Less Than a Week!

Hey ladies! Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend–mine was very busy and I couldn’t update until now! I spent my exchange year in Belgium with AFS and the weekend before we leave Belgium we have an obligatory end of stay orientation. Honestly, a lot of these orientations are bullsh!t (we’ve already had two orientation weekends–one in the beginning of the year and a mid stay orientation) but it’s great to see all the other exchange students from around the world. And actually, this orientation did have some interesting things to think about it (what a surprise!).

But Saturday was the typical wtf sh!t. We broke into groups and played “get to know you games” (such as running around like a bird, we only let that one fly in my group for about 30 seconds) and then we received this piece of paper with strange looking people hanging out on a tree. We had to describe which strange looking person we felt like with our family, with AFS, and with our friends. Whatever. I used the sheet of paper for my own purposes:

And I characterized a bunch of the AFSers! It started because I really liked the look of this guy:

Wtf is up with that smile? Anyway, there’s this creepy Indonesian exchange student who grunts a lot, and I decided that it looks like him, and then it just took off from there. Sorry for the blur there from focusing in on him. Here I am:

I’m on top of the branch trying to save my friend who can’t take her host family’s craziness anymore so she takes drastic measures. For some reason, I am obese looking here (haha, don’t think I picked her for bad self image reasons!) My friend there on that board is from Hawaii and hanging out on her surfboard.

AFS ridiculousness extended into the evening, when they kept us trapped in a room by taking our keys (so we don’t sneak back to our rooms and drink, which some students may or may not have a history of doing at past orientations, but not yours truly) and had us play the most random games well into 1 am, at which point we desperatley wanted our keys not to commit shenanigans but just to SLEEP.

Anyway, enough of that. Sunday was pretty beneficial. The AFS organizers had us close our eyes and turned out the lights in the room as they slowly recounted what e’ll be facing when we return to our countries next week (along the lines of–you pack  your bags and leave the house you’ve lived in for a year. You look one last time at the house, prepare the car with your suitcases, and think about what to say to your host family as a goodbye…etc). I’ve enjoyed my year in Belgium and I’m so glad I went through this experience, but I feel like it’s time to go home, so I’m pretty happy to return to the U.S. However, a lot of students are heartbroken, and this mental exercise made them confront their emotions concerning the end of their exchange year and many people started crying. The AFS organizers also had us write letters to ourselves that they will send to us in December. I really enjoyed this exercise, my letter got kind of deep, and I can’t wait to see where I am and what I’m doing in six months when I read the letter.

Then we found swings…swings that were formed in a circle! Chouette!

I’m prtty sure the swings were designed for the short legs of little kids, so consequently our legs hit each other a lot, and we used that opportunity to give each other feet high fives!

I’m miss calves right there to the left.

The Americans are definitely going to see each other again at the airport this weekend, but we weren’t sure if we’d see the other exchange students before they leave for their own countries, so there were a lot of photos and a lot of tears.

I love the Norwegian kid!

One of the best things about being an exchange studnet is meeting people from so many countries. I’ve learned so much this year and encountered so many new things. For example, the Thai student wrote this on one of the student’s names in Thai on her arm:

Thai looks like such a beautiful language.

This post is sorely lacking in the food depaartment, but AFS orientation food is usually not that interesting. I have to give them props this time though, they had this falafel tasting veggie burger concoction for the vegetarians and salad bars on both days. But I hope you found this post interesting, nonetheless! If you’re interested in being an exchange student check out the AFS website. There are other organizations as well, such as Rotary and YFU (I reallly like the name of that one!).   

I’ve been gone for a year and it’ll be both interesting and bizarre to go home and see how my friends and family have changed. I’m sure I’ve changed, also, and I think that seeing everyone again will serve as a mirror to see how I’ve matured this year. Have you been through a similar experience? Were you surprised by what you saw when you came home?

I’ll be back soon with some eats!

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

2nd High School Diploma

Happy weekend! It’s been a busy past couple of days and I have a busy weekend ahead of me, but here’s a recap.

I have pictures on my camera from Thursday but I don’t really remember too well what I was up to (so probably not anything that interesting) but here’s some food pics and descriptions for ya’ll:

Breakfast was the favorite warm weather meal, Swiss Oats!

With straberries, banana, and medjool dates. I love Swiss oats with some chopped nuts for crunch, and we finally had some in the house, so I added that for good measure. I usually have tea in the morning, and that mug you see back there has been my favorite this year.

At the last market I picked up some fresh goat cheese covered in Italian seasonings. This week has been pretty goat cheese filled, I do love it, but I don’t usually have it this often. I had to profiter from farm fresh goat cheese before I leave though!

And I slathered some on a whole wheat roll with the leftover stew from the couscous (watered down and sans couscous), which was kind of like a minestrone, with olives on the side.

My dinner was so frickin’ good. I made a huge jass salad with a combo of lettuce and spinach. I cooked some of my carrot ginger soup until it became thick and let it cool, which I used as a salad dressing. I also added cooled, cooked broccoli (can’t stand it raw), chopped tomatoes, chickpeas, and some kind of white fish.

This is only the beautiful beginning of many huge jass salads to come.

Then I went to les Granvilles house for some hanging out.

Blue eyed cutie Clemence. Getting a 2 year old to sit still for a picture during Rolie Polie Olie dubbed in French is not easy, hence the blur. Anne took us out for ice cream to celebrate one of the son’s good report card. I had speculoos ice cream with cherry sorbet. I thought the speculoos ice cream would be mind blowing, but it was alright. I just love that speculoos flavor so much that I was a little disappointed that it was muted in the ice cream. But it was good to try.

I don’t have any good pictures from yesterday because I went to Leuven with a friend. Leuven is a college town 20 minutes north of Brussels. It feels a lot like an American college town, one of the only universities like that in Belgium. My friend and I hadn’t really seen much of Leuven before, so we figured why not visit during our last week? We couldn’t spend too much time there as my friend had to get back to his house to prep for a party and I had my graduation, but we still loved the visit.

I heard about an Ethiopian restaurant, one of my favorite cuisines that my friend had never tried, but it was only open for dinner! Merde! We found a tandoori place instead, which he’d also never tried, and we split appetizers and tandoori shrimp. It was a beautiful day in Belgium, and even though we couldn’t see a lot it was great to walk around. We saw a lot of the university buildings, including a library that was burned down during World War II and reconstructed thanks to the help of American universities, whose names are scattered along the outside of the building. Our hearts swelled with American pride! Our youth hostle map told us about a statue of a beetle and said that you can send in a picture of you with the beetle. We found the square where it should have been and were confused when we couldn’t find it. We missed the map description of on a 26 meter pole. We looked up and sure enough, there was the beetle.

Our best attempt at a picture of us with the beetle. We then chillaxed with some Belgian beer on the longest pub crawl in Belgium.

And before we caught the train back home we made a detour for some chocolate, which we read about in the guide. The man who owns the store makes all the chocolate in the cellar. He was so sweet and adorable! We had such a hard time picking, and ended up splitting three flavors, which included ginger/coriander, violet, and coffee/rum.

Yesterday was my Belgian high school graduation! Belgian school graduations are nowhere near what they are in the U.S. A lot of my classmates went through my facebook picutres and were surprised to see the robes and caps from my own graduation last year, and they said “it’s just like in the movies!” They were surprised when I told them what a big deal graduation is in the U.S. and the huge parties families have for students. In Belgium it’s generally just a small ceremony where you pick up (and are not handed out) your diploma. I think the students had the idea to make it a bit more elaborate this year based on what I described, and they ordered graduation caps and had a song at the end.  During the ceremony I realized that it’s been a little over the year since my graduation, and I could feel the emotion build up in me. So much has happened in a year! I remember the graduation like it was yesterday. At the end of the ceremony, we released balloons in the building:

The hats were kind of cheap looking (only 7 euros, after all) but I get to keep mine, which is a bonus, and it was funny to wear a graduation cap without robes.

Here’s a picture from my high school graduation last year:

And a picture from my Belgian graduation:

I had to go for a self portrait look because host mama MC had to work and couldn’t make it.

This weekend I have an end of stay orientation with my fellow exchangers. Enjoy your weekends!

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

Getting Back Into the Rhythm

Good morning! I love trips and parties, but I also love getting back into the everyday rhythm. I definitely did so yesterday (with the addition of an intense nap) with my usual meals.

I got home at 10 am from my friend’s house. The Wednesday market closes at noon, and I knew I wanted to nap but I didn’t want to miss the farm fresh goods, so I made a detour on my walk home from the train station. I love fruit/veg vendors– when I asked if the melons were good he gave me a sample and I enjoyed a fresh apricot while I waited. I picked up half a watermelon, 2 of the melons, and strawberries, the sweetest I’ve tasted in a while.

Just look at those beauties.

I had breakfast at 11, which was my version of Greek oat-gurt. I cooked 1/3 cup of oats in the usual 2/3 cup of water and splashes of milk with a thinly sliced banana (adds sweetness, learned this at KERF) and made them super thick. When it cooled a bit I beat in 1/2 a serving of Fage greek yogurt and topped the bowl with straberries and globs of peanut butter.

I caught up with the blogworld after breakfast and did some blogging of my own. I also watched the Daily Show, aka my main source of news while abroad. Three hours of sleep is definitely not enough, so I crashed for a three hour nap. My exchange student bff’s call woke me up, and we gabbed about plans for this week and his experience at a Belgian “prom” (my school didn’t have one), which they called a bal. He said the guys were jeans and alcohol was served (way different than the U.S. experience of breathalyzing the students before coming in!). While on the phone my arm looked more and more appetizing, so afterwards I heated up some carrot/ginger soup and grilled a goat cheese sandwich for lunch.

I'm going to get better at this whole food photography thing, I swear

 Once lunch digested for a bit, I went for a three mile run and blasted this tune:

When playing this song it is absolutely compulsory to turn up the volume as loud as possible.

By the time my run was over it is was already 6:30 and almost time for dinner. I hate that the day after a blowout party is basically wasted. I spent half of it sleeping! Anyway host mama MC cooked up some veggie couscous, which they eat a lot in Belgium with the addition of meats sometimes. There’s a lot of immigrants from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria in Belgium and couscous is pretty popular. You can buy the coucous veggie mixes frozen, which we jazzed up with leeks, canned tomatoes, and veggie boullion. It’s like soup over couscous, I love it.

To digest  after dinner and French dubbed Gilmore Girls I took an hour walk with Harry Potter. Currently the gang are camping around England and being b!tchy to each other. It was a quiet evening, MC brought home work to do and I watched NYC Prep on youtube while enjoying a sorbet Greek yogurt creation:

Over which I added chopped apricots. I loved this simple summer dessert, it was like smoothie ingredients in a bowl, the strawberry sorbet went really well with the creamy yogurt. I’m not a big fan of reality shows, but as a Gossip Girl fan and hopefully future New Yorker I have to admit, I liked NYC prep.  I then FINALLY talked to my mom for more than five minutes on the phone. That lady is wonder woman, I don’t know how she manages her intense schedules yet still manages to drop everything and help me when I need her even across the Atlantic.

Do you watch reality shows? I try sometimes to watch a reality show, but they don’t really grab my interest. I might stick around for this NYC Prep, though.

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

Tu Dors?

So I’m currently blogging from Belgium and not from Dublin. The Dublin trip didn’t work out for a lot of reasons, but it was for the best. I’m lucky enough to have been to Ireland before (to Belfast) and I have my whole life to see Ireland again, but this is my one time to live in Belgium, and I’m going  to profiter these last 12 days!

So yesterday I had the most delicious bowl of oats EVER. I read about the idea of cooking oats in coffee in a couple of blogs and decided to try it. One of the best decisions of the week. I cooked  a little under half a cup of oats in 3/4 cup of coffee and 1/4 cup of milk with 1/3 of a thinly sliced banana. When the oats absorbed almost all the liquid I added splashes of milk and let that absorbed until I was happy with the creamy consistency. I usually don’t add sugar to my oatmeal but I always put a little in my coffee, so I added a dash of raw sugar. Then I stirred in the rest of my banana, sliced and some chopped medjool dates with chopped hazlenuts on top. 

This is what I imagine a Chocolate Hazlenut Jocalat bar tastes like (it has a lot of the same ingredients). I cannot wait to try Larabars when I get back to the U.S. Oatmeal latte BLISS. This is why I love the blogworld. I never would have thought of this idea on my own.

Then I got a lot of sh!t around the house done, like putting away my things from Milan, cleaning my room, sorting laundry. I cooked  and let simmer a carrot ginger soup while I worked and the smell was delicious. I can be so domestic, it’s ridiculous. Then it was lunchtime!

Carrot ginger soup, whole wheat bread with laughing cow light and smoked salmon, Activa yogurt with fruit (part of a nectarine, golden kiwi, and cherries). Then I ran like a lightning bolt out of the house to catch a train to make it to a friend’s house partay.

My exchange student friend (from Hawaii, how cool is that?) had her friends from school over for a kinda sorta goodbye party. I was the only exchange student there.

Her closest girl friends were busy with graduation shiz, so it ended up being mainly her guy friends (guy=mec in French). Now, guys in Wallonia have um, an interesting sense of style. They put tons of gel in their hair, are big fans of jewelery, wear form fitting shirts, and will often sport man purses. Not really my style, as I find it kind of awkward that a lot of these guys spend more time on their clothes and hair than me! The guys in my friend’s class were THE typical mecs and they were so much fun to hang out with. They kept saying how mignon (cute) my accent is. I used to be ashamed of my accent as I wanted to sound as authentic as possible, but I realized that even people who speak English perfectly and live there for many years still have accents and it only makes them more charming, so I have learned to embrace my American accent.

These guys were hilarious. They brought all this alcohol, but the first thing they did when they got to the house was go out to buy more. What I love about Belgian parents is that most of the guys’ moms gave them 50-100 euros just to buy alcohol for the party. If my parents gave me that much for drank, I would just buy cute shoes and maybe buy a bottle of wine. But these guys go all out.

As I had wine both nights in Milan I wasn’t really feeling the drinks too much, but I did try some of the goods, including lime flavored vodka and grappa (not a big fan of the latter). And I tried the nectar of the gods:

Italian chocolate liquor with whiskey and rum. Dessert in a bottle.

One of my favorite parts of the evening was when one of the guys blasted DMX’s Up In Here (excuse the anime in that video) and by “up in here” they understood “open my ear” and they asked my friend and me wtf that’s supposed to mean, while stretching out their ears. We tried our best to clarify.

Part of being a vegetarian is advance planning. I had no idea what the food would be like and was grateful that I brough a veggie burger on whole wheat (and ketchup!) with an apple. Not a huge fan of chips (of which there were probably 30 bags) and dinner was ham filled baguettes and tons of spaghetti with bolognese, so I was glad that I did brown bag dinner!

The guys were great to hang out with…until it was time to sleep. Most of them spent the night. As they were drunk they spent most of the night just yelling stupid sh!t. I was so ready to sleep but every 30 seconds they would yell something crazy or ask “Tu dors, Maya?” Et mainentant? Tu dors maintenant?” (Are you sleeping? And now?) Nothing worked, not silence, not joking back, not hitting them with pillows, so at 4 am I went to the living room to sleep where I enjoyed a little under 3 hours of sleep. Around midnight at the party my friend let me borrow her sweatshirt and sweatpants, both black, which I wore on my train ride home this morning. I felt like a true baraki. Nothing like coming home the morning after looking like you’ve been hit by a truck!

I had a brilliant idea while at the party last night that has to do with my plans for this year. It’s in the very very early stages of planning, like the fetal stages, but I’ll let you know if it comes through! It’s having me feeling pretty good right now, though!

Have a great day, gals and…

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

Ciao Bella!

Hope bellas! Hope everyone had a great weekend and a fabulous Father’s Day! It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen my dad, and I can’t wait to see him in less than two weeks now!

Papi, I realized we have almost no pictures together. I want to fix that when I get back!

I spent the weekend in Milano, Italy! It included:

Walking around a lot and seeing amazing sights.

Taking lots of pictures of graffiti.

Lots of loving (we exchange students only have two weeks left with each other!)

Resting and relaxing with a couple of beers in parks. I think my friend was hoping there was some bailey’s in that shoe.

Not enough Italian boy loving.

For some reason a lot of Abba listening.

And silly pictures. Ich bin blau means I’m drunk in German, which I wasn’t at the time. And J’aime les fruits, which is a fact.

And as for the eats!

Gelato!

Pizza!

At McDonald’s they put parmiagiano reggiano on hamburgers. Unfortunately they did not have veggie burgers.

Wonderful times. I’ll post again as soon as I can!

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

Vacances!

Finally! School is over! I had an English exam today and a German oral exam. I think I did pretty well in English (shocker, right?) but I can’t say the same for German. I’m pretty sure I passed, though. But what’s great is that, as I already graduated high school in the U.S. and colleges couldn’t care less about my grades here, none of my grades matter! I hear that the rest of my scholastic career probably won’t be like that.

But let’s start from the beginning. Breakfast was MORE Swiss oats! In plain fromage blanc with multigrain oats, medjool dates, a small chopped nectarine, 1/3 a diced banana, and raspberries.

Love

Which I ate while reading old Time magazines looking for an article to present for my English oral exam. I chose a review of a book on the psychology of shopping. According to the author, stores play subliminal music that encourages buying and discourages shoplifting. The shoplifting thing was a bit surprising.

Anyway! Then I knocked out those exams and came home for a run. It was hard to motivate myself, but I managed to push myself out the door, and Lady Gaga helped me along the way (I can’t stop listening to Just Dance, I think we all wonder how our shirts got turned inside out sometimes).

Lunch was a repeat from yesterday:

My cherries spilleth over.

I’m a sucker for the curry/caramelized onion combo. I like to drink this with my meals:

Sparkling mineral water. My American exchange students HATE it, but I love this stuff. I like to think of it as water with class.

I was dead after my exams. My sleep schedule has been all over the place. I called my dad today, who reads the blog, and says it could be because of the green sh!t I’ve been drinking. No Papi, the spinach drinks are supposed to give you energy. But anyway I fell into a coma took a two hour nap. I go through nap phases, and clearly I’m deep into one.

I decided to channel my inner yoga and turned to Polly. My abs certainly feel “yummier.” Polly is such a doll and has such a gentle manner, but during the yoga for arms I definitely yelled some expletives during the side planks. Online videos have been my saving grace this gymless year. After yoga I treated myself to green sh!t a delicious green monster.

Twas a beautiful day again, so I walked for an hour with my pal Harry P. Sh!t went down today at the Weasley wedding. Then it was time for souper, and I fixed myself a grilled goat cheese sandwich, tomato+zucchini soup, and braised chicons (Belgian endives). Mineral water on the side of course, bien sur.

What’s that peeking back there?

Host mama MC made the chicons, she said she kind of burned them, but I loved the caramelized sweetness with the bitter chicon taste.

After dinner I hung out for a bit chez les Granvilles, good times as usual.

Today is kind of boring considering how crazay this week should be, so I thought it might be a good time to teach y’all a bit about Belgium. Belgium has heavy Dutch and French influences and became independent in 1830. It has a constitutional monarchy, so yes there is a royal family, but unfortunately unlike the crazy Spencers, there isn’t a lot of controversy and they’re not really that interesting.

But you do see their portraits a lot.

The two big regions of Belgium are Flanders, which is Dutch speaking, and the French speaking Wallonia. There are also dialects in both regions with a lot of slang in different cities. But Wallonian isn’t really spoken much anymore, only the really old people know some Wallonian. There are some phrases that distinguish Belgian French, but really it’s the same French as in France. However, the Flemish still speak their dialects often, but official Dutch is taught in schools. I feel for the exchange students in Flanders who have to learn Dutch AND the Flemish dialects. German is the third official language which is spoken in a tiny region on the east. I live in Wallonia, about an hour south of Brussels. Brussels, the capitol, is bi-lingual, which means that by law, EVERYTHING must be translated into Dutch and French. A lot of Dutch sounds kind of like f!cked up English, so my American friends and I like to read things in Dutch and kind of poke fun at it. I mean, read this out loud to yourself, Er is geen reden voor u om de juiste voet van de olifant te eten. Kind of funny, no? Anyway, there are a lot of tensions between Flanders and Wallonia. Wallonia used to be the wealthier region and Flanders felt oppressed, especially because French was the more important language in Belgium. The Wallonian industries that made them rich have died (there are a lot of abandoned factories around here), and now Flanders is rolling in the Benjamins euros. The Flemish are bitter that because there are so many Wallonians on unemployment, Flemish citizens contribute more to national services such as social security and health care. They also hate that most of the Flemish also speak French (plus a lot of the Flemish are crazy good English speakers, mainly because the TV shows they watch aren’t dubbed and so they’re exposed to English and American accents) but very few Wallonians can really speak Dutch well. There’s often talk of a separation between Flanders and Wallonia, but few doubt it will ever really happen. Although there are a lot of disputes, it has never escalated into violence, which is pretty impressive. Still, I find it kind of a shame that there’s so much hatred between the two regions. There are more differences than similarities between the two regions, the Flemish and Wallonian cultures are really very different from each other.

Still gotta love a country that brought us the Smurfs (les schtroumpf en français):

I can’t remember the last time I saw the Smurfs on TV. I think it was more of an 80’s thing in the U.S. But here in Belgium the smurfs are still going strong. All kids love them and read the comics often. There are also a lot of products featuring the smurfs, and almost all the schools have them painted on the playgrounds.

And I’ve noticed that in Belgium that when a song is popular it’s POPULAR, and you hear it EVERYWHERE. Here’s the sound of my first three months here:

I’m not sure when I can post next, but at the latest I’ll be back on Monday with a recap on Milan!

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

Shiza!

Hey! Hope you’re all enjoying my blog so far. If you have any questions/comments/or recommendations, please tell me! I’d love to hear how I can improve this blog, and your ideas are greatly appreciated!

So I thought I would run this morning, and put my alarm on for 6:30. I woke up and said not happening. I thought I would sleep just for another half hour or so…and then I woke up at 8:45. My German exam started at 8:30. Shiza! Honestly though, I needed the sleep and I’m glad that I slept well. My German teacher ended up not minding at all, and I stayed just a bit later than everyone else to finish.

I had to rush breakfast a bit, which I hate, but tant pis:

Swiss oats with fromage blanc (plain), multi grain oats, chopped medjool dates (love the chew they add) and milk with raspberries, blueberries, and 1/3 a banana.

The exam was alright. I wish I learned more German this year, but it’s hard to learn a foreign language in French, and also I only had it two hours a week. How can you learn a language as complicated as German with only two hours a week?

I had another stupid moment today. I signed up for Google Reader and added blogs to it, because apparently it’s what all the cool kids do. But I didn’t see how it was helpful because I couldn’t see when new posts were added with numbers everywhere. Then I realized there’s a tout marquer comme lu boutton (mark everything as read) and voilà! I can actually see new posts now! This really shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize.

I threw together random things from the fridge for lunch, and it ended up being quite tasty. I made a tofu scramble with bell peppers, firm tofu, some roasted veggie tomato sauce, cury powder, and caramelized onions at the end. I need to keep caramelized onions on hand at all times, it’s wonderful. The sweet onions and the spicy curry went really well together. I stuffed the scramble in half a toasted whole wheat pita and had a fruit medly on the side featuring my love:

fresh pineapple!

The medley also had cherries, honeydew, and straberries.

Le diner all together. In France, breakfast is petit dejeuner, lunch is dejeuner, and dinner is diner. But in Belgium breakfast is dejeuner, lunch is diner, and dinner is souper. I get really confused when I just read a French book or watched a TV show in French and we start talking about meals with all the dejeuner and diner inversions.

Anyway! Today it was gorgeous outside.

And when the weather is this nice, you have to profiter (take advantage). Which I did by going on a 5-6 mile walk while reading the 7th Harry Potter.

I love Caitlin’s Operation Beautiful idea, and while looking in the mirror today I laughed a bit at my ringlets.

Sometimes I hate on my curls (especially in humidity, ya know what I’m sayin?), but really, so many people pay a lot of money for what my hair just does by itself. And I have to love it, because it’s what defines me.

Not the best picture of me after a 6 mile walk, but whatevs. Then it was time for a green monster, because it’s been a while:

Of course, made in my ghetto fashion. I don’t have much to talk about in between this monster and dinner. Today was just a lounge around day, which is TOTALLY fine with me, considering I have two back to back trips this week and won’t be home until next Thursday.

So for dinner we had salmon, risotto with some dying spinach wilted in, and a chicon salad. Chicons are what we call Belgian endives. In France they call chicons endives, but Belgians insist that is not the right word. I read once that the biggest dispute amongst Wikipedia users to date was whether the proper word for a Belgian endive is endive or chicon. Some people have intense pride for their national veggies. I never really liked Belgian endives raw (they’re very bitter) but I got used to the taste here and now really enjoy them in a salad. Belgians often eat them cooked in the oven with ham wrapped around it, bechémal sauce, and grated cheese on top. I take mine sans ham, bien sur.

There isn’t a picture of my plate, because I dined with host mama MC, and she probably would have found it a bit strange to take a picture of my dinner (she finds green monsters strange enough as it is). What do you bloggers do? Do you tell people about your blogs? Or just snap pictures and not really explain?

Because today was boring, I thought I would explain more about Belgium, because it’s a funny country. But I think I’ll do that another time, this homegirl is tired and needs more beauty rest because I have a German oral exam tomorrow. I barely know how to write in German! German sounds are fairly similar to the sounds made in French, so my classmates don’t have a problem. But I can’t distinguish between ooou and ooooouu (that’s my attempt at spelling out sounds that are imossible to explain without hearing it). So once again: shiza!

So instead, I leave you with this song. It’s played a lot here (maybe in the U.S. too? I have no idea anymore.) It’s called Walking on a Dream, and the video is kind of strange, but it’s a great song! I’ll probably post songs a lot, because I can barely go a day without looking for new songs.

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

To Market

Can’t you just feel the weekend around the corner? I can’t wait , I’m going to Milan this weekend! Italy is one of my favorite countries.

I just couldn’t sleep last night. I have no idea why, but I tossed and turned. I went to bed at 12:30 and woke up at 5. Urgh. I never really fell back asleep so I threw on my running shoes and pounded out a 3 miler. T-Pain inspired me with his message “I ain’t dead (nah) I ain’t done (nah), I ain’t scared (of what), I ain’t run (from who), still I stand (yeah), no matter what here I am.” It did wake me up a bit, and after my shower I headed to the Wednesday market in my town square. It’s basically me and the moms/old folks at the market. The merchants expect to see me and greet me with “Des betteraves?” (Beets?) No beets for me today, I picked up a kilo of spinach for some green monster goodness, raspberries, and cherries. I breakfasted on the same Swiss oats as yesterday, only with Activa mixed berry yogurt, so I didn’t take a picture (Next time!)

Today was my science exam, which had components of biology, physics, and chemistry. My teacher is a sweetheart–she looks like she’s at least 65, has TINY bone structure, and has rich chestnut brown hair which surely comes from a bottle by the looks of her wrinkles. She reminds me Yzma in the Emperor’s New Groove, only she isn’t diabolical or conniving.

She also likes to tell a lot of random stories that are science related, but that don’t have to do with what we’re learning. And she likes to burst out singing.

Anyway, she said I could use my notes. I haven’t taken bio in a long time, but I remembered how interesting it is. I find evolution and genetics fascinating. Physics and chemistry are still not so great, though.

I finished around 11 and watched the new episode of Weeds online. Weeds has a lot of great life lessons, today I learned not to get knocked up by the ringleader of a Mexican drug trade, because sh!t hits the fan.

I met a friend at the movies in the afternoon, and before I left I had a bowl of veggie soup. I packed a veggie burger with the last of the hummus spread on top and an apple for the train.

The movie theatre my friend and I go to is in Charleroi, which is um a ghetto charming! city. Don’t let that picture on wikipedia fool you, Charleroi is like the butt of Belgium, but it’s in between our houses and a good site for the movies. From the train station we took a metro to the theatres, and my purse got stuck in the closing doors. I squealed “My purse! My purse!” and somehow believed that yelling STOP IT to the doors would help me get my purse. I grabbed at it while the doors continued opening and closing, while my friend said “uh, just press the door open button” and my purse was saved. I entertained the metro car though, that’s for sure. I had a banana milkshake before the movies started. We couldn’t decide on what movie to see, and we finally picked 17 again (17 Encore). Totally not a movie I would see in English but we figured the plot would be easy to follow in French and we could laugh at the Disney-ness of the movie. There were only two other people in the theatre on the other side, so we talked loudly and laughed at Zac during the movie. He’s definitely a cutie, though, that Zac Efron, but he seems to…flawless, you know? Like Nate on Gossip Girl. The movie had a bangin soundtrack though–the Kooks, Santogold, Cat Power, Spoon, the Helio Sequence, the Virgins…not bad at all! I love that Kooks song, Naive.

Our trains on the way back both ended up being late, so we talked about how we felt about going home in a little over two weeks. I’ve been looking forward to it–I spent almost a year in Belgium. But I feel very anxious lately. A lot in my life will be changing this year, and this summer will be very busy. I wish there were an in between Belgium and going home, where I can completely clear my head and take everything in. But really, I’ll be happy to go home.

By the time I got home at 8 I was ravenous. I liked my sesame noodle spinach bowl yesterday, and did a twist on that idea tonight. I sauteed onion and zucchini and added grilled vegetable tomato sauce and shredded carrots (random) to the pan while it cooked. I tossed it with whole wheat spaghetti, and served the pasta over 3 cups of spinach.

With a little parmesan sprinkled on top.

I’ve been craving frozen yogurt lately, which I can’t find here. So I froze a container of 0% fage by stirring it every 10 minutes or so to avoid iciness. Turned out just really cold, but with some fresh fruit on top, it eased my fro yo craving!

Apricots and raspberries stirred in! Which resulted in:

Peaks of raspberry tinted bliss.

Sleeping 4 1/2 hours is NOT okay. Hopefully, as I am exhausted, I will sleep well tonight. German exam tomorrow! Shiza!

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

Patience, Iago, Patience

Hey!

No exams this morning! Works for me. I woke up around 8:30 and went to the doctor down the street for a little check up. Open consultation times are between 8:30 and 10:00 and anyone can come in. Gotta love global health insurance. Pas de soucis (no worries) here, and I learned a bit about health care in Belgium. Doctors still do house calls here, which I think is a great idea and so convenient, especially for the older folks and the little ones. The fact that Belgium does house calls is a bit peculiar in Europe, most countries don’t do them anymore.

Anyway! Breakfast was a repeat of yesterday, overnight Swiss oats with medjool dates, (I had the other half of the Danio to use, after all), but I took a picture anyway just because there was some different fruit additions…

…1/3 a diced banana, a chopped nectarine, and a handful of blueberries. I LOVE SUMMER FRUITS. The magazine headline reads “Je veux être canon!” or I want to be beautiful! You already are, sweetie.

This morning wasn’t that interesting. I added a sh!tload of new blogs to Google Reader. Before  I just looked at random blogs with blogrolls to see updated posts (hence why I looked at Amy’s Coffee Talk a lot), but when you follow more blogs and want to quickly see which ones are updated, Reader makes life easier. I watched the Daily Show, and learned that there is a movement for secession in Long Island. Wtf? And Steve Buyer, the rep from Indiana, warns that smoking anything, even lettuce, is as bad as tobacco. I don’t know if he’s right, but I’m not a fan of smoking, so I’ll keep the lettuce in my salad.

Here’s a picture of my room for the year in Belgium:

There was nothing in it before, and it was fun having a blank canvas to decorate with the limited supplies I had. My bedspread has all these images of Americana: the Golden Gate bridge, a diner (?), the Statue of Liberty, and a football team. At least it doesn’t have a McDonald’s (I only hear about every other day stereotypes about Americans and french fries/Coke).

The mirror on the bottom left is from one of my besties in the U.S., and to the right of that is a birthday card my grandma made for me and sent to me in May. The green frame and the Dream Big were sent to me by an American friend for Christmas (love the photo of us in Nice, France in 10th grade in that frame), and the long black thing is a big a$$ dark chocolate Toblerone.

A photo of me as a baby with my grandpa, a print I made in high school with an elephant (I LOVE elephants), a Belgian class photo, and some Columbia U pride, because I am admitted to Barnard College, though I may or may not go this year or next year because I may or may not apply to another college program in NYC. Long, complicated story.

Random photos, including a photo of 5 year old me in a pink power ranger costume. Wazzup. Various postcards from Amsterdam, Brussels, and Krakow.

Hope that was interesting. My lunch appetizer was a bowl of veggie soup made by host mama MC:

I had extra time to make lunch today, so I used it well. MC made an omelet with onions yesterday, which made me crave caramelized onions. They remind me of home–we don’t eat them that often, but my mom likes to put them on perogis. Mmm. So I thinly sliced a bunch of yellow onions and put them in a casserole over very low heat with a dab of butter. I covered them, and stirred every five minutes or so, for about forty minutes. I’m kind of impatient, so I read blogs and French books during this process upstairs so I wouldn’t be tempted to turn up the heat. When I think of the word patience, I think of Aladdin and the part where Jafar demands that Iago have patience. I’m random. Anyway, there was a lot of cardio up and down the stairs action going on. After that, I uncovered them and continued stirring every once in a while until they had a sweet, brown flavor. When the pan got a little dry during the process I added a bit of veggie broth. At the end I added sherry vinegar, salt, and white pepper. Dayummm if I do say so myself. Just what I wanted. I put the caramelized onions over scrambled eggs, which I cooked in a water bath, because clearly my weekday lunch wasn’t elaborate enough.

Take a pot filled with a little water, put a metal bowl over it (make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water) and add your eggs in the bowl. The water shouldn’t come to a boil, leave it at a low simmer. Because the eggs don’t have direct contact with the heat, they turn out custardy and delicioso. They take about ten minutes, but it’s worth it. I used two eggs with a splash of milk.  Whisk the eggs at first, then switch to a spatula, and stir them well because otherwise the bowl will be a b!tch to clean at the end.

Towards the end I added some hard goat cheese, shredded.

Voilà:

With a piece of whole wheat toast. Excellent.

I baby sat for Clemence and the boys after that while Anne got the lazer hair removal I mentioned yesterday. We went next door to Mamille (Grandma)’s house for crepes, which I passed on because of the late lunch. According to the back of the nutella jar, two pieces of toast with nutella, orange juice, and chocolate milk make the perfect, nutritionally balanced meal. Uhh sure.

I read all the Harry Potter books in English, and this year I’m trying to read them all again in French. As I read them a long time ago it’s amusing to read them again and cool to see that I understand almost everything en français. As I didn’t move around much today, I went on a 5-6 mile walk while finishing the sixth Harry Potter book. I got the idea of walking and reading KERF. I’m a huge multi tasker, and the kind of person who can read in the car, on the train, on the elliptical…wherever, so this works well for me. I walk on a path by the river Sambre, so I don’t encounter a lot of people, just joggers and bike riders who probably think I’m crazy, but tant pis. I realized this year that a long walk with a couple hills is a pretty challenging exercise, and a great way to use your time to listen to a podcast or read.

On the way back I had some red currants fresh from the back garden:

Why don’t we eat fresh currants in the U.S.? I’ve only ever seen them dried.

Dinner was one of my favorites, sesame noodles with whole wheat spaghetti. I’ve made it so many times that I didn’t use a recipe tonight– I just whizzed together sherry vinegar (instead of rice vinegar), peanut butter, toasted sesame seeds, soy sauce, spicy chili sauce, chopped garlic, chopped ginger, brown sugar, and hot water. I tossed the spaghetti once cooked and cooled with toasted sesame oil. Here’s the more accurate recipe I usually use from Cook’s Illustrated. I added shredded carrots, sliced yellow and red bell peppers, and chopped parsley, and topped it off with more toasted sesame seeds. Because I wasn’t hungry for a snack today and missed my green monster, I put 3 cups of spinach in a big bowl as a bed for my sesame noodles. I also added baked tofu, à la Gliding Calm to mine.

The spinach makes it look like a LOT of food, but it was enough. The spinach bed worked great– sometimes I ate plain leaves so I could have a better noodle to spinach bite ratio, but I didn’t mind.

I went back to the Granville house to watch some news with Anne and her husband, Pierre. Belgium had its regional elections last week. Pierre tried to explain to me the political system, but I didn’t really get it too well (about time I learned after almost a year, you would think a wannabe political science major would have learned this earlier). But this guy on the news made me laugh:

Meet Elio Di Rupo. Apparently he always wears bow ties and is a rather flamboyant fellow.

I was going to have dessert after blog writing, but I don’t have the time before going to bed! I want to run tomorrow, and I have a science exam in the morning. Maybe I’ll finish the lackluster melon to get it out of the fridge.

Here’s something that disturbed me a little today: I was talking to a nice neighbor today, and her daughter (at most 3 years old) was eating fresh straberries with some crème fraîche, or whipped cream. Her mother warned her not to eat too much creme fraîche, or she’ll get fat and big and no boy will like her. I about flipped. Should we really have 3 YEAR OLDS worried about body image already!?

What do you guys think about this? As Caitlin from Healthy Tipping Point posted, End the Fat Talk! Wow I’m name dropping blogs like none other today, aren’t I?

A toute à l’heure!

Maya

Loony Lundi

Happy Monday everyone!

Lundi in French means Monday. Today wasn’t particularly loony, but I liked the title idea.

Anyway, I woke up bright and early at 7 am to go for a run. It’s so great now that the sun rises early that I can run in the morning, I like the endorphin rush at the start of my day! I ran about three miles. My shower was positively GLORIOUS, for a long time the water pressure in my host mom’s shower was funky and would go from very hot to frigid to very hot again. I had to turn off the water every couple of minutes and then crouch in strange positions when the cold water blasted again. No more!

Breakfast was overnight Swiss oats. I combined this “fromage frais” or fresh cheese:

Don’t let the cheese name fool you, it’s really more like yogurt with more protein. I used half the container with 35 grams of multi grain oats (which is I guess between 1/3 and 1/2 a cup?) about 1/4 cup of skim milk, mixed it with chopped dates and let that sit overnight in the fridge. In the morning I mixed in a golden kiwi, diced:

 Have you ever seen golden kiwi before? I hadn’t. I also added 1/3 of a banana, diced and some more milk until I was happy with the consistency. Swiss oats bliss, enjoyed with my daily Earl Grey.

Luckily I had the endorphin rush to power me through a math final. Want to know what’s even worse than a math final? Taking a math final when grades don’t even matter for you. As an exchange student, I have to sit all my exams, but I don’t have to pass them. I shouldn’t complain though, there are way worse things to do than take an exam that doesn’t count! I spent about two and a half hours writing random numbers on my test, erasing them, and rewriting them (to make everyone think I was working). Then I played snake on my cell phone and texted my exchange student bff. I wrote my math teacher a note at the end, telling her I’m sorry I didn’t write more and that I enjoyed her class. This isn’t true, as she is allergic to all scented products, even soap and shampoo, and therefore has a body odor like none other I have ever smelled. Even worse, we had class in a room that had no windows, one of the only ones in the school. Good times right there. But I figured writing that note was the least I could do. I’m not a total glandeuse (slacker), I did well on my French and religion exams last week. But the 4.0, perfectionist student in me died a little today. I enjoyed, however, the first and last time in my life when I could really not give a f!ck about exams. When I left early, the kid who sits next to me in most of my classes (he’s 17, so I call him mon petit frère belge, or little Belgian brother) snickered, and I told him ta geuele.

My host mom leaves money in the kitchen drawer if I ever need to buy groceries. There’s two stores in my town, and a Delhaize about a 25 minute walk away. It’s worth going to Delhaize sometimes, because they have veggie burgers/meatless meatballs, hummus, organic products, and a good dried fruit/nut selection. It’s my Trader Joe’s this year. I walked there after my exam and bought some necessities, like yogurt and medjool dates. On the way there, I listened to a podcast of Radiolab on race. I’m an NPR podcast nerd. I learned if you recite all the letters of your DNA, one letter per second, it would take you a century to recite yourself. Crazy. On the way back I listened to Joni Mitchell, because it was that kind of day.

After a 3 mile plus walk, plus a revved up metabolism from my morning run, I was ready to eat my arm when I got home. Luckily I waited, and had a crack sandwich:

Whole wheat bread with a wedge of laughing cow cheese light, hummus, two chopped sun dried tomatoes (the PERFECT touch), paninied. On the side: some not so sweet melon and red currants from my backyard. That sandwich was delicioso, but I’m looking forward to getting Flat-Outs and trying the wrap version.

The afternoon was pretty mundane–I watched the Daily Show (basically my #1 source of American news here. To think I used to be a news junkie addicted to the Washington Post), read blogs, read a book. It was raining today, again. When they say it rains a lot in Belgium they aren’t lying. I needed a sugar/caffeine rush in the afternoon and had coffee with 1 tsp raw sugar and skim milk (I almost never drink coffee). I did Level 2 of the 30 day shred on youtube, a level I particularly like because my arms scream for mercy when I do military extensions and then the V raises. Seriously, sometimes I yell at Jillian. And while I found them annoying at first, I’m kind of digging those plank jacks now. After I made my version of a green monster, same as yesterday.

I wasn’t really feeling dinner yet at 7, but I hadn’t seen my host mom much this weekend and she ate at that time, so I chowed down on:

A baked sweet potato topped with a concotion of black beans, yellow pepper, a bit of tomato sauce, corn, onion, garlic, and cumin. The sauce creeping in the back there is samourai sauce. When you go to a friterie for Belgian fries there is a plethora of sauces to choose from. They go way beyond just ketchup here (plus they have curry ketchup, mmm) and most sauces are mayonnaise based. This one is SUPER spicy, I sometimes use it as a sauce, but often I use it as hot sauce. Just 1/2 a tsp stirred into these beans in the end gave plenty of hot flavor to my dinner.

Then my host mom and I watched Gilmore Girls in French. I watched the whole series in English with my mom in the U.S., and introduced it to my host mom, who has since become accro (hooked). To any of you GG fans out there, remember Michel the concierge of the inn? In the U.S. he’s stereotypically French, but in a French dubbed version where everyone speaks in French, to keep his foreign flair Michel is Italian. My host mom was like wtf you talking about, he ain’t French he’s Italian! and then I explained to her why they had to change it in the French version. Moving on.

After dinner I decided to visit my  “other” Belgian family. I met them halfway through the year and they adopted me, basically. My host mom doesn’t have an kids, so when I want a family ambiance I go down the street to chez les Granvilles. They have a 12 year old son, a 9 year old son, and a 2 year old daughter. The daughter is frickin adorable. The boys like to poke fun at my accent. In French they make this deep r sound, which is very hard for an Anglophone to make. I’m a lot better at this sound than before, but certain words are still hard for me. Clemence, the girl, is too little to properly say her r sounds, and the boys tell me she speaks French like me. I speak French like a 2 year old. Chouette.

I went on a bike ride with the mom, Anne, and Clemence. It was a wonderful ride, but it did kind of blow that in the middle of June I have to wear a coat. I want real summer weather.

Anne is as much of a tea fanatic as me, and after the bike ride we had Moroccan mint tea with turkish delight, a gift from one of her students. It’s kind of like jelly, covered in coconut, with pieces of pistachio inside. It’s super sweet, so a little nibble with my tea sufficed. Anne is so sweet, we had a long conversation after the kids went to bed about the festival in Mons, the lazer hair removal she’s doing tomorrow (expensive as sh!t, 60 euros per session and it can take up to 10 sessions to work, but it might be worth it), and bats (Which, she informed me, translates to vleermuis, or bald mouse, in Dutch. Wtf?)

No exams for me tomorrow! Yippee!

A toute à l’heure!

Maya