End of Summer

Hi

So it is getting close to the end of summer and I think here and also in Terrace you can really tell by the weather. Its getting colder and well in Terrace its raining more but here it rains everyday so there hasn't really been a change there. School starts for me on Friday and I have already met some people that will be in my grade and a few that will be in my class. I'm glad i'll know at least a couple people on my first day! These last few days have been kind of eventful. On Saturday I went for a very long walk by myself and listened to my ipod. There are a lot of really nice little parks around where I live so I decided to walk to one that was pretty far away. It had a really nice little lake with swans and ducks in it and a nice trail to walk around. After I walked there and around the lake I had already been walking for a really long time and i've been having major problems with my feet here. They've been hurting really bad lately so I decided to take the tram back home. When I got home my most mom, Claire, and I went downtown and went shopping. They dropped me off at an english bookstore and I bought 3 books. I bought "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" Series. I'm really looking forward to having a few good books here to read. While I was there they were at one of my host mom's shops and then came back and picked me up. We went shopping for a little while and I bought one shirt. I plan on going shopping tomorrow in Lille, France and maybe Thursday downtown. I know how to get downtown on my own now and I really like it! On Sunday we went to a little town called Dinant to go Kayaking. It looked like it was gonna be a nice day but after Claire and I had been kayaking for a while it started to pour. The kayak trip was a lot longer than I thought it would've been and it took probably 4.5 hours. Also, our kayak sunk because we had to go down this little waterfall type thing and it got so much water in it. We got soaked and had to jump in the river and try to get the water out. We couldn't lift it by ourselves and finally some guys came and helped us. We were very very cold, hungry, tired, and not very happy and the end of it. But we had a hot shower and hot chocolate afterwards and that made us feel a bit better. That night I had a dinner with my other two host families and the other two girls who were staying with them. They are very different than my host family now but we'll see what happens. When we got home around 10:30 everyone was very tired and I went straight to bed. On Monday I had plans to meet up with 4 other exchange students. 3 Canadians and 1 girl from New York. We had plans to meet at the Brussels train station at 9:30 AM but I was a bit late because there was construction so my host mom was about 10 minutes late dropping me off. When I got there I couldn't find them anywhere and decided to wait at the entrance for a while but when they still weren't coming ten minutes later I decided to walk around to the other entrances. I couldn't find them anywhere so I decided I might as well walk around by myself for a while so I did that for about an hour and a half. I kept coming back to the Grand Place whenever I thought I didn't know where I was and one time I came back I recognized another exchange student I remembered seeing on Thursday at the parliament. I went up to him and these two other belgian guys and talked to them and then I hung out with them around the city for a while. He is from Argentina and he was with his host brother and his host brother's cousin. Later on I ended up meeting the rest of the people I was supposed to meet and we had a really good day. We went to a greek place for lunch and then had a waffle and just walked around the city for a long time. Walking really didn't help my feet though. Especially since I couldn't even wear my shoes with my orthodics because even though I tried drying them the night before they were still soaked from Kayaking. So today I plan on not going out and resting my feet because I know i'm gonna have to walk around a lot tomorrow in France. Hopefully my feet won't hurt forever!

Rotary

Bonjour!

These last couple of days have been a bit more

eventful! They have basically consisted of meeting people from all over the world, sitting in the Belgian senate, and figuring out how to use the public transportation! Two days ago I went with my host mom for a tour of my school in the morning. My school is called Collège Saint-Hubert and it's really nice! It's in a really forested area and

there is a really old building in the back which looks like it was build in the 17 or 1800's maybe? Its all crumbling apart and everything. I had a meeting with a councellor at the school and I chose all my courses. Well I actually didn't really choose them she just asked me what I liked and then put me in a class. So I will have 4 hours of Art a week, 4 hours of Math, 4 hours of French, 4 hours of Dutch, 2 hours of English,

2 of Geography, 2 of History, 2 of Religion, and 2 of Science. I'm kind of looking forward to the Art because I never have a chance to take any electives back home in Canada because of all the academic courses I have to take. Hopefully they won't expect me to be a really really good artist though! School starts this Friday coming up on the 3rd but its only for half a day like it is in Canada. Apparently there's just something like an assembly and they will introduce me and there are 3 other exchange students in the school too. I don't think they are with Rotary though The first day of real classes are on Monday. I w

ill be in sixieme which is equivalent to Gr.12 in Canada. My host brother told me I would be really lucky if they put me in sixieme because its the best year. You get to go on a class trip and you get a prom and other fun stuff. I don't think

i'll be able to go on the school trip though because i'm going to Italy with rotary the same time they usually go. Last year my host brothers class

went to Egypt though!

Anyways, the next day was my orientation with Rotary. All the exchange students in Belgium came together in Brussels which was close to 200 students from all over the world and we got to have a tour of the Grand Palace,the Grand Place, ate lunch in a restaurant near the Grand Place, A tour of the Belgian parliament, and we also got to sit in the Senate and listen to the president of the house speak. It was really cool to meet so many different people and I exchanged pins and business cards with a lot of people. My blazer is looking more like an rotary exchange student's now! Hopefully i'll be able to fill up the whole thing by the end of my year. The only bad thing about yesterday was that (like usual) it was raining and a lot of people didn't have umbrellas. We did a lot of walking so today my feet are pretty sore but i'm sure they'll feel better by tomorrow. I hung out with a few other Canadians and made plans with a few people for the upcoming week.Right After the day with Rotary I had a meeting with my host Rotary club. It was a dinner and I didn't really like the food but I ate most of it anyways. After that whole day I was very very tired and came home and slept. Today my host mom bought me a bus/tram/subway pass for Brussels so I can get around which I was really happy about. My host sister and her two friends who slept over last night showed me how to get to a good shopping street in Brussels and then they had to go to dance class so I had to find my way home on my own. It was fine though. They just told me which number of the tram I would need to take and then just get off at the same place I got on and then take a bus home. It was pretty simple and i'm hoping i'll be able to use that a lot. I went to Avenue Louise which is the shopping street in Brussels and went in a couple stores and bought one shirt from H&M but I was mostly just looking around, seeing where I would like to come again. Tonight I'm just staying at home with my host sister and i'll probably go to bed early cause i'm pretty tired!

Français

Bonjour!

I think my french might be starting to get a bit better! Well I am speaking it more often I feel like at least. Tonight at dinner I spoke French pretty much the whole time with the exception of saying some words I didn't know in english. It made me feel a bit better about the whole language thing and maybe a bit less homesick, which is good! I am really looking forward to learning more and more french as time goes by and I am going to try my hardest to be fluent and to be bilingual. I hope some day I can maybe become tri-lingual as well..if possible. At dinner we had chinese food, which I don't normally eat in Canada even though you would think its more common to eat chinese food in Ca

nada than in Belgium! I need to start getting used to eating later dinners though because I always get pretty hungry around 5:30 but we don't normally eat until around 8:00. I am also starting to really like the breakfasts. We have bread everyday with whatever you want on it, which I never had in Canada. In Canada I don't like having toast for breakfast and the bread is just not the same as it is here. But yeah, anyways my host brother, Louis left yesterday at 6:00 PM for his exchange to Argentina. I was very excited for him but I was also very sad for the family because I really know how they feel. Being at the airport with the whole family when they said goodbye really reminded me of when I had to leave Terrace. The whole morning I was thinking to myself that I didn't want to cry, but as soon as I walked through the doors at the airport I did. It was probably the hardest thing i've ever had to do, but I knew that I was going to have a good experience. There was also another exchange student in the airport heading out and I really wanted to ask him where he was going, but then he started talking to Louis and said he was going to Mexico. Its weird the connection you feel between other exchange students even though you don't know them at all. If I could speak french better I probably would have talked to him. After Louis left everyone was pretty sad so we went to a movie to get our minds off it. We went to a movie called Knight andDay with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, and it was okay. When we got into the movie theatre it was really nice outside and sunny but when we came out it was raining! The weather is weird that that here. One minute its really nice and then the other its like a storm. After the movie we walked around, I had no idea where we were going but then we stopped at an Italian restaurant and ate dinner. It was already probably 9:15 or something. I ordered a pizza and it was huge! I would've defiately shared have if I were at home. While I was eating it I was thinking about my brother because he is always trying to make pizza like this pizza we had in Disneyland so long ago which was like the pizza I ate. So I took a picture for you Matt. Today there wasn't much to do because Ines had to work and Claire had dance, so I decided to go for a run. I ran for probably half an hour around a couple little lakes and then I decided I would walk for a while. I saw a lot of different things and many times I thought I was going to get lost but I always found my way back. I was on my run/walk for about 2 hours and then I was really tired. When I got home I just went into my bed and slept for an hour. I hope I will be able to get out and do more exercise while i'm here!

Au revoir!

One Week en Belgique

Hi!

So since yesterday I have been in Belgium for one week! Today is the start of week number two. This week has been good but also pretty hard. Of course I am getting a bit more homesick but once school starts and I become more busy I think it will get a lot better. It has been really nice here in Brussels for the last couple days but today it has kinda started raining again. I think its supposed to rain all week in Terrace as well though, so its okay. Yesterday we started off the day by eating the usual breakfast of bread and butter with nutella or jam or whatever you want. I felt pretty sick when I first woke up because I had a really sore throat and a runny nose, but I drank some tea and took this kind of spray for my throat and it made me feel a bit better. After breakfast my host mom, louis, and I went to a meat shop to pick up meat for Louis' goodbye BBQ. After we just came home and set up for the party. People started coming over at around 2:30 PM and the party lasted until around 2:00 AM. There was quite a lot of people and I got to meet Louis and Claire's grandparents and aunts and uncles along with a lot of Louis' friends. I tried to speak French to people but I didn't really know what to say a lot of the time. I did talk to quite a few people later on in the night and they were asking me a lot of questions about Canada and telling me about my school. A lady I was talking to told me that my school, College Saint-Hubert, is the best school in Brussels so I feel pretty lucky to be going there. Louis' friends were all telling me which teachers i'll be lucky to get and which ones i won't like so I hope i'm lucky! I start school on Sept. 3 and i'm pretty excited about it. I hope it will help me learn to speak French faster! Today we had a really good breakfast which was scrambled eggs, bacon(not the same as Canada), and chocolate croissants. And after that we went to My host mom's aunt and uncles house which was in a place I think is called Brabant or something. It was a really nice little house with really nice gardens and everything. They had an automatic lawn mower which looked kind of funny. And tonight, I don't know what we're doing yet!

aug 20

Hi!

The sun finally came out in drizzly Belgium!! :) Yesterday was really nice and today is even nicer. Not a cloud in the sky! Right now if I were in Terrace I would probably be heading out to the lake. That is something that I definately miss! I'm not sure what we will do today but I doubt we will be going to a lake to swim. Yesterday we just kind of relaxed around the house for the morning and then later on in the afternoon my host mom and my host brother both had appointments. My host mom had a meeting downtown and she said that I could go with her so I did. I actually just found out a few days ago that she is a fashion designer! I knew she had three shops but I didn't really know what they were for and then the other day we went into them and my host sister told me that her mom designed all the clothes in the store. I thought that was really really cool! The clothes are really nice too. So while my host mom was at her meeting for about half an hour I just walked around. I was pretty lucky because i just walked down a random street and I came across really really nice buildings! All the architecture here is so amazing and there is not really one normal building downtown. They all have some kind of carvings. There are also so many statues all around the city! I wish I could take pictures of them all but that would probably be pretty hard. We always drive by new ones on the way home or going somewhere else. Its very different than Canada. So as I was walking I just happened to come across the Grand Place again. It looked so nice with the sun shining off all the gold on the buildings! One of Louis' friends told me that the Grand Place is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Europe! There are a lot of tourists that go there and as I was walking around Iheard a lot of english being spoken. But yeah walking around Brussels by myself made me feel pretty independent I guess. This whole thing will probably make me much more independent which I'm looking forward to. Yesterday I also had my first Rotary Meeting. It was pretty different than the one that I went to in Canada. It was in the evening and there were no women in the club. The men were really nice though and everyone kept telling me not to worry that it was a stress free club. They had a presentation about cameras and I was trying really hard not to fall asleep because it was really hot in there and I get really tired during the day still. I had to make a really short presentation just to introduce myself but it went fine. I spoke some french with the rotarians and felt pretty good about it. Louis was also there with me which helped when I didn't understand something. One rotarian came up to me and invited me to come to his house for a weekend or something because his daughter went to Williams Lake on exchange a couple years ago and would like to hang out with me. I'm not sure when that will be because she has university tests to study for right now he said. I'm supposed to go back next week and I guess for that meeting there will be a dinner. One rotarian was asking me if we had a lot of Indians where I live and if I could speak the language. I said we did but no I didn't speak the language and that it is a very difficult language to learn. After the meetingI was very tired and very hungary and just came home, ate, and then slept.

Oh! Yesterday I also went for a little bike ride by myself. It was cool to just bike around all the little narrow streets. It was a bit scary though as well because the cars drive so fast down the little streets and bikers have to go on the road I think. On most of the roads they have these little speed bump like boxes that are supposed to slow the cars down but they still take them going pretty fast! But yeah it was a very nice little bike ride and I stopped at a little lake along the way, but I don't think you could swim in it.

Thats all for now though!

Bye

As Days go on..

Hi!

Its been a couple of days since my last post, so I have a few things to fill you in on. But before that i'd just like to say that i've been having a really good time here in Belgium! The weather hasn't been great but i'm kind of used to that living in Terrace. I might have found a place that rains more believe it or not!! Oh well I will get used to it. Today is looking a little bit nicer though, I can see a few patches of blue sky! But anyways I haven't been super super busy these last couple days, but I have seen and done a few interesting things. So two days ago I started dance class with my host sister, Claire. Before I got to Brussels I thought that I would just be going for a workshop for one or two days, but it turns out that if I wanted to dance this entire year I think I could. But they also told me that whenever I feel like I don't want to go anymore thats fine as well and I can stop. As you all probably know, I am not a dancer. Much more of a soccer player than a dancer as I soon found out.. When we got there I was a bit nervous but I thought it wouldn't be too bad since most of these girls were two years younger than me. When it started we just stretched and did that kind of stuff, but then right away we went into a routine. It was very difficult and very fast! Right at that moment I thought to myself, oh no i'm way out of my league here. And it was true, I was! The rest of the day I struggled along and felt good about maybe one of the 4 dances we had been doing. The dance teacher was nice though, and was always yelling at me GOOD and Ca Va! whenever I did something right. After the first day I kind of felt like saying I wouldn't go anymore but I decided to give it one more day to show that I was at least trying. THe second day didn't go much better and after that I decided that I wouldn't go to dance anymore. It was an interesting experience and now I know that I really am not a dancer! Hopefully I will be able to be on a soccer team here in Belgium though. Yesterday we went and watched My host mom's boyfriend's son Blaze play and they were pretty good. They all play on turf though, which I don't really like but thats okay. They have to have turf here because it rains too much to have grass fields. The grass just turns into mud! Some of the other things I have been doing is after the first day of dance, we went out for lunch with my host mom's aunt and uncle. While we were eating the power actually went off! It was very surprising but it only lasted probably 30 seconds. That would be pretty crazy if the power went off in Brussels. At the restaurant I had some kind of Macaroni in a breaded shell thing. My host brother had a Belgian dish which was something like raw hamburger like Beef. He offered me a bite and I was a bit hesitant but it was actually okay. It was cold and everything and I actually didn't know you could eat beef like that. That same day my host mom, my host sister, and I went Step Up 3D in theatres. I was expecting a theatre nicer than in Terrace but this movie theatre was crazy!! It could've been an opera house! There were wood carvings on the walls and cool lighting and the screen was huge. I bet there was probably room for 500 people in that theatre..maybe. My host mom and host sister had never been there before either and they were very shocked at how nice it was too. Another new thing that I have done in Belgium is grocery shopped. When we were going to pay we didn't go through a check out with a teller, we went to a self check out where we scanned our own stuff and payed. And at another grocery store it was even weirder! We took this wireless scanner thing around and everything we put in our cart we scanned and then at the end you just take this little card out of the scanner and put it in a check out machine and pay and then you're good to go! I guess this is a new thing here too, but it was really cool.

Thats all for now though! Au Revoir :)

First Day

Bonjour!

Today was my first day in Belgium! I can't believe how much I have already seen. Today my host mom took me, my host brother louis, my host sister claire, and louis' friend florian to the Grand Place in the center of Brussels. It was amazing! I was so happy I got to go there especially today because right now there is a big event going on in the Grand Place. There is actually a huge carpet of flowers right in the middle of it. This only happens once every two years for three days so I am very lucky to go see it on its last day in the Grand Place. Claire and I also got to go onto the balcony of one of the buildings at the Grand Place. Like a typical tourist I was trying to take pictures inside the building but then some guy told me I wasn't allowed. I actually didn't see a sign though! Many other people were taking pictures as well. We got an excellent view from the balcony but it was very crowded. I also ate durum which is apparently a Turkish meal but it was something like a wrap with thinly sliced meet, lettuce, cucumber, and belgian frites(fries), and sauce. It was really good! I don't think eating those everyday would be very healthy though..

Back to yesterday- Yesterfday I arrived in Brussels at about 6:00. I travelled for a good 25 hours before arriving there. It was really hard tosay goodbye to everyone and I was crying a lot! I didn't think I would get so upset but it was really difficult. I know that this year will probably go by so quickly an I will also be sad to leave Belgium but at that moment I was pretty sad. When I got to Vancouver I had a ten hour layover so I used the instructions from my dad and went downtown on the Canadaline. It was really easy to use the train and I just walked around all day. Granville street was all shut down so I went down it and saw a lot of street performers. My favourite was this group of guys probably around my age who were in a Mariachi band. They were so good and people were dancing around to their music. It was very entertaining.

After that I heard sirens and as I was walking I saw where all the sirens were. It turned out that a city bus had actually crashed into a lamp post in Vancouver. It was up onto the sidewalk and it had also crashed into two other cars. It looked pretty funny and everyone was laughing.

Right now in Brussels it is raining. I hear that it is not uncommon for it to rain a lot here. That's okay beacause Terrace is quite rainy aswell. The language is kind of hard for me right now. I try to speak it but i'm kind of shy. I told my family who has been trying to speak english to me to speak french because I need to learn! But so far it has been amazing seeing all the sites of Brussels!

Au Revoir!