Fin des examens. . .

As of last Tuesday, exams are finally finished and school is out for good so my friends from school are finally free again.  I'll start by describing my last couple weeks leading up to the end of the school year.

There's still a lot of cities close by where I live that I haven't been to yet so I'm doing my best to take advantage of every free day I have left.  On Saturday June 8, I got together with some exchange student friends Will, Evan, Madeleine, & Chris and we took the train to Maastricht for the day.

Maastricht is the second city I've been to in the Netherlands after Amsterdam.  Amsterdam is a cool city and it was worth the visit, but I didn't fall in love with it like some people do. Au contraire, while I wasn't expecting much out of Maastricht, I found it to be stunning, at least one of the prettiest cities in this region of Europe.

When we got to Maastricht, we passed through a bunch of streets with all the shopping to get to the main square.  Madeleine, Chris and I got a nice brunch at main square while all the lame people went to Burger King (and payed the same amount).

 Brunch w/ Madeleine & Chris

It was hot too!  It was so hot that we found a park and just laid down for about 4 hours.  I was dying of heat. I took off my shirt and probably bought about ten bottles of water throughout the day.  Generally I adore hot weather, but I've never had to tolerate it without Lake Michigan near by;)

Me, Evan, Chris, Will 

Evan, Chris, Will, Madeleine 

When I was in quatrième (sophomore year) before I changed classes after Christmas, I took all my exams.  This time I only did English, French, Spanish, and History.  That's partially cause the classes are a lot harder in rhéto (senior year), and the teachers are just a lot less strict too.  Some of them wouldn't even hand me the work.  That's anyways fine because I didn't have the energy that I had in December to study my brains out for a school year that doesn't count for a thing.

For my writing test in English, I just wrote it in French.  I actually sat with my English teacher and helped him with almost every oral exam.  It was just like a conversation with him, the student, and myself.  For my oral exam in French class, we did something different.  My French teacher and English teacher are the only ones that I've been with all year (before and after changing classes), so we just sat down and had a conversation about my stay in Beglium, why I chose to do it, challenges, etc.  It was cool for my French teacher because she was there when I could barely even introduce to her, and my English teacher and I had never even really spoken in French before.

Since I wasn't really obligated to be at school during exams, I took last Tuesday off to go Brussels with my host dad.  He's a delivery man for a meat company so he generally drives around Belgium making stops at various butcher shops.  In the beginning of the day, we went out for coffee.  After that, he dropped me off at a well-known basilica, Basilica of the Sacred Heart.  The old gothic atmosphere is incredible and there was almost no one there.  Walking around the huge sanctuary practically alone made me really dizzy, but I thought it was amazing.  I paid to go upstairs where I felt ten times more alone.  I took a staircase up which eventually turned back, probably meaning I wasn't supposed to be there, but I used my cell phone to help guide the way.  I was 100% alone at that point wandering around an old, creepy cathedral.  There was another staircase going even higher, but my host dad called and was waiting for me outside in his car so I had to rush out.  Afterwards, he made a few more stops and then he treated me to lunch at a nice Italian restaurant.  I still had to play tennis at night and I was served more wine than I needed which literally makes me fall asleep, but I took a nap when we got home so everything was fine.  Great day!

For anyone who doesn't already know, my family hosted a Dutch exchange student named Giovanni (no, he's not Italian) from 2010-2011.  He took off from Michigan in June 2011 and now we finally saw each other after two long years!  On Friday, Giovanni drove down from his house near Amsterdam to spend the weekend with me at my host family's house.  Friday night we went to Marche-en-Famenne so I could show him my school, where I hang out, etc.  We went to say hi to my old host family, and he was able to communicate with them because my old host mom speaks Dutch.  After that we just went to the bars in Marche that I usually go to with friends after school on Fridays.  We didn't see anyone I know other than one or two people because everyone was still studying for exams.

Saturday Gio drove us to Namur where we spent the day.  I climbed the citadelle again so I could do it with Giovanni.  Here's the picture I showed you last time I climbed it.

After climbing the citadelle, we hit the stores.  We went around shopping until Jonas (German exchange student in our neighborhood at the same time as Gio) arrived at the train station.  We met up with him, went to the new Starbucks there, and climbed the citadelle once more with Jonas (they were about ready to kill me because of the heat).  Eventually we drove back to my house and played cards in the dining room until we FaceTimed with a few people and went to bed.

Sunday was one of the best days I've had in a long time!  My friend Kayla from home is taking a Euro-trip with her family right now through various parts of the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium so we met up with them while they were in Bruges.  Gio, Jonas and I woke up early, picked up my friend Will from the train station, and made our way.

Kayla and her family were staying in a bed & breakfast just near the heart of Bruges.  Gio, Jonas, Will and I got there a little early so we went into town to get some food and then walked to her bed & breakfast after when she arrived.  Kayla took us inside to show us the room and it was an extremely nice place!  After that, we went into town and grabbed another small bite to eat with Kayla's family.

Kayla came to Europe along with her mom, dad, grandma, and sister and we spent about the first half of the day with them.  One of the first things on their to-do list was go to a really highly rated cholatier called Dumon.  Didn't buy anything, but they had some darn good free samples.  The building is also kinda unique in comparison to other builds in the area.

Next Kayla's family decided to take a boat tour through the canals in Bruges.  We Gio, Jonas, Will, and I had to talk about whether we were all willing to pay for it or not, and then because Kayla's grandma is so nice, she surprised us by buying us all a ticket.  The tour guide was really funny and we got an incredible view of the city.

Un mois de plus

One month from today I'm on a plane back to the Big Apple and all I can think about right now is the beginning.

When I left everyone I had ever known behind to go spend a year with people I've never heard of before.  To go to go spend a year in a new country with a new language across the ocean that I couldn't even place on a map a year before, or probably even find the right continent.  It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life - and at the same time, it wasn't that hard (to be fair, I did choose Belgium, not Africa).

Anyways I'll start with Amsterdam.  When you're a kid in Belgium, you start learning either Dutch or English, and then usually start the other later.  The kids who started learning Dutch first had a school trip to Amsterdam for them and my friend invited me to go with them with permission from their teacher.  I take pretty much any chance I can to travel so voilà!

There were two parts to the trip.  First we toured Amsterdam by bike.  We split into groups of about 10, each of us with a tour guide speaking in Dutch.  My Dutch doesn't go any further than "ja", but when there was something important or interesting, either one of my classmates would explain it to me in French or the tour guide would tell me in English.

Anne Frank house on the left

After the tour, we were separated into groups of 4 or 5 and each group had to go around taking pictures of specific places and present them in class.  I was in a group with my friends Shannon, Marie, Romain, and Audrey.

Marie & Audrey 

Marie & Romain 

(It's not a real gun)

We ended up coming across a pancake restaurant at one point, and Shannon and I really wanted to go so we went there to grab a bite to eat while the other three went around fulfilling more of the photo requirements.  Unfortunately they were really American style pancakes, they were more like giant crêpes, but it was good anyways!

The day was all and all pretty good, running around all day in Amsterdam with friends.  Amsterdam is a nice place too, I definitely liked Venice more (both with a lot of canals), but they're pretty different.  It's not just a stereotype that everyone in Amsterdam bikes, there are bikes EVERYWHERE.  It's also a little shocking when you first get there and people are just sitting in cafés openly smoking joints, but you get used to it pretty quickly.

Tell me that isn't the dopest bike you've ever seen

Finally towards the end of the day, everyone met up again to take a short boat tour through the city.  They treat us well, eh;) After that we boarded the bus and went back to school to get picked up.

The next day was my school's bal de rhéto.  It was a big party for my school organized by the seniors, a nice one too!  Everyone had to sell at least three tickets beforehand (which were a lot cheaper than the tickets sold at the entrance) so the other American Ashley and I decided to invite some exchange students.  I invited my friend Caleb from Vermont and my Canadian friends Will and Evan.  We all went to Ashley's house for dinner before the party where we met up with Ashley and our friends Nicole from California and Emily from Texas.  The weather was great outside so we started off having glasses of beer and wine next to the pool with Ashley's host family, and then we went inside for a nice dinner.

Then we left to the party.  The party was legit!  We rented out a big concert hall and hired a famous French DJ named Quentin Mosimann.  That's probably why it was more expensive than most other soirées here.

The party was from 10 PM to 4 AM and all the seniors were scheduled to work two hour shifts, some at the entrance but most of us at the bars.  There were four different bars that people would order from. I had to work at one from midnight to 2.  There were five girls in front taking the orders and five guys behind that made the drinks (I was in charge of the Vodka Red Bulls ^^).

After I got done working, I went to find the other exchange students for about an hour and then went off with some of my school friends and hung out with them at the bar when things started slowing down.  After a while I wanted to sit down so I sat on top of one of the kegs.  Somehow I managed to break one of the tubes and it sprayed EVERYWHERE behind the bar.  There was a huge fountain of beer shooting up in the air.  Thankfully everyone thought it was hilarious so I just stood there with my hands in the air and let myself get sprayed ^^ Eventually my host mom came to pick us up and Will, Evan, and Caleb slept at my house.  Great night!

Well I finally read my first book in French.  It wasn't exactly a novel because it was the dialogue of a play called Huis clos (performed in English as No Exit).  It was only about a hundred pages, but still kind of tiring because there was a lot of terminology that you don't use in everyday conversation, so I would have to switch back and forth between the book and my dictionary a fair amount.  However I got a good grade on the test, better than some other students in my class so I'm content:)

After the bal de rhéto, we had a three-day school week so I made the most of that.  Thursday I went to Brussels to meet up with Caleb and Nicole.  We went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Brussels.  It was amazing, I had my first real American hamburger for the first time since I got here.  They have hamburgers in Belgium, but there not nearly as good as the place where they came from (which isn't Hamburg incase anyone was wondering).  I always tell people that my ideal meal would be an American burger with Belgian fries.

After Hard Rock Cafe, we walked to the famous Atomium.  We thought about going inside, but we there was a huge line and we didn't really feel like paying anyways.  A little ways away, we found a nice area to hang around for a while in the woods where we sat and talked.  We weren't really sure what to do but I had been dying to see Jurassic Park in 3D so I suggested that and Caleb told us that there was a movie theater two minutes from where we were, so we went.  It's one of my favorite movies already and it was even better in 3D!

The following day my friend Chris from Maryland had a small party at his house so I took the train there and slept over.  Thankfully he lives right outside of Liège because the next day we were having a bunch of family over for my host sister Marine's birthday, so I went into town to buy a CD for her and a bottle of wine for my host mom since Mother's Day was the day after.

My host family's extended family is really nice and I had a good time with them.  Both of my host grandparents came over, and also some host aunts, uncles and cousins.

After the bal de rhéto, the seniors organized another party that was limited strictly to the seniors at our school, probably because everyone had to work at the other party so this way everyone could just have a free night to relax.  My friend Mathieu had Jérémie, Noé, and I over beforehand to eat dinner and practice for the beer pong tournament.

Didn't sleep well the night before ^^

The day after the soirée rhéto, Will slept over at my house and we met up in Namur the next day with Nicole.  We went up to the citadel which has a really pretty view.  Here's a photo taken from the internet:

After that we went to a bar together and talked for a few hours until I took the train to Louvain-la-Neuve to sleep at my Australian friend Tim's house.  We had the following Monday off for Pentecôte (Pentecost) so I was able to sleep somewhere else.  In the morning, I took the train to my host mom's parents' house in Libramont for a family dinner.

The following weekend was the last weekend Ashley had left in Belgium because she had to go home and present a project exam so that she could graduate.  So that Friday, I went to Chris' again only with a different group of people including Ashley and we all spent the night.

I pretty much spent all my time with Ashley for her last week.  Tuesday we skipped school and went to Brussels so she could buy souvenirs, Wednesday we went out to Liège together after school to a place called the carré so we could go out together one last time, and Thursday for her last night I slept at her house so I could say goodbye to her at the airport in the morning.  Some other people stopped by to say goodbye Thursday evening, including a few girls from Rotary (one of whom I knew) and Ashley's Belgian boyfriend Maxime at with us for dinner.  Ashley's host family is extremely welcoming.  By the time everyone left around 10 PM, we went upstairs and talked in her room while she packed until she finally finished at 3 in the morning, giving us a whole 2 1/2 hours to sleep before we left for the airport!

Ashley came with Rotary and not AFS like I did. With Rotary, every student has three host families (each family for a little over three months) so Ashley's current and last family drove us to the airport, and there we met her 1st host mom and 2nd host family.  It was really sad to say goodbye, especially when Ashley's younger host sister started crying:'( But thankfully we might be able to see each other again already this summer!  And hopefully, now that she's gone, I'll be able to improve my French a little more with the short time I have left;)

There was a special sale at my school (kind of like a sweepstakes I think) where if you sold enough tickets, you got tickets to an amusement park famous in Belgium called Walibi.  My friend Simon sold enough tickets so that we could go; it was a birthday present for me back from February.  Both of Ashley's host sisters from her 2nd and 3rd host families were going too, so Ashley's 2nd host family drove us there all together.  When I got there, I waited for Simon to arrive on the bus and when he got there, he introduced me to a couple of his friends that we spent the day with.

Walibi makes the 2nd amusement park I've been to during my stay here, the first being Disneyland Paris.  Even though I'm much more familiar with Disney, I have to say that I probably liked Walibi better because the rides were bigger.

Barbara, Me, Simon, Sawali

It was a pretty fun day, but it's difficult to do an amusement park all day after sleeping for 2.5 hours.  When we boarded the bus to go home, I fell asleep as soon as we sat down and stayed that way until we got back an hour later.

On Saturday, there was a reunion at school for the Croatia/Venice trip that we took in early April where we all got together to eat dinner and look at photos of the trip.  It was really fun!  And what I didn't realize is that there are a select number of people at my school who actually live at school; it's a really old, big building and it's actually partially a boarding school.  Well the same girl who brought her guitar  on the trip happened to be one of the girls who lives at school, so she went to go get her guitar and a group or fifteen or twenty of us finished the night playing guitar and singing outside.

Well yesterday was my last official day of school and from now on there are only exams.  I think I'm going to be taking about half of them.  Today I took my French exam and tomorrow I'm going to take my English exam, which means I'll probably just end up helping out my English teacher instead haha.

Exams are really important here, more so than in the US I would say, so all my Belgian friends are going to be really busy until we finish the on Tuesday the 18th.  After that, I have a whole lot to look forward to with them until I leave.  In the mean time, there are still a lot of places I haven't been able to go to yet so I'm probably going to go to Maastricht on Saturday with Will and maybe some other friends.  Then the weekend after, my old Dutch exchange student Giovanni and my old German exchange student friend Jonas are coming to spend the weekend at my house!  Then we're meeting our friend Kayla in Bruges who's going on vacation with her family.  I'll be sure to blog a couple more times before I leave;)

À la prochaine,

Keaton

Voyage de Rhéto : Croatie & Venise

Now that my class trip is over, I've almost reached my goal of making it to ten countries in my life! Now I can say that I've been in the US, Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Germany, France, Croatia, Slovenia, & Italy.  I wouldn't exactly count Luxembourg or Switzerland because I haven't been there other than at an airport or gas station.  My day drip to Amsterdam with school is in just under two weeks and if I'm lucky, my host family will be able to take me to London in June.

Sunday evening (April 7) around 6 PM, everyone met up in the school parking lot  and waited to board the coach bus.  After about 45 minutes, we took off and were on our way to Croatia!  I'm pretty sure we drove from Belgium, to Luxembourg, to France, to Switzerland, to Italy, to Slovenia, and finally to Croatia.

During the bus ride, every once and a while they would play movies, and otherwise people would just talk, attempt to play cards, and later on sleep.  At first everyone was pretty hyped up and energetic, but the bus ride was about 16 hours so it didn't stay that way.  I was one of the few people who couldn't fall asleep so I just listened to my iPod or talked with victims of insomnia until we stopped for breakfast in Italy the next morning.  At that point, we didn't have too much time left in Italy, so we left Italy, zipped through Slovenia, and made it to Croatia.

Our hotel was located in Poreč, Croatia.  Poreč is a small town along the Adriatic Coast with a population of about 17 000.  The hotel was called the Valamar Diamant Hotel.  If you clicked on the link, unfortunately the outdoor pool wasn't open at this time of year, but it was an amazing place to stay anyways.  Here are some of the pictures I took of the hotel.  It was a little rainy so it usually looks even better.

Hotel room exterior shot

The first thing we did after arriving at our hotel was get shown to our rooms.  Some were rooms of 3 and some of 4.  I was paired with two guys named Valérian and Nicolas.  I already knew Valérian pretty well before, and Nicolas not so much but now I know he's cool too.

After a short break in our rooms, we all met back together in front of the hotel.  From there we walked a couple minutes down to the sea and then walked along the shore to Poreč.  My friends and I went out for pizza, and then we went into groups for a guided tour of Poreč.  I forgot my camera in the hotel room, but we went back a few days later and I got some really nice photos of the area.

Everyone was exhausted the first day so it was a pretty chill night after the guided tour.  I went out for a drink with a couple friends in town, bought a pair of sunglasses (most people forgot theirs in Belgium, I forgot mine in the US), went back to the hotel to take a nap before dinner, ate dinner, and hung out in someone's hotel room until curfew.

Every night and morning, we ate at the hotel and had a buffet.  The food was pretty good, there was a lot of variety and it was cooked right in front of you.  And they served American breakfast!  Eggs, cheese, toast, bacon, saussage, pancakes, etc.  If I had to make a list of the top things I miss from the US, breakfast would make the Top 5.  It's my favorite meal in the US but it's not really a big thing in Belgium, just coffee and a croissant.

Tuesday morning we woke up early to board the coach bus for a guided tour in a Croatian town called Pula.  Pula is bigger than Poreč with a population of about 57 000.  The history of the city goes way back to the Roman Empire.  The first picture below is a famous Roman amphitheater called the Pula Arena constructed from 27 BC to 68 AD.  Some of the students asked me if there was old architecture like this in the United States.  I said it was rare because the US is new, but I believe you can find older stuff in big cities on the East Coast.

After the tour, we had about an hour to walk around Pula freely.  I went around with Ashley and our friends Maxime and Matthieu.  We checked out a lot of the street shops and then ended up at McDonald's (I know, lame, but sometimes you just go with the group).

After Pula, we went hiking in the hills through small villages called Grožnjan and Motovun before getting back for dinner.

After eating dinner at the hotel, a lot of people were going to the indoor pool so I went along.  We stayed there until the pool closed at 10, so then I just hung out with friends again until curfew.

On Wednesday, went rode about three hours away to Plitvice Lakes National Park.  It's the largest national park in Southeast Europe and it's beautiful too.

Let's just say it was slippery;)

Because it's a well-known national park, there were some people hiking the trail that weren't from our school.  While trying to cross a path without getting my shoes soaked, I came across a middle-aged couple from Pennsylvania.  They were really friendly and they explained that they'd visited Western Europe a few times before, but never Eastern, so they decided to take a two week trip through former Yugoslavia.  It was funny because Ashley came up to me just as I was about to say goodbye, and she could tell right away from their accents that they were from Pennsylvania because she was born there.

After all the hiking, we hopped onto a ferry and rode it across a lake towards our bus.  Then we went back for dinner.  When dinner was over, most of the students and teachers went to the bar in the hotel lobby.  I didn't drink very much during the trip, but Wednesday night was an exception.  I happen to know one song by Céline Dion in French, Pour que tu m'aimes encore, and I ended up singing it in front of everyone, students and teachers.  Embarrassing, but at least I got a lot of praise for it!

Thursday we finally had a free day.  We had to go into town in Poreč in the morning, but there were no tours or anything.  The teachers just bought everyone a drink and then the rest of the day was free.

This was the first day we had of downright great weather.  The first day we went into Poreč, it was alright looking, but when the sun's out, you couldn't ask for a better place to be.

 Homeroom

After sharing a drink with everyone in town, I went back with to change into a bathing suit and then went back down to the shore to jump in the water with my friends Romain, Anastasia, Marie, and Alex.  You wouldn't exactly say it was warm, but we don't regret it!

Anastasia & Romain by the sea

After swimming in the freezing sea, we went back to the indoor pool again.  This time my friend Simon was there with his waterproof camera.

After the pool and dinner, it was back to hotel room hopping and screwing around!  The last place I ended up was in a hotel room with about five other students and a few teachers.  It's funny because in the US, I can remember my teacher talking about how there was a controversy when a student saw some teachers out having a beer and told her parents (maybe just because it's a religious private school), whereas in Europe, you play drinking games with your teachers.  And it isn't like you're out getting wasted with them either, it's just sitting around relaxing and talking.  Sometimes I wish it could be like that in the US, but I like being able to drive at 16 too.

Every night of the trip we had a curfew because we usually had to get up early, and also because a group of over 100 teenagers up at night isn't exactly quiet.  Usually it was somewhere around 1 or 2, but we had a curfew of midnight for our last night in Croatia because we had to wake up really early the next morning.  Well no one really wanted to go to sleep.  Ashley called me about 15 minutes after midnight to ask me what I was doing, and I said nothing so I asked if I could hangout with her room with her and her roommates.  She said it was fine so I headed out about a minute later.

The teachers and other staff on the trip were really serious about the curfew so you had to be careful sneaking out.  My roommate Valérian was leaving at the same time as me so he helped me see if anyone was coming.  He took a quick peak around the corner and told me to go fast.  So I ran across the small road between the other hotel buildings and made it outside of Ashley's room.  When I got to the door, I gave a small warning knock, opened the door, and there were two teachers I had been with just before the curfew doing a role call to check if Ashley and her roommates were in their room.  Mrs. Rhap gave an 'I gotcha' look and said, "Keaton..." so I said "oh, uhh, Ashley forgot her cell phone in my room!", pulled out my cell phone, and gave it to Ashley.  Well the teachers bought it and told me to have a good night!

So the next morning loaded our baggage in the coach bus, ate our last meal at the hotel, and took off en route to Italy.  I didn't actually realize that we were going to be stopping in Slovenia to visit caves, but as long as I'm here, I'm up for any opportunity I can't have back home.  In fact, I actually had to ask someone if Slovenia was an Italian city or a country.  But at least I was almost sure that it was the second one.  

We took a mini-train from the entrance which sort of felt like a mini-rollercoaster, and then we got to the caves.  I'm not the best at differentiating between different French accents, but the tour guide's Slovenian accent when he tried to speak French was so incredibly strong.  It wasn't too hard to understand though because he spoke slowly too.

After the cave tour, we grabbed a bite to eat somewhere and headed to our hotel in Italy.  We didn't actually stay in Venice, but we stayed at a hotel in a town called Sottomarina, probably because Italy is a lot more expensive than Croatia, and particularly in Venice.

This time I was in a room with my friends Maxime, Matthieu, and Léopold.  The room was sorta small, but comfortable, with one bunk bed and two separate twin bedsThe hotel also wasn't as nice as the one in Poreč, but it wasn't bad either, especially location-wise.  It was a two minute walk from the sea, and unlike in Croatia, there was an actual beach this time.

View from hotel room balcony 

Like in Croatia, we ate breakfast and dinner at the hotel.  Before dinner on the first night in Italy, almost everyone went to the beach.  I was the only one who went swimming when we first got there.  People thought I was crazy, but it was a lot warmer than the water in Croatia!  Then I went with the group of people seen in the picture above around the girl who was playing guitar.  It started off with a smaller group of people singing along when they knew the song.  We were looking through her songbook for songs that everyone knew and we found Hallelujah, so she played that.  This one girl Laurie who is an incredibly good singer held the sheet with the lyrics, and I already knew the song by heart, so we led everyone with the verses and then everyone else sang the chorus.  Eventually everyone came over and we all stood in a giant circle with our arms around each other and rocked back and forth while singing. There are a lot of great people at my school and I'm gonna miss them a lot next year.

We went back to the hotel to eat dinner, and then almost everyone went back to the beach again.  I didn't swim again at night but some of the people I was with earlier did.  Other than that, we all just sat on the beach and enjoyed ourselves.  The same girl brought her guitar again so I ended up in a huge circle of people singing and playing again.  Some of the teachers joined us too.  We played things like Let It Be, Wonderwall, some French songs, etc. and eventually ended up doing Hallelujah with everyone again.

The next morning we woke up, ate breakfast, and walked for about 10 minutes until we reached a river.  We then boarded a ferry together and made our way towards Murano, a small set of islands just north of Venice.  I believe the boat ride was about an hour.

The first thing we did in Murano was go to a glassmaking factory.  I had seen it done before in Michigan when I was a lot younger, but I don't really remember it at all.  It was amazing though, the man made a perfect glass horse right in front of us.

Then we had the next hour or so to tour Murano before we boarded the ferry again for Venice.

And finally, we were on our way to Venice!  We had three hours to stroll around Venice the first day.

As soon as we got to Venice, I knew it was probably my favorite place in Europe, at least so far.  It's full of character, history, class, and most of all, it's warm.  That's probably actually the main reason.  It was the best weather I had seen since the day I left Michigan.

So because we were in Italy, one of the first things we had to do was eat Italian pizza.  Italian pizza is great, but to me it's almost the same as pizza in Belgium.  European pizza is way different than American pizza though.  European pizza is really thinner than American pizza.  It's also not drowned in cheese and tomato sauce like American pizza.  One time I remember seeing an Italian-style pizza special on some cooking show, and they talked about how in Italy, it's not important to put on so much tomato sauce so that you can't see the crust underneath.  And speaking of crust, don't expect to find cheese filled crust anywhere in Europe (unless maybe if you go to Pizza Hut).

After eating pizza, I went off with my classmates Gilles and Nicolas to check out the rest of Venice.

 Gilles & Nicolas

I wasn't ready haha

Eventually we all met at the plaza and took the ferry back to Sottomarina.  We probably got about five hours of card playing in that day.

We went back to the hotel, ate dinner, and then had another free night at the beach.  Except this night, some people decided to go to the dance club down the road with the trip leader Mr. Goffin.  These ones aren't my photos, but who cares

Unfortunately, that was our last night in Italy before heading back home.  The next morning, we packed our stuff, waited outside, and walked back to the river to board the ferry.  This time, we went straight to Venice, and for nine hours too.

The people I was hanging out with and I were pretty hungry from the get-go so first we found a place to get more Italian pizza.  This pizza was even better than the day before.

A couple hours later I met up with some other people who wanted to do a gondola ride.  Not very many people were up for it because it seemed pretty expensive, but 80€ split between five people is only 16€ per person.  After all, who knows if I'll be in Venice again, and going to Venice without taking a gondola ride would be like going all the way to the mountains in Colorado without skiing.

After the gondola ride, we had a few more hours left.  I met up with some of the friends I was with earlier and did some more sightseeing around the city.  Then once we met at the plaza again, the teachers did a role call to make sure everyone was there and then treated us to dinner at a Venetian restaurant.

We still had some more time before we boarded the ferry again so I went with some friends to grab a hot chocolate at the Hard Rock Cafe.  I had actually never been inside one before.  I've only seen the one in Orlando from outside several times.

Waiting at the plaza

And then unfortunately, the trip was terminé.  Around 10 PM, we hopped on the bus and road back to Belgium.  However, Belgium was nicer when we got back than before we left.  A few days before I left for the trip, I was freezing outside in my winter coat.  When I got back in Belgium, it was a lot greener. I was still wearing shorts and a t-shirt and it wasn't cold out at all.

Since I've been back, I'm back to the same old, same old, going out with friends, running around in Belgium, etc.  I would write about it, but this post is long enough already so I'll just see ya next time;)

Keaton