Welcome!

Hi! And welcome! For my first post on this blog, I will give a little background about myself, my story, and the adventure that I will be starting in less than two weeks from the time I write this.

My name, if you missed it on the blog page, is Austin Cope.  I am a seventeen-year-old, somewhat nerdy, blonde-haired and eccentric person who is not very good with self-descriptions. Currently I live in Cortez, a town of less than 10,000 people in the southwestern corner of Colorado. I graduated from Montezuma-Cortez High School in May, but I will re-do my senior year of high school this upcoming year. In Belgium.

On August 17, I leave my Cortez home and begin my journey to Linkebeek, a town right outside of Brussels, Belgium's capital. I'm participating in an AFS (American Field Service--more on that later) exchange trip-- I'll be living with a host family: two parents and three brothers (more on them in later posts, too) and going to school at Notre Dame des Champs high school. Linkebeek is a mainly French-speaking town, so I will be learning to communicate in French. I'll be gone for almost a year--I return to Cortez in early July of 2011.

In this blog, you will find stories, descriptions, pictures, and thoughts about my time abroad. I will update it as frequently as I can, but there may be some gaps depending on the circumstances. Also, it's possible that my English will deteriorate as I become immersed in French. So, don't judge me too harshly on spelling and grammar.

Soon, I'll give more details on my current life in Cortez so I can compare it to my upcoming life in Belgium. Stay tuned!