I Made It!!!

I love it here!! Belgium is amazing! It is hard to believe that just a week ago I was saying goodbye to my Rotary Club! I could not be more thankful for this opportunity!!

 I absolutely love it here! The food is so different here, and there is so much of it, but it is so yummy!! Yesterday was my first day, and the longest day ever! I arrived after a sleepless flight very disoriented and exhausted! I waited at the baggage claim for EVER and almost thought my bags were lost! Then I turned around and saw them all alone on another baggage claim! Whoops! I then proceeded to meet my host family! They are so sweet! So nice and kind! They say their English is bad… But it’s really good!  We stopped at a boulangerie on the way home from the airport. I stayed in the car while my host sister, Manon, went inside to get bread. (I had some today for breakfast and it was really yummy!) I got a tour of the house then my host sisters, Chloe and Manon, showed me around their neighborhood and town a little. It is so cute! Old buildings, cars zooming in and out; it was incredible and very neat!

In the evening we went to Liege, there was a celebration “Les Fetes du 15 Aout”. It was amazing! If you were to go to the State Fair on the busiest day and stand right on the main walk way near Big Tex and close your eyes and envision big old buildings, smell all the smells but not really know what exactly they were, and then tune out all sound till it just became noise that is what the celebration was like. So new and different, crazy, people everywhere, but so neat! At the beginning there was what seemed to be marching bands everywhere always playing with VERY loud trumpets. They would walk down the cobblestone streets playing loud, bright, very vibrant songs. To start the celebration there was a section where they made a trail of gun powder and along this trail were firecrackers and randomly there were lager louder ones placed. They lit the path on fire and each firecracker that was hit exploded and fueled the fire even more. Near the end of the trail it was like a wall of fire! It was so amazing!

Today Chloe had some friends come to say goodbye. She is going to Canada for an exchange! We played a card game together. It was very fast moving, as soon as I understood what was happening someone would play a card and it would all change!! It was still very fun! Then we played a trivia game, it was all in French and I practiced reading it and learned a lot of new words.

Belgium is absolutely amazing! I am so excited for the rest of my year! I am already dreading going home!  Tomorrow Chloe, Manon and I are taking the train to Brussels tomorrow. Right now the “gare” or train station has a bunch of flowers out in front of it and it’s supposed to be very pretty!