AFS - Paris!!

Last weekend I went to Paris with AFS. It was a lot of fun. I've already been there with my mom a few years ago but it's still a beautiful place to see. There were about 45 of us in the AFS group from both exchange students here for the year and Belgian students that need to leave this coming fall. The weather wasn't too great, but at least it didn't rain so much.

We left on Friday, it's about 5 hours by car, and got to our hotel at midnight. We woke up early the next day and went straight to the Eiffel Tower. I love it so much. It was absolutely beautiful. We had to wait a really long time but it was worth it once we were up there. 












Next, we went to Arc de Triomphe. We took really awesome pictures in front of it but we weren't able to actually go to it and look closely.

After that, we split into smaller groups and walked down Champs-Élysées. It was so busy with cars, tourists, shoppers and resurants. We decided to go into the Disney store (because it's obviously too much fun to pass up).  


After dinner, the whole group walked to Seine where we got on a boat. There, we were able to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up, the Notre Dame on the side of the river, and a whole bunch of other really nice things on the banks.

After that, we drove past the Moulin Rouge and went to one of the most beautiful churches I've ever been to in my life, Sacre-Coeur. There was a serivce going on and it was so wonderful to listen.



The next day, we went to Le Louvre. I've already been inside before, so after taking pictures, I chose to go see a famous cemetary, Père Lachaise. It was actually really beautiful. The remains of people like Edith Piaf and Chopin are there. Most of the people are French, obviously, so I didn't know many names.

After that, we went to see Notre Dame. It was so beautiful. Since I've already been in with my mom, I decided to bypass the super long line and just play frisbee instead. I'm pretty sure everyone wanted to play too, haha. It was actually a lot of fun. That was our last stop and we walked all the way back to the bus and went home!










There's just so many good pictures.. so I'll just put a bunch of those up :P

 

February Vacation (Part 2)

On Tuesday, I went to my friend Tomas's house. Aysu, Tomas and Agustin all met me at the bus stop in the afternoon(we met Chinmaya at the house). We walked back to Tomas's house and hung out there for a while.

In the afternoon, there was a parade with all different floats and trailers filled with people from different groups, organizations and Chiro(kinda like boy/girl scouts). We had all changed into our costumes and went outside. They threw tons and tons of candy and little snacks. After the parade, we all went over to another building and listened to the people of all the floats talk. Aysu and I got a burger. Eventually we just went back to the house and ate something small. Then, we all went out to the center of Lanaken. They had a huge tent which we stayed under most of the time. Like I said, the music was bad. I would never listen to it on my own time. Actually, most of the songs I knew were just English songs that they had changed.

Carnival is really crazy. Everyone gets all dressed up and goes out to parties with really awful music. But, despite the bad music, it's still really fun.
Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl0DrVaPyls
I met a lot of people and also saw some people I knew already. After, we went back to Tomas's house and spent the night.



Thursday was Sander's birthday, so I helped out at home for a while. We took something like 15 kids to the police station for a tour. They all had a blast and it was really crazy with so many kids to watch.

After, I went to Lanaken again to celebrate Tomas's birthday. A bunch of us met there and ate dinner there. He was super surprised that we were all there. After that, we all went to Hasselt. There is a club there called Versuz. It's really fun with really really really good music. We met a bunch of other AFS students there at about 11. The line to go in was so long. All of us stayed there until the first bus/train which was at 6am. I slept like the whole day on Friday.



In the afternoon on Friday, I went to Hasselt and had a drink with Ellen. We both got on the bus and went back to my house. A little while after we got home, Christina and Elise came over too. We made pizza and watched movies. It was a really nice night!










On Saturday night, I went with my family to see a play in Sint-Truiden. It was really funny but a little difficult because it was in Dialect. Oh well! Also, Astrid and I ate super good fruit and chocolate.. muahaha :D

February Vacation (Part 1)

The Friday before vacation, the whole family went out to go bowling. It was a lot of fun, even though I was really awful, haha.

After bowling, I went over to Nienke's house to spend the night. In the morning, we were planning on meeting Edona in Cologne, Germany. Nienke and I had to wake up pretty early to catch our first bus. In order to get to Cologne, we had to take two busses and then a train. I guess it wasn't so bad. We had made some food to bring with us but it was gone by the time we were on our second bus. Haha! When we got on our train, there were probably 30 Spanish students in our section. They were all dressed for Carnival, which, unluckily, we had completely forgotten about. Everyone was completely crazy and dressed up(kinda like how we dress up for Halloween).

We got to the station in Cologne about an hour and a half before Edona, so we decided to go walk around. Immediately when you walk out of the station is a huge church. It's probably one of the biggest I've ever seen. It was really too bad we couldn't go in(The closed it for Carnival). We walked around a little more and finally found all of the shops and the center. We found a place that sold crepes and each had one. It was absolutely delicious!

After walking around a little, we went to go meet Edona at the station. It was soooooo nice to see her! It's been a year and a half since I've seen her. Once again, we walked around and looked at shoes, clothes, DUNKIN DONUTS!! -which I was soooo excited about!!

Nienke and I had been waiting for Edona and none of us had eaten lunch, so we started walking around trying to decide what to eat. Finally we found something super awesome: Hard Rock Cafe! It was so hard to decide what to eat, so I went with my gut feeling and chose Mac and Cheese and Cesar Salad, two things I haven't had since I left Maine! It's too bad Edona has all of the pictures we took of us three. I'll get them soon but they're really great pictures!

After we ate, we had a few hours before we had to catch out train back home so we went to Dunkin' Donuts and got some really delicious ones! Believe it or not, there isn't one in Belgie so I was excited to have one again. Once it was time to leave, we made our way back to the station and bought tickets for out train. We didn't have to wait very long for our connections and busses so we were home pretty quick, something under 3 hours. It was a really awesome day!!