Hello, blogosphere. I figured I’d give this blogging thing a try, see what all the fuss was about. I’m figuring I’ll write about the things I’m passionate about, which may occasionally include things I despise, because, after all, despising is passionate business. Mostly I’ll be sharing whatever profound experiences in my day-to-day life I can scrounge up and whatever literature that ends up entwined with them.
Today it was 75 degrees out. Normally 75 degrees is not hot. Except when you’re coming out of the only real winter you’ve ever experienced and your body has had to redefine heat. I figured, hey, I’m from California, I know what hot is and it’s not 75. Apparently, I overestimated myself because I found myself wishing I hadn’t told my host family that no, I’m not at all hot in my jeans and a sweatshirt, thankyouverymuch, because 15 minutes later when I came outside in a light skirt and tank top they all looked at me as if I had been trying to play it cool and should be ashamed of my hotshot ways.
Luckily it wasn’t a scarring experience. I was able to write out the introduction to the most daunting project I’ve yet to encounter, my French research paper on mexican immigrants in California. I’ve been pushing it into the future with things like, get a haircut, calculate the sky-high sum I owe my parents and how on earth am I going to survive the course load meant to be spread out over two years crammed into the space of one this fall. My intro isn’t horrible though and doesn’t have that many grammar mistakes, so I am feeling slightly encouraged to continue the process.
I should probably explain all these looming objectives. Like why I would need to write such a paper, or am so deep in debt. I have spent my last 5 months in Belgium and will leave to go back home in one more short month. I’m naturally attending school and as high school seniors (I’m technically a Junior but my school’s junior class was full and I decided to jump up instead of spend six months learning everything I did last year over again in a different language) we are assigned an end of studies paper in our Social Sciences class. I am dreading my presentation date because we are advised against written aid and my french skills are not exactly to the memorizing an entire presentation stage quite yet. The debt on the other hand would be because being a foreign exchange student is not cheap, and on top of that I do not deny myself books or music that catch my eye, luckily I’m not the same way with clothes or jewelry or other material goods.
Although this is not an “exchange student blog” I do want to share a few of my most memorable moments from these past 5 months.
On my first school day here I was not exactly sure what to do, I was surprised by a number of things, like chalkboards in the place of whiteboards, or that everyone writes in an adapted form of cursive with fountain pens. However it was when I was sent to study hall during the rest of the class’s Dutch class that I remember more poignantly. Firstly, there was no one there, it was a big empty room with a few old desks. Secondly, I was struck with a severe longing for my Californian high school, where study hall would be full of faces I’d known for 5 years and teachers I could chat with, I’ve always been fond of my high school but I did not expect to miss it so distinctly. Because I had nothing else to do I got out a kiwi I had brought with me, I realised I was in need of a spoon, so I gathered up my stuff and went down to the cafeteria, it was at this point I noticed that to acquire a spoon I would need to know the word for it. In fear of being seen in the hall I went into the bathroom, whipped out my pocket french-english dictionary and looked up spoon [spun] cuillere f; I sheepishly exited the bathroom, got my spoon and ate my kiwi in the lasting moments before bell rang and my day shifted back to overwhelmed and confused mode.
There was a day where one of class mates was sitting next me enjoying an apple when she turns to me and asks, “Vegetables and fruit, do they exist in California?”. To which I laughed outrageously, because of course we have almost double the variety of fruits and veggies than available in Belgium, seeing as it doesn’t have an ideal agricultural climate. She had the impression that because it’s America all we eat is huge steaks and MacDonald’s. She also thought that you could not buy a pre-made salad in the US.
Thats all the exchanger, eye-opening experiences for this time.
Books I’m reading:
- Lolita by Nabokov
- Tis by Frank McCourt
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (translated into French)
Recently Read:
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- Angela’s ashes
- Huis Clos (play) by Sartre
- The Catcher in the Rye
