Les Bus Sont En Greve! :]

Bonjour :]

So you might be wondering, why is Maggie blogging at 10 am, why isn't she in school? Well I will gladly tell you the reason I'm at home, curled up on the couch with my sister blanket, drinking hot coffee...the bus drivers are on strike! :D Usually I don't go to school on the bus but my ride didn't show today, Mano had to go to work, and since there was no bus (and today is a short day anyways) I got to stay home! So I say by all means bus drivers of Belgium, stay unhappy and strike all you want, I don't mind :]

I just realized that this means I'll only have two days of school this week! My day just keeps getting better haha, no school really isn't that bad but it's always nice to have time to just relax at home. I don't believe I've told you why I didn't have school yesterday or the day before have I? Well Monday was a holiday so there was no school and all the businesses were closed but get this, it was only in Wallonia! The 27th of September is the day that the Belgians chased the Dutch out of Brussels, and the holiday is actually "a celebration of the french-speaking Belgians." This is just so weird to me, having a national type holiday in only half of the nation. I think it would be something like if all the confederate states back home had an official holiday celebrating a battle they'd won in the war and everything was shut down in only the south, it kinda seems like it'd be a slap in the face to the Dutch-speaking Belgians, it's really kinda bizarre! But it was a nice vacation, I just hung around the house with Isabelle and relaxed, and Dad you'll be proud of me I even worked on my French! Hahaha

Now yesterday was a much more interesting day! I went to "Aventure Parc" with my class! Contrary to my usual pre-departure anxiety (thanks Dad :P) I had tons of fun! It was a sort of ropes course, but not like any I'd done before because you didn't have people on the ground holding your rope (I can't remember what that's called for some reason) there were just two little hook things (can't remember what they're called either) attached to your harness and you just attached yourself to all the various wires, it was really convenient and fast moving except when we got stuck behind the kids who were really freaked out and moving slowly. But the best part was spending the day with my classmates outside of class, it was cool because we could talk and joke and I now feel closer to all of them then before :]


This is my class minus two people who weren't there :]

Speaking of which, I have finally discovered the secret to my tiny class! Yes, my school is small and there are less students than in most schools but also there are other "options" for 6th, and I think 5th, year students (I'm in the 6th year) so there are more students in their last year of school, they just aren't in general! So I haven't figured out what all the other options are, I'll let you know when I do, but I think they're more like job training type stuff, et voila! It's kinda sad I've been here this long and am just figuring this out haha but hey there is a language barrier!

Oh and one last thing, the other day in class we were talking about how expensive it is to fly here, when I said that I wasn't sure how much my ticket was but I thought it was somewhere around $800-$900 one boy in my class exclaimed, "Tu es folle! 900 dollars pour venir a Belgique!" I had to laugh :]