A Day In The Life off I; Tuesday Febuaray 27th 2007, Namur, FUNDP

6:40 AM: Alarm goes off

7:00 AM: Second alarm goes off. Wake up. Tired after having strange dreams. Or hearing people scream in the street. Or maybe both. Also because I spend some hours studying my English Grammar last night. Got a lot done though. Maybe I can work on that again today.

7:10 AM: Get out of bed. Shower. Look for something to wear. Put on blue tights. Can't find skirt that goes with blue tights. Changes outfit plan to jeans and shirt.

7:25 AM: Make breakfast, check email, facebook, myspace, blogs, news...

8:08: Pack up, finish getting dressed, head off to school. I'm early today, considering I woke up a little late today. Way to hurry in the morning.
It's a gray day and is slightly raining.

8:17 AM: Arrive at school. See one guy I know 'Salut-kiss-ça va?' More people arrive 'Salut-kiss-ça va?' 'Salut-kiss-ça va?' 'Salut-kiss-ça va?' 'Salut-kiss-ça va?'
Rinse. Later. Repeat.
People are reading the Metro: 'Verhofstad promises reform in Charleroi.' Michael Jackson converts to Islam.'
'I like your scarf.' 'Salut-kiss-ça va?'

8:28 AM: Enter Aula Maior and prepare for an hour of Religious Science at the Jesuit University. We read our horoscopes in the Metro. More people enter. BF's with GF's separate from their group of friends to sit apart.

8:35-9:30 AM: Class started. Get really annoyed with girls sitting behind me whispering and fidgeting. Talk about the Good Samaritan and God's relationship with the Israelites. Take notes. I understand this professor and I like the class. Sitting behind a Belgian girl with a headscarf. She nods her head a couple of times during class. Some rows in front of me is a girl who has put her hair up with a paint brush. cool.

9:35 AM: Walk over to the library with some girls. They talk in French, I understand 60% of it. We talk about all the work we have to do, laugh, complain...
the usual student talk.

9:45-10:10 Work on Dutch Group Project with one of the members of my group. Totally pointless, hardly get anything done. Girl highlights a few things on the papers she printed off, and I suggest that she gives them to me, so I can put them together in a PPT. Member number 2 is off with her English Group to work on that group project.
I loate group projects.

10:10-10:40 AM: Slowly walk from library to school. Take a de-tour and have a pit-stop. Climb up to the 5th floor. Some people are already there. Thank heavens.
'Salut-kiss-ça va?'
They talk about things in French that I don't really understand;
Food, probably me...

10:40 AM-12:40 PM: Grammar exercise class. Really kind of boring. Teacher is fun, she makes me smile. We discuss things like the Present Perfect Continuative and the Indefinite Perfect. Don't really know what those words mean.
Fill in conjugated verbs in sentences. Discuss. I get slightly annoyed. I zone out and think about Utah.

12:45 PM: Walk back to studio, eat lunch, check internet.

13:30 PM: Walk back to school. Find some of my friends sitting in a circle in front of the closed door of our classroom. Have a fun conversation about that horrible German movie yesterday. I feel part of the group. Start comparing Flemish people to Nazi's. Don't feel like part of the group anymore.
Talk about French Cuss words and regional Walloon accents. Feel like part of the group again. I love expanding my horizons like that. Conversation ends in us speaking English, so they can 'train' their English.

14:00 PM: English Grammar with LV. I, along with the rest of the class, am totally lost and half asleep. Some people behind me are talking. LV throws them an evil glare. We have a break after one hour.

16:00 PM: Class is over!! I walk home with my ipod and take a de-tour. It's still raining.

16:30-17:50 PM: Do some homework; work on the PPT's for the oral presentations. Listen to Imogen Heap and Nico. Talk to some people online. If done in Dutch, it counts for my Dutch portfolio, that is going to be of no importance to me...
I do the dishes.

18:30 PM: Fix myself some dinner, some red cabbage and lamb meat. This is unusual. I usually never cook like this at night.
It's not the best dish, in fact, I'm not even sure if you'd consider it edible, but I need some veggies.

20: 00 PM: Want to work on English Grammar, but Allison is online. We talk, listen to music. People are screaming in the street, my upstairs neighbor is blasting her TV and moving all the furniture around. People are slamming doors. A usual night in the Rue Fumal. Remember I have to find a news article for my French class tomorrow.

20:20 PM: Mommy + Daddy call. Small talk. Still trying to look up news article for French class.

21:00-23:00 PM: Get annoyed at the fact that nothing decent happened in the news the past couple of days. Spend more time online. Think how I'm going to plan my day tomorrow. Finally find an article. Do my write up. English Grammar is not going to happen anymore.

23:00-23:20 PM: Realize I still have to do the dishes. Do those, brush my teeth, get ready for tomorrow.

23:20-23:40 PM: Say prayer, read scriptures with the Feast Upon the Word Website and blog.

23:40 PM: Lights out.

Found out today that R is ill and won't be teaching today. Sad, but that means I can catch up on some lost Grammar time.

Watch Ellen Cook

Behold!!!

Ellen cooked! her own creation!

Ok, so it's nothing fancy. Just some red cabbage from a can. It says it has apples in it, but I think I've yet to disocover those. The meat is lamb.

It was alright in the beginning, but while the picture uploaded I got kind of sick of it.

but my body was really in need for some veggies.

tomorrow i'll eat some Andeivi my mom made and froze for me. Along with some Chipoloatta's and Pickles. yeah. For lunch.

Ok, it looks like i'm going to clean my bowl now and take a shower...

and probably dig into chocolate after...

I wish there was a way to photograph smell

this morning, i left my studio bright and early, to get some school supplies. my Ins-and-Outs syllabus exploded yesterday, and since there is not way to fix it, i decided that it was time to add yet another binder to the collection.

so i was walking through the old streets of namur, to the Club store, when it occurred to me. The streets smelled like burned toast and coffee.

i nearly died and went to heaven.

enjoying lunch, coke, my camera, my blog on a beautiful pre-spring day

in case you had forgotten how our heroine looks like...with her printer and coke.

...and with incredibly tacky sunglasses from HM. Plus a reflection of her camera in the above-mentioned glasses.

"Wor is mene veleo?"

You will never believe what happend to me

Actually you will. but this still rocked my world.
Last night, around 4 AM, when I was dreaming about a big yellow spider (according to Dreammoods.com it means that have a fear or an inability to make a decision or take action. The spider means that I feel like an outsider in some situations. Or that I may want to keep my distance and stay away from an alluring and tempting situation. The spider is also symbolic of feminine power. Alternatively, a spider may refer to a powerful force protecting me against my self-destructive behavior), when I heard a human voice. There is a guy who lives here, who talks way too loud on his cellphone when he is climbing the stairs to his studio, so I didn't make much of it. I just thought he was incredibly rude. But, when he announced"C'est moi!!" on the top of his lungs, I knew that it wasn't a friendly cellphone chat. And when he started singing, I quickly realised he was completely hammered. Serenading the whole house, he struggles to make it up the stairs to the second floor where I have my studio, where Drunk Man decides it's the perfect time to look for his keys. Then he notices that there is a couch in the middle of the hall. (don't ask why, I live in a student ville) and decides to make himself comfortable, while singing the same couple of lines over and over again. Now, if I were to speak fluent french, I would be able to tell you what song it was, but because of all the slurring and pauses, I am unable to find the lyrics at this moment. Maybe my fellow Wallonian classmates will be able to help me.

Anyway, he then decides to start the beastly climb to his studio, one the 3rd floor. Climbs back down a couple of times, mutters something like "incroiable", makes some key jiggling sounds (still singing, bien sur) and finally manages to open the door to his studio, slamming the door shut. I think he crashed right into his bed, cuz I didn't hear anything anymore.
Except Ellen who was wide awake (probably with the rest of the house), who was, shame on her, thinking about what a great post this would make. Luckily, I managed to fall back asleep half an hour later.
But, all in all, this story has a happy ending:

• Drunk Man is a happy drunk. We always prefer happy drunks over aggressive drunks


• He didn't hurl in the corridor. Or at least, I don't think so. I didn't hear any gagging noises and I'm not smelling anything nasty.


• He didn't ring my doorbell or try to break into my studio, which happened to my dad once when he was a student.Luckily, Drunk Man only had eye for his music-career.

But man! That dude has to have some hangover! Seriously, why would you go through so much trouble to totally make a fool of yourself, AND blow out your kidneys at the same time? I kind of want to join some uber-conservative women's organization against alcohol. Seriously, where do kids learn to drink like that?

You know, he still owns me for that hour of lost sleep. Maybe I should blast some music with a heavy beat. Or Xiu Xiu perhaps??

I'm using my dutch grammar books as a cookie tray

Yes, I should be doing my blasted Dutch grammar homework, but I just grabbed a couple of Prince cookies. And it seems to me, that the amount of chocolate has been doubled! hooray! Now I don't feel bad about sinning! This is an unpredictable situation! It's not my fault I'm getting fat. It's those darned people who put more chocolate in the cookies then usual!

Speaking of chocolate:

Happy V-day everyone! Or S.A.D. . whatever you're comfy with.

my V-day was fine i guess. I went to the library to study my enlgish grammar. It's a syllabus of more than 200 pages. After an hour and a half of carefully analyzing everything, I stopped at page 10. Which actually isn't too bad. I've just got an awfully long way to go.
Not to mention I have that dutch project due. And we got ANOTHER group project assigned to us in English. Max. 3 people in a group. I kind of hope I end up being the 5th wheel or something, and that I'm told I'm supposed to do the project alone.

I loath group projects.

Anyway, so everyone here in Belgium has a boyfriend/girlfriend. EVERYONE!!
Even the people of whom you'd think have no interest whatsoever in having a romantic fling, where talking about how they were having a hard time finding the 'perfect gift.'
People kept on asking me all day, if I missed my boyfriend in Les États-Unis. When I replied I didn't have one, they kind of gave me the "you're a looser" look. I guess every country has a different qualification of "looser." In America it's the way you dress and talk, here it depends on your Romantic Status. Or at least I have made this observation.

So our class has another couple! Numero 2. Not that this is much importance to me, but apparently it's a big deal. Apparently it's kind of odd to have your BF/GF in the same class as you. especially in collage. I guess, that if/when you break up with him/her, the 'seeing-them-every-day' might create a discommodious situation.
I guess Belgians try to have a professional environment on the work floor? even if the work floor is..well...covered in dictionaries and syllabi?

Ok, well I better get back to my homework. If I finish my dutch grammar right now, I can read the story for English lit tomorrow morning. Because we need to have read it by tomorrow afternoon.

I know I can't get away with these things at BYU...

Annoyed

So I'm annoyed by something. Many months ago, when still living in Provo, I stumbled across the fact that my (vintage) Book Of Mormon was missing pages. And not like, one page, but a couple of BOOKS, including Omni, Enos...,and also the very last page. So this weekend, when I was cleaning the basement, here in Belgium, I decided that there was a high chance of finding the missing pages, but as of yet, there is no result. Now, my dad told me that he was going to look through some boxes of documents, that belong to him, and maybe, with a big of luck, the missing pages will turn up. And if not, I'm afraid that I'll either have to buy a new B.o.M, or rip out some pages of another B.o.M. gah. This is really really been annoying me. Maybe I should just buy a new one. But this one is so cool looking. It has the light-blue cover, with a golden Moroni, and the pages are yellowed, and smell like the perfume that still has to be invented, namely Old Books. Well, if it ever were to be made into a perfume (not my B.o.M, but the perfume that smells like old pages) I'd probably name it something like 'Olde Bookes.' Or something along those lines. ok. back to this post.

Tomorrow another week starts and I really want to kick myself out of my Winter Fatigue, by actually going to the library again, organizing my courses, preparing a bit for the exams in June, don't eat so much chocolate (I already resisted some Smiling BN Cookies! aren't I good? The new week hasn't even started yet!), and start working on that group project for dutch.

I'm also going to be on the look-out for some new music. Buy a couple of songs on itunes, explore some new bands. I'm not sure how working for school and music go together, but we'll figure something out....

My enlgish teacher is so..cool? weird?

Today in English proficiency we got to listen to a song by the band Xiu Xiu (pronounced Shoe Shoe). Well, it wasn't even a song. It was just...artsy *pulls artsy move*.
and i mean, the song is pretty cool. It's just..not a song. it's a protest.

it's art.

and that doesn't mean that I actually LIKE it. I mean, it's not a song I would play in my living room. It's more something that would fit in Tate Modern.
well, you listen to it and decided for yourself.
But one thing has to be said though: my english teacher is so...cool? I mean, who would have the GUTS to play this in the classroom? I was really happy he tried to open up people's minds towards new kinds of music. It doesn't always have to be Claude Francois I was kind of upset with the rest of my class though. They were totally making fun of it, and only shut up when they had to do the exercise.
they just don't understand ART! *pulls move, and draw back into the darkness of the matinee*

I might pick a major I like and end up living in a box

based on this group on Facebook.

last night my fam and I were invited to a senior missionary couple's home. They are here on a mission to sort out legal stuff for the church, and are in contact with Church lawyers and professors, trying to sort all the problems. So those were the people I got to hang out with Sunday night.
Yeah. It was cool.
And for a very brief second. Like, a flash of light second, I wanted to go into Law.
Even though there is a very slight chance I ever will.
Well, you want to know the whole scoop? Here are all the events that led up to me thinking this:

• My dad's firesite
• Ingrid telling me about part of her study, Comparative Religions
• That night at the the SMC's home.

But like....it's more then law. I always wanted to go into international relations. At first I wanted to start an orphanage in Africa (which I still would love to do), but now, I kind of want to work for the church. I mean, I got a background, I'm European, grew up partially in Utah, speak a couple of languages, 2 of them fluently.
And yes, I'll probably end up living in a box. But hey, it gets compensated by meeting tons of cool people.

i don't know. This might be the last post in about this, or just the beginning.
I kind of wish this year here in Namur was over. I feel like I'm running out of time. Or at least, my time here has been well spend. Aside from a couple of things I WOULD like to accomplish...
anyway...it's gonna be interesting when I go to the Y.