I had a realization of sorts this evening after my Dutch oral exam. There I was, first one of the evening, pretty confident that I knew what I was talking about. (that was a sort-of joke) And then it ended up being very non-conversational. Sort of like a written test only using your voice. I'm much better just chatting it up than trying to come up with a formal sentence about whether or not I have friendly neighbors. Besides the fact that when I speak I'm much more apt to just ramble on and on.

But in this situation I couldn't ramble on and on. I simply had to "answer" things making sure to include waarom and omdat. It would have been much easier if Lut (my teacher) had simply asked me, "Is jouw buurman vriendlijk?" Then I could have gone on and on.

And then there was a problem with my heeft or hebt. I certainly know when to use each of them, but apparently one can't be altogether certain when I speak the words. I suppose they are much the same as words ending with t or d in Dutch.

Enough about that. I certainly didn't fail, but I didn't do as well as I could have.

And then it struck me on the way home that I had been a part of the Belgian educational system. I too got to be a part of the system where students have exams and have no particular idea what the exams are going to be over/on. It got even better when Jasper came over for help with his Dutch grammer exam preparation from Eva. It was worse than even my semester spent in History of the English Language back at Missouri Sourther! Breaking apart sentences in any languages is far from easy, and it seems learning all of the intricate specifics of grammer and language is his current great obsticle. The horrible part is, everyone knows he'd make a great teacher, and this is what is standing in his way. Verbs, nouns, subjects, predicates, indefinate articles, adverbs, etc. I woulndn't want to be in his shoes. (besides the fact that being in his Nederlands [language] shoes would be horrific in general.)

And though it's Eva's birthday week, it hasn't been much of a celebration. We knew the moment that it turned into June we were in for a mess. I'm totally swamped with work and the joys of preparation for my "tentoonstelling" and to be quite honest, I just can't wait for this month to be over. I'm not usually one to say such thigns, as life is too short anyway to want it all to end, but Eva and I have had enough of this sressful living. We're ready not only for a vacation, but some together time without work, without art, without anything much for us to do except be together and figure out how we can be together in the future. Where and what-have-you.

We started a film tonight as well. It wasn't something i really wanted to do as I figured we both had so much on our plate that how could we possibly afford to watch a movie. At least it seems to be a good move "Cookie's Fortune" and just to ease our conscience, we stopped it mid-way at 1 hour and 10 minutes so we have the rest to watch when we want to procrastinate. It's something like watching a TV series, only not as drastic and we don't have to wait for next week to roll around.

IN THE NEWS:
A parliamentary committee announced Tuesday it would hold an inquiry into the government's decision to go to war with Iraq, as pressure mounted on Prime Minister Tony Blair to explain claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.