First Full Week in Belgium

Day in the Life:

Monday, January 17th : first day of classes. Went to European Economy, my first ever econ class, and got my educated mind whipped when I was asked to correctly name all the countries in Europe. Funny story, that is hard to do! I missed a whole 26 countries! Sorry Europe, on the plus side, I now know where ya'll are at. Then, I went to an internship interview with Accessible Art fair. Next, it was time for class again, this time in the form of political science. It was Introduction to the EU, similar to not knowing my geography of Europe, it turns out that I don't know anything about the EU. I suppose living in the heart of the EU, I will probably have to learn a few things about it, right? Class ended, and by now it was dark out, cold, and rainy. Awesome Europe, you are nothing like those sunny pictures you have in your travel books. By then 7:30pm had rolled around which can only mean one thing: Dinner with the host family. As always delicious food, probably the best food that I've ever had in my life, but it comes with a price. Some of the most uncomfortable silenced dinners I've ever had. And that is coming from a person who thrives off awkward situations. After dinner, I went upstairs, read a little, and went to sleep.

Tuesday January 18th: Went to get more minutes on my phone since I ran out calling my father back in the good old US of A. Then I took the metro to get some sweet passport sized pictures of me.  After that, I ate lunch at a little cafe near the school, since I am terrified of eating at home since my home stay mom is a little possessive about the kitchen. Tuesday was also day 2 of classes. So I got the luxury of attending a lovely little 3 hour class de francais 103. Man, a 3 hour class is a long time to be in class for. Luckily, we get a whole ten minutes of break! I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but in Europe, at least Belgium, they don't really get sarcasm. That's just dandy for me, ain't it because I'm never sarcastic. Ever.  After that long class, I went out to City 2 and bought the book for the class with Maisah.  I just went home and uploaded pictures from the weekend before when I went on that ART class field trip around Brussels. As always, there was family dinner, where they asked me what I learned in French class, and there was an awkward pause, as I could not think of what I had learned sitting through that 3 hour class. I knew I had learned something, I just couldn't remember what!

Please enjoy the photos that I took for the Belgim commune that I am living in, aka these are my new ID pics. Don't I look snazzy, aka unhappy. I wasn't allowed to smile, wear my hair up, wear glasses, or a hat! Man, in essence, I wasn't allowed to be me. Oh well, c'est la vie!

 Wednesday January 19th: This was a busy day let me tell you now. I got up at 8am for my 8:30am class. Now I know that I live close to the school, but that's ridiculous! Some kids have 45 minute commutes and I have a sweet little 10 minute walk. But when you wake up 30 minutes for class, and need to get dressed, eat, and go to a building you've never gone hmmm....rough morning. Well luckily, I made it to class only a minute late. But, half of my class is composed out of other study abroads from the University of Missouri. They got lost and didn't end up showing up until 9:10am. Class ended at 10, ouch. Anywho, I booked it from the art class then over to my Intro to EU class where I learned more about why we study the european union. From that class, I rushed over to the Auderghem commune to get myself all registered like my visa paper work told me to do. After that trip to what is like an American DMV experience, I went to meet with Martine about how the home stay is going. After that, I chilled over at the college trying to figure out what class to drop for my internship. At Vesalius, you can only take 5 classes, and internships are considered a class. So, I need to drop one, but its very tricky figuring out which one during your first week of classes. This is also the day that I found out that for every class I take in Belgium I only get .75 units of Beloit credit. Aka for my full course load of 5 classes, I am getting 3.75 units. Ruh roh! But the good news is that I have 21.25 units just from my first 2 years at Beloit, and you only need 31 units to graduate, so I should be fine. I sure do hope so! Anywho, so I got to deal with all the drama that came with classes and the internship and etc. Then, I got to go to my Econ class again. This time it went much better than before, I felt much more prepared. Emotionally and physically: because I was almost fully over jet lag and because I had read all the materials needed. When class was over, I went home. After dinner, I went out with Cayla and the other kids doing the CIEE program and we saw the film, "Un Nom des Gens." Let's just say this, it was a very French kind of film about politics. It was all in French, no subtitles, so it was a little difficult to understand what was happening. I think it was about a liberal girl who sleeps with conservative men to try and get them to change views. I THINK.

Me at UGC, the movie theatre to see "Un Nom Des Gens."

Thursday January 20th: I didn't have any classes, so I went adventuring! I started off by myself on the beautiful sunny day wandering near le Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, Place des Martyrs, Musee Marc Sleen, Banque Nationale de Belgique, the Cathedral of St. Michael, and some other cool monument type things. Then I came home for a while, convinced Jiemin to come explore, and then wandered Brussels for another 3 hours until it was time for dinner. After dinner, I was tired, so like the scholar I am, I did homework, skyped with my mom, and went to sleep.

The metro stop next to my host family: Hankar

Sweet Belgian graffitti

Place des Martyrs

Theatre Royal de la Monnaie

Banque Nationale de Belgique

Cathedral of St. Michael

Belgian Stock Exchange

Me on my adventures!

Friday January 21st: I had my Marketing and Advertisement class at 8:30am. Originally i had thought that I was going to drop this class since I could probably take the same class back in the US, until I went to the class. I loved it! I really enjoyed talking about marketing internationally, in Belgium, and in the US. We had a great talk about how to market foreign films in the US and how the title of a movie means everything. And from the title, comes the question of when you release a foreign film in the US or vice versa do you change the name to better appeal to audiences? Also, does that then change the audience's perspective of the movie? It was awesome. I didn't even care that it was 3 hours. After class, I talked to Anna about my internship which should be starting sometime this week (24th to the 28th), and then set up to take a French placement test over at VUB. I think French will be the class I drop at Vesalius. Then I came home and did some EU readings for I knew it would be a busy weekend, then I met up with Maisah and went to City 2 to get her a phone. After that, home for dinner, then out to a Vesalius College meet and greet at the KK, then over to some Missouri kids apartments to explore the night life of Ixelles, a district of Brussels.

Saturday January 22nd: Got up early to catch a train to Antwerp, northern Belgium. Cayla, Jiemin (my roommates) and I had been talking about touring more of Belgium, so we decided to do a day trip to Antwerp, the Diamond Capital of the World. Alison and Elana came too! It was super fun, despite the kind of gloomy weather that seems the norm in europe. We started off my marveling at how beautiful the train station was, then we did some shopping. We went shopping mostly because Belgium has sales twice a year in January and July, and January is almost over! So got some shopping in, found a little sandwich shop to eat at, walked along side the sandy beaches, saw the Cathedral, saw the giant hand, went to the market place, saw town square, went to the Musuem of Fashion (where we learned all about hats) I got my waffle, and we got to try some local Antwerp beer at a local pub. We then left Antwerp to go back to Brussels to meet up with some friends at a club called Fuse. Those friends never ended up showing up and it was just us, but it was a fun time. By the time we left the club at 2am, all the night buses had stopped for the night, so we ended up taking a cab home instead of aimlessly wandering the streets of Brussels.

Train station in Antwerp

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me in the Antwerp Hand.

At the waterside

Antwerp man

Townsquare

Mode Musse, hats

Alison, Jiemin, and I at club Fuse.

Sunday January 23rd: Today! I woke up late. I finally got to sleep in! Then I ate lunch, went to a protest at the Cinquantenaire, and went home to do laundry. The protest was about how Belgium hasn't had a government in 7 months and people either a) want to divide the country based on language and cultural differences or b) they want to keep it one country just with a working government which they currently don't have. This was a peaceful protest where the overall consensus was let's just get our act together and be one country. It was a very cool thing to witness all these Belgians coming together for a common goal.

Belgian protest at the Cinquantenaire