium is 18 and almost no one drives before finishing high school, so everyone always needs rides.  Belgian parents must be pretty generous to give rides at 3 AM.  When I first told Patrick about the party, he told me he could pick me up whenever I needed.  When I asked if 3 AM was ok, he said that I better stay at LEAST until 3 AM.  I wonder if my real parents would do the same;)

Dik-Dik, Marie, Me

On Sunday we went to my host mom's sister Sandra's house in Arlon, which is right on the border of Luxembourg.  I forgot my camera, but Sandra and her husband have an extremely modern house.  Sandra's husband is huge fan of American TV shows and kept showing me clips from old 80's and 90's shows and asking me if I had heard of them before.  I was probably only able to recognize about half of them.  He was stunned that I never heard of Baywatch Hawaii before, but when he showed me the intro on YouTube, I knew that I had at least seen it parodied a dozen times.

One other funny thing is, I figured out that my host mom is qualified to teach English in addition to Dutch.  We haven't even had a conversation in English yet, but that should be the goal anyways.

Well today's Wednesday the 27th, leaving only two more days of school before two weeks of vacation. I part for Croatia and Venice on the 7th, and before that I'll be going paint balling and doing other various things in Belgium with friends and my host family.  See you after les vacances de Pâques!

Keaton

P.S. Got my flight information

Stuck in March

After the excitement of a weeklong vacation in February for Carnival, everyone's dragging themselves through March with their eyes set on les vacances de Pâques (spring break, literally Easter vacation) that starts in the beginning of April.  Though school in Belgium carries on through the end of June, at least I'll be able to enjoy a second week of spring break this year that I don't get back home.  Until then, things are moving along slowly but surely.

After school one day a couple weeks ago, there was an optional evening trip to Liège for students in second year Spanish to watch a Spanish play.  At my school, the earliest you can start Spanish is in 5ème (junior year), and I actually dropped down to that course since I hadn't already taken first year Spanish, but they let me go on the trip anyways.  The two Spanish teachers and all of us that were going met at the train station after school and made our way to Liège.  It wasn't big surprise to me that I understood next to nothing in the play (other than "la puerta" and "Coca-Cola"), but it was still fun to watch, and worth going because I hung out and talked with friends all evening.

On a positive note, my school went to see a more sophisticated play in French the next day dealing with controversial subjects, such as God and science, and though I fell asleep for part of the time, I was able to understand the basic plot and a lot of the dialogue.  It made me think about how if I had watched that same French play back when I first arrived in Belgium, it probably would've made as much sense to me as the Spanish play did.  Six months in Belgium pays off well!

That following weekend, I began the weekend with homework.  I was assigned to do a geography project with a friend named Anne-Laure (poor her), so I took the bus home with her after school.  I know most of the people that she talks to on the bus so the ride to her house was kinda fun.

When we got to her house, we did research on our computers and started to make our PowerPoint.  I was getting my research from English websites and taking notes in French.  At one point I found a good page on BBC so I told Anne-Laure to go to it on her desktop.  Her computer automatically translated the page to French and we started dying of laughter because the translation made absolutely no sense when she tried to read it.  We worked pretty hard until our work ethic died so we just talked and messed around on the computer until my host mom picked me up.

The Saturday of that weekend, I went to a huge bonfire that my friend Simon invited me to.  It was hosted by a youth movement called the Patro that Simon belongs to.  They don't really have church youth groups in Belgium, and the European alternative seems to be youth movements or scouts (a lot of the youth movements in Belgium are Catholic based though).

Simon and I got there early because he had to help set up.  Where we were, it must've been 10 degrees colder than where I live.  It reminded me why I have always wanted to live in Florida.  Anyways, during the beginning I mostly just talked to people that Simon introduced me to.  Finally when the whole ready to start, we all walked down the hill to a church to meet the rest of the people.  The bonfire must have been based on some old tradition because Simon and I had to find a fake witch sitting in a chair.  Then we all walked back up the hill while singing and chanting.  They used a small crane to put the witch on top of the gigantic stack of firewood and set the thing on fire.  We spent the rest of the night eating, drinking, talking around the fire with people, and eventually dancing under the tent where the DJ was.  Simon's 22-year-old sister came at one point and I helped her and her friend going up to people and asking them to guess the weight of something to win a prize while Simon was serving food and drinks.  Then finally around 3 AM, Simon's mom came to take his sister and I back to their house while Simon had to stay a few more hours (not really sure why).

My friend Nils, one of the exchange students I went to Paris with, decided that he wants to go back to Germany early because he's homesick, so I slept at his house this past Friday for his last weekend.  Will and Evan (the other two that went to Paris) stayed too.  Nils lives in a small town called Visé outside of Liège.  We had a good time.


On another note, I've had some problems with my host family for a while, not so much personal problems, but other problems.  I had been talking about them on and off with my liaison for a couple months.  A few weeks ago we decided that I was going to switch for sure and with the help of some of my friends from school, I found a new host family.  It's a girl at my school in the grade below me who friends with some of my friends.  Her mom is also a Dutch teacher for the younger grades at our school.

Anyways, my biggest fear of switching host families was having to tell my current host family.  I was afraid that they were going to be really offended and that it would turn into a whole emotional disaster.  Well my English teacher, who has always been a huge help to me, had been in contact with AFS about the situation and messaged me on Facebook to warn me that a lady from AFS was going to call my host mom within the next few days.  For the next few days, everyday that I walked home from school, I took a huge breath preparing myself to embrace an uncomfortable situation.  The first couple days, nothing happened.  Then finally one day, I walked inside my house, said hi, and went to my room.  Everything seemed normal so I had assumed they didn't know yet.  Then I got called down to dinner.

I sat down at the table and we started serving ourselves when my host brother goes, "So I heard you want to switch host families?" I sort of shut down into a prediarrhea-panic until my host brother finished, "No don't worry, it's not a problem!"  Then my host mom walked into the kitchen and said, "Marinette from AFS called today."  I replied, "Well she explained that it's not that I don't like you, right?" and my host mom answered, "No worries!" and then went on to explain that she understood why I wanted to change.  So to my big surprise, my host family wasn't offended at all.  In fact, they were so unoffended, it was a little offensive!  As of now, I'll probably be with my current host family for another week or two.  My new host family has already confirmed with AFS.  Now I think they just have to finish up the paper work.

I'm relieved to know that I'll be able to leave my current host family on good terms.  My host mom just told me to be sure to visit them before I head back to the Americas.


And speaking about heading back to the Americas, as of now I have just about exactly four months left!  It's March 10 today and I think I leave Belgium on the 10th of July.  Also, this past Thursday (March 7) marked exactly six months that I have been in Belgium as I landed in Brussels on the 7th of September.  Looking back on the exchange program, I think my views have changed a lot throughout these six months.

During the fall of 2011 when I first decided to be an exchange student, I wasn't all that happy with the way things were going at home.  Everything felt out of place to me and the idea of leaving everything behind and starting something new was appealing.  But I didn't feel that same way when I took off.  Throughout the rest of the school year and into the summer, everything began slowly falling into place.  By the time early September came, I was on top of the world with the greatest life, the greatest friends, and the greatest family anyone could ask for.  The urge to get away was gone and I didn't have anything that I wanted to leave behind anymore.  I remember it hitting me the hardest on the car ride to New York when I just sat in the back of the car asking myself, "What the hell am I doing?"

Then when I first got here, looking at ten long months ahead of me, I was constantly questioning if this was really what I wanted to do.  My mind was constantly set on home.  I didn't tell this to anyone or even really admit it to myself, but truthfully I really regretted it.  I could've just stayed home this year, lived with my family, and finished high school like most people do.  That's what I wished I had done.

It really took almost the whole first half of my stay just to start to really enjoy Belgium.  That's why I chose to stay for the year instead of just a semester.  And now as these six months have passed by, I don't have a single regret.  I still think of my friends and family back home all the time.  I'm very eager to see them this summer, but I'm glad to say that I've proved to myself that I can do things I never thought I could.  Best choice I've ever made and I wouldn't change a thing.