Since I finally had my camera with me at school for once, I was able to take pictures of how many people ride their bikes to school!
There are also more bikes parked in various places around the school. I also didn't get a picture of another walkway lined with bikes. But you get the point; a lot of people ride their bike to school! :)
The bus ride to Liege took about two hours. It actually went by pretty quickly; I played a game with Nadine, Sofie and a girl named Alex. You write down things like city, country, TV show, food, etc. and then pick a letter. You have to fill out each category for the chosen letter. Then you compare answers with your competitor(s). If you have the same answer you get 5 points, different answers 10, and if you have an answer and they don't you get 20 and they get 0. Alex and I weren't very good, but it was still fun. :) My the people around me and I all compared our different passports because most of them have a German passport, I have an American one and Alex has a British one. :)
Me on the bus. I looked stupid(er) in all the other tries to take this picture, so Alex tickled me, which got a more natural smile. ;)
Then we arrived in Liege! There were actually hills in the area, and the bus parked on a hill overlooking the city. After a big group photo, we were given a packet with the scavenger hunt questions (unfortunately, it was all written in French) and sent down a long flight of stairs down the big hill. Our first challenge was to count how many steps there were. There were 374.
It's hard to see the top of the stairs because it's so far away! ;)
That was pretty much where our success ended. The whole day could be described like this: "So you think you can speak French? Ha! Ha! Ha..." The two years of French I'd had did not help at all. Well, maybe a little. But we still looked like idiots and understood very little. We went up to random strangers a LOT for help (something I'd hate to do in a different language in place) and got lucky when they spoke a little German or English. We particularly had trouble finding the post office. We were supposed to buy a postcard, stamp and then send it, but we couldn't find the post office! We asked about five different people and still didn't find it. After that, it all went downhill. We didn't know it was important to do the questions in order, so we ended up in a different place where we couldn't find anything. After a while we kind of gave up and decided to wait by the fountain where we were supposed to meet everyone at 1:30. Two other groups showed up, but we couldn't find the teachers or other groups anywhere. We had to call our French teacher and ask where everyone was. It turns out we were at the wrong fountain! We spent the entire day close to this fountain because we thought it was the meeting point! We were pretty much at the wrong side of the city! Arghhh! Despite our total failure at the scavenger hunt, I had a lot of fun with Nadine and Lisa F. (the one who lived in America.) We laughed a LOT, especially about how we totally are failures. :)
When we finally reached the others, twenty minutes late, we had two hours to shop and do whatever we wanted. :) I went down the shopping street with some of my friends, but I wanted to go into stores that they only had in Belgium, not the stores on the main shopping street like H&M. So we went a little ways away from the shopping street and spent a lot of time in this awesome store called Maison du Mondes.
Here are some pictures from the trip:
Lisa F. and Me
Lisa, me, Nadine
Ya hear? No flowers allowed in the restaurant!! (Oookay....)
We randomly came across a green plastic dog chained to a post. Seconds after I took this picture Lisa walked into a store prop-up sign. It was hilarious.
Belgian waffle!
The sick uniforms of the Liege police!
Here are some random videos I took while on our scavenger
hunt. It is a mix of German, French and English. Good luck
understanding anything... ;) But a video you can't understand is better than no video... right? ;)
At the end of the day, I was tired, my feet hurt, and I was slightly pissed off at the world in general because one girl who is always a jerk to one of my friends decided to be a major jerk today. The bus ride home wasn't nearly as fun as the bus ride there. The kids in the back were yelling and singing and all sorts of things. Being in the back and being obnoxious is incredibly fun if you're a part of it (trust me, I have been), but really annoying when you're not (and already annoyed.) However, some teachers brought gummy bears which were passed around the bus, which helped my mood a little bit.
Okay, so I know that at the beginning of the blog I said the trip was just okay. Really, it was fun, just the ending wasn't very fun. :)
German word of the day: Lüttich. Pronounced LEUH-tichh. Lüttich is the German name for the city Liege. Same thing. :)
The Sunflower Project: Unfortunately, one of them isn't doing too well. :( But the others are! :)
Book update: I haven't had the chance to read all that much lately. This is a busy week for me! What I did read is this: Anna and Max's French tutor wants them to start French school after Christmas, which their mom agrees with. Then comes Christmas. It's a smaller Christmas than usual, with less (and less expensive) presents, but Anna just appreciates that she's with her family, celebrating Christmas at all. From her uncle, who thought it was stupid to leave Germany, she gets a bracelet with different animal charms because her uncle works at a zoo. With it there's a note telling her to tell her aunt Alice hello and also that he should have followed in her footsteps. Anna's confused because she doesn't have an aunt Alice, but Anna's father tells her he thinks it means him because Anna's uncle could get in trouble if the Nazis, who intercept and read people's mail, found out he was contacting Anna's dad, a famous writer who opposes the Nazis. (The Nazis already burned all his books.)
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