Bonjour, je m'appelle Ariana, et je suis américaine...

Well, as you can tell by the title, I learned a lot at my French class this past week. The hardest part was when we had to go out into Louvain-La-Neuve (a college town) and ask the students how to get to the cinema. They were all very pleasant, but you could tell that they thought we were ridiculous. Every day after class we had an activity planned for all us exchange students in the class. As you read in my last post, on Monday we went to the abbey in Villers-la-Ville. On Tuesday we went to a house in Louvain-

A picture of a picture
of my exchange friends
from French class

la-Neuve, my third host family's house, as it happens, and we made crêpes and gaufres. That was a great time, and not just because of the food. One of my third host brothers, Anton, is a theater student at the university, and two of his friends were there as well. The three of them acted in stereotypical theater major fashion, and entertained the rest of us quite thoroughly. I can already tell that living there is going to be anything but dull. That evening I went to the Cinema with my host dad and brother and we say Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. It was really good, and in English! Except the subtitles were only in French and Dutch, so when the apes would communicate in sign language, which was quite

What Belgian cartoonists
think of America...

often, I had only a faint idea of what was going on. I understood, "My son" and "father" and "humans" pretty well. Everything else was sort of a shot in the dark. Wednesday's afternoon activity was a visit to the Hergé museum. Hergé being the illustrator and author of the famous Belgian comic, Tin Tin. It was interesting for the most part, but after several rooms full of nothing but cartoons, even the most avid fan would get bored. It was still nice to spend the day with awesome exchange students, so I can't complain. We didn't have class on Thursday, as we spent the day in Bruxelles, visiting the Royal Palace and the Parliament building with all of the, approximately 220, Rotary exchange students in Belgium. About a third of those are from America, by the way. Fun fact: there's a room in the Royal Palace in Bruxelles in which the ceiling and one chandelier are covered in Thai jewel beetle wings. No joke. Dead beetles as wall paper. Google it. In Bruxelles we also saw la Grand Place, which is amazing. After class on Friday, we went to Rixensart, and spent the afternoon painting with kitchen utensils and playing theater games. It was a busy week to say the least.

This weekend I went to the Exposition 14-18, all about the first World War. From the few signs and explanations in English, I was able to learn a lot more about Belgium's participation in the war. It was really interesting. One exhibit was a "traditional American store" during the wartime. In it there was a crate labeled "Chinook Salmon, Columbia River!" That was cool. There was also a guy mentioned in a

part of the museum with the last name Keyser. Even though my name was changed to Keyser when my Oma and Opa moved to America, it was still fun to see it there. The parts I think I found the most interesting were the sculptures, like this here. Since WWI was known at the time as, "the war to end all wars", empty canon shells and bullet casings were converted into art and often displayed in people's homes. On the way home, we stopped for dinner at Pizza Hut. It's ridiculous here. Pizza Hut is like a sit down, family outing type deal. I had ice cream and everything!

Along with all those crazy adventures, I have also come close to mastering solo train rides, and I can now get to and from the train station in Fleurus by bike or on foot. This is useful because school starts this week, and I will have to take the train every day. Speaking of which, I should get some rest before my big first day of school tomorrow! 

All of the Rotary Exchange students in Belgium