Officially 1 Week

Tonight marks 7 days since I've been with my host family. I really like them and where I'm placed, but I also miss home too of course.

On Thursday, AFS Namur (there's five chapters for AFS Belgique - Namur, Brabant, Hainaut, Liege, et Luxembourg) took us on a tour of Namur. The first part was very touristy, we were shown a mural, important buildings, and statues. Then we went to lunch. I got frites and a chicken pita sandwich type of thing. I couldn't finish it all so I gave the rest to (prince) Cameron, the NZ exchange student that was in an earlier photo. I'm still loving the mayo here, I think it's what makes me like the fries so much. Then, we walked to the Citadel of Namur and took a few pictures. It was a long walk so we rested for a bit. We practiced a little French and enjoyed the nice weather. Then we went to the square of bars and we all tried some Belgian beer. I got a raspberry flavored beer and loved it. We went back to the train station around 6:30 to be picked up by our host families.

The next day, my host sister invited me to Kermesse de Wépion. It was a big party with a lot of dancing and music. We left around 3AM so I was super tired, but I enjoyed being out with my host sister and her friends. Her friends are really nice to me. I slept over at my host sister's friend's house because she lives in Wépion.

We went to a fast food restaurant named "Quick" the next day. It was the most ironic experience because it was anything but Quick! I'm used to fast food restaurants being fast, but in this one you had to wait for everyone to order, pay, AND get their food, so it was a very long wait. I got frites avec mayo (of course) and chicken strips (again, of course.... if you know me, you know I don't like burgers....) and it was okay. It wasn't as good as fast food restaurants in America, but that's to be expected. It was weird seeing a drive through though. We stayed inside for TWO HOURS. I'm not used to it yet, but Belgians - and people living in Namur especially - are known for taking a long time to get through meals. We finished eating in thirty minutes, but the conversation lasted way longer than that. The people of Namur are actually known for being slow, and the symbol of Namur is the snail because of that. There's even a statue of two people with snails in Namur.

Today, one of my host sisters left for Tunisia. I got to meet the neighbor who will be taking me to school. After, my oldest host sister and my host mom took me on a walk through the village. If anything, it said a lot about the friendliness of Belgium. Every time we passed someone, we said "Bonjour", and often stopped to talk to people. Everyone is so friendly here, I'm really glad I chose this country. Plus the food is amazing.








I should be going to Brussels on Tuesday, so that will be fun. I start school the day after, so I will update then. It's going to rain on my first day of school..... I hope that's not an indicator of how this school year is going to go!

Tchao,

Nicole