August 31st; It must be Tuesday
Mood:  special
Now Playing: Something in French
I GOT MY FIRST LETTER TODAY...and THAT is why I feel special!! (Ok, well actually, it was a card) My neighbors, Marie, Richard, Sisi, Collin, and Darrell, all signed it! They also send mushy e-mails all the time that make me cry! Thanks guys! (Just kidding, I love them, keem 'em coming!!)

School starts September 2nd here. So tomorrow is my last day of summer, then its to school. I'm not to worried about it though... I only have 3 classes and I start out back in 9th grade.
1) French
2) Art
3) Gym
It shouldn't be too awful difficult. Once my French improves, in about 2 weeks or so, I get upgraded to 10th grade, and some more classes are thrown in, and finally when I master French, I advance to 11th grade. But here, after 6th grade, they refer to 7th through 12th as 1-6 again, so actually, I'm going to be starting in grade 3, then going to grade 4, before finally settling in grade 5! Wednesdays are half days and someone from my host family is scheduled to come pick us up and take us home, but Corinne, my host "Mom" said that if I don't enjoy any of the afterschool activities and don't like any of my classes, she will send me and Noemie to private art lessons come Wednesday afternoons!

On the weekend of the 28 and 29 I had to go to an orientation for all the "inbound" students to Belgium. There were a lot of us; but I had expected there would be more Americans when in reality, the majority was Brazilians and Canadians! Everyone had pins and business card things to swap. There were a lot of presentations and things, that got reeeeeeeeeealy boring, but I suffered through. There was also a lot of time to socialize too though. I met a girl named Jung-Yeon Kim. (Pronounced Chong-Young Kim) She is from South Korea and right before she left, she met my sister, Lorie, at an exchange student meeting! They exchanged cards and everything and Lorie showed her a picture of me and told her that she would probably meet me here, and WE DID!! Small world huh!? Because we had to stay the night, everyone got their own rooms, kinda like a hotel, but with only one light, no bathroom, sink, or wastebasket... Beer was offered at dinner but a lot of people said it was warm so I didn't try it. Later on at the "party" thingy, they had cherry flavored beer that was tolerable, but everyone only got two and they were small. All the Rotary people said in the rules there was to be no drinking, but then afterwards they mentioned that beer is a big part of the Belgian culture and when they said "NO DRINKING" they mean don't go out all the time and get drunk because that gives Rotary a bad name.

Then today I had to go to this "Speak Academy." It's a one day course that is supposed to teach me French. No, its not a miracle, and no, it didn't work. There were a lot of other exchange students there that I had met at the orientation and we all had to watch french movies in French with French subtitles, Watch French music videos with French subtitles (and most of the music was really good), and then do this activity which was really funny in a stupid way. We had to partner up in twos and go out and find these four shops that the teacher had written down for us in French. (In a city we had never been to, surrounded by crazy Belgian drivers!!) I went with Jung Yeon and at first we didn't know how to read the map and got waaaaay lost, then we went back and had to get more directions, and so on and so fourth. In the process we looked like complete idiots, were kicked out of a bookstore, and hassled by an old woman for money... But we had fun!