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
