Today my friend Jordann and I went to Brussels together! She is another exchange student that I met through Rotary who's from Pennsylvania. We took the train together, paying barely 5 Euro both ways, and we were in the city!!
       We took lots of pictures, ate Greek food, waffles, and chocolate, walked around, went to stores, spoke some French... the usual Bruxelles activities :) About every five minutes we would look at each other and say "are we really here? This is so crazy that we're actually spending the day in Brussels at 16. It's crazy that we're exchange students!!"
        It was an amazing day, exactly the kind of day I pictured having here. I can't wait to have more experiences with traveling here!
        Voilà des photos:

      So last week when I was telling myself that the cure to homesickness was staying busy, I (and all the exchange students that I've talked to) was right! 
     Last week I was still at Marianne's (I came back to my first host family's yesterday morning), and this weekend was busy! Friday night I got to meet a lot of her friends, it was so much fun hanging out with kids my age. They all kept asking how to say things in English, and loved hearing how their names sounded with an American accent. I was also surprised that they ALL know how to swear in English!! Probably all those American movies...
This weekend we also went to a street market, watched a movie, and went out with friends too. I love building relationships with peers in a different language, it's so much fun!
Yesterday I hung out with my friend Michelle she's an exchange student from Colorado. I feel like I have a nice balance between being with Belgian kids and exchange students, and I love hanging out with both of them! It feels so nice to be making friends :D I don't have the loneliness that I was having at the beginning.
      Today I'm going to BRUXELLES with my friend Jordann (an exchange student from Pennsylvania). Even though we went last week, we wanted to come again to take pictures, eat chocolate, walk around, and really see the city. We're taking the train in about an hour and I'm so excited!!
So some funny things that I've noticed:
People here eat bread. For almost every meal. 
People here also eat an insane amount of chocolate :D
The cereal has pieces of chocolate in it
The lights are more like buttons, not switches like in the U.S.
Doors are always closed in houses (and there are a lot of doors separating rooms in Belgian houses). It's too keep the heat in, I was told, because gas is really expensive here
The French Belgians don't have much against the Dutch Belgians, but the Dutch Belgians really don't like the French Belgians. 
That's all for now! I have a very busy week before school starts on Friday :D
I'll blog about Bruxelles later today or tomorrow (with pics). 

      The past week has been pretty good. My second host family is wonderful, and we've been doing a lot of fun things! 

Butte de Lion! 
Monument where Napoleon lost in the Battle of Waterloo

With my second host family siblings. Marianne, me, François.
I love them already!!

Chausettes (socks). So cute!

All the exchange students waiting to go to the Grand Palace!

Grand palace! (We couldn't take pictures inside though)

I love the roads and streets here so much

      Today was a really good day! After being woken up by the adorable kitty "Ron Ron" (pronounced "ghgro ghgro", with those crazy guttural French r's), I had breakfast with my 2nd host family. We hung out at the house for a bit, then went to pick up the dog from where she stays when they're on vacation. Marianne (2nd host sister) and I were dropped off down town and we met up with two of her friends for lunch! It was really nice. Then we walked home, watched "Catch Me if You Can" (In English with French subtitles), I went for a run, and then we had dinner! I wasn't nearly as homesick today and I think that's because I was busy. For future exchange students: if you arrive a while before school starts, don't worry if you feel really homesick at first. It's probably just because you're bored and that's the first thing your mind goes to! That's was I've found. At night I miss home a bit, but hopefully that will get better too. I'm really happy to find that French isn't a problem, everyday I learn more and I really don't have much problem communicating and understanding. Complete immersion really does work! Haha. 

     How I feel here changes from hour to hour! It's ridiculous! Yesterday was a really hard day for me, I felt really homesick. But today is much better! I'm actually staying with my second host family this week, because my host family is going to France for camping. I could have easily gone with them, but there is a big event in Brussels for all the exchange students in Belgium that I've been looking forward to since the Spring, so I decided to stay here. It's nice, because I get to go to Brussels, and also meet my second host family! At first it was hard to decide what to do, because I didn't want to hurt my host family's feelings by not going, but I realized that a week of camping after just arriving in a new country was just not a good idea for me. One of the reasons that I chose a yearlong exchange instead of a summer travel program was because feeling settled is very important to me, I don't feel good nor do I have fun if I don't feel settled somewhere. 
     But I'm really happy with my decision to stay here, my second host family is wonderful! They have two kids, Marianne who's 18 and François who is 14. Plus their cousins who live next door, so there are a lot of kids! I love it. 
     I still feel homesick sometimes, especially at night. But I always feel better when I'm around more people and there is more activity. I know for a fact that in a few weeks I will be much more busy, so I think everything will slowly get better! But right now I'm feeling pretty good :)

   Today I visited my school! It's called Collège Cardinal Mercier and it's soooo beautiful. It reminds me of a castle, I can't wait to go there! I met with one of directors, and I'm going to be able to take Spanish. I'm so happy about that because I thought that I would forget all of it while I was here, but now it's Spanish in French. We'll see how that goes...  
I can't wait to start school, I'm really excited to have a routine. Right now is really hard because there isn't a whole lot to do. When I am out doing something I'm very happy, but later at night when everyone is doing their own thing and I don't really have anything to do it's really hard. I don't have a life here yet, so I'm still trying to continue my old routines, but that doesn't work either. This causes me to miss home. I'm pretty sure that once I start school and meet more exchange students this will change. At least that's what everyone tells me! 

Part of the campus (it's so huge!!!!! There are about 3,000 students)

      I haven't even been here a week but it feels like much longer! Already I'm learning much more French and I can understand way more than when I first got here. 
      In the past couple of days we've gone grocery shopping (so much meat! It's a good thing I'm not a vegetarian...), gone to the mall, where I ate Belgian fast food. It's not much different from American, it's the first food I've eaten here that didn't make me say "Oh my gosh this is so good". Shopping was fun though! I also tried my first Belgian waffle "les gaufres" it's an understatement to say that I just like them :). 
       Today I went to Oostend (a beach city in the north) with Perrine, her boyfriend Sevan, and my friend Jordann who is also an exchange student. She's from Pennsylvania. It was really great to hang out with another exchange student! I really like everyone I've met here, but because I can't completely express myself fully in French it was really nice to hang out with someone that I can really connect to (through being an exchange student and English). We did try to speak French with each other, and we succeeded pretty well! We did speak a lot of French today anyways because we were with Perrine and Sevan. 
      We went to the beach (it was way too cold and windy to go swimming though), we walked around the city, ate lunch, got candy, it was a good day! I especially liked taking the train there, the trains here are really nice. 
      Tomorrow we're going to visit my school, I'm really excited to see it! (It reminds me of Hogwarts... haha)

Braine-l'Alleud! 

An old, very beautiful church we went to in Oostende. 

La mer :)

Oostende town

Me, Perrine, Sevan, and Jordann

       I have arrived. Je suis arrivée. Yes, it is just a little bit crazy! 
I'm constantly surprised by how real everything feels, I shouldn't be, but for some reason I felt like everything would feel like a dream because when I was preparing it felt like a dream. It's great though! 
      The plane ride was 7 and a half hours long, and I slept for about an hour and a half... not very fun. What was great was that I met up with a bunch of other exchange students in D.C. and flew over with them. When we all got off the plane and went through customs all our host families were there waiting for us! It was an amazing sight. After some searching I found my host family (as well as the mother and son of my third host family), there were beaucoup de bises (cheek kisses, something that I like but am still getting used to!), and we left the airport. 
      I noticed while driving that everything is smaller... the cars, the streets, the houses, everything but appetites! They really know how to eat here, and they eat very well!! My first food was pain au chocolat. All the food has been wonderful. We stopped at home, I saw the house and everything, and we set off for the beach in the north of Belgium, in a Flemish town called Koksijde. By this time I was extremely tired, being awake for about 24 hours with no more than two hours of sleep. We walked around the town, went to the beach (it was the stranges feeling standing in the sand thinking "England is right across from me, how crazy is that???) got ice cream (mmmhmm), got caught in the rain (it's always raining!) and finally arrived back to the beach cottage. By this time I had been awake for about 30 or so hours with 2 hours of sleep, and I felt like I was about to die. I went upstairs and had a petit meltdown, took a shower, and came back down where everyone was watching a concert on TV. I fell asleep in the chair, and then they woke me up saying "Savannah, on va souper maintenant! (time for dinner)" to which I responded (in English, French was beyond me in that moment) "I think I'm just going to go to bed". It's a good thing that my host family's friends understand English. It was about 7:30 at night, I fell dead asleep, and didn't wake up until 10 the next morning! I felt quite refreshed. After a nice breakfast of plums, a croissant, and nutella, we walked around the beach more, got waffels, went to the grocery store (also much smaller than in America!), went back to the house, ate lunch, and drove back home. 
       It was so so so nice to come here. One of the reasons that I wanted to do a year abroad and not a summer traveling type program was because I'm the kind of person who hates living out of a suitcase, not having my own space, and not being settled. I was VERY happy to have my own room (it's awesome! With a cozy loft and my own bathroom :D), get my stuff in place, and relax. Today was nice, we went to the supermarché and I played Wii and watched Pirates of the Caribbean (in French with English subtitles) with Perrine (my host sister) and her boyfriend Sevan. It was a good day! It was also the first day that I skyped with my parents and a lot of my friends and that was really nice. It was good to "see" a lot of people! 
      I'm feeling pretty good about everything, I like the lifestyle here, there isn't really any culture shock. I think I'm doing pretty well with French; when people are talking between themselves it's difficult to understand, but when they're talking to me I usually understand pretty well (I think they use simpler language, haha). I'm able to express most things, and they know quite a few single words in English so they can help me along a bit without giving me a crutch. English is everywhere here, so most people know at least a few nouns/words. My host family is so so so sweet. They're wonderful. Freddy is my host dad, Valérie is my host mom, and Perrine is my host sister (their other daughter Florence is on an exchange in Finland). They're so helpful and patient with me and I'm already learning a lot! Tonight I had my first real conversation at the dinner table, it felt really good! 
Tomorrow I'm going to a Braine-l'Alleud rotary club meeting, apparently they have really wonderful food! I think it will be really fun. Pics coming tomorrow.
Bonne nuit, à bientôt!

My house

My street

Braine-l'Alleud

Some pics of Koksijde where we stayed at the beach. Train, neighborhood, me, (right), my host sister Perrine, and they're friend's daughter Julia, the beach, amazing Brazilian dancers, my familiy's dog, Belle, my room (with a loft!), views from my window.

       Okay... I've actually started some packing, I'm making my pins (more on those later), my good-bye party is in 4 days, I should be freaking out right now!!!!! But I'm not. Maybe it won't hit me that I'm leaving until the day that I leave and I am standing in the airport saying good-bye to my family- I'll burst into tears and realize the crazy decision I've made!!! Somehow I don't think so though. There are many emotions that I have when I think about going to Belgium for a year, and they all pretty much fit into three categories: (1) Insanely excited, (2) complacent and still-not-believing-that-it's-possible, (3) Worried. About what it changes... that I won't be able to fall asleep in my new house, that I will realize that taking Physics in French is actually impossible, that I will (God forbid :P) decide that I really really like America and that I never want to leave it again. But, I really do feel that no matter what happens I will be okay. This is because I am doing exactly what I want to be doing. This has been in the works for over a year, AND I'M READY TO SEE WHAT IT'S LIKE!!! I want to leave so much, and this in between-limbo time is difficult for me and for my family. I want to be here but my mind is already in Braine-l'Alleud Belgique. (Even though that's a bit difficult because I've never even been to Europe, so I can't very well really imagine what it's like there). 
       Anyway... something that has been taking up a fair amount of my time are the lovely pins that you see up top and below. These are for the Rotary Jackets. I don't have mine yet as it's on a plane from Georgia right now, but these are the pins that will go on it. Here's how it goes: every Rotary Exchange student either makes or buys pins that represent their country/region, and when we meet other exchange students we trade pins with each other, and by the end of the year everyone's jacket is covered with pins from kids from around the world :D. There are 184 Rotary exchange students in Belgium this year so I have to make A LOT of these babies. I have about 120 done so far, so I'm not disappointed. 
That's all for now, maybe there will be a frantic post in a week or so saying how unprepared I am!!! :)