France

Bonjour!

So I haven't updated as often as I usually do but I have been a little bit busy these past few days. So last week my host mom told me that she had to go to a city in France called Lille for work and that me and Claire could probably go with her. I said I would really like to do that and I was really excited to go all week! We went there on Wednesday with me, Claire, my host mom, and my host mom's friend. I think it was probably just over an hour drive to get there from Bruxelles. That just goes to show how different Europe is from Canada and especially where I live. If you drove for just over an hour you would probably be in the middle of nowhere. Here I am actually suprised at the amount of forest but whenever you are driving on the highway there is usually farms and civilization all around. It was a really nice day but it actually wasn't that warm. It got warmer as the day went on and that was probably one of the nicest days I had seen since i've been here in Belgium! Today is also really nice though so maybe today will top that day. When we got to France my host mom dropped Claire and I off downtown and we just started walking around. We went to the Grand Place of Lille, which was really nice and looked a lot different from the Grand Place here in Bruxelles. It reminded me more of Spain in some ways, and less gold. After we walked around the Grand Place we decided to go shopping. We went to a department store type thing first and the clothes were all very very expensive and I didn't even really like them very much so I just looked around knowing that I would not be buying anything there. After we went to a couple other stores like H&M and Gap and I bought things there. My host mom and her friend came and met us after they were done work and then we went to a restaurant and ate some lunch. After that we just walked around some more and my host mom did some shopping. We went home at around 4:45 pm and I was pretty tired and slept on the way home. I can't believe how fast people drive here on the highways. My host mom was going over 160 km pretty much the whole way. For some reason it doesn't seem that fast though. When we got home my host mom told me that we were going to go to French lessons. I thought she meant that I was going to have my first lesson that night and I was a bit scared because I was really tired and hungry and knew I wouldn't be able to focus. But afterwards she told me we were just going to sign up for lessons that night. First we went to a school that was pretty far away from my house and would be difficult for me to get to and Ines didn't really want me to go there but it was cheaper and the rotary club was paying so yeah I don't know, but we signed up there. Afterwards she said we were just going to go check out lessons at a school closer to our house and at a nicer school where the lessons were more expensive but she thought would be better. We decided it was a better idea to go to the school closer to our house so I could take the tram when I have lessons. I had to take an aptitude like test to see which level they would put me in. I think I could've done better but like I said I was really hungry and tired and just wanted to go home and eat something. I didn't do very well on the comprehension part but did really good on the writing part I think. After I wrote the test the teacher interviewed me (all in french) and it was kind of difficult for me. I was surprised to find out that the teacher didn't even speak english so I had to always figure out a way to say something in french even if I thought I really didn't know how. But anyways I got put in the class "Beginners but not real Beginners" so hopefully the lessons will help. I have them twice a week on monday and wednesday for two and a half hours. So that was my eventful French day!

Au Revoir!