Orientation

Last Monday, Marc silently handed me the super official looking envelope and simply walked away mysteriously. It was addressed to me, so I opened it. Inside I found an even more official looking piece of paper. It had the Rotary International stamp, it had the Belgian lion thingy, it had it all. Needless to say, I was a little intimidated. Even more intimidating than all the cool guy stamps were the words written on the paper. . . They were French, and my personal translator had just walked away mysteriously.

So, I pulled out my little French-Enlish dictionary (the old school kind. Marc and Frederique don't have wifi. No wifi = no translator app for me.) and set to work deciphering my official little piece of paper. I had gotten through half of the page, and was feeling extremely proud of myself, when the mysterious Marc walked back into the room. He looked down at the paper, silently turned it over (he isn't much of a talker. Most things he does can be described with the word "silently", which also makes the things he does "mysterious") and walked back out of the room.

I looked down at the paper, expecting to see more French words. Instead I found the already perfectly translated version of the letter I had just spent thirty minutes trying to translate myself. Oy.

The moral of this story is: . . . actually, I'm not so sure if there was a moral to that story. Anyway, the point is I got a letter from the official higher ups of the Rotary Exchange peoples telling me about this important meeting that I had to be to on Thursday. They used a lot of words like "MANDATORY" and "REGULATION" which only intimidated me even more.

I wasn't so excited for Thursday. . . But I ended up having a lot of fun. Every single Exchange Student in Belgium was there. There were Australians, Puerto Ricans, and this one girl from some obscure Island that I can't pronounce. If I thought I had experienced culture shock before, it was nothing like this. Just when I started getting the feel for French, they throw me into an ocean of Spanish/Dutch/German/Chinese/Every-other-language-imaginable speaking teenagers. It was pure insanity. I met dozens of awesome people (and some not so awesome people) and I made some really great friends.

This is me with a few of the other Americans. They kept us all in a group, which was fun but a little sad. I wanted to go out and meet EVERYONE, but I guess that can wait for another time.

This is a picture of ALL the Americans with the President. (Don't ask me what he is the President of, I don't have a clue.)

Thats me :)