Sixth months ago, at exactly this time of the year, I was still busy packing my stuff, to fit everything into a luggage that has a limit of 23kg, and arguing with my mom about which undies to wear.
Today, I'm here, sitting in front of the screen of my host dad's laptop, missing everything but not ready yet to leave Belgium.
Do you know the kind of feeling where you think, my work here is not yet done but the time is running out? Whether it's because my Dutch isn't that well, or things that are still unsaid.
I need a plan, things have got to be structured, but I'm not the kind of person who does all those things.
Either way, these are some random questions I randomly found on the internet. I'd probably post this kind of thing more often.
It's actually quite interesting.

Random Questions:
1. How are you feeling right now? Needy.
2. What's the closest thing to you that's green? Almost everything in this house is green, god damn it.
3. When did you last laugh? Yesterday.

4. Do you remember why / at what? During middagpauze, Erika suddenly sang her own creation of a catchy song that goes; 'here there everywhere, we are friends forever' and somehow it turned into a techno/house music when I started beatboxing along with her.
5. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
Belgium. F*ck it, I want to stay, I wish my dad's agency would send my whole family to move here, or I wish there was a mini earthquake that would move Indonesia geographically to europe, next to Belgium to be exact.

6. Do you like to dance? Love.
7. Do you really know all the words to your national anthem? Honestly... no.
8. Have you ever been in a beauty pageant? No, not sure if I'm qualified.
9. How many tattoos do you have? None.
10. If you don't have any, have you ever thought of getting one? Nope.

11. What did you do for your last birthday? My brother threw a surprise birthday party for me. I love him so much.
12. Do you believe in love at first sight? Crush, maybe. Love? Too serious.
13. Where were you on Valentine's day? Home, loving myself.
14. Have you ever been drunk? Never been completely drunk, somehow I've always been the babysitter.
15. Would you like to go out to eat with Barack Obama? Only if he's buying.

Love Your Username

Today, brainless me, has done something moronic.
Yes, I accidentally deleted my Gmail account.

Here is the chronological story:
My current username is 'rayarinaldi', yup, boring.
I wanted a username that sounds fun, silly, and just like me! (yeah right)
The name cutiepie777 would sound much better.
Nah, kidding.
I thought minderdandrie, minderdan3, or kurangdaritiga (all of them have the same meaning- 'Less Than Three' in both Dutch and Indonesian) would make a cool username.

Youtube wouldn't allow me to pick a new username so I thought if I make another Gmail account to replace the old one, I'll be able to choose a new username. Sadly, things didn't really work that way.
I did create a new account but apparently there is no way I could change the email that I've used for Youtube nor Blogger.
So, I stick with my boring username and decided to delete my new Gmail account (it's useless anyway so yeah).

You could guess what happened next.
Instead of deleting the new one, I deleted my old Gmail account, which is linked to all my important emails, youtube videos, and this blog.
What did I do?
I just sat there, staring at the screen, analyzing the stupidity that I've done.
And regretting, of course.
I was like, holy shit, not again, I'm so not making a new blog.
This blog is not even my first because I've screwed up a couple of times before.
I searched informations on google but nothing helps.
"...once you deleted a Gmail account, then it would be permanently".
Shit, of course I freaked out.
It's like, murdering your own flesh and blood! Not that I've ever done that, but god damn it, all of my hardworks, are in this stupid account.

I was so helpless so I updated both on facebook and twitter for help, and my friend, Melissa, shared me a link about recovering Gmail account.
It didn't really work out 'cause there were way too many questions asked in that link and they even asked for my old hotmail address, which I can't seem to log in anymore.
Anyway I felt a bit better knowing that someone was willing to help me out, so thanks a lot Melissa!

I didn't give up, I knew I could still save my babies.
I keep searching on google, yahoo answers, etc.
In the end, I didn't remember exactly what I did because I tried out every single link that has something to do with 'recovering my Gmail account', and voila!
My Gmail account is back, I didn't lose a single thing, my videos and blog posts are save and so are my emails.

Lesson of the day:
Love your username the way it is, because at one point, it was exactly how you wanted to name your account.

De dag van de weerbaarheid

I probably had one of the suckiest morning ever.
I woke up thinking that today was just like any other Thursday and school starts at 9 AM.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
I knew that it was gonna be de dag van de weerbaarheid but hey, who would've have known that school actually started 50 minutes earlier?
Apparently, everyone but me.
So, I was half an hour late but the school's secretariaat was such a darling, she let me in with my lame excuse.

What is weerbaarheid? No idea.
We had to follow workshops about drugs and alcohol.
Honestly? Apart of having a short day with no lessons, it was boring.
First session was a group talk. We played a kind of a card game, we needed to describe each others with such difficult Dutch words that I couldn't understand (except for the word brutaal, I later assigned it to Camilla but she denied.. well you know, it's just an opinion... sorry :p)

We also received quick Aikido lessons and it was great. Not that it would be useful for me, in a middle of an attack I'm pretty sure screaming my lungs out will be the first thing I'd do.
Well, I'm actually into self defense dus, ik vind het leuk.
(Watch out people, badass coming through)

Later before noon we watched 'Requiem For A Dream', a movie about drugs that was released in the 2000.
I like it. Even though 'disgusting' would be the perfect word to describe this movie, I think it deserves an award plus it has amazing soundtracks. Not that I'm a movie expert, or the fact that Jared Leto was in it.
Yes people, Jared Leto.
When the movie first started I was like 'hey this guy looks familiar, a bit gay but yeah I know him from somewhere...' and voila.
Ok, don't take it wrong, I'm definitely far from a homophobic. It's just that one of my best friend is Leto's crazy fan girl and I used to tease her a lot by telling her how gay he looks blablabla and she would be pissed. Apart from that he is a great man and even if he is gay, I could guarantee that he'd get more guys than I do.

So I actually lost my whole appetite.

Het Krokusvakantie PART II

I went jogging... again!
Yay!
Not that it changed anything because I did stop by Kruidvat and pick up some snoepjes. It was really nice to visit the park again though.

On saturday I had to meet up with all the AFS students in Station Leuven but was the only one who came late thanks to the stupid GPS.

Middle Orientation Camp was awesome.
Sorry for the excitement but I actually enjoyed it.
My Indonesian mates were there, I met a lot of new people, who I became friends with afterwards, or should I say, my international friends.
Well my friends from the DAS chapter are also foreigners but hey, it's always great to know more people!

We had to follow workshops during the camp, which I think were a bit boring.. well it's OK. Just OK.
The camp took place in Leuven and unlike the arrival camp, it was only for a night. Trust me, it was too speedy that I want it to last forever.
Ew... lebaynya.

My favorite part of the camp was meal time.
I don't mean to sound like a cow but during meal times you get to chat a lot with your friends and I like it. I'm not gonna complain about the food though, they were actually lekker!

At night, we had a party and Retro was the theme. Most of us dressed up, some of us didn't really care to match up the theme...
Well, at least we had fun, right?

It was not bad actually, Primus was fine and good thing that they didn't serve Kriek. Widari brought her bridge cards so we played couple of games too. We were planning (it's more like I suggested) on playing the drinking game but it didn't happen. Somehow, we ended up playing tepuk nyamuk.

*katanya* Duta Bangsa HAHA

Plus Turkish out of nowhere

The music was OK, but I was expecting more soundtracks from Dirty Dancing, Grease, etc since retro was the theme.
But they played Pretty Woman... so I guess it's fair enough, eh?

I made a new friend from Italia and hij is super!
Just like me, he arrived late in Belgium so we both missed the first camp.
His name is Elios and his classical piano is excellent.
He told me that his name means 'Sun' so it matches my name (Rainy). During the camp we have this fake facebook wall where we can write (or post) everything we want, and he wrote this:

Elios and I

Nice, eh?
Elios and I ditched the party for approximately half an hour to play with Oelij. Good thing he had internet on his phone because we needed to look up for lyrics to sing.
What I love about this party was that I didn't spend a lot of money on drinks. Milos bought me the first drink, Titus lost a bet and had to buy me another, and then I got another from Koen!
While I was playing my ukulele, some stranger actually throw a 50 cent to me and I managed to buy another pint. Thanks people!
The party ended at around 1.45 AM with the song 'Ik Wil Je' from De Kreuners, yes that's early but we needed to wake up at 7 AM in the morning.

Sunday: workshop, workshop, frietjes, workshop, and finally we need to leave the camp and that also means the end of Krokusvakantie.

In the train with my badass turkish (Dilan)

Ik vind het echt triestig, want de volgende camp is de eindecamp.
Gisteren was ik 5 maanden in België.
Ik heb nog 5 maanden en I promise I'm gonna make the best of it.

Cheers!

Het Krokusvakantie PART I

It's Thursday baby!

That means three more days before school starts.

Holycow, time goes really fast.

First of all, I want to say that I'm sorry. I don't mean to turn this blog into a personal diary or something, it might sometimes seems like it but I promise it's not on purpose.

So what have I been up to in this vacation? In my last post, it seemed like my vacation would be a total waste?

WRONG. Well, not 100% productive, but still, wrong.

Saturday was fine, my host family and I went to the kineapolis in Antwerp because they wanted to see a Dutch movie called Brasserie Romantiek.

Since I would not understand a thing, I picked myself a movie that I have been wanting to check out for a long time. Yup, it's Pitch Perfect.

It was quite a catch, not bad, has a lot of great tunes but quite predictable. I'm not complaining ok, just check it out yourself if you want further information.

On Sunday I went to the Ardennen, Belgium French. They say it's the highest point of Belgium. Usually people go for a ski there but I've got no experience and not really interested so my host family and I just went there for a walk. It was a wonderful walk though.

I was just fooling around the whole Monday, so let's just skip to Tuesday.

I went to Erika's house (a school friend) and we hung out.

She painted my nails, which is totally not my thing because I consider my nails unpaintable; short and horrible. Plus, playing a lot of ukulele doesn't make me want to beautify them.

Anyway, I was a bit surprise that she managed to do it and was actually quite good at it. So, thanks Erika!

We stopped by Kiana's house to pick up Erika's bike, and stayed for a chat.

I told you already that I run terribly in a cold weather but that didn't stop us from doing Run & Bike, neither jumping on Erika's trampoline.

I gotta say that I have never ever jumped in such a huge trampoline.

There, I said it and I was freaking excited. It was a bit icy but Erika did a kind of flip anyway. It was a fun Tuesday!

The next day, I tried very hard not to mop around the house like a lazy pig, so sometime before 1 PM, I decided to go out for a jog.

That's right people, I went jogging around Opwijk.

Achievements baby, woohoo!

I wanted to get to know Opwijk better so I was like jogging with no direction, no idea where they ways lead me to and ended up in the park.

Gemente Huis van Opwijk

(in my opinion) the best frituur ever

In the park, I climbed the kind of tower thingy (I don't know what you call that thing) until I realize there was a notice board saying that you need to be under 12 years old to actually play there, and I thought, fuck it. No one could tell that I'm gonna be 18th this year anyway.

The Park

Honestly, I really love the park in Opwijk. Guess what I saw there?

A fucking Mallard!

Cool, yeah?

 

I think the park is beautiful and relaxing, especially because at that time no one was there so I'm really looking forward on going back.

On the way back, I stopped by the Okay to pick up some stuff and accidentally bumped into Judith. (Hey Judith! :D)

Stuff

Well, what I meant by stuff was actually snacks, which made my effort of jogging quite useless. Well, I tried!

Today was not really my favourite. It rained the whole day, so I guess it was the most unproductive day I've ever had. I woke up late, had a so-called brunch, took a shower, back to bed until 4 PM, watched Skins series all over again and nothing.

I still have tomorrow and I really want to make the best of it, but I guess I'll be studying math for the test on Monday 'cause I'll be having AFS Camp on the weekend. (CAN'T WAIT!!)

Oh almost forgot,

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY<3

I'm not gonna start with 'how I am not a valentine person and blabla', which is true, it's really not my thing, but hey, we should spread the love everyday!

Unless you're a grumpy cat, once a year will do.

I'm a fan of 'Actual Advice Mallard meme', I enjoy reading most of them and I found an awesome one on 9GAG, like when I saw this, I thought, how on earth did I not think of that before? This is not really an advice, more like a supportive message that your parents or anyone would give.

Anyway, just remember,

It bet it didn't sound funny anymore now that I post it....

well, fuck it.

Vandaag is de laatste dag van school vóór de krokusvakantie!
YAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Het weer van deze maand is niet zo goed.
Soms sneeuwt het, maar wel een klein beetje.
Het is eigenlijk koud maar soms gaat het warmer.
Zeker dat we veel wind en regen hebben.
Veel mensen worden ziek, en we hebben ook veel studie op school.
Ik hoop dat ik niet ziek word... omdat ik wil enjoy de vakantie.

Enough with the Dutch for today.
Since it was the last day before krokkusvakantie, zoals altijd, we received our report cards.
Mine? Horrible but who cares? I do.
I got 20% for Biologie, Chemie, Geschidenis, and surprisingly 40% in Esthetica (I was expecting less than that).
The only explanation to all my terrible grades is because my dutch is just not good enough.
I can understand you and respond to your questions (most of the time, no dialect), but writing, explaining, and learning are not the same.
Points are not really what I'm going for during my stay but I really don't mind getting 80%-90% once in a while...
Then I guess I need to pump up my Dutch!

Krokusvakantie, what the hell is that?
Why does the school here has so many long vacations?
Well, for me a week off from, even before you reach the middle of the semester is like een wonder.
Things like this doesn't exist in Indonesia so I'm loving it!

But what could I possibly do in such a long week?
Yes, I need a plan.
I need to do something else rather than just playing with Oelij (although my love for him is too damn much, I won't be able to take a day off from playing).
AFS België is holding a midorientation on the weekend before the vacation ends so I still have seven days to filled up.
Maybe go jogging? Too ambitious.
Visit the library? Too far.
Read another Dutch novel? Too much.
Study before school starts again?
Wtf, hell no!

Forget it. I can see myself wasting the next seven days, thinking what to do, and ending up doing nothing but munching all Milka products at home, browsing on the internet, posting shits and playing with Oelij.

Blab Blab

Hoi!
Happy belated new year dearest bloggy, the vuilbak of my life, where I throw all my junky opinions out.
Thank you for being such an understanding blog, I appreciate that.
Forgive me for I have abandoned you... for almost three weeks!
I didn't mean to 'cause I totally have a lot to share.
Christmas vacation in Paris, NYE's party, ukulele covers, and even back to school tales. Not to forget, my judgemental opinions on life!
My life, to be exact.
But, as much as I want to spill everything on you, I can't do everything in one post right? I don't want you to end up bearing too much pressure...
I'm actually caring you know...
WRONG! I don't.
I'm still not gonna do everything in one post but none of the craps above is the reason. You see, my english has gone worse than ever and I don't want to babble that leads nowhere. Maybe it didn't really show here but while I talk, I messed up every grammar.
If there were a grammar nazi around, I'd end up being executed by the gas chambers.

Anyway, christmas and new year's vacation have ended and I can't wait for the next vacation in Febuary. Yup, it's krokusvakantie!
What about school? Nothing is new actually. It's just the fact that my school is in renovation, that I need to take another exit which is kind of far from my 'unreachable locker' (incase I haven't mentioned it yet after all these months, my locker is not located with all the lockers from the 5th and 6th year).
I'm now starting to understand every lessons and could follow quite a bit (except for French, it's kind of impossible).
But good lord... History, Religion, and Geography are probably the most difficult subjects to follow. With all those words in Dutch I could end up cracking my head. I don't know if the teachers see it but I really tried my best to keep my eyes wide open and understand, even just a tiny bit but I couldn't. I hope I don't look so obvious...

In Dutch, we are currently learning about Antropnymie, also known as Anthroponymy in English which means the study of the personal names. We have an assignment to look up the meaning of our names.
Actually, I talked about the history of my name already in one of my old posts (click here if you feel like reading it!) but I can't just say: "Yo, mevrouw, if you want to know my name you can always check up my blog and follow my updates!"
No. Not at all.
I have to look up my name in a Belgian voornaamwoordenboek but since I'm not Belgian, it's almost a waste of time to even try. So, I searched it on google, like always, google has my trust.
I always know that I'm named after the rain but I can't seem to find my name in baby names' website. Not in indonesian, nor english.
I skipped to my last name and search Rinaldi instead, then I clicked on wikipedia. Look what I found:

So, I know that my name is not really religious or Indonesian but I didn't expect to share my last name with such a person!
Not sure if I have to be proud or just the otherwise.
Sometimes I really regret things, not that it's a big deal though.
Rather than finishing my work, I fool around. As always.

P.S: This month I made two covers for my friends' birthday. I know I look like a birthday clown with an ukulele, because more videos to come! Enjoy!

Winda's 17th Birthday (January 10th, 2013)

Tania's 17th Birthday (January 15th, 2013)