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

Germany / Allemagne / Deutschland

Since I last blogged, I spent four nights in Germany and New Years Eve in Brussels!  Here's what happened:

On Thursday the 27th, I took the train from Liège, Belgium to Cologne (Köln), Germany.  It was a pretty short train ride, lasting barely even an hour (not to say it came cheap, hence a one way ticket was about 34€ or ($45)).

I arrived at the train station in Cologne at about 4 PM, greeted by Jonas, his sister, and his mom.  We said hi, hopped into the car, and headed to their apartment about a half hour away in Sankt Augustin.

When we first got there, Jonas showed me around their apartment.  His mom and sister slept on the main floor and he had the basement to himself.  It was attractive and good sized, I forgot to take pictures of it though.

His mom is a good cook and made us made spaghetti the first night!  Most of the food we ate wasn't distinctly Germany, except for schnitzel of course.  Jonas' girlfriend came over for dinner, and then we just rested at home for a while until we left for a party.

We took the local train (5 minutes by foot), that runs every 10 minutes, to the party.  Thankfully Germans tend to be very good with English so I was able to socialize with a lot of people. You had to be 18 to stay past midnight, so unfortunately I wasn't cool enough to stay very late.  But I was tired anyways from the nature of traveling.

The next day, Jonas, Emily (Jonas' sister), and I took the train to Cologne.  The first thing you notice when you step outside of the train station is the Cologne Cathedral, or "The Dome".  It was incredible, definitely the biggest cathedral I'd ever seen.  You are often allowed inside of it.  As we were leaving, we tried to get in as people were exiting from a mass service but the priest wouldn't let anyone else in.

We walked around in downtown Cologne, which seemed like a giant shopping mall on an endless street.  Still pretty cool though.  I ended up buying an iPod Touch there because my old one officially wouldn't make sound anymore.

On Saturday the 29th, Jonas, Emily, and I woke up early to take the train to Wuppertal, Germany where Jonas' dad lives.  His dad picked us up at the train station and took us to a bakery at a German grocery store.  He was nice enough to buy us pastries for breakfast.  After that, went to Jonas' dad's house to have eggs and orange juice with the pastries he bought us.  Jonas' dad and step-mom were extremely friendly, even if his step-mom made a wise crack at me for not having a "clean, British accent".

Once again exhausted from traveling and lack of sleep, I went upstairs to take a two hour nap before Jonas' dad drove us to downtown Wuppertal.  Wuppertal is well-known for having a unique hanging train for public transportation.  It's several kilometers long and we got to ride it nearly all the way down the city and back, getting off once to see the Christmas festivals and to explore the city a little better.

While we were downtown, Jonas' step-mom was making a cake for us.  We were welcomed back with a cherry cheesecake served with coffee.  They were awfully generous.  Finally Jonas' dad drove us back to his mom's house where we got to enjoy some homemade pizzas.

The following day, exhausted, we slept in until 2 PM.  We got ready, ate breakfast, jumped in the car, and headed for Bonn, the capital of West Germany until Germany's unification in 1990.

Beethoven's birth home 

 After four long months, I finally got Starbucks

I woke up around 10:30 the next morning, had breakfast, and Jonas' mom drove us to the train station in Cologne where we said our goodbyes.  Germany was definitely one of my highlights of the year.

I got home from Germany on New Years Eve.  As soon as I got home, I slept for a few hours and then headed off to Brussels.  I met up with my friends Cameron and Callie on the way.  When we first got to Brussels, we started off by going to a couple of different bars, but everything was pretty full and there wasn't much room to sit, so we left the bar, got fries, walked around for a long time, and ended up at Subway (four months without Subway was just as bad as four without Starbucks).

We were still inside at about 11:55 when we realized we were about to spend midnight inside of a Subway, so we hurried out.  I saw some Rotary students that I knew so I ran ahead with them.  It was absolutely packed downtown, so we couldn't get as close to the center as we were hoping, but we were still able to enjoy the fireworks from where we were standing.

After running around for a while with Rotary students, I ran into some friends from AFS and we went to a Latin bar.  When you first walked it, it was very lively with salsa dancing all over the first floor.  Unfortunately none of us knew how to salsa dance, so we went upstairs with the younger crowd where the mainstream music played.

After about an hour at the Latin bar, Callie and Cameron called me saying they were unable to find it, so I ran out to find them and bring them back.  We stayed there for about another hour or two until people began to clear out.  It was probably around 4 AM at that point and it was freezing outside, so we ran around looking for places to go until we came across a McDonald's.  McDonald's was busy and I waited in line for a good half hour at least.  When I finally got my food, they were forcing everyone to leave so we had to eat quickly.

After McDonald's, we left back to the train station.  There was almost no one outside anymore, and the central station was packed with people waiting to catch their morning train.  We got there around 5:30 AM and my train home left at 6:37, but an hour goes by quickly when you're with the right people:)

For the full, uncensored story of my New Years Eve, please email safark@gmail.com and send me $5 via Paypal.

I didn't bring my camera to Brussels so all I had was a crappy photo of Callie, Cameron and I waiting for the morning train taken by my new iPod.

The train ride home was the worse.  I was so fatigued, all I could think about was climbing into a warm bed.  I managed to fall asleep once, and thankfully some Rotary students woke me up to make sure I didn't miss my stop.  I got home at about 8:30 AM and slept until 5:30 in the evening.

Well I'm pretty sure I start school again on Monday, so I should another four days of freedom.

Bonne année !

Joyeux Noël !

Well I'm still enjoying les vacances de Noël.  Here's what I've been doing to celebrate the holidays.

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.