Just call me a goatherdess...

Today is Thursday, or jeudi, and I am exhausted. I got in to the Brussels airport yesterday at about 8:30am and met my lovely host parents (Christine and Vincent) and, I guess you would say, my host cousin of my third host family, Elina. Christine speaks decent English, and Vincent a little. They don't live together, and stay with Christine, her son Julien, her partner Serge, and his daughter. Christine is the only one at home who speaks English and she works all day. Serge is a teacher so he's still on holiday as well. On the way to Fleurus we stopped in Wavre to go to an art supply shop for clay and glaze, because my host mom makes pottery. There's a wheel in our house and everything. My house is located on the property of la Ferme de Martinrou. It's pretty well known, at least in Fleurus, for hosting many arts camps for kids during the holidays and for the plays they put on every month. The house I live in is one of several that people live in, along with two theaters, one bigger, one smaller, and the

office. There is a nice garden full of fresh vegetables that we eat with dinner every night , including eggplant. That's right mom, I ate eggplant, and I liked it. Quelle surprise. There are several cats as well, the one in the picture is Whiskey (potentially spelled differently, but I like it), chickens, a rooster (which did not wake me up this morning, but I'll get to that later), and three goats. Let's just say I'll be eating A LOT of goat cheese these next three months.

Mon chambre

My room is pretty small, but it used to be a farmhands room back when the house was a barn, so I'm not complaining. My bed is comfy though, and warm, which is nice, because it gets pretty cold here. Also it likes to rain. After lunch, I unpacked all my clothes and organized my room, took a shower, and then a nap while Julien (host brother) was at camp and Christine was at work. The picture of the shower only begins to cover it. It's so cool! You go through this little hole in the wall to get into it, and it has a light. The toilet is separate from the rest of the bathroom. When Christine got home we ate dinner, I went over to one of the neighbor's houses (Serge, Christine's partner) and watched, in French with subtitles, Extremely Loud

The coolest shower ever

and Incredibly Close. It's really sad, but good, and I think I probably missed the full experience since it was in French, but still. I went to bed and Mini, one of the cats, slept in my bed all night until I let her out at about 7am, when I was awake. I got back in bed because we weren't having breakfast until 9, and I ended up sleeping until 12:30. Ridiculous. I had lunch with Julien, who, by the way, doesn't speak English. Then I went with him to the art camp deal, and I hung out with these two girls, one of whom speaks close to fluent English just from watching TV. At about 3ish the camp ended and Julien and I walked across the court yard to the house, where we found one of the goats had escaped and was eating everything. Serge was busy, so Julien and I spent a good 10 minutes corralling the crazy thing back into its pen. Now, I'm sitting here writing for all of you, and that's basically it! Tomorrow I go to meet with the director of my school to pick my courses, so that's exciting. Hopefully he'll just let me take English, French, and math all day. That'd be prime. Thank you all for tuning in, this has been adventures in Belgium with your hostess, Ariana Keyser, signing off. See you all soon for another thrilling tale of my life in Europe.


Here are a few differences I've noticed between Belgium and the good old States:
Starting with the obvious, the cheek kissing. It happens all the time.
Lunch is not a big deal. You get bread, cheese (goat cheese), meat, sometimes veggies, and water. But that's okay because lunch was never really my thing, and, strangely, I haven't been all that hungry since I got here anyway.
Also the colors. The brightest clothes I've seen have been on little kids. And even then it was just normal pinks and yellows at the most. None of the neon, highlighter type thing you see at home. Also white shoes are not really a thing. Some people have them, but you can tell they've been worn a lot. I was wearing white Converse on the first day, not the best goat house touring shoes, and I definitely heard Christine and Elina talking about chassures blanches and something about Americans... C'est la vie.