Host Family #2

I moved to a really really really sweetly decorated house. Its african/asian/cool. Theres a real dead christmas tree. My room is spread over 3 floors: bathroom and closet on the second floor, desk and stuff on the third floor, ladder going up to my bed in the loft on the 4th floor. I love my room! And geuss how many pianos are in this place... not one, not two, not three or four or five or six, but SEVEN PIANOS!! no joke. and the house isnt remarkably huge or anything but wow! There is a dog named Peanuts. I have two older host sisters in college. So far all theyve done is study for exams but theyre over now so the studing can cease (!) I ride to school with the neighbor and his son. I come home either with them or one of my host parents will pick me up or I 'take the bus' (ive tried three times, ive yet to take the bus home after school) 2ish weeks ago i went with my english class to see The Importance of Being Earnest. and who do you think was sitting behind me?? JENNA!! my friend from home who is also in Belgium! crazy!

December in a Nutshell

Im the equivellent of a Senior here. Saint Nicholas came to my class and gave everybody animal crackers not in the shape of animals. But I'm not complaining. St Nick and Father Christmas are different people here. The first came the 13th-ish of December and gave me a new journal and a bunch of chocolate. The second never actually came. HUGE disappointment! We stayed up until midnight on christmas eve and opened all the presents we bought for each other... i thought come morning therd be a lil something more from santa considering theres a 9 year old in the house and we were still lying to him. but no. we slep in christmas morning then went to the grandparents house where we ate alllllll day. and since half the family are teachers... for our entertainment we played Jepordy in french. Needless to say I was more than useless. I did know the capitol of Cuba. Luckily my team mate was my host mom so we came in second out of 4 teams. For new years my host sisters went out but i stayed at the house. We dressed up and watched the eiffel tower light up on tv then listened to the king give the same speech 3 times, once in french, once in dutch, and once in german (the three official languages of Belgium). i called my parents and was like 'happy new year' and they were like 'its only 6' a lil bit twilighty zoneish. doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

Thanksgiving

so we had thanksgiving on Saturday. sorta. we ate turkey anyway. i think. it was like a turkey-stuffing loaf in the shape of a turkey anyway. and we had a fancy form of tatertots for potatos and a mushroom soup. it was very sweet tho. Ill definatly be missing Aunt Lynnettes house tomorrow. i called ohio for the first time on monday! mom answered the phone and she didnt recognize me so we had a casual conversation for the fist few secondes until she was like 'whos this' and i was like 'Deanna' and she went... NO IT ISNT! IS IT? aww! sweetie?.... too cute :) we talked for wayyy longer than we should have probably. but dad said hed take the international phone bill for one hour if its a problem. i figure tho, if i would have called for 5 minutes every week since ive been here it would be up to the same so i think im justifyed. im in a Junior acheivement mini entriprise and we had our big meeting with our share holders last night. my entriprise was looking pretty spiffy if i do say. guys wore black dress pants, white dress shirts and red ties. Girls wore black skirts, white shirts, and red ties, except for me cuz ya know, i for got to pack my tie collection when i was packing for an entire year in 2 suitcases. we all matched and new our parts (mine was to stand there and smile and not let people know im from a different country) ya know your not in america when students serve students champagne at a school event. wow.

PB and J is something everyone takes advantage of until they no longer have it.

Well, nothing is new. But family members are getting a lil bit angry because I never post anything... but theres nothing to post. I've gained weight. I drink more OJ than is good for my teeth apparently but I despise milk. I love getting mail :D its the highlight of my week even if its just my grandma informing me that her flowers died. <3 Im saving tons of stuff to scrapbook. Ive mentally filled about 5 books already. Im journaling more than I can believe... One book per month. So if your thinking to yourself right now i want to give Deanna a present.... mail me blank journals,(get the address from my mom or Gram) or start a stash of amazing scrapbooking stuff for me in July (i exahusted my supply for my SMB) Thats all. Miss everyone!

Just an Update...

Well, nothing has really changed all that much since my last post. :) Im still in Belgium and still loving it. I went Kyacking on Saturday. the Country side was beautiful. Eventually Ill put some pictures on facebook. School is going good. Nothing new there. Im now going to greece over spring break... thatl be good fun. Oh ya... the other night we were eating chicken nuggets and I was dipping them in what I though was like a whippedcream jello dessert... no. It was fish eggs. So I geuss I like dipping my chicken nuggets in fish eggs. Thats about it.

One Month Later...

Has it really only been a month??? It feels so much longer than that. I feel like Ive been in school for a month, let alone Europe. School is great. Ive made some good friends with kids in my class. The one kid who sits next to me speaks at least 3 languages and he translates the important stuff for me. I think Im doing a decent job of keeping up considering my french is terrible. I can tell its getting better tho. I can understand most of other peoples conversations now a days. I remember when I was sitting on the plane on the runway facing Belgium the directions were in English first then French, and I still couldnt catch anything. But now its better. I just need to work on the speaking part. Theres so many extra little words like la, de, and un in sentances and I have no idea when to use them and when not to. Its technical-grammer-crap. But other than that everything is great. I got new batteries for my camera. Its insane that I lasted this long on only one set! Insane.

School

So yesterday was the first day of school. Im not really sure how it went since it was all in french. The school is huge but it covers middle school and elemantary school. Either that or 6th graders are tiny! Im in the same room with the same people all day. The teachers move around which is the total opposite of Minerva. I also have a different schedual everyday. Friday was religion, economy, gym, and spanish... thats right... spanish. The teacher is really sweet tho. She made me do the same assignment as the rest of the class except I wrote a paragraph in French instead of Spanish. and ive made friends!! Some of whom live in my town so its all good. This morning (saturday) I went to my host-dads bagpipe practice. Imagine... 4 bagpipes, two field snares, and a base drum in the same smokey room. It was still sweet tho, even tho 6 hours later my head is still ringing. And great news... I could possibly become the drumish-major of the Drum and Bagpipe Core here! How sweet would that be!?!? (kilt and all)