Ode to Arnaud, the Cookie King.

Here's what went down this weekend:

Friday night, I was supposed to spend the night with the chipmunk, but that got cancelled. So instead, I went to Talia's house, and hung out with her and Emma before we headed to the café in Hannut. Talia left to go to a party in Liège, and Emma and I stayed at the café, chatting and writing Belgium bucket lists.

I spent the night at Emma's, and came home the next morning.

When I got home, Arnaud showed me that there was something about American politics in the newspaper, and he explained what it meant in English. We talked for a while, and then I asked him if he read my blog lately. He said no, why? I told him that I had a challenge for him. HE can try making cookies, if he doesn't like mine. He laughed, and we went on our merry way. About an hour later, I came downstairs for lunch, and there was Arnaud with a plate full of butter and a giant mixing bowl full of flour and sugar. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "What you told me to do." I looked closer, and sure enough, he was making chocolate chip cookies. The family ate lunch, and afterward, I did sudoku while Arnaud tried to make his cookie dough into the little ball shapes. It was the first time I've ever seen someone use two wooden spoons to put the dough on the cookie tray. Here are the pictures of his cookie adventures:

Using spoons to put the cookie dough on the cookie sheet.

First batch.

The artist's work space.

Anyway, as he was making the cookies, I learned that Arnaud had never before eaten raw cookie dough. Naturally, I felt a need to remedy that situation, so I had him try the raw stuff. I'm pretty sure he thought it was gross.

Talia arrived not long after that (she, Emma and I went to Liège for the afternoon), and she ate some raw cookie dough as well. It was REALLY good cookie dough. REALLY good.

So, the first batch of cookies finished baking, and Talia and I did a taste test.

Arnaud wins, hands down. They were REALLY good cookies. REALLY REALLY good. Even better than the ones I made with Emma. And (no offense Talia...) about a billion times better than the ones I made with Talia. They tasted almost exactly like good old American Nestlé Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies. I'm still amazed.

Also, Arnaud had only made cookies once before in his ENTIRE 21 years of existence on this planet (CRAZY). He has mad skills. I applaud him.

After the cookies, Talia and I met up with Emma at the train station, and we took a train to Liège to do a little shopping. I ended up finding some super cheap earrings that I like a lot, so I bought a little present for myself.

We came back to Waremme at about 6:30, and Anne-Michèle brought me home. I had a quick bite to eat, then left with Etienne to go bowling near Charleroi. It turns out that the bowling was actually a tournament, and the people we were bowling with were BEASTLY. This one guy kept correcting my form and trying to teach me how to bowl better, and it did help. Oh, and I won a Mars bar! That cheered me up. :)

Today, I slept in laaaaate and read for a while, before heading over to the stable to ride. I enjoyed myself, even when I landed butt-first in the dirt. It's a learning experience. :)

Now, I'm at home, wishing I could watch the Packer's game. Oh I miss football.

Tomorrow night, I'm going to Namur with Arnaud, Talia, Emma, and a bunch of Arnaud's friends to do karaoke. I don't think I'll be singing, but we'll see.

Tuesday, I have a Rotary meeting, and Wednesday, Etienne is taking me to Bruges.

Thursday, I'm leaving for London with Rotary. I'm so excited!

Amaury is watching The Hannah Montana Movie.

I can hear it through the floor.

No amount of music can drown out that horrendous noise. Ugh.

This post is about two quick things though:

1) I got my first Belgian report card! Here are pictures:

In Belgium and France, grades are given out of 20, as you can see. I don't think anyone can get the full 20 points though. Even kids who haven't missed a question all year in math only got 19. I'm pretty satisfied with what I earned, honestly. For someone who doesn't completely understand the classes, I managed not to fail anything. I'm pleased.

2) Here's a photo of Amaury:

Yes, he's wearing heels. He's definitely one of the coolest kids I've met in a long while.

Tonight, after dinner, he offered me an éclair. I told him I only wanted half, so he cut it for me and put it on a plate, all nice and fancy. After I finished the half, he asked if I wanted the rest. I told him no, not tonight, and he said, "Okay, tomorrow, for breakfast," and nodded, the same way Arnaud does when he's trying to convince me to do something ridiculous, like karaoke. Oh, by the way, I'm going to karaoke on Monday night. This should be an adventure....

Mikayla

The Best Monday in a While.

So, I didn't have to bike 20 km today. I learned how to tie knots for rock climbing and played volleyball instead. I didn't even break a sweat. :)

Anne-Michèle bought waffles. YES.

I got accepted to college. It's hard to describe that feeling, honestly. It's a mixture of relief, happiness, surprise, and I don't know what else. I'm very pleased right now. :)

I hope your Monday was just as fabulous as mine.

Mikayla

Sunday.

It's Sunday. I have to go to school tomorrow. Yuck. I have to bike 20 km for school. At least that's rather mindless work.

Friday was a regular day at school... We did get out an hour early though because my English teacher wasn't there. She fell at school and knocked out one of her teeth (OUCH), so she wasn't there to teach class. We all went to the café for a while, then I went to Amaury's school to wait to be picked up, comme d'habitude. Friday night I hung out at home and caught up on sleep. It was so nice. :)

Saturday I relaxed some more. Etienne and I went to pick up Anne-Michèle in the afternoon, and after we got home, I skyped with Hannah for a while and then we ate dinner. During dinner, Arnaud told me that I'm going to be seeing the chipmunk again. The chipmunk's owner has an English exam coming up, and she wants to practice speaking English, so I'm going to spend the night at her house next Friday. Okay, cool. I kind of missed the chipmunk.

I stayed up waaaaay too late again last night, so I need to catch up on sleep. Again. It's a vicious circle.

I think that's about all I need to say... I have school next week, then we're closed for Toussaint, and I'm going to London November 4th through 7th. Let me know if you want a post card or a souvenir! :)

Bisous,

Mikayla

The rest.

Alrighty, so, the rest of what's going on:

Sunday, Emma and I decided to make cake for her host family. We found a recipe online and managed to get all of the ingredients together, which was quite a feat. It was yellow cake, and we made chocolate frosting out of Nutella, Nesquik, milk, crème fraiche, and an egg white. It was not nearly as gross as it sounds. In fact, it was quite delicious.

We hung out the rest of the night, and I raided Emma's closet. Gosh she has amazing skirts. We watched The Proposal that night as well. Well, I watched it, Emma fell asleep. :P

The next day was Monday, and school was closed, so we went to Brussels with Emma's host mom to see an exhibit on American history and how it's tied to Europe. It was quite interesting, and very well done. Both Emma and I loved it. I was familiar with most of the information, coming from the states, but it was really cool to see from a European point of view.

After that, we stopped at Emma's host mom's parents' house in Waterloo. Yes, Napoleon's Waterloo. Emma's host grandparents are the cutest people ever, and they gave us a ton of chocolate, which was so sweet. And delicious. When we left their house, we stopped at a British food store.

Oh.

My.

Gosh.

You may be confused. Why would I be excited by a British food store? This was not just any British food store. This was a British food store. In Belgium. They had things like pancake mix, cake mix, Oreos, the equivalent of Spaghetti-Os, BACON, and bagels. This store had most of the things I've been craving like mad the past few weeks. Emma and I were screaming across the store, things like: BACON. BACON!!!! or DUDE. SOY SAUCE. NO JOKE!

It was quite amusing, I think. I'm hoping to go back in the not too distant future. They even had taco shells there. For tacos!

After that, we stopped at the monument in Waterloo, which is a large, man-made hill with a lion statue on the top. It's pretty awesome. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/4644210559_1a61b9226c.jpg

Yes, you can climb the stairs to the top. That's going to be one of my trips with Jordan, I think.

As wonderful, incredible, and just plain fun as Monday was, it turned into a not-so-great day. When we got home, Emma found out that her best friend's brother had died. Not two hours later, she learned that her uncle had a stroke. We both felt pretty crummy after that, so we weren't in much of a mood for chatting or movies or anything. It was a pretty somber evening, and we just went to sleep, both lost in our thoughts.

Tuesday was fine, just a regular day at school. We went to the beauty store during our three hours of study hall, comme d'habitude, and we went to the croque-monsieur place. It's a restaurant in Hannut with really good croque-monsieurs. We're becoming regulars, really.

Yesterday was, again, a normal day. I had an hour of study because my Science Sociales teacher wasn't at school, then two hours of French. We continued taking notes on surrealism. When I pulled mine out of my binder, my teacher looked at them, then asked me, "What is that?" I said, "My notes..." He stared for a minute, then said, "But... they're so DIRTY!" Not dirty like dirt, dirty like I scribbled something out at the top of the paper and continued using it for notes for this class. Dirty like I don't write in perfect cursive like all the Belgians. Dirty like I had doodled in the margins. Dirty like the top of the paper was covered in song lyrics. Basically, my notes look like the notes of every other American teenager. Belgians simply don't do that to their notes. They use rulers, multiple colors, formats, etc. Their notes are immaculate. And mine... Mine are crap to begin with, as they don't even make sense. I write things like, "Marcel Proust, when he was I'm hungry." Or "At the end of the First World War, you would not believe your eyes, if 10 million fireflies, lit up the world as I fell asleep..." (lyrics from "Fireflies" by Owl City).

Today, I went to school, then left for my 2 hours of study and lunch. I spent the time with Talia, Emma and Eduardo at the café down the street from our school. We ate fries and chatted about whatever we thought of at the moment.

I came home after school, talked to my mom, and then started writing this. I'm exhausted, and need to catch up on sleep this weekend. I always mean to go to bed early, but I never do. I'll catch up eventually.

Until next time,

Mikayla

The Soirée.

I've decided to dedicate one post to the soirée, before writing about the rest of what's happening in my life. So, here goes.

Beginning of September: I was at dinner one day and Etienne asked me if I wanted to go to a soirée with Arnaud. I agreed, not entirely sure what it was. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure. Regardless, as we got closer and closer to the date, I started freaking out more and more, comme d'habitude (as usual). One night Anne-Michèle and I chose one of Alix's dresses for me to wear (it's absolutely gorgeous, by the way. Navy blue halter with a flowy skirt. Gosh I love those flowy skirts.) and she found a shrug for me to wear with it to cover my tattoo. We went shopping the day of the Fête de Wallonie and bought shoes and a necklace to go with it. I was totally set for the big night.

A week or two before: Anne-Michèle told me after dinner that all we needed now was to go to the hairdresser. There may or may not have been a mild exclamation of disbelief/terror/panic when I heard this. Mais ça va.

3 days before: Minor flip outs during English class with Emma and Talia.

1 day before: Anne-Michèle told me that I needed to use some self-tanning lotion.

The day of: I went to Namur with Rotary. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Then I reapplied the tanning lotion, per Anne-Michèle's request. We found a small purse for me to take.

1 hour before: Anne-Michèle did my hair. She did a blow-out, then curled it. I love love loved my hair. She did an AMAZING job. Seriously, my hair looked great. After the hair came the dress. Then the makeup. Then the sweater. Then the merciless stuffing of my cell phone, gum, a pen, some bobby pins, and my little perfume thing into the clutch. After that, I toyed with the idea of putting on the heels, but decided that I'd rather make it down the stairs in one piece, so I just went barefoot. I got downstairs, and Anne-Michèle handed me a pair of pantyhose. Back up the stairs I went to add those to the ensemble. I came back downstairs after that, and I was all ready to go. Arnaud was doing something with the GPS, and then Anne-Michèle and Amaury wanted to take pictures. I basically just stood there while they snapped oodles of photos with various picture-taking devices. Arnaud was laughing. He, however, did not get his picture taken.

After the photos, we left. I had made it 20 minutes without a mishap, so one was bound to come soon. I was wearing the heels when we left the house. I forgot that there aren't any lights outside, and my brain, in its laziness, had decided to forget that there are steps coming down from the door. No, I didn't fall, I merely made a loud, stumbly, scraping noise as I descended. So... I pretty much fell, but landed on my feet.

We got in the car and headed on our merry way after that. It was a pleasant car ride until Arnaud told me that there was the possibility that we would be sitting at different tables. Cue panic. But since the people throwing the party knew that I'm American and don't speak French, they probably put us at the same table. End panic.

We arrived at the soirée at about 9pm and I immediately sunk into the grass when I stepped out of the car. Thank you, heels. There's a reason so many women hate you. I managed to get out of the grass just fine, and when we walked up to the house, the first person I saw was my third host sister, Camille. I talked with her for a second before Arnaud and I went inside to greet the parents of the party. When Arnaud introduced himself, they immediately looked at me and said, "The American!" (In all honesty, that's a fairly common reaction. It's as though I'm expected to look different or have a flag painted across my face. I really look just like all the other people out there in the world, promise). After greeting the parents, we found a board with little pieces of paper listing people's names on them. These tell you which table you're sitting at. We flipped them over, and what do you know, we're at different tables. I was totally ready to flip out, but then I decided it wasn't really a big deal. I mean, it's one night. I can manage to eat a meal with a bunch of people I've never met before and who speak a language I don't understand, right? No sweat.

I found Camille not long after that, and she introduced me to her friends, all of whom were very nice. They spoke French with me, which was a nice change from the English I usually get. During this time, Camille told me not to talk or dance with any guys who were wearing only pinky rings. The pinky ring is a tell-tale sign, apparently, that the guy is a money-obsessed, snotty jerk. Well, what the hell do I know, I'll believe it. Not long after that, it was time for dinner, so we all filed inside. Camille helped me find my table. We waited for a few people to sit down, and then she walked up to a guy and this conversation followed, in French, of course:

Camille: Hi, what's your name?

Random Guy at My Table: Olivier.

Camille: Hi Olivier. This is Mikayla, she's my host sister. She's American. She's going to sit by you at dinner, and you're going to talk to her, okay? Have fun.

And that was all. Olivier was actually very nice, and he and I talked quite a bit during the course of the meal, which was quite delicious (the meal, I mean, not Olivier...).

What did we eat?

Well, the first course/appetizer-y thing was raw salmon rolled around little shrimp. It was actually pretty good, despite my aversion to raw meat and seafood.

Second, we had a form of potato (I'm thinking it was potatoes au gratin, but I really have no idea), something involving ham and a sauce (really great sauce), something I'm hoping was chicken, and something else I can't remember. It was all super delicious though. I loved it.

Desert was an AMAZING raspberry/sugar creation. The raspberry was like a serbet kind of thing and was SO yummy. I wasn't a huge fan of the sugar part, but the raspberry. Yes. Incredible.

This whole meal was accompanied by a roll (one of the best parts of any meal, in my opinion) and two wines, one white, one red. Both were quite good.

After the meal, we all went outside as the waiters cleared out the tables so people could dance. Camille found me and we went outside with her friends for a while, then we went in to dance. Yes, I did dance. I actually had a lot of fun! There were little platform thingies for people to dance on, so I joined Camille and her friends on one of those. It was great fun. We would go outside for some fresh air for a while, then go back in and dance some more. During one of our trips outside, someone walked up behind me and said, "What is your name?" in ENGLISH. I told him, and he and I started chatting about English, me being in Belgium, and his time studying English in England. Camille came back over, and we went inside to dance some more. As we were walking, she told me to be careful; that guy had a pinky ring. I didn't really give the guy another thought, and just started dancing again. All of a sudden, the guy appeared right next to me, dancing. Camille and I moved across the dance floor, and he followed. No matter where we went, he was no more than a minute behind us. It was a little creepy after a while. At around 12:45 (yes, am) I went outside and the guy followed me. He commenced what I'm sure was a lovely soliloquy about how much he knows about America (he's been to Washington DC and Chicago, after all), every reason he could think of that demonstrates why Belgium is better than America, and the brewery his uncle is buying. What did I gain from listening to this? there are approximately 164.7 things I would have rather been doing than standing there, including, but not limited to:

watching grass grow

attending a Justin Bieber concert

learning Korean

singing karaoke in Polish

attempting a back flip, heels and all

Luckily, Arnaud came to my rescue. He came over and said, "Shall we go? I have to be up early tomorrow." I think he was my favorite human on the planet at that moment. I turned to Mr. Pinky Ring and said, "Bonne soirée!" and bolted. As Arnaud and I were walking to the car, I thanked him profusely for saving me from the pinky ring guy. He said, "Yes, I saw your face... and I heard him talking about Belgians not having to use ID cards..."

The drive back was passed discussing the fact that Arnaud has never seen the Wizard of Oz, the possibility of an afternoon of watching Disney movies (ahem... :P), and blasting Ke$ha songs. Then, we got back to the house, and I passed out in my room, exhausted.

That, my good people, is the story of an American girl, a pair of heels, and an evening in Europe.

A weekend with Emma.

Okay, so I haven't written about the soirée yet, but I promise I will soon. This post is all about the fabulous weekend that began on Friday night and is going to end Tuesday morning.

Friday after school, I went home with Emma. Her host mom picked us up from the café after school, and we went to a lady's house to buy some vegetables. When we got back in the car, Emma and I were both complaining about how hungry we were, so her host mom took us to a boulangerie (pastry shop/chocolate shop/bread shop/heaven) and let us each pick out a piece of cake. I got something involving chocolate and mocha, and Emma picked out a cherry creation. We drove home before indulging in the deliciousness, and let me say, that was possibly the best piece of cake I've ever had. EVER. It was SO yummy.

After that, Emma and I asked her mom if we could make pumpkin seeds, since her mom was making pumpkin soup. She agreed, and so Emma and I spent the next hour or so picking pumpkin seeds out of pumpkin goo and trying to explain the idea behind pumpkin seeds to her host mom. She seemed a little dubious at first, but after we baked them, she couldn't get over how delicious they were. Emma and I ate a good portion of them, but we saved some for the rest of her family too. I definitely want to make more.

We ate a delicious dinner with her host family, and afterward, we put on sweatpants (YES) and made cookies. Emma is the best. These cookies were PERFECT. I tried making cookies with Talia last week, and they didn't exactly work... They were more like little rocks than cookies. But the cookies Emma made... fantastic. Absolutely perfect. There was one cookie in the bunch that was just... words can't describe it. It was the PERFECT cookie. Baked to a light golden brown, the correct chocolate to cookie ratio... It was amazing. We saved that cookie for Arnaud, my host brother, to try to help him recover from the traumatic experience of eating a cookie I made with Talia. Although, he said that the cookies Emma made were too soft. So Arnaud, here is a challenge for you: You can try making the cookies. That way they won't be too hard or too soft. Show us how it's done. :)

The only downside to making the cookies was that I burned my finger. Why does that always happen to me? It's nothing too bad though, and it doesn't hurt. I'm excited because I think it's going to be a wicked awesome scar when it's healed.

After cookies, Emma and I went up to her room and tried to watch Ocean's 11, but we both fell asleep.

The next morning, we made French Toast. YUM. It was delectable. SO delicious. French Toast is really good with Nutella, by the way. Shortly after breakfast, Emma had a dance class, so her host mom drove me home on the way to dropping her off. I cleaned my room and just bummed around for about 2 hours, and then Emma came over to my house. We basically sat on my bed on our respective computers, chatting and just relaxing. No one was home last night, so we made tortellini with a butter sauce... Kind of. It was supposed to be a butter sauce, but it turned into a butter/milk/flour/cheese-alfredo-ish sauce, but it was actually REALLY delicious. We had an excellent dinner followed by some home-made mousse au chocolat (chocolate mousse) made by my host dad. That stuff was GOOD.

After our delicious dinner, we hung out some more, talking and being crazy girls.

We got ready for bed and watched 27 dresses. It was a pretty cute movie, and lemme say, James Marsden is a very attractive human being. We fell asleep at about 2 am, and slept till 9:30 this morning, which was refreshing.

We got up and had breakfast, and then my host dad drove us back to Emma's house, where I'll be spending the night again tonight, and possibly tomorrow night as well. We don't have school Monday, so Emma's host mom is taking us to Brussels to see some sort of exhibit about European/American relations. I'm rather excited. :) Plus, I get to raid Emma's closet, which will be fun.

That's about all I have for now... I'll write another post in the next couple days about the rest of what's going on. Until then, enjoy life and eat dessert first.

Mikayla

Oh, and I cut my bangs. :)

Things I can't say in French.

• Namur
• Colorado
• Wisconsin
• un an
• Cartuyvels
• mechant

to be continued.

Things I like to hear Belgians say.

• Baby Boom
• Mikayla
• de la sauce
• donc
• document

to be continued.

Today:

I have lots to tell about the past few days, but I don't have the time to do it right now; that'll be my next post, okay? I just want to share a few things that have happened today:

• my science teacher exclaimed over my teeny-weeny family tree
• I ran another 5 kilometers
• my host dad asked me if I'm fat now that I'm in Belgium while we were eating dinner (it was funny, I promise)
• I forgot all of my school papers this morning
• I'm craving egg salad. And a Chipotle burrito. Ugh.
• The gnat that has been flying around my room for the past few days is still in here, attacking my ears while I sleep.

That is all.

:)

At dinner tonight,

Arnaud told me that he's reading my blog now. And he told me that the ketchup was not for the mac n cheese, it was for his steak. Awkward.

For Michael.

I love you forever, Sexy Mike.

I know you're in a better place.

A Special Request.

To all the readers of this blog:

Please keep my friend Michael Paul in your thoughts and prayers in the coming days and weeks. Michael is an incredible young man who has been forced to fight battles no person should ever have to fight. His strength, determination, and vibrant personality affect everyone he meets. It is an honor to call him my friend.

"No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."

-- Francois Mocuriac

A rant about the U.S., for a change.

Applying to college really sucks.

I know that I'm qualified and capable and whatnot, but it's just such a pain in the butt to have to fill out the same information over and over and over again. Yes, my name is Mikayla. My birthday is November 19th. Have my address again (because you don't already send me three pamphlets a week about how beautiful your campus is, the exceptional cafeteria food, and your Nobel Prize-winning faculty). Yes, I'd love to list all of my courses. Sorry they're in French. I bet you'd like me to explain that! Oh wait... there isn't a box for "Additional Information" about my courses. Well, that's a bit of a problem, isn't it? Oh, I'd LOVE to write an essay about how I'd be an asset to your campus. Yes, I'm a unique individual. Just like everybody else.

Grrrrrr. I know I just need to get it done, but that doesn't stop me from griping about it.

P.S. Corndogs and pizza rolls.