Joran Lamisse

2006-07 Inbound from Belgium

Hometown: Flemalle, Liege, Belgium

Sponsor: Flemalle Rotary Club, District 1630, Belgium

Host: Gainesville Rotary Club, District 6970, USA

School: Buchholz High School

Bio

Joran's Bio

I'm Joran, from Belgium. I'm turning eighteen on September 9th. I live in a town called Flemalle, near Liege. It's 1 hour from Brussels, to the East. I've got 2 brothers, Norman (23) and Tristan (30). I have one sister, Yasmine (29). They all went abroad thanks to Rotary; my two brothers spent a year in Texas and Wisconsin, and my sister was in Brasil. That's how I decided to do the same, as their experience has been the best they've ever had. Living in another country means meeting a lot of people, learning a new language and a new culture, and it also means discovering a lot of beautiful places. Such a trip will certainly change a lot of things for me, and I love to travel.

I like to hang out with my friends, I like to skate, and I LOVE music. I'm here in the land of skateboarding and blues! I also like to write, I play the guitar a lot. One of the first things I discovered in Florida was Against Me!, a punk-rock band from Gainesville. I'm starting to like them very much!

So "aurevoir", and thank you all! Peace.

September 23 Journal & Pictures

July 26th, 2006.

My plane arrives at Gainesville Regional Airport at 11:24 PM. For me, it was 5:24 AM. I stayed in Atlanta for 7 hours more or less. I realized that I left Belgium, chocolate, fries, waffles, and... beer. Traveling on crutches is not as hard as it seems. It was pretty funny (I stretched my foot ligaments one week before leaving... I know, bad idea! If you ever have the choice: don't start skateboarding.)

Atlanta Airport's advantages:

-Always people, on the tracks, around the gates, like ants crawling everywhere. Interesting to look at.
-No pause, perfect organization
-Beautiful
-Big
-Very big
-We have CNN
-We have Coca-Cola
-The Olympic Games seem to be this year... but it was 10 years ago... remember

Atlanta Airport's disadvantages:

-Waiting time
-People's accent
-Obese people
-Big
-Very big
-Impossible to skate there: no spots
-They don't sell beer

I spent 4 days with the Craig’s. They are from Rotary. I love the lake, see pictures. I would like to go and wakeboard there. We'll see! I had a good time and discovered Gainesville for the first time. I met my family! Sam and Angie Doherty. They have 4 children, just like in my family back home. Kylie is 8, Conor is 13, Liam is 16, Makena is 18. Makena has a car, and the first weeks I went a lot to downtown Gainesville, to the movie theater, to the mall… We had a really good time.

My first day with the Doherty’s, I went to Jacksonville. I met my first “hurricane”. It wasn’t a real one, just a big storm. But 2 feet of water down the streets of Jacksonville, after one hour of rain, this is still amazing. My first weeks in Florida were like that. Amazing. I can’t find the best word to describe that.

And then, I met all the exchange students. The orientation weekend with all the Rotary students. It was great. Now I have friends from all around the world. We had a great time all together, and this is really interesting to talk about each other’s countries. I learned a lot. Now I know how we can prevent war. Just help Rotary to keep doing this great job! Would you send a bomb on Taiwan, if you know your friend is there?

August 14th, 2006.

School! This is so insane. 2000 students, but it’s easy to find your way in. The teachers are all great, and I had the chance to meet a lot of people. Thanks to my brother, Liam, I met a lot of skateboarders, who I skate with all the time. Thanks to John (our “ride”, a friend of the family), I met some great seniors. I also met Anna, who was in Belgium last year with Rotary. We soon became good friends. I have a great time at school with all my new friends. My most interesting class is TV-production. My job is to make features for WCAT News, the school channel. Every morning, on every single school screen (one in each classroom), we have the news. We have features, news, commercials, and corny jokes to make. I really like it, we learn how to use good equipment, cameras, computers, studios. People like my accent, when I read the news. Girls love my accent. I didn’t know it was so easy to be amazing here, just have an accent! Life will be easier!

My life here is like this:

-Wake up 1 hour 15 minutes later than before.
-Back home 2 hours 20 minutes earlier than before
-Sweaty without doing anything
-Hamburger or pizza everyday. Or both.
-Skateboarding nearly everyday (even with my weak foot)
-My love for my new guitar
-Going places with my new sister
-As much Coke as I want (never without ice)
-Mini skirts and mini shorts everywhere
-My ride to school is younger then me. It feels so weird.
-Rappers at school don’t speak English. It is kind of a whispering with style that doesn’t make any sense to me. I just don’t know what they say.
-You learn how to enjoy cold. And rain.
-Dressing days: football jerseys, army uniforms,… people wear what they do.
-English class: I’m not as good as I was in Belgium. Because this is literature here. Not just translations.
-In the hallways, between classes, you don’t see the walls. So many students.
-Lost season 3 months before Europe.
-I love the Belgian flag since I don’t live there anymore.
-A bed for 2 people, yeah, a BIG BED!
-A new skateboard, 40% cheaper than back home
-I think that American seconds are two times shorter, because, time goes by really, really fast!

I also went to the Gator football game against Southern Mississippi. This is craaaaazy. I love it. Gators won, of course. 100,000 people in the same stadium screaming “go gators”, this is huge. I also went to Busch Gardens in Tampa. This was a lot of fun. I had a great time with Makena, Lindsey (Makena’s best friend), Conor and Cameron (my host cousin). I also had my birthday. One of my best birthdays ever. Cee and Jeffrey came to my house, with my new friends from school, Anna, Astrid (she is in my French class), Tim (from Germany, but not with Rotary), and some of my family’s friends. I also started the soccer training. The season hasn’t begun yet, but training is fine, and I think I’m going to make it to the team. I can’t wait for the season to start!

A few weeks are gone, already. This is scary to see how fast it all goes. “Don’t worry, it’ll only get worse,” Anna told me. Eventually, you end up being scared of sleeping, because you don’t want to waste any time. Thanks to all the things I’ve done so far, I haven’t been feeling homesick yet. Thanks Rotary for making me scared like that. I know I will miss Florida more than I miss Belgium. And I love Belgium more than ever. Because being far away makes you proud of your roots.

Peace.		My bedroom	Kissing my new guitar
Santa Fe Lake at Waldo	Me at Buchholz High School football game	Jacksonville Beach	My pool at home

November 17 Journal & Pictures

“Don’t let this feeling never go away” Against Me! – We Did It All For Done

Today is Thursday, November 16, 2006. I look back and… ho! Snap! In 10 days I’ll reach my fourth month in America. Already. This is so incredible how you get so used to your other new life that you almost forget about your first life. Four months in Florida almost made me forget about 17 years in Belgium. And I still haven’t found homesickness. Am I normal? Is this good or bad? This is probably a sign of how I love my new life here. So, since my last journal, I have been doing a lot of things that I can’t even think about on top of my head. I will try to do my best, just for you, reader! So let’s start with the beginning.

I have been to another Gator game, UF against LSU. This was an insane game, because my host brother and I got tickets that put us… in the middle of Louisiana State fans! So during the first part of the game, they were making fun of us, thinking that LSU would win… but then… Florida scored, and again, and again! The fans just left early and we were laughing so hard! That was such a great game! Talking about UF, my Rotary counselor Gene Hemp took me to the WUFT TV and radio studios, knowing that I was interested in all that kind of stuff. It was a great visit, see pics!

We had the trip to Daytona. Whoa. This trip was amazing. So the first day we went to the Kennedy Space Center, and I LOVED it. I mean, who has never dreamt of going to the moon? Cape Canaveral is the port to the moon, and it is part of those things that made America so big. And of course, it is always good to see the other exchange students, so we had a good time. But that’s not it! We went to Daytona to see Biketoberfest. This was insane, so many bikes, bikers, biker’s wives and… good old rock-n-roll! We stayed at Tom McDermott’s house, with Mattia, Andre and Gorkem. We had fun, Tom is a really good man, we had a good time in his pool, and we played cards till… 4 am. Ok, so, on Sunday, we woke up, pretty tired, but whatever! We were about to get all together again for more adventures! This time we went to the racetrack at Daytona 500, this was crazy. Really. I loved it and I can’t wait till the Disney World trip, because, god, this is probably going to beat everything I’ve seen before. And we all became so close now, this is probably going to be hard to leave…

Liam as Jack Sparrow, Astrid as a German maid, me as a 70's skateboarder, and Makena as a biker girl!

So let’s talk about Halloween. Halloween in Belgium is this new thing that companies are trying to make us do because they want to sell us Halloween stuff. I never really had Halloween, because I was too old when it started. Anyway, the biggest part of being an exchange student is to learn about other people’s cultures, right? So I went for Trick or Treat! I went with my little sister and my other sister and her friend. This was so nice to see people opening their doors, smiling at you and giving you candies! I have been eating candies for more than a week! I was a ninja, and a 70’s skateboarder. Ho yeah, because I had a party at one of my friends house, then I dressed up different for the actual Halloween. So my verdict is that… Halloween is cool!

There is also one more amazing thing I did lately… Kona! So most of you guys probably don’t know about Kona, but this probably as famous as J-Lo’s butt to skaters… Kona is at Jacksonville, and this skatepark was built in 1977, this is one of the oldest skateparks of all time, and the most original one. Kona is to skateboarding what Hollywood is to cinema. I had so much fun there… see the pictures below. It is pretty useless telling you all the tricks I have learned, because most of you wouldn’t understand what the names are for, and seriously, who cares? Just remember that I had a really good time. And I went twice, because I loved it. The first time I got in for free because I had a good report card. At Kona, it’s free if your report card is good! I had straight A’s and one B+!! Pretty happy! And I loved it. Really, this is like a dream coming true. When I started skateboarding, never, I say never, I would have thought about going to Kona, this famous skatepark. I am really thankful for that, thank you Rotary, you are part of my dream coming true… Skateboarding makes me happy.

Anyway… I talked about learning about a new culture earlier, didn’t I? One of the first things I learned in Florida is called Shotgun. Shotgun is what you call, going to a car, so you can get in the front, next to the driver. This is a fight to survive every time you call it, because you also have to call No Blitz, so that your call will not be cancelled. I am starting to get used to this game, this is part of being in America!!!

Here are some of the funny questions people have asked me about my country:
-Is Belgium cool?
-Do you like it better here or back home?
-So, you are German?
-Is Belgium next to Brazil?
-From Belgium? Cool!! Where is it?
-Have you ever been to Amsterdam? Yes? So you smoke?
-Do you guys have TV in Belgium?
-You don’t have your own car? So do you stay at home all day long?
-You really took the train every day? Are you poor?
-I love your German accent!
-Do you guys have snow all year long in Belgium?
-Brussels? Isn’t that in Germany?
-What? You guys have a king? That’s so Middle Aged!
-Do you guys eat Belgian waffles every day?
-You guy eat rabbit in Belgium? Eeew!
-How many states are in Belgium?
-Are there many terrorists in your country?

So, I am done for now, I am going to the French club meeting, so I am going to end this journal entry with one of my favorite sayings:

Life is not life, it is just fun. (I just made it up; no one ever said it to me before. This is just how I feel right now. I won’t let it go away.) Peace.		WUFT News	Me as the UF newscaster
Mattia and me (behind us is the rocket launcher)	All my new friends!!	Me at the Daytona 500	Sweet cars are part of America
Melon! I wish I had some other pics to show you...	Pop shuvit! Makena took that picture	Sweet park	Yes, that many skaters were there... Try to find me!
The Standard de Liege jersey at Kona USA, represent!	The Kennedy Space Center	Jesus is in da place	A real Sheriff police car like you see in the movies

January 2 Journal & Pictures

“Every single day will never feel the same, a single minute can't be wasted. Tell me, tell me there's no goodbyes” - The Subways – No Goodbyes

This is 2007. Now I will have to write 07 next to the date instead of 06. You’ll tell me, this is what we do every single year, but not for me. This year is special. There is something about 2007 I will never forget. It took place in Florida. What I did? I woke up, my 127th dream in English just ended, and I realized. This year, everything will be different. Not only the date, not only the possible win of the Florida Gators at the National Championship game, but everything. To me, 07 will be nothing like 06 started.

So many things have happened to me. This time I am, like, new born. Like a little dog jumping and discovering the wonders of life. I can live on my own, I am able to let my little problems on the side to enjoy every single moment I can, as much as I can. And I don’t think about tomorrow, my mind is in the present. Maybe I am too scared to think about the future, cuz it leads to the unavoidable return to Belgium. There are some moments when I want to come back, to show everybody the new boy I am, but then I think, when I’ll be back, there will be no Gainesville anymore. There will be no improvised evenings to the movies anymore. There will be no French accent anymore. There will be no Football nonstop from Friday to Monday anymore. There will be no gorgeous “mewsee” (aka English style merci). There will be no “Yo, let’s go to the Westside ramp for a while, and then stop by Checkers on the way back” anymore. There will be no 15 minutes long commercial breaks every 5 minutes during a movie anymore. There will be no exchange student privileges anymore. There will be no Reese’s Pieces anymore. There will be no Gator craziness anymore. There will be no trips at the mall anymore.

But let’s think about the future, like I said. Whoa, what have I done since last time? Everybody already talked about Disney World. So you guys know I have been to Disney in Orlando for 4 days. Probably the best Rotary trip so far. I will let you enjoy my pictures below, because I can’t describe it in a way people would understand. As good as my English gets, I will never be able to explain what it takes to be part of 60 Exchange Students going wild in the land where the dreams come true. It is even better than a dream! Everywhere we went, we met people that were amazed by us being all together and from so many different overseas places! Meeting Mickey, Snow White, chillin’ at Minnie’s house, hearing happy music and seeing children’s faces shining while smiling, where are the black lines? Ho? Is this real? This is not a cartoon? Amazing. These 4 days got me exhausted, but I am proud I made it. And I LOVED it.

What else have I done? In order, I went through the finals, at school; they weren’t too hard I must say, as I don’t fight for credits. I also love the classes I took, which makes it easier to work. There has been the Christmas break. That was basically a lot of skateboarding, Christmas shopping with amazing Lyndsey, my friend from my English class, exciting Christmas morning and day, my third skateboard broken in 5 months, an amazing unforgettable New Year's eve, and my second phone call to Belgium since I arrived in the US.

And what is going to happen before I see my real Belgian parents again? There is this trip to the Keys, I really can’t wait for that…. I will have the chance to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers once again, in the end of January, I might (nothing is sure) spend Mardi Gras at New Orleans, Probably a trip to the mountains in North Carolina… The year is not done yet, though half my year is gone, ALREADY!

Like Mattia said, and he is totally right, you know you don’t wanna leave when your new family is not called “new” anymore, when your new friends become your closest best friends, when your new language is spoken without even thinking about it, when your new town doesn’t have any secret anymore, when you can easily find your way through it, and when you go through one, two, or even three days straight without even thinking about your home country. Sometimes (now it tends to happen often), I forget I am an exchange student and I act like I’ve always been living in Florida. I act like a real American.

I don’t even know what to write anymore, I feel the need to tell everybody in the world how amazing it is to travel, and to meet foreign people. I won’t stop my journey in America. I will go further, I want to see North and central Africa, I want to travel from Japan to Taiwan, I want to visit my friends in Brazil and come back to Italy, I want to learn Thai, and teach it in Australia, I want to film a skateboarding video in Moscow, in Lima, Buenos Aires, Berlin, New Delhi, Porto, London, Toronto, and Malaga. A year ago, going to Brussels, which takes me one hour by car, felt like the longest trip ever. Now I feel like I can go to the moon and come back in one night. This is how America feels like. How weird is it to see a Football game live that takes place in Michigan, where the sun is still up, as it is really dark where you are. Gosh, is this the same country?? I can just take the car, and go skateboarding in St Augustine, or go to Busch Gardens in Tampa, 2 hours away.

I don’t know where I saw that quote anymore, but it’s worth saying it again: thank you, Rotary, for making the world such a small place. I hope there will be no goodbye. Fellow students, don’t waste your last few months abroad! Outbounds, Inbounds, wherever you are or are from, enjoy. Be wild, and be safe. Peace.			One day of grinding, ollying, flipping & sliding. American skateboarding.
Mickey's my dawg!	Cruising around in Disneyworld.	I've always been a little goofy inside.	The way to your dreams!
Ole!	Close friends from so far away.	The little really white Belgian is chillin' under the Florida sun in December.	The new updated version of Joran.

May 15 Journal & Pictures

“This is the end, beautiful friend, this is the end” The Doors – The End

Ladies and gentleman, the end is near. Very near. My end. I mean the end of my year. My beautiful year. Definitely the most memorable year of my whole life. I definitely am, or try, to enjoy every single day of this year, even more… every single minute. I have been busy every weekend since January, date of my last journal entry. These months have passed so fast… Homesickness hit me, but only in February.

Let’s start at the beginning.

In January, I have been to the Keys. That, of course, was an awesome trip, I was sooo glad to see all my friends from south Florida again, and we all had a great time in the ocean and at Key West. I learned a lot about the ocean’s life and how to protect it, and I met great people from up north, Garden City, Michigan.

Same month, I went to Orlando, and I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the second time… It was…orgasmic…is there any other word to explain that? They are such a great band, especially on stage… I loved it. Gnarls Barkley (“I think I’m craaaazy”) was opening for them, and was pretty good too. The excitement to see Flea, Anthony, Chad and John was too big for me so I unfortunately didn’t pay attention to him enough.

Ho yeah, and, of course, UF won the football national championship… Insane! I went downtown Gainesville with thousands of UF students cheering for their winning team! We were running around campus and the Gators football stadium, trying to get on TV… That was a great time.

Here goes February. I took an AWESOME trip to… New Orleans! I spend 4 days in the Jazz city, and got millions of beads during the Mardi Gras shows. All the promises are held, I really enjoyed it, and this is such a great city!! I also changed family, it is different than the first one, and this is how homesickness hit me. I got over it pretty quick, cuz now I don’t even have time to think about it.

In March, I went skateboarding a lot, in St. Augustine and all around Gainesville. In the end of the month, I followed the Gators basketball team going up and up and winning game after game until the NCAA championship game! And guess what… we won. I went downtown again and cheered again and saw Tim Tebow, UF’s new star, the football team’s quarterback. I also hung out a lot with my friends Mateusz and my man Mattia, the surfer-lover of Jax and St Aug beach! Good times together man!

In April, spring break was the first week, and I went to St. Augustine to skate. That night I will never forget. Well, I actually already did. Let me explain. I jumped on this handrail… I didn’t jump high enough, concentrating on the grind more than the Ollie. So I fell backwards and hit my head pretty hard on the concrete, cracking it open. I basically spent the night at the hospital, waiting for a doctor. I blacked out for about 20 minutes, that is pretty scary, but now everything is alright. The next day, though, Liam and me still were at St Augustine beach, and we decided not to come back, but to drive to Crescent beach, where most our friends from Buchholz High School were spending the break. We hung out there all day, played ultimate Frisbee and got sunburned! Perfect holiday!

May arrived, and I spent the first days of this month in New York City and Philadelphia. That definitely is my favorite trip in America! I visited everything a perfect tourist has to visit, as in: Times Square, Rockefeller center, Chinatown, Little Italy, Ground Zero, Wall Street, Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the Museum of Natural History, Central Park, Strawberry Fields, and we even got a tour around the NBC studios, where I saw Damian Marley, Bob’s son! We also went to a nice lake upstate New York, and hung out in Middletown, the little town we were staying at. Then we spent a day and a night in Philadelphia, definitely my favorite city that I’ve seen in the USA! I really love that place! We saw Love Park and I ran up the stairs of the Museum just like the Italian Stallion in Rocky… this was so epic! We stayed in the “hippie” side of town, with a lot of cool stores and restaurants. The only thing is that it rained in Philly that night. But rain never stopped any Belgian!!

Now here it goes, Graduation is coming, then a little time to hang out… then… time to go home! Here goes the worst feeling ever. Right now I am struggling between the excitement of going back home and see my friends, my dogs, my house, my skateparks, and my family; and the wish to stay in Florida longer, longer, longer, with the beaches, the people, the weather, the foreigners, the Gators, speaking English, the AC, the $1 iced tea at McDonalds, my awesome friends, Sam, Angie, Makena, Liam, Conor, Kylie, Coco (RIP), Astrid, Lindsey, Anna, Monica, Tim, Cameron, Gene, Scott, Vic, Dante, Carlos, Kyle, Elisa, Eric, Gustavo, Judie, Alex, John, Natalia, Mattia, Zac, Mateusz, Ida, Jeffrey, Emma, Janka, Celeste, Edgar, Elena, Emeline, Fern, Fred, -G-, Helene, Kaori, Lucile, Madleina, Nathalia, Olof, Roman, Srushti, Victoria, Al, Lawrene, Rob, Tom, Louise, Gene, Ann Marie, Brent, and EVEN Toby, all those people that build such a special year for me and that I will miss a lot, please god, make it longer!!! One year is too short!

Once I get to Belgium, a third life is going to begin. I can’t wait, but I am also scared. What am I going to do once I’m not an exchange student anymore?

Peace. Joran	Yeah!	Belgium in Philly	Bling-bling in New Orleans yo
Brooklyn Banks, world famous skate spot	Brooklyn Bridge	Fastplant Tailtap yo	It means hi.
Lennon=great guy	Liam and me chillin'	Livin' it up on Times Square	Love Park!
Nice and clean	Sad thoughts on ground zero	Skyline	So cute!
The eye of the tiger	Tim and me playing soccer at Crescent Beach	We took a Mississi-pee	With Makena in a NYC park