What do you mean Christmas is over? part 2

Continuation. Part 2 with 3 subparts :D

1st part: So I went to the Caribbean ;)
Since I turn(ed) 18 this year, my family decided to give a trip to the Caribbean as a birthday present. It was amazing! And of all places in the Caribbean, we we're at the Dominican Republic (Nerdfighter squeal!) So the week went something like this:
31/12/11: Arrived in the evening after 8 hours of sitting in an airplane. We ate at the buffet which was really decorated for the occasion.

And a pig's head is really important 

1/1/11: Just chilling and recovering from the jetlag. Not that much really, trying not to get lost on the huge area called "hotel".

There was a pool. And a bardisk. JUST BY THE POOL!

A Christmas present from my hostparents. These things really saved my vacation :D

2/1/12: Tour in the "real" parts of the Dominican Republic.

Our bus :D

A local school we went to. It was really just like any other school, Europe and the Caribbean aren't that different after all

A classphoto

The Cathedral. It was huuuuge and made out of concrete.

Rice fields

Local market

Making cheese

Sugarcane :D

What do you mean Christmas is over?

Visited a "sorcerer" = voodoo priest?

Not all of the photos but yeah...

I have a big fault. Whenever I do things, I get too excited and don't take photos. Or when nothing happens, I don't take photos either. This explanation is needed since I have almost no photos of the rest of the week. What we did: hanged out at the pool/playa at the hotel Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and partly Saturday. On Wednesday we went on a excursion and I don't have almost any pictures because a)we were in a speedboat and I didn't want to risk my new camera b)there wasn't that much time and c)on the way back, I was too busy dancing to take any photos. What I do have is this photo:

First (and last) time I will eat lobster.

2nd part!
I have moved. I should have posted this ages ago, but I have now officially moved (one month ago but who counts?) I'm not going to take as many photos from my room this time... or not yet ;)

Oh hi nice painting that watches me when I sleep

Part number 3!
A painter selected my offer for one of his drawings. Painter? Drawer? Whatever. The story goes like this;
I went to Truc Troc, which is a annual showcase with modern Belgian painters and sculptors. What the audience does, is to write offers what they want to exchange for this work of art. So I offered to be a Finnish e-mail penpal. AND one of the painters accepted my offer!
My future drawing will be something like this:

http://www.jeroenhollander.eu/menu.php

And last but not least, blazer update time!

Ciao!
-Emilie

What do you mean Christmas is over? part 1

Today's blog comes to you in 2 parts and this part contains 4 subparts.

First part: Apologising
I just realised that I have managed to ignore this blog for way too long. Lots of things have been going on lately *coughcoughChristmascoughcough*. So long story short: exams, Christmas, New Years in the Caribbean and changing families to mention something.

Second part: Exams
Yep, I had to write the exams. Well not all of them, thankfully, but a handful. The ones I wrote were English, art history, history, géo, science, religion and science économique. No math for me! Nor French nor Dutch. The days that I didn't have an exam I went to the school's library and had French course FOR THREE HOURS. Hahhah, that was a blast.

Third part: Christmas!
Once again apologising to everyone who wanted me to write something on my blogg for Christmas. I just didn't seem to have enough time to do that :(
On Christmas Eve I went to meet my new hostfamily and after that I went to the movies with my first hostfamily. (New Year's Eve is an ok movie by the way, it made me feel all happy inside). We opened some presents during the evening and I was just blown out of y mind. I got a camera. I'm not even kidding. A real, very nice, camera from my hostparents.

Christmas day was a bit chaotic. The cousins came over and we had a big dinner/feast that lasted almost the whole day. And we opened presents once again :D Enjoy a collage with photos taken with my new camera

We ate both of them. There was a lot of us here at Christmas

Asia, Africa and Europe unite!

Me and Kamo from Lesotho. She was Nana's oldie and unfortunately she  already had to go back home :(

a table filled with delight :D

Fourth part: l'Atomium and down by the Seaside!
The days after Christmas were filled with doing stuff that although I've been in Belgium for 4 months I still hadn't done. So I went to the Atomium with my hostmom.

A map of the World Fair in Brussels 1958 (for which the Atomium was built)

The day after, my "replacement" came to visit us and we went together with him and my hostparents to the Belgian seaside. Knokke to be more exact. It was quite cold that day and we went bicycling. It was fun though, even if the weather wasn't the best possible.

Paris and updates part2

So I'm now going to continue from the post before 6/12.

The weekend after I arrived back here in Belgium, it was the Armistice. We didn't have school that Friday so I went to Paris with my hostcousins and my Balinese "cousin". It was an awesome trip, although the weather was once again not really on our side. I think France has something against me... Since we were in Paris just for 2 and a half days there is not really that much to tell.

We did all kinds of tourist-y things (although we didn't enter Louvre...). I think Paris is a very beautiful city, although a bit too dirty for my taste. We had a blast though so here are some pictures from that weekend!

First time in Paris and la Tour d'Eiffel looks like that ...

Outside of Sacre Coeur, Paris

So beautiful!

Couldn't stop laughing for some odd reason~

La Nouvelle Chouette anyone?

The gates to Heaven Abercrombie&Fitch

Half-an-hour before Abercrombie opened. It was really special

Now I'm off to read for the exams. Wish me good luck :)
Oh, and I can usually guess who has commented but please if you comment anonymously add a name so I know for sure who you are :)

Joyeux jour d'independance! (et saint Nicolas)

First part in English, the rest will be in Finnish/Swedish.

Did you know it's saint Nicolas' day today? Yep, and it's like small Christmas :D Let me explain this a bit. Saint Nicolas (Sinterklaas in Dutch) is kind of Belgium's version of Santa Claus. The main difference is that he's a real saint, he's helped by a dark-skinned boy and he has a horse. Oh, and he arrives on the 5/6 December. So this morning I found some speculoos by the stairs...

...a packet of speculoos and some candy on my desk in school... [I don't have a picture of that since a) no phones allowed in school and b) I ate it all during lunch] ...and this sight when I came home:

Please find the random kinder surprise egg that somehow is not related to Easter here.

Merci beaucoup saint Nicolas!

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää kaikille suomalaisille!
Glad självständighetsdag till alla finländare!

Kuva: Wikipedia

Ja tähän loppui englanninkielinen osio. Tuntui kummalliselta toivottaa hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää jollain muulla kielellä kuin suomeksi tai ruotsiksi. Tänään ei ole tullut tehtyä mitään kummallista siihen suhteen koska tämä on muuten ihan normi-koulupäivä jos tuota kauheaa karkki- ja speculoosmäärää ei lasketa mukaan. Kerroin parille kaverille asiasta mutta ei tässä muuta. Illalla on ranskan kurssi toisen suomalaisen kanssa joten siinä sitten toivotellaan hyvä itsenäisyyspäivää.

Och samma på svenska. Kändes underligt att säga det på något annat språk än svenska/finska, det är helt enkelt inte samma känsla. Eftersom det är en helt vanlig skoldag här (frånsett all den där mängden med godis och speculoos) så har jag inte gjort något vidare speciellt. I kväll har jag franska kurs tillsammans med en annan finsk utbyteselev så får man önska glad självständighetsdag till någon annan.

mini-Tour and updates part1

Wow, it almost seems like I have abandoned this blog. But don't worry, I have just been ridiculously busy!

So starting from where I left you last time. That weeks Saturday was the start of my "mini-tour" around Europe. It was autumn break the week after so we had all the time in the world.

The first day was spent pretty much just by sitting in the car. We drove through Luxembourg and France on our way to dear old Switzerland. I had been planning to upload a video from my first day in Swiss but blogger doesn't seem to like me enough to upload it.

That Sunday we first did a small "ballad", a.k.a we went on a small walk, and saw a lot of cows. I'm not even kidding.

Taken in front of our hotel's entrance. I LOVE MOUNTAINS!

Cows! With cowbells

After our promenade-thingy we went to Gruyère. If you have heard of the name before, it's probably because of the cheese with the same name. So we went there and had some real cheese fondue.

And we found this museum. The creator of ALIEN lived/lives here.

On Monday we continued to Geneva. We walked around, bought some chocolate and in the evening we had dinner with my hostgrandparents who live there.

Preach! I love this one

We drove then to a France (sounds like a lot but actually just two hours) and continued to the Mount Blanc tunnel the day after.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and also almost all of Friday were spent on the French Riviera. We weren't really lucky with the weather but I still liked it a lot. Here follows some mixed photos

Menton

Menton by night

Nice

The G20 was being held in Cannes so even Nice was filled with policemen.

Last day, it was quite impressive to see

We also went to Monaco on Friday but we just drove through it since it was raining...

On Friday evening we started to drive back. That night was spent in a hotel, which we realised in the morning, didn't have any other guest then us. It was really weird... But it was still a nice hotel so not complaining.

When we arrived home to Belgium, there were things about how southern France was flooding. Good thing we got out of there on time ;)

That's all about this vacation. The next time I'll continue writing about what I have been up to.