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Ok. The first entry is hard to start. I guess the beginning would be best. I do not suggest that you go on vacation with your family and only have 8 hours to recover from that and then take off on your own to a completely different continent. Speaking from experience, that is a very difficult situation. My flights were good over here (all three of them). I didn't actually get to sleep until the last flight from New York city to Brussels. When I landed here, it was 9am. I had a whole day to go through before I could sleep. Sunday (May 25), my first day was a blurr of exhaustion. I was so tired but I didn't want to fall asleep early in the day because I had school in the morning.
My host family picked me up from the airport. They are a 55 year old woman and her 19 year old daughter, who surprisingly has the same birthday as Molly (my little sister). Michele doesn't speak a lot of English but with my limited knowledge of French we can understand each other. Dadou speaks English very well. I have to help her with some of her words but other than that she is very good.
We decided to go look for the university and which buildings I needed to go to on Monday. Of course in the very Katie way, we got lost and could find anyone to ask for directions because it was Sunday and nobody was out. We did finally find it. It is about a 40-60 minute metro/tram ride from our apartment. I feel so urban when I use the metro. However, I don't feel urban when I miss my stop and have to get out and go around to go back one stop.
Oh, let me tell you about the apartment! We live on the top floor (penthouse suite, NOT). There are four floors of spiral staircase to go up. You should have seen us trying to get my giant bag up those narrow stairs. We have 3 bedrooms and one bathroom. The toilet (or WC) is in a separate room from the sink and the bath tub. It is very strange. And the toilet has buttons to push not levers like ours. Our kitchen is really small. It is like everything is cut in half (like Willy Wonka's office, you know the good one not the Johnny Depp one). Our oven looks like it won't even fit one cookie sheet. We have three cats: Miss Cha Cha, Baby, and Cali (Kelly, I'm not sure which). Michele talks to these cats more than I talk to my animals. It is alittle creepy. It is strange to think the cats would 'speak' French. I talk to them in English. They will be bilingual by the end of my stay here.
My first night here I slept for 13 hours. It was a great recovery from the weird 8 hour time change from California. I felt bad because we had guests over but I just had to sleep so I went to bed. On Monday, I had to go to school early to register for my class. I left 3 hours too early!!! I was extremely mad. I didn't want to come all the way back home then go back. So I just sat around in the office for forever. It was not a fun time. I am taking one class: Political Science--The European Union in the World. My teacher is from the University of Florida and so is half of my class. I guess they came as a group. They are nice. We only have European girl in my class of 15. My teacher was not excited about that. She expected many more Europeans and she was depressed to find out that we weren't. Too bad for her though. The class won't be too bad. I have it for 2 hours Monday through Thursday.
Tonight I got to go to a dinner party. What a trip that was! There were about 24 of us there. They were all older people from the neighborhood. They were speaking French and Dutch. I had no idea what was going on. I just smiled and nodded when they looked at me an spoke. There were 4 courses. There was so much food. I didn't want to see anymore. It was interesting to hear all their accents and they would switch between French and Dutch in the middle of the sentence. I was quite an experience. I believe we are going back tomorrow. Oh! and I got to meet the mayor. I got my picture taken with him as well. (The photo will be added later when I get it from Dadou). C'etait tres amusante. I got to have my first taste of real Belgian chocolate today as well. Oh my goodness, it is so amazing. I will have to bring some back so everyone can enjoy. I am telling you it is the greatest thing ever. And they are presented so well too. They are almost too pretty to eat, almost. Well, I guess that is all for now. I need to get some sleep for school tomorrow! Au revoir!
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Molly
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BIRTHDAYS!
Thats so crazy! She is trying to be a replacement sister! Connor says hi