Remembrance Day

Hi!

So yeah i'll just fill everyone in on what i've been doing with my life for the past few weeks since I haven't updated in a little while. So two weeks ago I had a four day weekend which was nice because after coming back froma week off of school I only had to go to school for two and a half days. On Wednesday my friend slept over at my house and in the morning we went to a town called Ypres for Remembrance Day. Ypres is the site where there was a big battle in the war and its the place where the Germans first used gas on Canadian soldiers. It was very very cool to be there for the Remembrance Day ceremony. The weather was very bad and it was raining so hard but I couldn't even use my umbrella because it was way too windy. That day we had plans to meet up with 3 other Canadian exchange students but on the train we also met 4 other Canadians who were also going to Ypres, so that was pretty cool. They were all on exchange as well but they were with University Programs. When we got to Ypres we were able to see the ceremony and a bunch of army marching bands and then we went to see the Arc with all the names of the soldiers who had been killed. There were so many Canadians on the wall it was actually surtprising to see how many there were. There is a war museum there called In Flanders Fields museum but I will have to go back there another day to see it because we didn't get the chance that day. When I got back to Brussels from Ypres I had been invited to two girls birthday parties from my school so I packed my stuff and went to that. It was fun and it was also very nice of them to invite me. I have also been going to Rotary Meetings twice a month. Last week I went to a meeting and there was a presentation given by a really young doctor about Polio and research he has done about incurable diseases and the importance of still vaccinating people who have polio. I was very interesting even if I didn't understand everything he said.

Also last week I met up with Brodie Lamarche from Terrace who had been touring around Europe with a home base out of Munich in Germany so that was really nice to see someone from home! We went to a couple different cities and hung out with some of my other friends here. It was a lot of fun! Tonight I have another Rotary meeting but I think its the meeting where its just a dinner. Hopefully the food will be good tonight..haha.

Trips

Hi!

So these last couple weeks have been pretty good! First of all I had holidays from school from Oct.30-Nov.8 and now I have Thursday and Friday off as well because of Remembrance day! I really really enjoy not having school! I know thats part of the exchange though going to school and I know it really does help with my

french, I just don't like the schools or at least my school really in Belgium. My school is incredibly strict and yeah there are other reasons but some of the rules I actually don't understand at all. For the holidays I had signed up in the summer for two Rotary trips organized by BRESA. I signed up for Paris and London. Paris was the first trip and it was for the weekend for 3 days. We left on a Friday and took a bus to Paris. There were 40 exchange students on that trip and I think that was one of the smaller trips. There was so much traffic on the way to Paris so the

bus was basically just crawling along the highway the whole way. For Friday in Paris we were supposed to go to Versailles but we weren't actually able to because of all the traffic and we missed our time. I was very very dissapointed because Versailles was the thing I was looking forward to the most before I left for Paris. I really hope I will be able to go back and see Versailles another time while i'm here. Paris is only about 4 hours away by car and i'm not sure about train...but not very long. So instead of going to Versailles when we arrived in Paris we went to Champs Elysees, the most famous shopping street in Paris and saw the Arc de Triumph. It was really cool to actually see the Arc de Triumph in person and I was very excited to see it. After we looked at that for a while we had freetime to walk around the Champs Elysees and do some shopping if we wanted or just look at things. On the street there are a lot of high end designer shops like Louis Vuitton etc. but there's also shops like H&M, Quicksilver, Sephora etc. So there's shopping for everyone. I did find it a bit more expensive though and I didn't buy any clothes in Paris. I just bought some souvenirs. That night we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant and then had a tour of Paris by night in our bus. That night was the first time we saw the eiffel tower and it was all lit up and when we drove past it it started glittering and it was so pretty! Everyone was screaming and oohing and ahhing it was so cool. Throughout the bus tour one of our trip leaders was explaining what things were and would say "..and on your left you have ___" so everyone would run to the left side and the same for the right side it was really funny. That was the end of the first day! The second day we went to the Musee d'Ors

ay and the Louvre and those museums were AMAZING. The paintings were all so incredible as well as the sculptures. I saw so many masterpieces in both museums it was overwhelming. The Louvre was gigantic and was definately very overwhelming! I was glad I had a map and circled all the paintings I wanted to see beforehand because if not i'm sure I would have missed so many things. I saw the Mona Lisa and it was cool to see her in person but its a pretty small painting and I think there are better paintings in the Louvre haha! I also saw Napoleons apartments and that was amazing! I really felt like I was walking through his apartments and not just a museum. The museum itself was so beautiful. All the staircases and floors and everything were really really nice. After the Louvre we ate dinner at a French restaurant and then had a tour of the Seine river at night which was really cool! And after the tour of the Seine we went to the Eiffel tower at night and we went all the way to the very top. It was very exciting to be able to see the Eiffel tower and to go up and look over all of Paris at night! It was an experience that I really will never forget! And that was the end of the second night! The third day we went to Notre Dame which was soo cool. When we were there, there was actually a mass going on so we got to hear the choir singing and the priest talk and everything. I stayed with the trip leader in the church and I learned a lot of cool information from him. That church took 700 years to build! It was very very beautiful inside the church. After the Notre Dame we went to Momart and the Sacred Coeur church. And after that we had lunch at the Hard Rock cafe and then headed back to Belgium. It was a very tiring trip but it was so much fun!

London was a really good trip as well. This trip was organized by the ROTEX so it was younger people around in there 20s. There was 72 other exchange students on the trip so it was bigger than Paris. We took the ferry across the channel to Dover and then drove to Canterbury to see the cathedral. The cathedral was very nice but I think I prefered the Notre Dame in Paris. We had audio guides for the cathedral so I was glad to learn more information about it. After that we drove into London to Picadilly Circus and ate dinner, and then went back to our hotel. The next day we went to Windsor Castle, which was my favourite thing that we saw while we were in London. The castle was huge,and there were so many artifacts and old weaponary and things Britain had taken from the countries they conquered. It was amazing! They also had a room for Princess Mary's dollhouse and that was really cool. It was a really really big dollhouse with everything miniature and everything looked real. There was even a miniature electric vacuum in the dollhouse! After our visit to the Windsor Castle we went to Madame Toussauds wax museum and then had dinner at the Hard Rock cafe in London. That night we saw a musical called "Blood Brothers." It was amazing! It was the best musical or play I have ever seen and I was so happy we went to see it. At the end some people were crying and everyone gave them a standing ovation. The third day in London we had a walking tour which took a few hours and we saw a lot of the typical London attractions like the Big Ben, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, etc. I was very tired at the end of that but then we went to the Br

itish museum and that was really cool as well. They had all these artifacts from the Native villages around Terrace! They had totem poles from The Nisga'a nation and also Haida. I thought that was really cool. It was like their opening exhibit in the museum and I was very surprised to see those totem poles. After the museum we had freetime until 10:30 when we would have to go back to the bus and make our way back to Belgium for the night. I didn't like travelling through the night and I was sooo tired the next day but it was all worth it because I got to go to London!

The trips were soo amazing and I can't wait for my next trip organized by Rotary!