Welcome to the Wonderful World of (Kosher) Waffle!

Hello Friends and Strangers!

Welcome to my blog, thanks for visiting:) I've never had a blog before, so I hope you come with really low expectations so I can impress and entertain you easily. I'm embarking on a wonderful journey to enchanted Belgium where I will be volunteering with children with special needs, and wanted to start a blog for two reasons:

1) So my friends and family can stay updated on where I am/what I'm doing/my adventures
2) My beautiful and excellent mother has a way of...inventing the truth...so instead of her leaving half of Michigan and the Jewish parts of Chicago, New York, and Florida with the completely wrong interpretations of my stories, she can simply pass along this link to her friends (Good luck at Mahj this week, ladies!) Nickel for every time one of them tries to tell me about their Jewish son/nephew/deli grocer who's "in Europe, cute, and gonna be a docter/lawyer/bagel factory owner."*

What exactly am I doing in Belgium? Well, I'll be speaking Dutch, eating waffles, connoisseuring chocolate, and taking pretty pictures. But mainly, I'm working at a center outside Brugge for people with developmental disabilities. I don't know my exact possition yet, but I know I'll be working with autistic kids. I am beyond excited since Dutch, food, and kids w/ special needs are pretty much my favorite things in the world.

Many have asked how exactly I'm doing this. There is a wonderful international organization called International Cultural Youth Exchange whose mission it is to exchange volunteers internationally, creating a global community with increased cultural understanding. ICYE has affiliate non-profits all over the world. I applied through the US affiliate, United Planet, who connected me with the Belgian affiliate, VIA Belgium (if you'd like their site I can send you it, but you need to have gotten at least a B or higher in Dutch 201 to be considered). So, off I am to Belgium, to live with a host family (family tbd) and do my favorite kind of work ever. Yay!

First, though, I'm going to the Netherlands. There's one thing you can get there, out in the open market or at various shops, that you can't get anywhere else in the world. I just absolutely crave it and can't wait to burn my fingers and lick my lips....I'm talking about stroopwafels, of course! Mmmmmmmm. So in and around Amsterdam I shall be until the end of the month.

I hope you found my first post satisfactory. Thanks for reading it:) And thanks so much to all of my friends and especially my family who have been incredibly supportive of my dream to volunteer with special needs abroad. You will be rewarded with chocolate. Or, when I run out of money, inappropriate postcards from Amsterdam.

xoxo
kosher waffle

*all nickels go to the person who explains to my dad what a "blog" is