My Rotex writeup

So this is what i wrote for the Rotex back in my district; it's a writeup exchange students have to do every 3 months to say how the exchange is going, what we've done what's been easy what's been hard etc. rotary also uses these writeups to show outbounds what it's like to be on exchange...
so here's mine!!


Sooo, my first two months in Belgium:
It all started with a family of amish jews. The 13-plus hour trip passed in a haze, and so I didn't feel like I'd just crossed the Atlantic and landed in Belgium; I just felt like I had been sitting for nearly six hours; the wonder of a new frontier hadn't begun to sink in at all. After going through customs and getting my visa checked I went to the carousel to retrieve my luggage, and it was there that I saw while waiting, an amish family speaking yiddish. The simple and random encounter was enough for me to realize that i was no longer in familiar territory and that
I came to Belgium not expecting it to be drastically different from Canada; I was right in a sense but even after three months i'm still finding small differences. If you've seen ''Pulp Fiction'' it's like they say near the beginning; everything is more or less the same but it's the little differences that you really notice. One huge difference that still strikes me is how TINY Belgium is in comparison to Canada; you can take the train from one end of Belgium to the other, there and back, all in one day. That's another thing, the trains. I find it so great to simply be able to take a train and easily be anywhere in Belgium in less than two hours; that's something that i know i will definitely miss!! Belgians are also funny in their perception of space; for them, a trip that takes a half hour is a long one, and three hours is just ungodly!
Language wise, I never had any problems. I'm in the french part of Belgium, and since i was in french immersion at school for seven years i arrived understanding 90 percent of what people were saying, and speaking an above-basic-french. I feel tremendously lucky that i never had to go through that horrendously awkward period of the language barrier, where you can't even ask someone where the bathroom is. I remember going through that with english, and it wasn't fun! Plus since i never felt isolated becuase of not being able to communicate I became close with my host family pretty quickly. Now, I speak with relative ease; i can say big sentences, and convey complex ideas. Also, i can say the r's in french which is a huge step forward.
At school i was put with the grade 12's, and in general school is not rainbows and sunshine, but it's not bad. The kids here are not as clique-y as in Canada but i find that it just as hard to make friends. My school here in Belgium is from kindergarten to grade 12 so the people here have been together for years, which obviously makes things difficult. The lowest i've felt here was when my teacher in sociology asked the class who wanted to be in a group with me and help me out with the project he had assigned us; and room was just silent.
I understand that school here is hard, it is much easier to fail a year here than in Canada, and they don't owe me anything, but still that was hard to swallow. Now things are better, I have a group that i hang out with during lunch, I've more or less found a place at school, I'm in a play!!...I feel much more settled and at ease, but the school work itself is not easy!! One of the highs was when i got to fly a plane on halloween. :D
So far in Europe I've been to Brussels, Bruges, Namur, Leuven among many other belgian cities, Pérrone in France, and Canterbury and London in England (not bad, i think). Other trips i have planned are to Paris at the end of the month, Amsterdam in March, Greece during spring break, and i'm trying to see what i can do about Germany. Tomorrow i'm going to the concert of Raphael, who is apparently a well known french singer, with my oldest host sister Marie.
I feel immensely lucky with my host family, I clicked in right away with the whole family and i never felt like i was a guest or a temporary addition to the family; there's my host parents Pierre an Malika, and my five host siblings, Marie, Antoine, Camille, Martin, and Louis.
So all in all, My exchange so far has gone well, i still get homesick from time to time but it passes very quickly. I feel like i've been here for much longer than i have and also like it was yesterday that i arrived; there are still so many things i want to do, and yet i feel like there's so little time!!
anyway, until the next one!
Daniela Rios

Due to popular demand,,,

I know it's been more than a while since I wrote last and i'm sorry, but time flies when you're having a good time :P
But that's not totally true, there have been some heavy moments. Officially, i've felt homesick to a dangerously high degree once...but then i played badminton and was completely fine, which serves as a good expample for the following; in the first weeks, time passed in moments of extreme awesomeness and then boring lows, it's as if in the beginning i was momentarily bipolar. I would go through heavy moments where i felt that i was alone, and why had i put myself through this blah blah blah, but then something would happen, and it didn't have to be big, and i would then be so happy that i was in Belgium. It was bizarre and after talking to other exchange students I saw that it wasn't just me and that they hads experienced the same thing, but now that doesn't happen. And i can see now that those seemingly inescapable dark moments were just a passing thing and not really something that had any real meaning.
Anyway, other changes i've noticed. My french accent has astronomically improved; i can tell because the r's that used to sound like a gurgle now sound like actual r's (although i still can't say cirurgien or aéroport without making a face)I understand everything when somebody speaks to me, and with unwavering focus i can watch french tv without using subtitles. More and more often I can respond and speak at the same speed as the people here, although i still often have to look up words in the dictionary; that's probably what frustrates me the most, my french vocabulary and knowledge of sentence structure are extremely limited. Or so it feels to me; Malika my host-mom and several people say I'm way too hard on myself I've also learned a lot of belgian-isms. For example, in belgium they don't say soixante-dix (70) or quatrevingt-dix (90), they say septante and nonante; only in belgium. Also Belgium is the only francophone country where they say à tantot instead of à bientot for see you soon.
The one thing that awes me and frustrates me to no end, is the belgian's lack of appetite to travel. In this itty bitty country, where you can just take the train in any direction and arrive in another country in less than 2 hours, there are people who have never been or have any desire to go visit Berlin, or Paris for example. I think of the multitudes of kids, me included, back in Canada that are itching to travel, to backpack across Europe, or Asia, anything, and then the kids here that have the luck to live in the country that's right in the middle of Europe and they don' take advantage of it! Why God why??
Something else that has way more influence over Belgium than i at first thought is the conflict between the french-speaking-Wallonians and the dutch-speaking-Flemish. Not a day goes by where it doesn't pop up in conversation, or something is said on the radio. And it's actually been escalating; tomorrow there's going to be a demonstration in Brussels.
And noooooow, places I've been; places I'm going. I've now been four times to Brussels and i love it; in the old centre of the city there are murals throughout the place painted after famous comic strips like Tintin (because apparently Belgium is the country of comic books), and there's this outdoor bazaar where they sell the most bizarre and quaint antiques, and Manneken Pis which is the most belgian thing there is, more so than even chocolate and beer and waffles and fries, and it's this tiny statue that pees and is always dressed up in costumes. There's also Janneken Pis, which is "the sister", you can probably guess what she does. I've put up pictures of my first voyage to Brussels on Facebook (if you haven't already seen them)
I've been twice now to Bruges; the first time with Malika and Norton, a brazilian who is a friend of the family. The second time with other exchange students from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the States. Bruges simply put is an amazingly well preserved fairy-tale-like-town; I've also put up pictures of Bruges.
In Belgium I've also been to Namur, Ottignies, Dinant, Luven, Louvain-la-neuve, Florée and there's probably more but I can't remember.
In France i went to Pérrone which is close to the Belgian-French border, and in the end of November I'm going to Paris with Camille who is my host sister and two of her friends. In mid March i'm going to Amsterdam for three days, and for spring break I'm going to Greece.
:D

Guess who went to Brussels???

My flights, my family, the cows (!!), and this keyboard

So the flight from Vancouver to Montreal was fine; simply it was fine. I sat beside a very guy-typey guy, and i know for while i watched ´<<>> he watched <> Which was totally fine, but that means that he asked no questions about my blazer and so i didnt get to feel totally rotarian.
Getting off the plane and into the Monteal airport was really easy since i didnt have to pick up any suitcases and my gate was really close (which meant no security check). I then waited 20 minutes for a Tim Hortons sandwich; it was like an overdose of canadian-ness as my final goodbye. It was the only place to get a decent sandwich, there was a multitude of people from all over the globe, and you could order in either french or english. Once i got my sandwich i watched two italian men argue through a window as i ate; i couldnt hear anything but i could guess from all their hand gestures what they were saying, it was fun!!
The plane ride to Brussels was long, thats all. I sqt next to a guy who listened to a lot of Elton John and techno music and watched Shrek, he didnt ask about my blazer either :(
So once i arrived in Brussels at quarter to 9 in the morning, i stood in the security line for a half hour, but all they did once i got to the front was look at my passport and that was it. Waiting for my lauggage at the carroussel was interesting; i saw an amish/jewish family!! It really made it sink in that i was in a different country.
So, once i finally got out,waiting for me was Malika, Pierre, Helouise a brazilian lady who is visiting, Louis their son, and from my second family Monique and Justine. They had made a banner for me which was really touching!!
I hope to get some pictures of my house up soon, but simply put it reminds me of a mexican house on the inside ( for example its all tile floors, theres no carpet and you dont remove your shoes once inside)
THERES COWS EVERYWHERE. I CAN SEE THEM FROM MY BEDROOM WINDOW, ITS BRILLIANT!!! Not to mention the bbb´s are huge, but theres also a lot of dairy cows.
And my final thought is that this keyboard is a pain!!! the q and a are switched, the m is where the semi-colon is and theres no apostrophe, typing this took me an hour!
One last thing, Malika told me yesterday that i arrived on a historic day; i arrived on the most rainy day theyve had since the last 14 years.
And i just found the apostrophe it's up with the number 4...