This may actually be the FIRST BIG trip in a while. I am talking BIG like our Honeymoon to Alaska BIG! Even BIGGER than the trips I took to Cancun and Jamaica in 2008. What makes this trip bigger than those, you might ask? Well, the cost, for one thing, will be coming out of my pocket.
Where am I headed on this BIG trip, you might ask? My beautiful little sister has asked me to join her on her first trip abroad! We are headed to Belgium (and planning trips to the Netherlands, Germany and France)! I am so glad my sister is a bit of a procrastinator (I love you kid, admit it already, you are a procrastinator!), because that meant I got involved trying to find her a program that would satisfy her language requirement, so she can finally graduate from college. This program also had to fit her rigorous requirements, and since we were unable to find a Dutch Immersion program on the island of Sint Maarten (which I'm thinking they are missing a key group of Seasonal Affect Disorder people who need to meet language requirements there!), I knew we were looking for something shorter than the requiste semester or longer.
Halleluja for an immersion program in Belgium where she can get 70 hours of study in 1 week! And an even greater HALLELUJA that her school accepted the program and she will only need 4 weeks of classes to satisfy the requirement!
We are still a long way from being ready to leave, but that is okay. We still have a little bit of time. Approximately 4 months! I have started my planning by ordering a set of French Immersion software. I am pretty good with Spanish, and can get by with Italian, but my French is limited to mainly the culinary arts, and certain greetings. Bon Jour, Bon Soir, Au Revoir! (And I even had to look up the last one for the correct spelling.) If my first trip to Belgium was any indication, French is important. It is one of the three (yes THREE) official languages of Belgium, along with Dutch (hence, little sis doing her immersion there) and German. I remember Monique and I trying to order lunch at a Pizza Hut (yes, they have them there, and for a 21 year-old American, it was AWESOME!) and ending up pointing at pictures on the menu. Mind you, Monique speaks French, so yeah, I have my work cut out for me.
This time around, I hope to be more wordly and eat at LOCAL restaurants, not international chains. We will see how the little sister feels about that. Luckily, I now have my 1000 Places To See Before You Die books that I WILL be consulting, so we don't miss a single place. I am really looking forward to this trip. My sister is one of my best friends, and I really don't get to see her enough.
Wish Europe luck, the Tuttle girls are headed your way!
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