Christmas!

Hi Everyone!

So these past few weeks have been pretty good! I've been going around to a few Christmas markets and I really like them! In Bruxelles there's a really big one with all these little huts selling all sorts of little things. There is even a Canadian booth at the Bruxelles christmas market! I was really excited when I saw that. They were selling things like maple syrup and smoked salmon. In the middle of the Bruxelles christmas market there is a huge outdoor skating rink which I haven't skated on yet but I did skate on the one in the middle of the Mons Christmas market, which is a different city in Belgium. There's is also a really big ferris wheel at the market in Brussels. Its very festive at the markets and actually makes something feel like christmas around here! Not much does...there's no snow, no tree, no decorations well at least not at my house. Its kind of sad but oh well thats okay. I got my Christmas shopping done last weekend so thats kind of a relief. I got my host mom a tea set that I think is really nice and i got my host sister pijama pants and hair elastics and lip chap. Last week there was a holiday called Saint Nicolas here in Belgium. It was the first time I celebrated that holiday and it was pretty cool i guess. Saint Nicolas for me is basically like Santa Clause but he comes on Dec.6 and gives kids a little gift or candy. There were some signs that were addressed to Saint Nicolas telling him they've been nice and that he should come at this hour. It was pretty cute I thought. Saint Nicolas apparently did not come to my house but thats okay I saw a fake one at school which was just one of the guys in my grade dressed up. It was a little bit embarrassing because everyone in my class was chanting my name telling me i had to go sit on his lap. So I did in front of everyone but it was funny as well. On Sunday one of my good friends in Belgium went home to Australia and it was pretty sad! Me and a few of our friends went to the airport to say goodbye to her in Bruxelles. It was also funny though because her bag was 9 kg overweight and she couldn't fit anything else in it so she was wearing 3 scarves, 3 hoodies, and 2 jackets! She looked like she was very hot but she didn't even get charged for overweight bags!! She was really lucky. She also gave me and my friend bags of her clothes she didn't want anymore. I think i'll probably have to do that when i go home too. This week is exam week for all the high school students in Belgium but I don't have school until wednesday because i only have to take 3 of the nine exams. I'm taking history, religion, and science. I studied all day today for history so hopefully i'll do okay! The teaching style here is just so different though here. Its all about theory and why someone would have done something and not just about the facts and practical stuff. They never get worksheets its always just like the teachers lecturing and then they have to write a debate or essay or something. For me, I DEFINITELY like canadian high school better. Being here makes me miss school in Canada. But yeah i think thats most of what i've been up to lately! I have a formal rotary dinner with all the wives of the rotarians so hopefully that will go well on friday. And hopefully i can get a few questions right on my exams..

À Bientot!!

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!

Hiiii

I keep procrastinating writing my next blog, its terrible I know. So what have I been up to since I last posted? Well i've been speaking french a lot and i'm really happy with how its coming along! I think I had my first french dream the other night, not fully in french but I'm pretty sure certain parts were. That was pretty cool. I really enjoy speaking french and speaking to other people but sometimes its hard to start up a conversation, especially when other people are already talking and having conversations because I don't just want to say something totally random. But yeah i'm really starting to understand people better and I feel like I can speak it better as well. School is still pretty hard but I've been trying to copy peoples notes and try to do some homework I guess. Math is ridiculous here and I really don't like it, or understand it at all. I'm not sure if its just terrible teaching or I just really don't understand it. For me I really really prefer the teachers in Canada and the material we learn. But oh well, I will just stick it out! After this week we have holidays for one week and then we go back to school for 3 days and then another 6 days of holiday after that. So this weekend I will be going to Paris which I am sooo excited about! We are going to the eiffel tower, the arc de triumph, the louvre, Versailles, The Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, Paris by Car at night, and a few other museums. I have to decide which paintings I would like to see in the louvre and the other museums because of course we won 't be able to spend all day in them. I think there are around 50 other exchange students going on the trip.

But yeah, I haven't been doing too too much lately! Just going to school and hanging out with friends on the weekend. Two weekends ago my friend, Janelle, slept over at my house on Friday night and then on Saturday night we took a train to a different town in Belgium and slept over at our other friends house. It was a pretty fun weekend! Last weekend I had plans with my Rotary councellor and his family to go to there house in the Ardennes, which is a farming area with more forests than in Northern Belgium and nice rolling hills. It was really pretty there and I took quite a few pictures. The house was actually my councellors wife's parents house and she had grown up there. The house was an old house but it was big and refurnished so it was very nice! On Saturday we went to the tiny country of Luxembourg. It was my first time being there and it was really pretty! It was a cold day but I had a scarf and gloves so it wasn't that bad. It took only about an hour to drive there. When we got there we just walked around for a little while and did a little bit of shopping. We also saw a rotary booth fundraising for "End Polio Now" so we stopped and had a glass of wine there. Afterwards we ate lunch and it was really delicious. I had pasta and so did everyone else. I also found out at lunch that I won't be going to my second host family anymore and instead will be changing in January to go to my third host family and then after Easter holidays I will be coming back to the family i'm at right now. That was a bit of a surprise for me but I don't mind it. Anyways, after lunch we went to a modern arts museum in Luxembourg. It was very interesting and I liked most of the art. There was one piece of art that I thought was really shocking because I didn't know any information about it before. It was a neon sign that said Arbeit Macht Frei and it had Mickey Mouse beside it so it looked like he was saying it. My councellor told me that the Arbeit Macht Frei was what was above the doors at the concentration camps for the jews and it means something about working for freedom or something I don't know exactly so the jewish people thought that they would work throughout the war and then afterwards they would have freedom but it was a lie as we all know because most of those people in the concentration camps were killed. The artist has Mickey Mouse saying the phrase because Walt Disney was a Nazi as well and Disney stories aren't true either, they are stories. So yeah, the saying on the doors of the concentration camp wasn't true and either are Disney stories. I thought that was really intriguing when I learned the information. The museum was really cool and we stayed there for about 2 hours. The next day I decided that I would make pancakes for the family and they really really liked them! I was scared they wouldn't turn out very good but they did so I was pretty happy. I had maple syrup as well and made fresh whipped cream. It was fun to see the families reaction to my pancakes because they really liked them!

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!