Well, I’ve done it. I’ve completed the first semester. What’s that mean? I’ve been here for 121 days.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE DAYS.
So, you know, just a third of a year. Surely I’ve had some exciting things occur since my last post.
YUP.
THANKSGIVING. Don’t you worry your little heart, dear reader. I, as a strong and patriotic American, made sure to have an American Thanksgiving celebration. I wanted this so badly that I arranged the first guys and girls household event together! So, it was myself, my two American housemates, Martha Gornik, another American, Javier, our brother American, two Belgians and a Lebanese for Thanksgiving. We had everything thing that a traditional Thanksgiving should have, for the most part. We had your turkey, your gravy (or in our case multiple kinds of gravy), your cranberry sauce, your mashed potatoes, your stuffing, your green bean casserole, and your pumpkin and apple pie. DELICIOUS. Also, since I wanted to be festive and authentic, I made some hand turkeys and hung those up on the wall. You know those outlines of your hand that you make when you’re roughly 5 years old? Yeah, those.
On Thanksgiving Day, I went to a conference in London. (We had to celebrate Thanksgiving two days early to make sure we could fit it in, but I KNEW that it would be worth it.) It was the second part of the SWOT conference… For those of you who have been following this fairly faithfully, you’ll know that this is the same type of conference that I attended at the beginning of my Gap year in Scotland. The emphasis of this conference was on teamwork. And so, as you can imagine, lots of teamwork topics and exercises were talked about and done during my time in London. It’s a bit of a shame that I was busy the entire length of my stay in London, but I figure it was worth it. Actually, I know so. I was able to stay at the women’s household in London with my friend, Camille. She’s fabulous. I’ve probably said this before, but I’ll say that roughly 2,598,347,596,846,945 more times as well. We had quite the time, and definitely grew in our friendship in ways I can safely say that she and I were not anticipating.
The next most exciting event was Pharos Weekend! WOO! Our outreach had a retreat at the beginning of December and the focus was on worship. Well, seeing as that was the emphasis, and I am the worship team leader, you can bet your bottom dollar that I had my work cut out for me. But, in the end, all worked out. We, the Pharos team, had been praying since the beginning of the semester for 20 people to be able to attend the retreat. The headcount: 21! It was really great. The Lord really worked in people throughout the retreat. We also had a little bit of fun as well. ;) My highlight was probably playing Sardines. For those who are not familiar with this, it’s essentially like hide-and-go-seek. However, one person hides. The rest search for the person hiding. Once you have found the person hiding, the goal is to hide with them and not be the last person to find the “hide-ee.” This late night activity, I’m pretty sure, helped to strengthen some of the friendships within Pharos.
Another great event that has happened was our Pharos Bingo Night! As the head of the Social Events Team, I knew that I had a little bit of power in deciding what the next event was. At the time, I really just had the urge to dress up like an elderly person. So, I decided to combine these together. Thus, Pharos Bingo Night was created. I tried to figure out how to spice up the old age factor, and what instantly popped into my mind was the idea of a bingo hall in America. So, for the event, we played Christmas Bingo, and we asked all those who were to attend to dress as if they were 65 years or older. I was a bit cautious that the Belgian people wouldn’t quite be as thrilled for dressing up, but, fortunately, they were just as enthusiastic as I. Needless to say, it was quite a fun event.
The final Pharos event of the semester was a Joint Prayer Meeting. Pharos, along with two other Christian student groups, joined together to have one heck of a night. The event started off with a prayer meeting, mainly run by Pharos, where I participated as the music team leader. With the three groups, we were able to form a team of musicians, including a flute and a saxophone which gave a great feel to the music. After the prayer meeting, there was a dinner. It was essentially a potluck dinner where people from all the groups brought food to share. Following this, the event team had hired a folk dancing group to come and teach us folk dances. So, we danced the night away. The event was over 5 hours long, but it went very well.
I’ll end with this. I’m sure there will be plenty for me to write soon, seeing as my best friend from Lansing, Ellen Schaefer, and her family are currently here in Belgium. There have been many adventures in the past two days that they’ve been here, and I’m quite positive there will be more to come during their stay.
Oh, but quick check out a video we made in December too!
