The Missing Months

Dear Blog,

Sorry I completely abandoned you. I know that I should have given you a little warning and I honestly didn't mean to blind side you. I swear it's not you, it's me. We were just at such different places in our lives and I needed to focus on myself. I know, it was selfish of me but it turns out that my schedule has opened up and I think I can pencil you in again, at least for a month or so. Will you forgive me and take me back?! Yes? OK great, now that we have that out of the way...

I think I last posted in January or February, which means that I have officially dropped the ball on this blogging thing. Let's be honest, I just didn't have my poop in a scoop, and seeing as though I have the attention span of a 12 year old boy it makes things like updating my blog nearly impossible. Life totally got in the way of me hanging out on the inter web, which I hear is all the rage these days, so I had better get back in the saddle or something like that. I'm having trouble hearing myself think because even with my headphones in I can hear death metal and machine gun sound effects coming from the television as Damon and his teammate, Chris, watch some absurd film that makes me actually consider hiding in the laundry room. Despite this, I shall try and update you on everything that you've missed, Readers' Digest style.

February was the month of Carnival. This is a much more worthwhile holiday than Valentine's day as it involves people getting inappropriately drunk, dressing up in elaborate costumes, and throwing the most insane street party imaginable for four days straight. Aalst is known for their Carnival celebration and although our city is small, the intensity of the celebration and the level of commitment that comes from the Belgian party crowd makes up for it in comparison to the celebrations in places like New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. I'm pretty sure the point of this holiday is to partake in every form of debauchery possible and commit every 'sin' in the book prior to the beginning of lent, and from what I saw I can conclude that Jesus would be very proud and very honored. The tradition is for all the men in the city to dress up as women and then to go out into the city center and dance, sing, eat, drink, and love life. Each year it seems as though one or two people sacrifice themselves to the Carnival gods and either fall into the river in their Winnie the Pooh costume or get so drunk that they sleep on the streets in the February weather where they freeze to the sidewalk and remain, never to party again. It is indeed tragic, but it is just a testament to how serious this party is; it puts American college parties to absolute shame. I wish I had blogged about it at the time because I saw some truly incredible things. However, it goes without saying that I was unable to read or write because, while "being in Rome and doing as the Romans do", I had pickled my brain with Vodka and Duvel and this is the real reason I have been out of blogging commission for seven months.

March was the month that I celebrated my birth (thanks Tom and Andra). I turned 24 (underwhelming), and went to a concert to celebrate. I won't get into that story because it involves beer bongs and a brawl during the encore, and so clearly I can't do the tale justice without proper sound affects and reenactments. What I learned is that there seems to be a cultural difference when it comes to how to properly enjoy a jam band, and also that one should avoid going to see live music in a venue that leaves you surrounded by people that hate fun. I'm not going to throw any specific regions under the bus (Antwerp), but let's just say that this particular city has a lot of work to do in order to redeem itself.

During the spring I also applied to graduate school, to which I was accepted! Surprise everyone, I got a life! Starting in September I will be getting my Masters degree in Migration Studies from the University of Kent at Brussels. The University is a British University that has their International Studies Campus in Brussels, and I will hopefully be completing my degree in one intensive year. I also tried out with a First Division volleyball team in Gent. I have began training with the team which involves practicing three days a week for three hours each and includes weight lifting, jump training, and me sweating like a 300 pound man as well. The team is young, and by young I mean that they are too young to have sweat glands apparently, and the next oldest person on the team can't legally drink in America, but they are all very talented and have a lot of potential. Despite feeling like the grandmother of the team, I'm having fun and trying to get back into fighting shape and learning how to argue with the referees in Dutch. I won't elaborate on this too much because I can tell that you're bored. Translation: I'm boring myself, which is tragic because literally I'm just talking endlessly about myself, which most people generally love to do.

Let me sum things up. I went home to Seattle for the summer to spend some quality time as a member of the McDonald family circus, and to have pretty much every job that I had lined up successfully fall through. It was a real blast. Damon signed another contract with the team in Aalst, so here I am in Belgium, extra broke and extra flustered because I had to learn how to drive stick shift in less than a week so that I could drive myself to and from practice and games. Driving has been going just swimmingly (thanks for asking) as long as you don't count the time that I briefly stalled the car on the train tracks. What can I say, I like to live life on the edge. School will be starting later this month, and so I am trying to mentally prepare myself for the busy life of a student-athlete, which honestly is one that I did not imagine I would be revisiting post graduation from Brown. I will be commuting by train into Brussels for school, and then driving myself in the opposite direction in the evenings for volleyball practice. Somewhere in there I will try and find time to be an active member of Democrats Abroad Belgium, breathe, go to Damon's basketball games, continue my gourmet culinary adventures, drink Cava, and do laundry. Life has gone from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye, and hopefully I will survive. Wish me luck!

For now I must depart on account of the fact that blogging hurts my brain and besides, when it comes to this, my attention span wore out yesterday. I have the horrifying sense that I've lost 'my funny' which could be a result of the fact that I haven't used blogging as a means of embarrassing myself in a public forum for quite some time now. Orrrrr it could be that it is borderline impossible to be entertaining whilst paraphrasing seven months worth of events. Ugh. At least I know that my Mom will read this, even if no one else does, and I can rest easy knowing that she is obligated to like it.