Belgian Waffels

Hellloooo peeps,

I hope everyone has had a fabulous weekend!:) I know I have!

Okay to begin I must give a little back ground! This weekend was spent traveling because my host parents had planned a trip to go see my other host sister Olivia. She is in school up in Valenciennes which is right next to Belgium. Her and some friends got a house up there and so we brought up a ton of furniture and everything when we went! Okay so now that you know the reason for the traveling I shall tell the story of the actual event!:)

FRIDAY:

I skipped school friday because we left that day! We were originally going to take the car, but there was no way everything was going to fit! LOL! So my host parents went and rented a van (it was basically a moving truck):)! The drive took about 8 hrs and it was actually pretty fun because we all had to sit in the front of the van, in a back seat type seating arrangement, with me in the middle! hahaha! On the way there I took 3 naps and slept on Renata! LOL! I swear I have a gift for sleeping in vehicles! I just couldn't stay awake! We arrived at almost 11 and then had dinner and unloaded the truck! Safe to say it was a late night! But a fun one!

SATURDAY:

Saturday Olivia and her friends had class, so I woke up early and made them a "Texas breakfast"! LOL! It was breakfast tacos! Except these were serious breakfast tacos, they had eggs, bacon, french cheese and beans! OMG it was so good! I want one just writing this! <3 Then after they all got back from class we unloaded the rest of the truck and arranged all the furniture and stuff! It looked very nice, for student housing, once we were finished! Hahaha!:) Then Olivia, Renata, Wojtek and I all went to Bruxessels. Which is in Belgium for those of you who may not of known that! It was soooo fun, we walked all around this huge shopping area and ate belgian waffles and moules and frits (mussels and fries). Sadly I didn't get to do any shopping because on the weekends in France everything closes super early! We ate dinner at this cute little italian restaurant and sat outside, so we were right on the cobble stone street! We shared steamed moule and frits and a pizza, then we had expresso for "dessert"!:) It was all very very yummy! The city was beautiful at night and later in my pics you will get to see "Grande centre" by day and then by night! We then headed home and went to sleep because it was very late by then!:)

SUNDAY:

We packed up and drove home sunday and it was not a very pretty drive because it was raining the whole way! But I didn't mind because I absolutely adore the rain! It rains a lot here!:) Surprisingly I never really went to sleep, I just dosed from time to time! It didn't take us quite as long on the way home only like 7hrs! Once we were home Renata made this really yummy Spanish dish with rice, peas, peppers, octopus, mussels, shrimp and chicken! Then I took a shower, attempted to do my homework and now I am writing this blog post to all of you!:) 

The description of Belgium was very lame and does not do a good job of showing how much fun it was! But I think the pictures do a good job, so it will be okay!:) 

(SIDE NOTE: Isador is currently asleep next to my bed on my carpet! He is so cute!<3)

PICTURE TIME! 

YESSSSSSSS!

There are about a million! Hahaha!

Olivia and I with the moules

Renata, Olivia and I in "Grande Centre" This is like the city plaza!

 Olivia and I with our Belgian Waffels

 Quite possibly the nicest and biggest truck stop/ gas station I've ever seen, that we stopped at in Luxembourg

 The city of Nancy! I had to take a pic in honor of Mawmaw! (my grandmas name is Nancy)

 Gorgeous little town we passed on the drive up to Valenciennes.

 I know it's hard to see, but these are vineyards that line the mountain side right outside of Wittelsheim.

 The Van/ moving truck

 This is our route (the dark blue one)

 This is Olivia's cute house.

Bruxelles

I love cobble stone

Grande Centre "Big center" 

Belgian Waffles

The famous statue in Bruxelles. Menneken Pis (It's a little boy peeing) LOL!

Moule and frits (mussles and fries)

Pizza<3

Expresso

Grande centre at night. It was beautiful!

Gorgeous sunset when we were driving through Belgium on the way to Valenciennes!

A map of Luxembourg that was at the shell station

Renata took a pic of me when I was trying to eat my Belgian Waffle! It was so messy! OMG!

Okay now that I have posted a butt load of pictures from a super fun trip, I am going to peace out!

until tomorrow probably! Hahahaha!

XOXOXO Grace <3

Little Chat

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all having a great tuesday! This blog is not about one specific topic or event! It is about all the things that I have forgotten to blog about and remembered after the fact or about things I have thought of since last night! LOL!

1. STORY TIME:
At school the locker situation is weird and instead of normal lockers, they are like boxes that you share with two other people. You really only use them during lunch and break and if you want to lock it then you have to bring your own lock! I had brought one from home, The only problem was that you needed a key to unlock the lock. It wasn't a combination lock and I've never had a locker do that before! So yesterday we were super hungry and we were rushing to get to lunch! We quickly put our stuff up and locked the locker, my brain was basically only thinking food! Hahaha! We ate lunch and as we were walking out of the cafeteria I went to grab the locker key and realized that I had LOCKED IT INSIDE THE LOCKER! OMG!!!!! They aren't combination locks and there is no master key since you bring your own, so one of the counselors had to come and BOLT CUT THE LOCK! It was so embarrassing! LOL! But it was also really funny!

2. Léa gave me a ton of children's books that i'm trying to read in order to learn french! Hahaha! We also comprised a little book with the french vocab I learn each day, like around the house and stuff! That way each night I can go over it and learn!:) It is pretty helpful cause I can carry it around at school!:)

3. The sunset last night was sooooo beautiful! It was amazing! I came home from my run and couldn't stay inside, so I stretched outside and watched the rest of it set!

4. I got the coolest letter today from my grandma! It was a news paper article of my good friends that are twins and they run cross country in school! They had been written about in an article and my grandma loves to cut things she likes or thinks we will like out of news paper and give them to us!:) I loved getting it! It was a great article and she had written a little note on it!:)

5. Math is actually one of my favorite classes! It's probably because I've already done the math they are learning, at least most of it! So it's not to hard for me to follow! :)

6. My french is improving each day a little more! I'm slowly starting to remember certain words and in school my friends are very helpful with letting me try and use french words! Hahaha! It's kind of like a game to everyone!

7. Today after lunch since we had a break some of my friends and I went to this little store because some of them didn't want to eat at school and then we played on this little park in the middle of an apartment complex type building!:)

It was a lot of fun! The girls from left to right are Caroline, Eva and then me!:)

It's been a pretty chill start to the week and the weather today was very weird! It was freezing then it got really hot this afternoon!  Safe to say I was sweating my butt off in my long sleeves and pants by the time I got home! LOL! 

Okay peeps à bientôt,

XOXOXO 

Grace 

Weekend festivities

Bone Jour ladies and gentle folk,

I know it is no longer the weekend, but I could not muster enough energy last night to write a post! So instead I am going to double post today! ("crowd cheering") :)

This past weekend was my first weekend in Wittelsheim and it was very fun! A majority of this post is going to be about sunday because that was the day that I did the most!

SATURDAY:
Saturday was a pretty chill day because I got to sleep in (till 9:30) and then just relaxed and read my book until around 1 or 2 when Lea and I went to Mulhouse to go shopping! <3 It is a bigger town, about 15-20 minutes by car, from my house and it has a shopping center similar to the domain and galleria. To give you Austinites an idea of what it is like! I got a couple cute tops and one dress and was very impressed with my self because I didn't spend all the money I allotted myself for the shopping trip earlier in the day! (" I know my dad is totally thinking that last sentence is BS, but I swear it's true!:) ) After our shopping trip we went back home and Renata had her kids from bible study over for dinner and to meet me. I already knew one of the girls because she is my age and we already hung out last week. Everyone was super sweet and we spoke in a mix of broken french and english, because they were very interested in me teaching them english! LOL! like pretty much everyone I meet! :) It was a lot of fun! We ate burritos and had a dance party and just hung out!

SUNDAY:
OKAYYYY, sunday I had an AFS event! It was to celebrating the 100th birthday for AFS. 2 American men had rebuilt the original ambulance from WWI that was used by AFS. And have been touring France with it!

(SHORT HISTORY LESSON:
AFS stands for American Field Service and it was started after/ during the world wars. The Afsers would drive ambulances.)

So these two men took the first ambulance and took the parts and made a new one that looks like the original! They were also there with this old woman, i'm not sure which one it is because I was given different info from two different people; but this woman was either, the nurse that served the last meal to the first man shot from AFS or her mom was. (sorry that was crazy! LOL!) Anyway, that is very confusing and I arrived right before she left. The first part of the event, the part I just told you about, was at this museum in a small town and anyone was welcome. After the woman had left the museum and I had met all the people and volunteers from my AFS chapter, we went to one of the volunteer's house for lunch! 

This was not a normal lunch though. Keep in mind Lunch to the french is a very important meal and it can take up to 5 hours sometimes, especially on sundays. Yesterday it was only like 3-4, I enjoyed it so I wasn't really looking at my watch. The two times I did were roughly before and after and it was about 3-4 hrs! Hahaha. They kept referring to it as a BBQ before we got there and I just kept thinking, "BBQ probably means something completely different to them than it does to me! LOL!". I was pleasantly surprised to find the french version of coleslaw, pasta salade and then we had german sausage! <3 It was all very good. For dessert we had cheese and bread and then for more dessert coffee and tarts or a pound cake type of bread! 

That was just like the first half of the day. We then left and continued our celebration by going up to a War memorial that was in the Vosges mountains! It was called the Hartmannswillerkopf memorial 1914-1918. I know that name is freaking insane! It's german! LOL! 

We got up to the memorial and the 2 American guys, which I loved, parked their car and set up the French, American and another flag (I'm not sure what it was). Then the volunteers went around talking about AFS to all the people up there and handed out brochures. I was like a spokes person, it was really funny, they would call me over and I would say hi and answer some questions about my exchange! I walked around and took a lot of good pics and a couple of them come with a pretty cool explanation.

LOTS OF PICTURES

"YAYAYAYAY"

 This was a vineyard we drove by on our way down the mountain!:)

I meant to post this way earlier, but here it is! DAD, IN FRANCE THE WHITE MAN IS FREAKING GREEN! SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD YOU WERE RIGHT! (I literally freaked out when  I saw this! LOL!)

Every time I eat the figs here I think of my grandma because she has a fig tree in Austin. The only difference is here, they are like as big as your first! Hahaha!

Driving up into the vosges!<3

This was the ambulance that the two American men fixed up!

At the memorial, this is the shields of all the towns of the french soldiers!

 The cross on top of that mountain in the distance is called the peace cross because it is lined up in a straight line with somethings at the memorial and it is meant to signify the peace between Germany and France.

 The flags as the guys put them up!;) One of my Fav pics!

 The two American men, they were all dressed up in their uniforms! The one of the right was George and I feel terrible about this, but I cannot remember the other guys name!:0

 Driving up the Vosges

 This was the inside of the ambulance!

 Okay So now these next pictures come with the longer explanation! The picture directly below is of a plaque that was in the center of an underground crypt at the memorial! Under the shield are 12,000 unidentified bodies from battle! Above the shield in the ceiling there is the medal of honor and they say that the souls of the unidentified men go out of the shield and up through the medal and meet the identified men out side by the other graves.

 These next 3 pictures are to represent the religions of the fighting soliders.

Jewish 

 Catholic

 Protestant

 This was the entrance to the main part of the crypt, once you were inside.

 This was the entrance to the crypt from the outside.

Okay so picture time is over!:( I said earlier that I was going to double blog today, but that was a lie! I was going to write another post about basketball, but when I went today it turned out that there were no coaches at school! Hahahaha! That was new for me! Never in my life have I experienced a coach just not being there! I mean there were no coaches, not the I had previously talked to and not any of the other ones! So that post will come another day! Instead I am just going to run tonight!:) I feel as though I am forgetting something I was planning on talking about, but since I forgot I will just talk about it in another post!:) 

I hope everyone is having a fantastic/ fabulous monday!

À bientôt :)

XOXOXO

Grace <3

German shopping trip

Salut everyone,

IT IS FRIDAY! Which means I made it through my first week of living in France and going to a french high school! YAAYYY!!!!:) It has honestly been a surprisingly great week! I thought school was going to be a much harder obstacle than it is appearing to be at the moment. I thought friends where going to be the hardest thing in the whole world to make. I thought everyone would be mean to me because I was different and didn't speak french and turns out, the exact opposite thing went down.  I have made a lot of friends and everyone is amazingly sweet and welcoming towards me!:) Especially this one girl Lisa, she has sent me the sweetest messages on Facebook saying she is so happy I'm in her class...etc. and she even commented on this blog!:) That made me very happy because it gave me hope that someone out there besides my parents is reading this! LOL!:)

Anyhooo, this afternoon after school, Léa and I went to Germany to go to the grocery store and to buy toiletries! I know what your thinking, "Why the heck did they go to Germany for groceries and toiletries?". I'll tell you why!:) Germany is very close to where I live. Same goes for Switzerland! It's about a 30-45 minute drive and the items in Germany are much cheaper than the ones in France. For the exact same thing. So we went to Germany and ate german pretzels and shopped! Hahaha! It was really fun! It's crazy how you can just drive between countries and not even know you left the one you where just in. I guess it's just like driving to different states in the US.
I took some pics of our shopping adventure!:)

LOL lots off pictures:)

Léa and I

German Bakery<3 with pretzel bread

Amazing looking sandwiches with pretzel bread<3

 I know you have all seen a grocery store. But this one is automatically better because it's german!:)

The beautiful streets of the little town. I took them out of a car so they aren't that good! Désolé!

The French/German border

After that we came home and went for our nightly walk/run! Luckily tonight we got to go running!<3 Every time I go running I think of my dad, because he has decided to become a cross country runner and out here the trails are like a maze of forests, corn fields and farms. It's beautiful and there are about a million different ways you can go and still get a solid run in. I totally understand my dad now and how he says running is addictive. I want to do it every night! Hahaha! I never thought I would willingly say that! I probably like it so much, because it's cooler here and its flat. So I can run a lot farther and for more time!:) Plus Léa is my running buddy, we motivate each other!:) 

Then for dinner we had a tomato, beet, some meat that we couldn't translate to english, salad. But the name of the meat in french it's fillet mignon and blue cheese with bread and grapes! It was fabulous/fantastic (my 2 fav words:)). Like I've mentioned before, my host family has the garden of eve in their yard.  So everything for dinner except the meat, cheese and bread, came from the garden! <3 Pretty much every meal is like that. A majority of it is home grown and organic and some is store bought! It's so yummy!

Okay it's time to catch some ZZZ'S!

Au revoir lovlies!<3

XOXOXO Grace :)