Massive Update.

28 December 2010

Emma and I went to Talia's host family's house to meet Talia's real family, who came to Europe for a week to see Talia and to go skiing. It was a lot of fun speaking English and translating. During the meal, I ended up at the end of the table with all of the adults while Talia and Emma were with the people our age. My brain got quite the workout translating between French and English.

I would like to throw out a huge THANK YOU to Talia's family for bringing me Chex Mix and Goldfish.

I went home with Emma and spent the night at her house, and we watched How I Met Your Mother, a truly awesome TV show. It's similar to Friends, but they're not quite exactly the same.

29 December 2010

Emma and I went to my house and hung out for the day, before heading to Hannut to meet up with Talia and her family. We went to Mr. Patate, a restaurant in Hannut, then went with Talia and her sister, Abbey, to the café and hung out with the Belgians there. It wasn't the most enjoyable thing I've ever experienced, but it was nice getting to know Abbey.

30 December 2010

Emma, Bella (my oldie, an Australian), Gaby (from Mexico) and I all went to Maastricht. There was all sorts of confusion and craziness with trains though, so we didn't get there until late afternoon, and Emma and I could only stay for about 2 hours. It was nice just getting out and seeing something different, and listening to Dutch. It's SO beautiful, I just don't understand why Belgians don't like it. The huge sales were going on in the Netherlands, so we went to H&M and a few other stores, and I ended up finding a really great pair of jeans that, of course, decided not to be on sale. *sigh* Oh well, I really like them.

31 December 2010

Arnaud and I went to his friend's house to celebrate the new year with a dinner and small party. There were only seven of us, but it was still a lot of fun. We had raclettes for dinner (AGAIN), and I had the pleasure of watching JB eat a plate of melted cheese. That's it, nothing else. Just melted cheese. Truly disgusting, in all honesty.

The group I was with are all very good friends, and so they had their Christmas gift exchange that night as well. I was pleasantly surprised when Arnaud gave me two packages. One of them was a black tote bag that has 5 slots on the front to put pictures in. Arnaud printed out some pictures and put them in as well. On the top row, there's a picture of Jordan and I on the ferry to London as well as a picture of me and the wax figure of Daniel Radcliffe (I posted both of them in my blog about London), a photo of me, Talia and Emma at Lady Gaga, and two photos of him and I: the one from the Fête de Wallonie (the first picture we ever took) and one from Christmas.

The second gift was two half-dome snow globes with magnets on the back. Inside of those are pictures as well: Arnaud and I at karaoké, and one of us and the entire group of his friends from that night.

They're two of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. Merci mon frère.

Snow globe.

Arnaud, me, Sedef

Sedef and the bag Arnaud gave me.

Jb and I.

The group.

Me, Arnaud, Sedef, Romain, Rodolphe, Jb.

Photo taken by Charlotte.

3 January 2011

I went shopping with Anne-Michèle and Amaury in Liège for the sales, and we spent the day there. Anne-Michèle had to run back to a certain store, so Amaury and I hung out at the Fnac, which is like a Barnes and Noble, and we played with the cameras there. It was quite fun.

I was supposed to change host families that day, but we pushed it back a day so my new host mom could get some things finished before I came. Arnaud, Amaury, Etienne and I went bowling, and Arnaud won.

4 January 2011

I switched host families. It was, quite honestly, a normal day. I woke up, ate breakfast, etc. I went into Liège again to meet up with Evan, a friend from the states. He was kind enough to bring some gifts over from the states for me, which was AWESOME. We went out to lunch with a Belgian friend of his, Raphael, who was actually an exchange student to Loveland a few years back. Craziness.

I came home, packed up my final things, said goodbye to Arnaud, and we were off. Etienne, Amaury, and Anne-Michèle drove me to my new home. We were a little worried that we wouldn't be able to fit all of my stuff into the car (scary, I know). I ended up having 2 suitcases, a duffel bag thing, a laptop bag, 2 other bags, and 4 or 5 boxes. I don't know HOW I accumulated all of that crap in such a short time.

After being dropped off, I had dinner with my new host mom, her daughter, Valérie, and Valérie's boyfriend, Lionel. It was a lovely evening.

5 January 2011

I went to Bruges with Rotary. It's a beautiful city, truly, and everyone there speaks Dutch, which was wonderful. I do love that language. I wish I had seen more of the city though. I'm thinking I'll go back in the near future.

Most unfortunately I don't have any pictures, because I had accidentally left my purse in the back seat of Etienne's car when I was dropped off the night before. My camera was dead, too, so I was up a creek without a paddle regardless.

The rest of the week I spent just relaxing and not doing too much. I slept a lot, talked with friends and family in Colorado, and just enjoyed the last few days of break

10 January 2011

I went back to school. Yay. It was the start of a truly horrible week. Everyone's bound to have one of those sometime, right?

I don't want to focus on all of the icky things that happened, as I've already written about them, and honestly, that's not what my exchange is about. Bad things happen, yes, but they're not the main focus of my life.

13 January 2011

I spent the night at Talia's new host house, and it was great to have someone to talk to about everything and just be American for an evening.

14 January 2011

Talia's host mom drove us to Collège St. Quirin in Huy, where we spent the day speaking English to a group of 5th years. It's amazing how good their English is, and some of them have only been studying it for 3 years! At the end of the day, we sang karaoké, including Lady Gaga (wooo!), Queen, and John Lennon. It was a great day. :)

15 January 2011

I went with Valérie and my host mom to Liège, and I met up with Jordan, Caitlin and Sam. We hung out for the afternoon, and Jordan and I saw a movie, "Another Year." It's a British film, and while I usually enjoy most things British, this movie was not one of them. It sucked, plain and simple. There was NO plot. NONE. A total waste of over 2 hours, but I was with a friend, so it was all good.

Oh, and the Packers won that night. :)

Song of the Day:

On the Radio

by Regina Spektor

Update.

Rotary was a fabulous affair, as usual. Bella (Australia) did her final presentation (she's leaving January 14th [insert sad face here]), and despite the sadness that accompanies that sort of thing, it was truly a beautiful presentation. I'm glad I got such a rockin' oldie.

Wednesday I did some more nothing, I believe, which was a lot of fun. I watched the West Wing (sooo close to finishing season 6!) and just enjoyed my break from life. Vacations are wonderful. People should take them more often.

Yesterday I hung out at home and enjoyed my vacation some more, and watched more West Wing. I actually had an "Aha!" moment while I was watching, and I'll share it with you:

For those who don't know, I'm going to CSU next year, and I'm going to major in Political Science and minor in French. I love love LOVE politics, government, and everything else that goes along with it. Watching campaigns for office is really exciting, in my opinion. I'm one of those rare people that doesn't get sick of the campaign adds on tv. I like hearing what both sides have to say, and I like having opinions and fighting for them. I got to shake President Obama's hand when he gave a speech at CSU during his campaign. That was one of the coldest (and most AWESOME) days of my life.

Anyway, back to my story. I was watching an episode of the West Wing (Season 6, Episode 17: A Good Day). In it, the Speaker of the House cancels a vote on stem-cell research. He wants to wait until the Democrats are out of town so that he can get the outcome he wants on the vote. The episode revolves around the attempt to foil the Speaker's plans. It turns out that some of the main characters manage to help hide a group of about 15 Congresspeople in the Vice President's office over night, so when the Speaker calls the vote the next morning (thinking most Dems are out of town), they can vote and defeat the Speaker's evil plot.

Yes, I know that it's illogical. Yes, I know that 15 Congresspeople probably wouldn't hide out in an office all night long. Yes, I know it's a tv show. But that doesn't change my reaction to it.

I got tingles in my toes.

I was so interested in how the politics of the situation were set up and how the members of Congress were going to vote that I didn't even stop to care if it was illogical or not. It really reinforced for me how much I LOVE politics. I just love how people can come together (or separate) on issues. I love listening to both sides make their point. I love campaigns, elections, voting, and political efficacy (that one's for you, Mr. Felton). I love politics.

Wednesday night (okay, I did do something on Wednesday...), I was chatting with Aymeric, a Belgian friend of Talia's, on Facebook. He asked me how I feel about America and being American, and we discussed some issues that are very important to me, like the environment and education. Education is number one on my priorities list, yes, even higher than environment. We can't possibly think we can help the environment if we can't even spell the word. But I digress. Aymeric and I also talked about Belgium and the lack of government here. Yes, that's right folks. Belgium does not have a government at this point in time. Its been about 6 months without one. If I'm not mistaken, it's the second time in the past few years that Belgium has not had a government. Yes, there is a king, but he doesn't have the power that belonged to kings of years past. Donc (therefore), Belgium is kind of in a rough place right now. It was really enlightening to be able to talk to someone who's my age and who can explain how this came about here in Belgium. I've heard rumblings about it my whole time here, but any time I asked someone about it, they'd just say "Les politiques... trop compliqués." (Politics... very complicated). I'm glad I now have a little bit of a grasp of what's going on here.

Moving on to the rest of my Thursday...

Last night, Etienne, Anne-Michèle, Amaury and I went to my second host family's house for dinner. I met my second host dad for the first time and I think we'll get along swimmingly. He speaks 7 languages. SEVEN. That's crazy. And my host sister in that family speaks 6. I'm insanely jealous. I don't know how they do it... I can barely handle 1 1/2!

Tonight is a Christmas dinner, which should be fun. Adrien, my host brother who's currently studying in England, is supposed to be coming back, but we don't know if his train was cancelled because of all of the snow. I won't lie, at this point, there is a LOT of snow out there. My snowwoman is kind of... misshapen right now because of all of the snow that has landed on her in the past 2 days. I'd love to take pictures, but my camera is still dead. Insane, I know. I'll get batteries asap.

Merry Winter Solstice to you all!

Bisou,

Mikayla

Thanksgiving Pictures

All right world, here are the photos of the Thanksgiving Talia, Emma and I made for our host families. It was a LONG day -- we started cooking at about 1 and the party didn't finish until about midnight. Despite the enormous amount of work, everyone seemed to enjoy the food (the sweet potatoes were a big hit as well as the stuffing) and the pie was an interesting new experience for them as well. I'll post the story of the day later, as well as my stories from London. But for now, enjoy it visually. :)

Mikayla

Talia and I working on the sweet potatoes.

Of course, the vegetarian gets stuck making the chickens...

Melted butter, salt and pepper to rub on the chickens.

I don't remember what was going on at this point...

Emma's apples for her pie.

Emma, me and the bowl of stuffing.

Apple pie ready to go in the oven.

Our work space. It got a LOT messier than that.

We had leftover pumpkin pie filling, so we made little pumpkin pie cake things.

Rubbing the inside of the chickens with salt and pepper. The one I'm holding now became my chicken, the other was Talia's.

The chickens, in all of their chicken-y glory.

Pumpkin pie ready to be baked.

Stuffing the chickens. Amaury walked in while I was doing this, stared at me for about thirty seconds with eyes the size of saucers, and then ran out. He later told everyone that the stuffing was chicken excrement. Gotta love 11 year old brothers.

The chickens doing their thaaaang in the oven.

Apple pie.

Finished chickens. Mine was so beast it broke the string that was holding it together.

The finished table, right before we sat down to eat.

The dinner party.

Clockwise around the table:

Arnaud, M. Crismer (Emma's host dad), Anne-Michèle, M. De Wulf (Talia's host dad), Mme. Crismer (Emma's host mom), Etienne, Mme. De Wulf (Talia's host mom), Talia, Charles-Antoine (Talia's host brother), me

Not pictured: Amaury, Charlotte (Talia's host sister) and Emma (she was taking the picture)

Charles-Antoine, Talia, Emma, me, Arnaud

Etienne, Talia, Emma, Me, Anne-Michèle

Back row (l-r): M. De Wulf, Anne-Michèle, Mme. Crismer, Etienne, Mme. De Wulf, M. Crismer

Front row (l-r): Charlotte, Talia, Emma, me, Amaury

Thanksgiving, Belgian Style.

Tomorrow, Emma, Talia and I are cooking a Thanksgiving meal for our host families. Kind of. See, there are a few... unforeseen challenges we've been presented with. Like the fact that you can't get a turkey in Belgium at this time of year. So we're making chicken. Okay, fine. But we're not making one chicken, we're making two. Why? Because my host dad couldn't find a 6 kilo chicken, he bought two 3 kilo chickens. Okay, that works. But do you make a chicken the same way you do a turkey? Will there be enough space in the oven for said chickens? What's the appropriate amount of time for baking a chicken? I called my grandmother and asked her for her turkey recipe. So I need to go out and buy 8 pounds of butter (oh wait, they don't use pounds here...) and a few spices and some mushrooms, an onion, raisins and some celery. Except I forgot the word for celery. So I didn't write it on the list. I came home and looked it up later, and what is it? Céleri. Of course.

We also want to make pumpkin pie. Dandy. Except Anne-Michèle couldn't find pumpkin purée. So I have a legit pumpkin waiting for me downstairs. It requires cutting, gutting, baking, peeling, mashing, purée-ing, and then it will finally be ready to be made into pie. But do we have all of the spices? I put ginger on the list as well. Anne-Michèle bought a ginger root. That's great, I can use it, but what's the appropriate substitution for real ginger and ground ginger? Oh, and I need apples for apple pie too. Okay, we can handle this.

I need bread for stuffing. I have these cute little baguettes that I need to bake, let cool, slice, then bake again to dry them out. They won't make enough bread crumbs I'm sure, so we need to go out and buy more.

Did you know that in Belgium (and, I'm assuming, most of Europe) they don't use cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, or any other measurement like that? They use grams for EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING. This includes liquids. So I need to find 10 grams of vanilla extract. Okay. I don't even want to think about how many grams of butter I need. Or grams of sugar. By the way, do we have enough butter, sugar, and flour for all of this? I sure hope so.

I forgot peas. Crap. It's okay, we'll just live without.

Our menu:

Chicken

Green Bean Casserole

Cranberry Sauce

Salad

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie

Mashed Potatoes (oh no no no.... did we remember to buy potatoes!?)

Crescent Rolls

Well, time to get crackin' on that pumpkin. Wish me luck.

Mikayla