2 Months

Hi!

I've been here for two months already! That is so crazy! Time is going by really fast and I think its only gonna start going by faster and faster. I have approximately nine months left here before I come back to Canada. In two months my french has really improved I think! I can have real conversations now and I feel really good about it! I can understand so much better than before. When I first got here I felt like I could speak better than I could understand, but now if I concentrate I can understand pretty much everything people say to me! It makes me really happy, but i've had a couple instances where people have lowered my confidence about it but thats okay, i'm just happy with how much its come along. I hope by next month I will be able to communicate very well and hopefully understand school a l

ot better. School is very weird for me right now because I don 't really understand the teachers and I don't know whether they expect me to do all the homework or not. The problem is I never know what the homework is! No one really tells me what it is so I don't know until the day of that we actually had something for homework usually. I haven't gotten in trouble but it's weird because I kind of do want to learn stuff and maybe I could attempt the homework. Last week for school the sixiemes which are the 12th graders had a week off of school to go on a retreat. There was probably 10 different options you could have done with the school or you could've done a personal project. Some of the choices were things like helping handicapped people, helping out at a school with young children, helping old people, helping homeless people around brussels, etc. My option wasn't really like that though. I didn't have to work with the public, and I was chosen for the option "Marcher" which means to walk in french. It was my first choice because a lot of people told me it would be fun for me and help me meet friends and improve my french so I took their advice and chose that option. On our first day about 15 of us and two teachers took a train to a place called Eupen, whic

h is in Belgium but is right by the German and Netherlands border. On our first day we walked 18 km through a MARSH. I thought it was going to be a nice walk through a forest but it wasn't! Pretty much the whole way was marsh will tall grass. Sometimes there was a boardwalk to walk on but when there wasn't you had to walk through the water. I only had running shoes on so my feet were soaked and my white shoes are now black. One of the teachers actually sunk up to her thigh in mud too on the first day. The second day wasn't exactly the same terrain but it was still quite muddy and wet. On the second day we walked 25 km. It was kind of tiring but it was just really difficult for me because I was very sick. On wednesday we were supposed to walk 27 km but I knew that I wouldn't be able to do it because I was really sick and on tuesday night I just slept the whole time and couldn't participate in the activities. So on Wednesday I took the train back to Brussels and slept the whole day. I slept a lot on Thursday as well and I felt much better so I could go to school on Friday. On Friday we only had courses in the afternoon because all morning we just talked about the retreat. It was a pretty interesting experience but i'm not sure that I would want to do the exact same thing again!

Last weekend I had a day planned with rotary on Saturday and plans with a friend on Friday after school. The weekend was a lot of fun! On Friday I met up

with Pooja, a belgian girl who was in Vancouver last year with rotary. I met her at the orientation weekend in Prince George with all the other exchange students. She is living in Brussels now going to fashion designing school and she has a little apartment with another girl. I was actually supposed to meet her and her friend so I could model one of her friends clothes that she made but when I got there her friend said I wasn't tall enough. Oh well. Afterwards we just talked and then went and ate something. It was nice to see her again and talk to her about Belgium and also Canada.

On Saturday I had to wake up pretty early because I had to take a train at 7:40 to go to a city called Namur for my Rotary day. It was a day organize

d for all the exchange students in Belgium so there was a lot of people there! Probably close to 200! The train we took to Namur was actually going all the way to Switzerland and on the board where it says all the stops it said all the names of the little towns I went through almost everyday when I was in Switzerland like Pfaffikon, Thalwil, and Zurich. It made me really happy! I miss Switzerland and I hope i'll be able to go back there sometime! When we got to Namur we just met everyone at the train station and then walked to the Wallonie (French speaking part of Belgium) Parliament. Sitting in the parliament was a bit boring for me because I couldn't hear or see anything because I was way at the back but it was okay. After that we just had a drink and then we took a group picture. After we ate lunch we all got to go on a boat that went down the river. It was a really nice hot day so it was really nice to go on the boat. The boat ride was probably around 2 hours and we got to see a lot of really nice houses and also a really cool chateau. After all the rotary activities were done a lot of exchange students went back to Brussels to hang out. I went out for dinner with a my friends from mexico, brazil, colombia, canada, and the US to a mexican restaurant and it was really nice! I miss eating mexican food in Canada even though its not real mexican food. They were trying to teach me spanish but I wasn't for good at it. I learned one or two phrases though! But yeah it was a very fun day hanging out with all the exchange students! I always look forward to those kinds of days!

Thanks for reading!

Brugges

Bonjour!

So this will be a blog that I should've written about 2 weeks ago, but I guess i'll write it now. Better late than never! So two weeks ago I was staying with my host sisters dad with her from Friday to Tuesday. His house was outside Brussels by about 15 minutes and it was close to another city called Waterloo as well. Her dad's girlfriend was staying there too on the weekend so I got to meet her and she was very nice. I talked to them a lot about Canada and the things I do there and I enjoyed talking in French. The first night I was there we ate really good spaghetti and after we watched Survivor. The show wasn't called survivor but it was the exact same, just French edition with french people. It reminded me of back home besides the fact that I couldn't really understand much. I find it a lot harder to understand shows on tv because people aren't talking directly to me so its hard to pay attention. On Saturday we ate breakfast and then just hung around the house and then after lunch we went shopping in Waterloo. I didn't buy anything because i'm trying to wait to buy any more close until the sales start after Christmas. Its really tempting to buy things here all the time because its so easy to just go downtown and go shopping. But I really want to not spend too much money on clothes so I won't buy anymore for a while! After the day of shopping I was pretty tired and we didn't do much after dinner. Sunday we had plans to go to a different city called Brugges. I was really excited about going there because before I came to Belgium I had read about it in my book and it looked really nice. Brugges is in the Flemish speaking part of Belgium and it is known as the Venice of the North. It is a really nice city with canals flowing through it and there are always boat tours going down the canals. The Flemish people don't really like the French speaking part of Belgium I guess so they told me not to speak French there. I took a lot of pictures of Brugges and I liked that city a lot! The architecture was really different there and there were so many horse and buggies going around the cobble stone streets and I just thought it was really cool! While we were walking around Brugges just looking at different things we stopped at a little cafe/bar that looked over the canal and had a beer. I tried a special beer from Brugges that came in a really cool glass. It was pretty good and we also ate some caramel that we had bought at a chocolate store. The caramel was so good! I think everything sweet is a lot better here than in Canada. I'm really getting addicted to the chocolate here! Belgian people eat it ALL the time! Everyone at school always is just eating chocolate bars for a snack but it's weird because no one is fat! I'm just hoping my body will turn Belgian here and i'll be able to eat all the chocolate I want! The drive to Brugges took probably 1.5 hours and it was a pretty nice drive I think. We passed huge windmills that were pretty amazing to see up close! They are sooo big. I remember the first thing I saw when I flew into Amsterdam were windmills and of course they looked tiny from the plane but yeah, up close they are enormous. That weekend I was also working on a presentation about Canada for two English classes. I finished the presentation on Monday and presented it two times on Thursday. The presentation ended up taking me 2 hours because they teacher asked me a lot of questions and we had a discussion at the end of it with the classes. I think the presentation went pretty well! I was glad it was in English then, but soon i'll have to make the same presentation but in French for my Rotary club. Oh, and on Wednesdays I usually meet up with my exchange student friends from around Belgium in Brussels and we just walk around and stuff, and this wednesday I ended up meeting up with another Canadian girl from Regina. We walked around and tried to find a cheap sandwich shop because we were both starving and then after we just walked around some more. It was a really funny day though because a bunch of other exchange students said they couldn't come to Brussels that Wednesday because their parents told them it was too dangerous. I was pretty confused because I hadn't heard of anything being dangerous in Brussels that day! Apparently there was supposed to be a huge riot that day though in Brussels about expanding Europe or something. The whole day Janelle and I were looking for the rioters but we didn't see anyone that could've been dangerous. We saw so many police men on horses riding around but they weren't even doing anything! It was really funny! Everytime we heard police sirens we would always yell "rioters!" and we would look around but there would always be no one. Eventually we saw a few people wearing the same blue jackets so we assumed they were the rioters but they weren't dangerous or anything and they weren't doing anything. It was a very weird day!

finally

So again I have put off writing a new blog but it is so hard cause i'm tired ALL the time! I have also been getting a lot more headaches since i've been here. I think its definately from making my brain work so hard everyday, trying to understand and talk to people. yesterday I felt pretty good about my french though! I had about four different real conversations for over 10 minutes each . I didn't understand everything they were saying all the time but i think I got what they meant. afterwards I was dead tiredand just wanted to sleep but I had to go for a run first. I think its true that exercise relieves stress because whenever I go for a run I feel so much better when I get home! It also doesn't hurt to run off some of those Belgian desserts as well! So, I will tell you about my weekend now. On Friday after school I was very very tired and was really looking forward to going to relax in my bed after school but instead I decide to go downtown and update my cell phone and search for a case for my Mac Book. It still feels a bit weird living in a huge city and just being able to jump on a tram or the subway and go to almost any store I want, or see any old building in Brussels I want whenever I want. I definately couldn'tjump on a subway in Terrace! But being here has also made me realize all the things I really miss having not being in Terrace. On Saturday I had made plans with my friend Janelle and a couple of her friends from school in a different town called Charleoi. It was a really fun day of shopping and walking around. There was some sort of festival going on though and there were all these people dressed up in crazy costumes and on stilts and some of them were actually really scary! When I was coming back to Bruxelles I was so close to missing my train and had to jump through the closing doors of the train, but I made it and was very relieved! I got home at around 8:30 pm and it is already dark here now at that time! It's been reallyreally nice for the past few days though which I think is pretty rare in Belgium. On Sunday I had plans with my rotary club all day. My councellor, Paul, came and picked me up at 8:30 am because Sunday was a special day in Bruxelles called Bruxelles without Cars so he had to pick me up before 9:00 am before Bruxelles closed down for cars. WE drove to a city called Waterloo and I got to see the actual site of the Battle of Waterloo where Napoleon was defeated. We ate breakfast in Waterloo and afterwards drove to an art museum to meet the other rotarians. The museum was for all the pieces of art done by the artist, Folon. I really liked all his work and it gave me some ideas for my art class at school. The tour of the museum took almost 3 hours. After the museum we walked up to a huge chateau and it was really nice. We ate lunch at a rotarians house and then went back to Bruxelles when it reopened at 7:00 pm. I was very very tired after that day and slept very well that night!

Au Revoir!

One Month!

Hi Everyone!

I know its been a pretty long time since I have last written a blog but I have been a bit stressed out with school and ALWAYS tired! I can't even believe how tired I am everyday! Yesterday I had a two hour nap after school and I think I probably could have used another 3. I think its just trying to understand everyone all day long and making your brain work really hard that makes you so tired. But yeah, so I have just basically been going to school lately! School is well...school. I actually like school in Canada

a lot more than in Belgium at the moment. We'll see if that changes in a few months but just right now I don't understand anything really that the teachers are saying and it can be very boring at times. It is also so hard without all my friends at school! I didn't think it would be as difficult as it is to make

friends here. Its just a really new experience for me I think because I have lived in Terrace my whole life and have never had to try to make new friends. Right now its especially difficult because I can't understand everything everyone says to me and I can't always say what I want to say because I don't know how to say it! I like a few of the girls in my grade and they are pretty nice so hopefully i'll be able to hang out with them more. Everyone here is so different than the people in Canada as well! Not a single girl in my entire grade plays a sport other than field hockey I think and thats only a couple. I was really hoping to be able to play soccer while I was here in Belgium and I think that would help me meet more girls who I can relate with better, but my host mom told me tonight that its not possible right now. She said I can't play because something like the club has to do a transfer with my "club" back in Canada. But its really different because I don't have a club in Canada its just with the school and used to be with TYSA. She said maybe it would be possible in January I think but i'm not entirely sure. Maybe I didn't understand everything she said. I've been running a little bi

t while i've been here though and I really like it. Getting exercise makes me f

eel a lot better! (and makes me feel better about eating all the belgian food!)

On the weekends I have been meeting up with some rotary friends and its a lot of fun hanging out with them! They are going through the same stuff I am so we always have a lot to talk about and we're all experiencing new things together so its really cool! A cool thing I did one Sunday was go to the Grand Place by myself and check out a beer festival that was going on. No, I didn't drink the beer I just looked around. Plus the line ups for the tickets were really really long! There were so many tourists there to taste the belgian beer, it was crazy! Th

e whole Grand Place was shut down in the center and had all different beer vendors giving people full glasses of beer to taste. They had some really funny banners that said things like "Beer doesn't make you fat" and " A Pint or two a day keeps the doctor away" After that I attempted to get home on the subway but that didn't turn out well and I got pretty lost! But I made it home so thats all that matters. Last weekend I had my rotary orientation date on Saturday with all the other exchange students in my district and we just had a bbq and learned all the rules and stuff. After that I met some other exchange students in the center of Brussels and then I went for a sleepover at my friends house in a different city called Mons. It was a lot of fun! But yeah, thats all for now I think! I will try to update sooner next time!

OH! and i've been here for one month already! so thats already 1/11 out of my trip

Au Revoir!

School

Hi

So this week has been my first week of school and I know I haven't been updating very often but not too much happens when your just going to school everyday! I will probably start updating like once a week or maybe twice. I had my first day of school last Friday but that was only two hours and it didn't really count as a real school day so my first "real" day was on Monday. I was kind of nervous about it but I wasn't too worried about not understanding the teachers because I don't have to get really really good marks here because none of the credits count! I went through Monday starting off with Religion, but I don't think we talked at all about religion, and then after that I had Neerlandais (Dutch). I knew right away that I wouldn't understand anything because that was basically the first time I had even heard the language! The teacher just told us to make a one page presentation introducing ourselves in dutch and I just told the other people sitting beside me that I didn't know a word of dutch so they told the teacher and he said I could do it in French instead! That was definately a relief! The next time we had class he asked us questions about ourselves and went into more detail about the things we wrote about in our presentations. I was pretty happy because I understood all the questions he asked me! My other classes went pretty much the same, with me not understanding much.. but I just try to write down all the words that I do recognize while the teacher is talking and during history I actually got like 2 and a half pages. Of course none of it made sense and when the other students read what I wrote they just laughed but oh well its something. My other courses are Gym, French, History, Art, History of Art, English, Math, Science, and Geography. School here can be pretty hard but I really like how on Wednesdays I finish at 1:00 and then on Thursdays I only start at 10:30 but on Thursdays I have to go until 5:00. Its pretty hard not having all my friends that i'm really comfortable with and not really having a set group of friends here right now but i think it will get easier as it goes on. Tomorrow will be a fun day at school though I think because in the morning we are going to a university city called Louvain la Neuve and going for a tour of the University and then in the afternoon we have sports day. It will also be good because we only have to be at the university at 10:00 and don't have to go to school before. The school is also a lot different than Canada because for one the teachers change classes mostly not the students and you are with one class all year. Also when the teachers are sick or don't come to school you don't have a substitute teacher, you just don't have to go to that class. So yeah! I am looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully i'll start understanding things at school soon!

Bye!

Birthday!

Hi!

I'm seventeeeennnn!! Finally! I'm happy i'm seventeen but I know if I were still in Canada I probably would have been more excited to turn seventeen because I could go get my N and drive by myself! I'm really hoping that I will be able to go for lessons when I come back a few times and then go get my N right away. Turning seventeen in BC at least is way better I think! I had a good birthday here in Belgium! On Friday night I went to Mons for a sleepover with 3 other exchange students, two from the States and one other from Regina. I hung out with the girl from Regina and the girl from New York whose house we were sleeping at so I had a lot of fun with them! When we got there we walked to the Grand Place in Mons and then we ate pizza. I love the pizza here and I always want it. I feel like i'm getting addicted or something even though i've only ate it twice. I'm pretty sure its healthier for you than pizza in Canada too because it is so thin. But yeah that night was really fun and during the night we met up with some more exchange students. I also used the trains here in Belgium for the first time since i've been in Belgium. I was a bit nervous because unlike Switzerland the train doesn't announce where you are so you just have to look around for a little sign saying where you are. It all went fine though and I got there and back fine. I did almost miss my train going back home though! I didn't check the train schedule online like the other girls before we left the house so I just went with them thinking there would be a lot of trains going to Brussels. We had to be at the station for 10:26 in the morning and we got there at 10:19. The girls I was with just ran off to go to their stations and I looked at the board for the list of the trains and the times. I saw there was a train for Brussels right then at 10:19 and I saw a train at the platform so I decided to run really fast and try to catch that train. Just as I got up to the platform that train started pulling away and the only other train was at 11:19 so I was really dissapointed! But then right after that train pulled away another one came and a lot of people were getting on to it so I asked a lady if it was for Brussels and she said yes. I was so happy but I think I was very lucky because the trains are usually on time and this one was 2 minutes late! So I got home safe and sound and had a long bath and nap. A little later on in the day my host mom asked me if I wanted to go to a rugby game with them and I said yeah I would and I had never been to a rugby game before! I thought we were just going to go to a game in Boitsfort where I live and watch Louis' old team or something but we ended up driving about an hour to Namur, another city in Belgium, and watching the mens boitsfort team against the Soignes team. It was really good and I really couldn't believe how much contact there was! I'm so suprised more people don't have broken legs and arms playing that. A few people got hurt but I don't even think they came off the field. Boitsfort lost but it was still a really good game. And it was so weird because I heard a girl who was speaking french but had an english accent so I turned around just to look and it ended up being another exchange student from Kamloops who was sitting right behind me! So we talked the rest of the game and she explained the rules to me because she plays rugby in Kamloops. When we got home we ate steak, fries, and vegetables for my birthday dinner and then we had cake. The cake was really really good! It had cherries in it and cream and chocolate cake and then it was covered in really good chocolate. By the end of the day I was really tired though and was glad to be going to bed. I also had my first day of school on Friday! I was pretty nervous but also excited. We just got put into our classes and then went to them and heard the teacher tell the rules ( I think) and give out notebooks and things like that. It was only for two hours so tomorrow is my first real day! I'm not really expecting to understand much but i'll try! I'm actually really looking forward to Art because I never got the chance to take in Canada because I always had too many academics. I also get to take Gym again which i'm happy about but my feet are really really hurting lately and I can't walk for 20 minutes WITH my orthodics without them really hurting. On Wednesday I don't have school past 1:00 and on Thursday I only start school at 10:30 so I'm really happy about that! My schedule is pretty good I think. I only have one day where I have to go to school until 5:00 but the last hour is just english so I don't think it will be too hard. After school I went to get sandwhiches with a few other girls that go to my school and they only spoke french to me so it was very tiring after a while but I think that will really help me learn faster. I also have my first French lesson as well tomorrow so I'm really hoping those will help!

Bye!

France

Bonjour!

So I haven't updated as often as I usually do but I have been a little bit busy these past few days. So last week my host mom told me that she had to go to a city in France called Lille for work and that me and Claire could probably go with her. I said I would really like to do that and I was really excited to go all week! We went there on Wednesday with me, Claire, my host mom, and my host mom's friend. I think it was probably just over an hour drive to get there from Bruxelles. That just goes to show how different Europe is from Canada and especially where I live. If you drove for just over an hour you would probably be in the middle of nowhere. Here I am actually suprised at the amount of forest but whenever you are driving on the highway there is usually farms and civilization all around. It was a really nice day but it actually wasn't that warm. It got warmer as the day went on and that was probably one of the nicest days I had seen since i've been here in Belgium! Today is also really nice though so maybe today will top that day. When we got to France my host mom dropped Claire and I off downtown and we just started walking around. We went to the Grand Place of Lille, which was really nice and looked a lot different from the Grand Place here in Bruxelles. It reminded me more of Spain in some ways, and less gold. After we walked around the Grand Place we decided to go shopping. We went to a department store type thing first and the clothes were all very very expensive and I didn't even really like them very much so I just looked around knowing that I would not be buying anything there. After we went to a couple other stores like H&M and Gap and I bought things there. My host mom and her friend came and met us after they were done work and then we went to a restaurant and ate some lunch. After that we just walked around some more and my host mom did some shopping. We went home at around 4:45 pm and I was pretty tired and slept on the way home. I can't believe how fast people drive here on the highways. My host mom was going over 160 km pretty much the whole way. For some reason it doesn't seem that fast though. When we got home my host mom told me that we were going to go to French lessons. I thought she meant that I was going to have my first lesson that night and I was a bit scared because I was really tired and hungry and knew I wouldn't be able to focus. But afterwards she told me we were just going to sign up for lessons that night. First we went to a school that was pretty far away from my house and would be difficult for me to get to and Ines didn't really want me to go there but it was cheaper and the rotary club was paying so yeah I don't know, but we signed up there. Afterwards she said we were just going to go check out lessons at a school closer to our house and at a nicer school where the lessons were more expensive but she thought would be better. We decided it was a better idea to go to the school closer to our house so I could take the tram when I have lessons. I had to take an aptitude like test to see which level they would put me in. I think I could've done better but like I said I was really hungry and tired and just wanted to go home and eat something. I didn't do very well on the comprehension part but did really good on the writing part I think. After I wrote the test the teacher interviewed me (all in french) and it was kind of difficult for me. I was surprised to find out that the teacher didn't even speak english so I had to always figure out a way to say something in french even if I thought I really didn't know how. But anyways I got put in the class "Beginners but not real Beginners" so hopefully the lessons will help. I have them twice a week on monday and wednesday for two and a half hours. So that was my eventful French day!

Au Revoir!