cinq jours parfait

HELLO WORLD.

First of all, I apologize for not writing for SO long. I was gone Wednesday morning until Friday afternoon on a retreat with school. My retreat was at Ave et Auffe. I have no idea where this is or what that means, but there you go. There were a bunch of different options for retreats you could chose from. I ended up at the one I was at because one of my friends from school changed my sign up sheet so I could be with him. Which worked out, as I had about three of the best days in Belgium on said retreat. I should probably start this blog off saying that. The last five days were amazing. Truly five of the most perfect days imaginable.

I will start with Tuesday. Tuesday I had three hours of study after lunch. Thus, I had four free hours during the day. For these four hours, along with my fellow Americans, I left school and headed out for lunch. Then I spent the rest of the time in Hannut, hanging out with some other friends, and enjoying life. Tuesday after school Mikayla came over to make American chocolate chip cookies. Things didn't go perfectly.  First of all, we had to convert the recipe to grams instead of cups, tea spoons, etc. The brown sugar here is different. We used WAY too much butter. We had to use yeast instead of baking soda. Here are some pictures to demonstrate our disaster.

It didn't help that I'm not entirely the most cautious person in the world, and I forgot that the cookies were in the oven a couple times. But. Our final product was... too sweet. Too hard. But delicious none the less. I mean, come on, they're cookies.

After our cookie making business we went to a Rotary meeting, and it was nice to see everyone and I enjoyed being there. After the Rotary meeting my host dad from my second family drove me home, and I spent an hour or so packing for my retreat, which at that point, I had no idea what to expect. I didn't know if we would be hiking, if we'd be staying inside or outside, I knew nothing. 

Wednesday morning I woke up and my host mom drove me to school with my bags. When I got there we took a bus, along with one other group of students doing a different retreat. They were going hiking. There were about thirty or forty of them. There were nine of us in my group. We drove for about an hour and finally pulled into the place we would be staying.  

Then they have all of us get off the bus, grab our stuff, and we are introduced to a nun and another man. The teachers all say goodbye, board the bus, and the nine of us are left standing there with our suitcases and sleeping bags, watching a bus full of our classmates pull away. We go inside, get a mini tour, and at this point I'm practically hysterical. I was basically staying at a convent. There were I think ten nuns or so who lived there, and one of them was the leader of our retreat for the few days. We went into our main "meeting room" and started playing activities to get to know one another better, such as picking objects out of a table full of different random things and saying which objects represent you as a person, and which are the opposite of you.  We did different little activities like this one until we ate lunch. After lunch we had a break, and we spent the time outside playing soccer and listening to music. After our break we were instructed to go on a reflective walk. We were given a piece of paper with different points we had to go to, and we had to walk around alone and reflect on the nature and how it made us feel. Needless to say, doing all of this in French wasn't something I was overly thrilled about. But walking around outside was nice. I saw a volvo, which always reminds me of home. 

I kept walking alone for about half an hour, when I ran into a few of the others taking a break on the side of the trail. I joined up with them and we found a place to sit and just enjoy each others company as well as the sunshine.

The boy in the picture above is named Lucas. He speaks English perfectly, is super funny, and all around an amazing guy. The first time I heard him speaking English in my English class, I turned around looking for the American boy.

Anyway, after the walk we did some more activities, ate dinner, had another pause, and eventually we headed to bed.

Thursday morning I was woken up at 7:15 (I had gotten about four hours of sleep the night before because I stayed up hanging out with the others). Thursday morning after breakfast we did an activity where we were given a piece of paper with a bunch of different words such as "respect", "love", "suffering", etc. We were instructed to pick out the ones that meant the most to us, and arrange them in on another piece of paper however we liked. Let me just say that Belgians are a lot more creative than Americans. Everyone's final product was AMAZING. When we'd finished we went into this little chapel thing and presented what we had done, why we used the certain words we did, and we arranged it the way we did. Everyone talked about their family. How wonderful their parents were, how important their siblings were to them, etc. And it just got me thinking about how incredible my family is. My parents are amazing. They are always there for me, and honestly, without them my life would have gone nowhere. They encouraged me to do this exchange year and helped me through every step of the way. Of course I always have appreciated my family. But something in that moment in the chapel just snapped inside of me. Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, I want you to know that I love you both so much. You are the most amazing parents that anyone could ask for. I am the luckiest girl in the world to be able to be your daughter, and I want to thank you for everything that you have done for me. It really hit me right then that I was going a whole year without seeing my family. A year. I haven't gone more than two weeks before without seeing my family in my entire life. And now I'm going a year. The whole time I've been here thus far I've had the mentality that I am here. I wanted to come here, it was my choice to come here. Right now, my life is here, and I can't let myself be sad about being away from home, because I am experiencing the most incredible things here in Belgium, and I need to appreciate them. With this mentality, I was able to keep myself from ever being sad or homesick. But during that talk, I lost it. I was tired, I needed sleep, I had been speaking in French for too long. I missed my family. And I was just overwhelmed with appreciation for them, and lost in the fact that I never appreciated them enough before I left. When it came to be my time to talk, I couldn't get the words out because I was crying. I didn't want to cry in front of everyone, but I couldn't help it.

 After we finished in the chapel we went to lunch and had a pause. After the pause we went back into our "work" room, and I found this sitting at my spot.

You probably can't read everything it says, but it just has little notes saying that everyone is there for me and that they were really glad that I came on the retreat with them. And it was honestly one of the sweetest things ever. It made me very happy, and appreciate not only the people from the United States that I missed, but also the wonderful people that I have met in Belgium.

Later that day we played with clay. And I again realized how creative the Belgians are. And how neat and perfectionistic they are.

This was my creation. On the left is the Belgian flag, on the right the American.

My present for Gregoire.

My present for Ladislas.

A picture of some of the other creations.

The rest of the day we did some more activities, ate dinner, and had another break. Here are some pictures from the day.

the boys playing soccer.

fabiola, aka the most amazing person ever. she has helped me through so much already, and is honestly one of the nicest people i have ever met. thank you faby!!!

me and ladislas. he's crazy.

i'm eating a branch. don't ask why.

lad and stefan.

me and faby just being gorgeous.

a rainbow in belgium!! it wasn't raining or anything, and it made me smile :)

me, stefan, sarah, and jack.

A large majority of the group.

Silly faces!

Me and Lucas and Fabiola, aka my two English speaking buddies.

Me and Gregoire, one of the nicest people in the world.

Yeah, okay, I'm crazy too.

Climbing up onto the roof of the building with Ladislas...

Making our way...

Success!!

I absolutely love this picture.

Sarah, me, and Lucas.

Dancing on the roof.

One of the things I should probably mention is how beautiful the sky is in Belgium. After Ladislas and I climbed onto the roof, we laid down for a good fifteen minutes just looking at the sky. The stars here are gorgeous, and it's crazy how many of them you can see. Then the others came up onto the roof and we started dancing. It was fun. After this break, we went back inside to have some more deep French conversations.

Above is a picture of the chapel I mentioned earlier. We brought in branches and rocks to signify death and life and probably a lot more, but the French wasn't completely clear to me. You can see some of the examples of the projects we did earlier in the day. Mine is at the top left corner on a blue piece of paper that says "ma vie" in big letters, in case you were curious.

After the chapel we had a party. We played games and did different activities.

The pictures below are from one of the "activities". They set up four chairs all facing different directions and had us sit in them. Then they removed all of the chairs and we had to support each other. That was easy enough, but it was the standing up that was hard. I stood up and everyone else fell down.

After the human chair activity, they did the typical one person is another person's arms game. Ladislas was the arms of Stefan, and Stefan ended up covered in yogurt and tooth paste and water.

The final game we played was very funny. We had to say "Moi, la vache sans tache qui tache appelle *someone else* la vache sans tache qui tache". It's a tongue twister. And if you messed up and said something wrong, you got "tache-d", aka, they pressed a burnt end of a wine cork to your face and left the ashes there. After you had one ash mark on your face you would have to say "Moi, la vache une tache qui tache..." meaning you had one ash mark. Every time you messed up after you would get another ash mark. 

Above is a picture of Jack. He got all four ash marks within a minute. The game continued on and in the end, I was the only one left without any ash marks. It helped that I had to talk slower than everyone else to begin with, since I have trouble saying non tongue twister words. But it was fun, and eventually I did get an ash mark.

The rest of the night we all just hung out together and it was very fun.

Friday we woke up early again, ate breakfast, had some activities and spent some time outside. Overall it was a great day. Below are some random pictures from Friday.

Stefan and I.

Me with the two people who were the two most outgoing and helpful people the first week of school, and who are now two of my best friends here! :)

Sarah, Fabiola, Gregoire and I.

A picture Ladislas drew for me.

Means "Talia, I love you".

Us at lunch with all of the nuns.

Jack. I think this picture should be in a model campaign or something.

Me and Fabiola.

The boys trying to get a soccer ball in the open window.

The same.

Ladislas and Gregoire made a see saw out of a board and a rock.

...

sweet mid air shot.

Jack and I.

Me and Lucas.

Me and Ladislas.

Me and Gregoire.

Me and Stefan.

Me and the "sister" who was in charge of us.

Ladislas being his normal crazy self on the bus.

Me and one of my best friends Maxime- he wasn't on the same retreat as me, but he rode the bus out there with us. It's not a cute picture, but it's the only one I have of him!

So that overall was my retreat. It was great. Some of the activities were lame, and there were definitely times when I was bored out of my mind. But I enjoyed it. I had fun and I loved getting closer with all of the people I spent the three days with; they were all amazing. So if any of you are reading this, thank you! :)

After the retreat, the bus took us back to school, where I caught the bus home. Then Emma came over and we got ready for a party. My friend Jack, who was on the retreat with me, is a DJ and he was in charge of this party at a club not too far from my school. Basically everyone from my school was there, and a lot of other people. It was very fun. 

Me and my best friend Mathieu, looking gorgeous, as always.

Me, Emma, Ladislas, and his crazy brother. 

Me and my friend Thomas, who rides the same bus as me.

Gaby, Emma, and I. Gaby is another exchange student, from Mexico, who is in the same Rotary host club as I am, but goes to a different school.

Emma, me, and Perrine, a lovely friend from school.

A lot of friends :)

Emma, me, and bus buddy Maxime. At my school there are about fifty Maxime's, so Emma and I have nick names for them all. This is bus buddy Maxime, because he rides the bus with me. He's a very good friend :)

Dancing!

Me and Jack, the boy who organized the party.

Me, Emma, and Tutu, another one of the DJs in charge of the party.

love love love.

emma and I with some new friends.

Emma and I with some of our friends from school :)

Me and Gregoire, officially one of the sweetest people in Belgium.

Me and Henri-Guillaume, a friend of Geraldine and now me as well.

Saturday I went into Namur with Rotary. We went to the French Parliament, went on a boat ride, and had time to just walk around the city. It was really nice seeing all of my exchange student friends, and I had a lovely day.

Me with two Canadians, Jace and Remi.

The four best exchange students ever. Emma, Matheus a boy from Ohio but who is originally from Brazil, me, and Remi my best friend from Canada.

Saturday night I had an activity with Geraldine and I learned how to dance Rock. Or, I attempted to learn. I have mentioned it before, it is sort of like swing dancing. And super fun. At first I was terrible, and since I was so tired it was hard for me to remember everything I needed to learn. But by the end I loved it and picked it up like a pro. 

Overall, the last five days were amazing. Tuesday was just nice. The retreat was lovely. Friday night was crazy. Saturday was beautiful. Saturday night was wonderful. I had a great time.

I will add more photos to this post later.

today I appreciate: being busy