Finally I Update
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Les Simpson ( i still don't understand why the french left out the s)
Topic: Mid. Sep - ?
everything is going completely wonderfully here, and i feel a little bit bad for not letting all of you folks out there in cyber land know how i'm doing, but I just got really busy and doing things like this always seems like kind of a chore if I don't get any kind of feedback in the form of comments or something like that. SO: if you'd like me to update my blog and website more often drop me a line.

Today was geniunely good. I had a real conversation about school, music and general emotions with a Sweed and Ecquadorian in my French course today. It was utterly fantastic. I feel bad that that clqss is now over in its regular version . . . oh well . . . I look forward to helping the same guy teach an English class. Anyway, along those lines, I never realized how rediculously conscience of paperwork these schools were. My host parents got a personal call from the school because I wasn't there today or last Wednesday because of my French course. I had the Directeur sign my paper and I thought all was fine, but I need to deal with a seperate piece of paper with the man who does attendance. Why is it so difficult here? At Analy exchange students have free run of the place.

Anywho, that's minor things are going well in general. The people here are nice; though they like making too many jokes about the stereotypes of America even though they admit to me afterwards that they are well aware that I fit none of them.

Speaking of which, the stereotype of Europeans hating Americans isn't at all true. They hate Bush, but I quite literally bumped into a former member of the Belgian Army who said he was strongly behind the US, and gave a reasoned explanation as to why.

Anywho, until next time,
-Kenny

WOW; c`est tres amusant
Topic: Week 1
My first two days of Belgium have been fantastic, and I can only hope that the rest go so well. The family is incredibly nice and supportative. They are far more cooperative than any American family I've seen. I got a small tour of the Area and a brief introduction to Belgium. Also, I have learned how hard it is to type on the keyboard when just enough of the keys are different that you think you can type without looking.

In other news, language school starts for me tommorrow because I slept past the time it ended -- jet lag is fun:

Anyway, everything is great, but I'm still just a little bit scared about my French because it is just good enough to get me in trouble. We'll just have to see how things go from here; no need for stress.

For now,
-Kenny

Somethings are really hard to believe
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Before I Leave
It seems like it was so long ago that all of the paper work for my exchange began and I thought these final days would never come. I am getting so much more nervous. I'm really excited about what I have before me, but at the same time I think it might be more challenging that anything I could ever imagine. I just keep drilling my mind thinking that there is something else I could have or should have done much, much earlier, or that something I have done has managed to be an abysmal failure, but also I know that I need to just let these things happen and not stress out about the immediate and just wait to see what exactly happens along the trip.

Tomorrow I'm going out into town to take care of my very last bits of shopping and to make the phone calls I know I should make before I go. I haven't talked to Oscar or Sam for a long, long time and I know they deserve a call. The same is true for Emma, and I think I just need to talk to Megan one more time before I leave. This is so scary and suddenly things that didn't seem so emotional, now are steeped in them.

Anyway, here I go.

Wheee doesn't everything look better . . . .
Mood:  crushed out
Now Playing: too much noise!
Topic: Before I Leave
When I was bored in San Francisco a couple days ago I took a class at the Apple Store on some different tweaks I can do in Dreamweaver, which I've had for a while, but haven't had a chance to do much with. Well, now I've redone my exchange page (http://www.bondelie.com) with Dreamweaver using XHTML layers, and while the content isn't different, I think the design is a lot friendlier and also a lot easier for me to cram more content into.

I'm considering moving the site from .mac to Comast or tripod. Don't know why, but we'll see what happens. Maybe we can get better throughput or something. Anyway, I'll keep things updated and stuff . . . like I said I would. I can't believe how little time there is until I go. When I got the friendly (and utterly persistent) reminder call from my mom about setting up banking and stuff, I got so amazed about how quickly things have been passing by. Anyway, I'll have plenty of time to reflect and write on the train once I go out to see my brother.

Intentional downtime is always good.
I'm out.

I'm pretty impressed with myself
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Before I Leave
I'm really impressed with myself that this all fell together like it did. I just threw this website together this evening because I realized that Dustin was right and this was the total way to go. I'm surprised that considering I had no plan when I started it came out looking halfway presentable.

Anyway, there isn't really much to say at the moment. I'm very nervous and excited that there's not much more than a month and I'm off to Belgium and ready to live what I've been talking about for so long. This is really, really neat.

I ran into some people I know in front of the Sebastopol Pet Center this afternoon, and I felt so wonderful gushing about what's ahead. Man, this is going to be fantastic.

In other news, I am beat and ready to call it a night at 9:20 on a Saturday night; that's depressing. I just downloaded this program onto my Mac that tells me how far my cursor has travelled. Just in making this website, I've moved my mouse close to a kilometer. Does this count as PE?

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens out there,
-Kenny