I’m in one of those awkward phases of my life where I’m still growing into my situation and I can’t yet decide if I’m happy here or not. My indecisiveness is becoming a problem. Or rather it’s my inability to see the future that’s the problem. I need to decide which family I’m going to work for this year. I need to decide where I’m going to law school next year. The overwhelming part is that no one’s opinion besides my own really matters. Actually, there are many overwhelming parts.

Graduation was May 14^th and 15^th. My mom’s family was there the entire weekend. Not all of them but enough of them to get the full effect. They were generous with their graduation gifts so that I’ll hold my commentary. My dad’s family came up Saturday night and left before the graduation on Sunday which sucked because I love spending time with them and hardly ever get to, but was just as well because it torrentially down poured the whole ceremony. One of my roommates was smart enough to skip it and the three of us who went just sat there huddled under an umbrella, shivering and waiting for it to be over. We booed our president. He didn’t ask the French majors to stand or even the language majors, just “the rest of the degree candidates” after business and biology and a few others. I look awful in my pictures. It was an appropriate if not enjoyable ending to my time in Albany.

In Berlin I stayed in my first truly bad hostel. I get worked up every time I think about it, but you can read my scathing review here: http://www.travelpost.com/users/1803969540/reviews, and that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.

On Friday I flew to Brussels. It was a six am flight on easy jet. I had to spend the night at the airport (always fun). To my disappointment my French cell phone was still out of range and the pay phones were not being cooperative, so after two hours of waiting for my boyfriend, Ader, I had dissolved into sleep deprived tears. Two minutes later he came and we had our dramatic airport scene, just a little bit late. His train was delayed, really nothing to cry about. We got tomato mozzarella pasta from a café I went to the first time I went to Brussels, before my twenty first birthday, before I even met Ader. It was like a dream that mixed people, places, and weather I never expected to experience together. But it was a nice combination. Saturday we slept in and took the 13h33 train to Namur. It took an hour and a half rather than fifty minutes like the guy who said us the tickets told us. The Belgians seem to have some train issues.

Namur is one of those cities where you feel like you’re walking through a post card. It’s not big enough to have a metro but big enough to have an H&M, which is how I know I’m in a legit city. There’s really nothing very chic about the Belgians, which I love. I’m always the first to defend the French when they’re accused of being rude snobs, but the Belgians are nicer than the French. Sorry but it’s true. Generally.

I’m a bénévole in the city’s only hostel, which means that in exchange for washing some dishes and restocking the bar, I get to stay here and eat for free. I have to share my room with a bubbly, fast-talking Québeçoise who is probably very nice (I can’t understand her well enough to be sure) and I eat some variation of a tomato and cheese sandwich for every meal, but I’m not complaining, since I have so much free time to think and write. Which is exactly what I needed.  

I swore I would never get a blog. First of all because who cares about my boring existence? Secondly because it just seemed impossible to write something honest that wouldn’t be incriminating or offensive or embarrassing if certain people read it. (I know that there are technically privacy settings on these things that let me control who can and can’t read this, but let me get all lawyery for a minute and explain that privacy settings can only block certain usernames. I don’t get to do something to, say, a potential employer’s eyeballs so that (s)he could never look over the shoulder of somebody who’s “allowed” to read my blog and also read it. It sounds paranoid, but it’s just to say that I consider whatever I post on the internet to be public.) Well if you’re still reading you probably care about my boring existence. And I’m hoping that it’ll soon become a lot less boring. Within the next two weeks I’m graduating from college, flying to Berlin for two job interviews, meeting my boyfriend in Brussels (I haven’t seen him since January!), and starting my job in a Belgian youth hostel named after Félicien Rops, a painter whose paintings—well let’s just say you shouldn’t do a google image search on him in a crowded library like I just did.
And my fear of embarrassing and offending other people with my writing is just something that I’ll have to get over because I still want to be a writer. I decided that when I read my first children’s book and was sure that I could do better. My ego has calmed down considerably since I was four but I’ve never given up. It may seem like I have these last four years but that’s just because I’ve been busting my butt to get a degree in French (yes, just French) and although I’ve never completely stopped writing, I stopped showing people what I wrote. I’d like to start finishing and sending my four novels to publishers a.s.a.p. cause I’m not getting any younger. I need some unbiased constructive criticism, ideally from people who have never met me. The more opinions I get the better. Maybe it will help me in my writing process. Maybe it won’t. So if you’re interested in reading this, I’m already happy! If you’re interested in reading this and want to spread the word about this page by posting a link or whatever, that’s even better.