Whitney Brown -- Belgium

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Hi Everyone! I hope everyone is doing well and is having a happy new year so far. I have been really busy since my last email update.

I celebrated new years eve in brussels, which was amazing! There were thousand of people celebrating in the beautiful Grand Place, it was picture perfect! So much fun!

On New year's day I moved in with my new host family. I was a really hard goodbye to my first host family. This new family has been an.... interesting experience. They live 30 minutes away from town by public bus and the bus only comes once an hour... I miss my car more than ever! The house is chaotic and the father is so so weird. He really gets under my skin... He is obsessed with the US, talks about it non stop, sings allllllllll of the time (good classics like the beatles, but ruins them with his painfullllll voice), and has some of the worst table manners I have ever seen!... but I just smile, be polite, and try really hard to make the best of the situation..... its part of the exchange experience. They have 3 teenage daughters though and they are nice, so I go out with them quite a bit - concerts, movies, shopping in antwerp.... all of which has been really fun. But I really cant wait to move to my next host family.

And I've been keeping myself very busy. My calender is always full. Ive gone on a lot of city trips with friends lately and have visited some museums. I went to the Waterloo battlefields, where Napoleon was defeated by several adjoining nations in 1815. That was a really cool visit. And my city is famous for being one of the world largest playing card producers in the world. The company here, Cartamundi, makes most of the playing cards for Las Vegas. So I visited the National Playing Cards Museum here in Turnhout; it was actually really really interesting.

Rotary had a benefit concert and I helped serve dinner at the after party.

In January, I went on a 3 day trip with my class called Bezinning. We stayed at an old abbey for 3 days with monks. Haha it was an interesting experience. We did a lot of team building activities and had many discussions about life. The other students learned about their college options. College is far less competitive here. They have nothing like the SATs and anyone who want to go to college can. You only need to take a special exam if you want to go into Medicine. Schooling here is so so cheap. Although they do have higher taxes, which is how the government pays for the schooling. And the name of the college doesnt really matter; all of the schools are on the same level. Its been interesting learning about their different system.

We are off from school all this week for carnival. It is a 4 days celebration before the Easter fasting. The Carnival activities are more popular in Holland, so I wento to Holland on Sunday and Monday. There are huge parades with big floats. EVERYONE dresses up all crazy....I'm serious, if you are not wearing something goofy, then you are the weird one that stands out. After the parades everyone gathers in the pubs for the rest of the day and pigs out on fries, fried dough, and beer. Its crazy, people get so into it.

Yesterday I did some more site seeing in Antwerp. My umbrella and I fought the never ending Belgium rain and wind. But it was a great day; Antwerp is a beautiful city, one of my favorites in Belgium.

This Thursday I have to give a presentation to Rotary about where I live in the US and such. It will be all in dutch, so wish me luck! I am getting better at the language, so thats good news.

And the count down continues.... only 13 days until my brother comes to visit in Belgium!! He will be here from February 19-27 and we will also being taking a 3 days excurrsion to Paris together. Then my mom comes March 5 -13. YAYYY!! and we will be taking 3 days to go to Ireland. Thennn, I will be going to Italy with my school from March 19 - 30! So I have a very busy and exciting month ahead of me!

I miss you all like crazy and am always thinking about you! Take care and Keep in touch!!

Lots of love, Whitney