'Where's my Paulo?'

Omg where do I even start writing about such as amazing trip?


        Considering I'm my mother's daughter, I'll start with the food(in true bradbury fashion). So when you think of Italy, you imagine pizza, pasta, gelato, and nutella, and that is what I got! :) Three course lunches, 3 sometimes 4 course dinners, starting with pasta, a main dish(potatoes&meat) and finally finishing with dessert. Through most of our meals were eaten at our hotels, resulting in lots of night we left the table after only the pasta course so we wouldn't have to sit through instant mashed potatoes or smelly fish. Just on a side note; Italian's don't eat vegetables!!! The only time my body enjoyed a vegetable on that 11 day trip was the tomato's in the pasta sauce... Defiantly not my 8-10 recommended  a day. My proudest food moment of the trip had to be my rule of Gelato at least once a day! :). Another highlight was the eggplant pasta we had one day; you see I have a new found love for eggplant, and even made eggplant and tomato casserole for a couple of friends I had over for lunch after my trip to Italy. 


      As much as it felt like I spent my whole time in Italy eating, I was actually there to learn, to see the sights, and be a tourist...Which I did only to realize I don't actually like getting cattle called through thousands of other tourist, camera strapped around my neck and the least stylist but most comfy walking shoes, ruining my outfits. As much as I like to say I hate being a tourist, I was totally excited to see all the sights. Vatican city was beautiful, and even thought others wouldn't count it, I'm adding it to my Country Count list! :) 
The Colosseum was way cooler in person then it is in my textbooks back home, It was ginormous and you could tell it was super old!
 Thanks to the 16th Chapel and the Pantheon I have now seen the 1st and 2nd largest unsupported dome roofs in the world (<--yeah i'm kinda  geek!) which by the way is much more impressive then it sounds...


Ever since I went to Naomi's 8th birthday and we went and saw 'Lizzie McGuire The Movie', I have been obsessed with everywhere they go, so well I was packing for Italy I went on iTunes(thanks parents for all the gift cards) and rented the Lizzie McGuire movie so I would be all fresh on the sights of Rome.
Basically the point of all that background knowledge is that  1. When I saw the Trevi Fountain I almost peed my paints in excitement. 2. I sat in front of the fountain, eating my gelato and looking cute hopeing to find my Paulo, unfortunaely I didn't find him this time. But that just gives me another reason to go back! :) 3. Well I was looking for my Paulo, some Mexican girls who were on the trip with me started singing 'What dreams are made of' from the movie which just made things a billion times cooler.


The 11 days of this trip were so jammed packed I barely had time to sleep, and because of that, they all went by so fast that everything we did kinda of just got all jumbled together so I think the easiest way to tell ya'll what we did each day.


Day 1- Bus ride through Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland all the way to Rome, Italy. 24 hours with a bus full of grino(a)'s! :)
Day 2- Vactican City, by day, relaxation and sleep by night.
Day 3- Colosseum & walking tour of Rome by day, adventure with Italian teenagers we met in the street by night.
Day 4- Ancient port of Ostie and Abbay de Monte Cassino.
Day 5- Lemon Cello shopping in Sorrento, tour along the Amalfitain coast.
Day 6- Most Beautiful Boat tour ever around the island of Capri, touring & lunch in Capri and Anacapri
Day 7- Soaking wet rainny tour of Pompeii (also way cooler then what you learn in the textbook) Random Fact; Pompeii had a brothel even before it was covered by the Volcano  :)
Day 8- Another super cassy awesome for our photos umbrella nedded day, well visiting Pise.
Day 9- Easter sunday; Boat ride to the island of Murano a glass blowing tour/showing and visiting the island of Burano
Day 10- Venice!!! :), btw, it reminded nothing like Bruges to me, even though everyone says Bruges is the little Venice...
Day 11- Bus ride all the way back to Belgium. 


There is just something about it that beats anything else. Traveling with students is an amazing thing, especially when half of them are latino(a)'s (always ready to party& always singing). 


Italy 2012 is an unforgettable trip, forever and always! <3

Loud, and Proud!

D.2170 exchange students singing our song while on a boat tour of the Port of Antwerp :)

Where has all the time gone!?! 

I used to write all the time, updating ya'll on my amazing life here in Belgium, but it seems every time I start writing a new blog, I just end up getting sidetracked (thanks 9gag.com...) or just get frustrated at all the spelling mistakes due to the fact that my French is finally starting to come, which makes my English awful most of the time. But I am totally committed to finishing this blog and updating ya'll on everything there is to know! But first I have a question. Since when is the word 'everytime' not a proper word!?!
Ok, time to just jump into this! First lets start with Carnival! :)
Carnival in Belgium is nothing like the weekend adventure that comes to Rupert once a year, with it's 'quote' cool and awesome rides. No, no, no  it's a week long break from school, with parades, confetti, and men dressed up in funny costumes with even funnier hats! My carnival unfortunately did not include this...Wait unfortunately isn't the write word to be using here! I spent my carnival like this-->

Friday Night--> American Party for my friend's Birthday! :)

Saturday--> Sleep/ Movies with Tasha! :)
Sunday-->More Sleep(cause you can NEVER have enough!:))/Sleepover at Cat's
Monday-->AMSTERDAM!!!!!with Cat and her host parents!:)
Tuesday-->MORE AMSTERDAM!!!!!!!:)

Wednesday-->Brussels with Morgan and her American family

Thursday-->Maastricht with my host family! :) <3.

Friday-->Zeeland(the North Sea in Holland) with my Rotary person and her daughters! :)

Saturday-->Host brothers soccer games/Sleepover with my Brazilian friend Marina!:) <3

Sunday-->SLEEP!!!!!! :)
Crazily busy week, but so much fun! I don't think I've ever been so tired or so happy that I had absolutely nothing I had to do on Sunday then I was that week!

Next adventure was a weekish of hanging out, trying to be Belgian(<--which is a billion times harder then it looks!), a couple birthdays/sleepovers, my ever so needed french lessons and even a crazy night of salsa dancing with Latinos! :) And finally the much anticipated visit from my amazing and oh so lovely sister Ally!
Yup that right, she made it, without the 'Bradbury family flying curse' getting in the way! :) What actually happened is, she was in Paris with her university program on a field school type thinger, and just happened to have to come to Belgium to check out the world famous, and honestly best in the world chocolate world here in Brussels and then had a weekend of free time after, donc elle reste en Belgique avec moi! :) We had a great weekend together, with a night out meeting my exchange student friends, lots of laughs with my host family, and a trip to Bruges and the North Sea! :) Thanks love for coming it was so great to see you and I love you so much! <3

Me and a couple exchange students celebrated a not so celebrated holiday by Belgians in Brussels, crowed with Irish people straight from Ireland! :) So much green and so many cool accents!!! And last week was wall about trying new sports. Played tennis with my host family on Sunday, and squash and a self-defense class for 'Sports Day' with school on Monday... I now know why I play hockey and not games with racquets and balls!

Today I had a super cool adventure. Well actually it started yesterday with a 2 and a half hour train journey from Genval to another town in the south-eastern part of Belgium called Verviers, a bus ride and coming to the conclusion that as soon as you get out of a city, the rest of Belgium smells like COW! adventure to Morgan's(american from seattle, who is also canadian and i love very much!) for a sleepover. BLT's which tasted like heaven after not having bacon for 7 months, 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' and a mess of her bedroom after trying to figure out a last minute outfit for her to wear today, was the perfect night before our big Rotary day today.
Not only did I get to see all my Canadians, hang out with super cool exchange students for hours today, play with those annoying clappers that we have for hockey games, and wear heels all day, but I also got to meet the International President of Rotary aka the most important person in all of Rotary in the entire world! :) It was a huge honor, and he seemed really nice. Best part was that after he left we got to go watch 'The Hunger Games' payed for by Rotary, in English! :) (hehe).

Today was the first day of my Rotary weekend. Saturday is the District Conference in Antwerp which means, more singing for Rotarians... more blazer wearing (which is super heavy now and dangerous to wear!!!), and more exchange memories! :) Oh and I think it might even include a boat ride...? and Sunday is a ROTEX activity at the Adventure Park in Wavre. Tree climbing, wooden bridges and more dangerous fun with exchange students! :)

This next week is going to be crazy! Monday and Thursday I have a oral presentation for my Social Science class, Tuesday and Thursday I have french lessons, Wednesday I have to pack for both Italy and for when I am staying at my host uncle's(because my host family is going to the States to visit there daughter before I go to Italy and get back after I get home from Italy), Saturday is going to be spend doing all the last minute errands I need to do, and Sunday I leave for ITALY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) 

Kay, well this will have to do for now, as it's 11:24pm and I have school tomorrow and have not gotten anything ready for it yet.. Good night everyone, or maybe good morning depending on the time change. Love you all! and make sure you have JULY 8TH marked on your calendars! :)

ps. we change our clocks forward on satuday night so then the time change will be 9 hours ago not just 8.

Random info and a surprise! :)

my life has been keeping me super busy lately!
Topic #1, the language- i've finally started french lessons, so hopefully now my french will improve cause really this is getting ridiculous, i've been here for almost 6 months and i still fail at the language!!! :'(  if it doesn't approve and i leave at the end of my year here without being able to speak the language i will feel like a failure!
Topic #2, school- it's boring as ever, but i've finally started making some friends(that don't speak english). last week was really cool because as part of the curriculum in Year 5 you need to do so many hours of volunteering so what they do is, the teachers place you in a primary school or a nursing home or a daycare center (for me i was put in a 1st grade class) and you spend 2 and a half days volunteering there. it was really cool and the little kids were adorable! <3 
Topic #3, vacations!- only 6.5 more days until it's carnival and i get a week off school! :) this week is going to be spent experiencing carnival, a day trip to Luxembourg and maybe a trip to Maastricht, and exploring more of Belgium. after carnival we have about 5 weeks of school before a 11 day trip to ITALY!!!!!!!!!!! :)
Topic #4, vists!- i have the best visitor ever coming to visit me! my amazingly wonderful, awesome sister is going to Paris and Belgium with her university  and i get to see her! we have about 2 full days together, and we've already been planning everything to show her! my host families, my stompin' grounds, my friends and all the tourist traps are about to get canadianized and sisterized!!! :) countdown=27 days! 
Topis #5, activities & adventures!-lately i've had some crazy adventures. a rotary meeting in Namur with my whole district, shopping trips in Antwerp, sleepovers, concentration camp visits, and my first wednesday spent in liege. there is so much i wanna see and do still this year and i need to use every free moment i have because my time here is getting shorter and shorter each day...
Topic#6, returnal :(- my plan was to only tell my parents when i am coming home, and i was wanting to walk into a party or a family dinner, or show up at one of my friends jobs but really thats super hard to plan and also this way people can come meet me at the airport!  i leave Belgium JULY 7th and because there is only one flight a day on weekends into PR, and i miss it by about 2 hours i think i'm flying into Rupert on july 8th. it kills me to think about having to leave behind this amazing year and this country that i love so much. the only good part of leaving is that i get to fly home with two of my many loves! Sylvie; one of the girls i flew here with and Devyn; another BCian who i've met here. it's gonna be one crazy plane ride! :)  i have a couple of rules for y'all (really i'm not a bitch i just really like when things go my way!)
1. please don't remind me how soon it is until i get home! i don't want to come home and it kills me even thinking about it. booking my flights was super hard and well you'll be counting how long it is until i get home i'll be counting down how many days i have left here and will be trying to make the most of them!
2. come one, come all to the airport and meet me when i get off the plane!!!!!!! bring everyone, and signs and camera's! :) more the marry'er!! :) 
3. if i came home to a properly cooked roast beef (aka not raw!!!) dinner i might just be the happiest girl in the entire world(well at least as happy as i can be, well im sad about having to have left Belgium)
4. first stop on the drive home from the airport is going to be tim hortons!!!!!!!! can't wait to walk in there with my blazer covered in pins and getting starred at again like i did before i left when my blazer was so empty.(omg that feels like a life time ago!!!)
Now that I'm finished sounding like a spolied brat( which really i am not!!!) we can continue on! :) 


My time left here is going to be spent living life to the fullest and trying to cross everything off my bucket list! :) Just found out that I might be going on a trip to Prague for 5 days in June and I don't remember if I've already meantioned it but my next host family is taking me to London, England and we are sailing (on a legit sailboat)  through the English channel home to Belgium! :) trip/experience of a lifetime! :)
Hope you all have a great day, and have a Happy Sweater Day! :) http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/23136/1/it's+national+sweater+day
<3 <3 <3

Ft.Breendonk

          I knew it would be sad, I knew it wasn't going to be like going to other museums, but I didn't know it would be so emotional!
Saturday morning, I woke up and walked through the snow to the train, meeting 3 other exchange students in Brussels, we caught a train to Willebroek; the town that has the concentration camp outside of it.  After getting lost and freezing out butts off from walking in the sold and snow for almost 2 hours we finally found Fort. Breendonk. ~I would love to know how fast the Google maps person who says it was only a 20 minute walk from the train to the camp walks!!!
 *Fort Breendonk= the only concentration camp in Belgium
Walking into the office, seeing the photos lining the entrance and the barb wire fence we started the tour listening to each number as we entered a room. Finding out what had happened in each room, often there were rooms that I felt creeped out in and I would try taking refuge in the hallways but it was worst for me being alone in the hallways then feeling creeped out in a room with the others. We walked down the hallways following the arrows until we found the next number to punch into our listening players. '4, 8 green button' and started into the doorway of a room that looked just like any of the others from the doorway. 5 steps in I stopped turned around and walked as fast I could out of that room. I could barley handle standing alone in the hallway, but I had just walked into a torch chamber. There was nothing worst for me then being in there, and waiting alone int he hallways well my friends were inside was awful and scary too! I was extremely glad when they walked out towards me and we could walk away from that scary place. \
Instead of continuing on we went outside and looked around the grounds.
 I think we were all pretty relieved when we decided we were finished. It was a really weird experience, and left me feeling privileged that  I will never have to go though what those who lived at the concentration camp did.

January Update!

First of all I would just like to apologize for my last blog. I didn't realize how emo it made me sound till after I posted it.

Monday- Maastricht, and Liege sale shoppingJ

Tuesday- Nothing J
Wednesday- First Wednesday in I don’t even remember how long not spent in Brussels… L

Thursday- Brussels and a sleepover

Friday- Bruges, a run and a dinner party

Saturday- Lille, France

Sunday- Brussels and a movie with my Oldie J

            I thought that breaks were supposed to be relaxing and you are supposed to come back well rested… That was defiantly not the case of my break. 6:30 Monday morning came far to early, and I have been counting down the weekend so I can sleep in and turn my alarm clock off since Monday afternoon.

             Christmas break was great! But after talking with others who went away during it, I wish I had too. There is so much of Europe that I want to see and so little time to do so. The next break is only 5 weeks away; a week long break at the end of February for Carnival time here in Belgium and I am hoping to spend it in Copenhagen, Denmark.

You see I’ve always had a strange love for Denmark, and it is where I wanted to go on my exchange, but unfortunately for me my district doesn’t exchange with Denmark. Every time I’ve done a project on a country for school up until I found out I was coming to Belgium on exchange it had always been done of Denmark. Maybe I have a weird liking for naked mermaid statuses( totally joking), or maybe I’m hoping I’ll meet the Prince’s well I’m there and we will fall in love, get married and I can finally become the Princess I’ve always known I should be( don’t worry, I’m really not that conceded) , but whatever it is Denmark has always captivated me.

 This year is going soooo fast, and I just want it to slow down!!!!!!!!!!! (I wish I had magical powers so I could make time freeze) and this feeling was only made stronger the other day when I got an email from my travel agent (nope not my momma; the wannabe travel agent, but from Hansi the travel agent for our Rotary district who organises all the exchange students flights) saying it’s time to start booking return tickets. I think I’ve decided when I am coming home, but I’ve decided to try to keep it a secret just so that I can either excite someone when they are having a bad day and need something to look forward to or so that I can walk into a family dinner or a party and surprise the crap out of everyone J (either way I win J ).
ps. Momma and daddy you two are the only two that will know when I’m coming home and if you tell anyone I will be greatly disappointed in you!

This week is pretty crazy for me. Not only am I getting back into a routine of waking up early, and going to school, but I am also mentally preparing myself (don’t laugh it’s a scary thing) to become and ‘Oldie’, on Saturday I will be saying ‘Au Revoir’ to my amazing and cool and so so helpful Austrailian ‘Oldie’ Alex and the rest of my ‘Oldie’ friends and leaving behind my ‘Newie’ title at the airport. Also I am busy packing  all the ‘stuff’ aka  shit that I have no idea how I will be getting it all back to Canada in July, because Saturday afternoon I change host families.

I’m going to miss my current family a lot, but my life with them has become too routine for my liking during my exchange and I am really excited for a new adventure with a new family. My next family lives only 10ish minutes from my current family, which is great because my Brazilian friend Marina is moving into my current family so I can do double duty visits!  J  My next family consistes of a host mom Nath, who is amazing and I am so excited to be living with herJ, a host dad who I have only met once but is also very nice J a 16 year old host brother a 12 year old host brother and a 18 year old host sister who is on exchange in the States right now. It’s going to be a HUGE change with this family, as I’ve never been the only girl before or the oldest (might only be a couple of months but I am still considering myself the oldest cause I’ve always want to be the oldest J ).

 Today is Thursday so I had a long day at school, with 8 classes and school ending at 4:10pm. After making it to the early train and getting home around 4:45 I’ve been working on some homework, packing and trying to get everyone on my ‘to do’ list finished. Hopefully I’ll make it to bed early tonight so that I am not super tired tomorrow afternoon when I go to the airport tomorrow and have a sad afternoon saying good bye to my Australian friends.  

Lastly, because the whole 'Newie' 'Oldie' thing can get really confusing, there is a diagram made by yours truly! :)

Outbound student----->

                                Inbound Student
                                -Newie(when you arrive in August)
                                -Oldie(when your 'Oldies' who came last January from the Southern hemisphere return to their countries in the current January)----->
                                                            Rebound Student

I'd rather be homesick, then sick of home

I’m not homesick I just miss my old life sometimes.

I love my life. Don’t get me wrong. I love everything about living in Belgium, love being an exchange student, and I love the life I have created for myself here. But today I realized how much I miss my old life. I miss my friends back home and the relationships we had, I miss walking into Safeway and knowing everyone, I miss going for coffee at Tim Horton’s, I miss going to high school and seeing kids I’ve gone to school with since kindergarten. I miss our big, loud, crazy family dinners, I miss my room. I miss hockey season and I miss my family. And I love the person I have become in the last 4 months.

Never would I change anything about coming here, and never ever do I want to go back to the person I was before my exchange but sometimes I wish I could just pop back into it for a couple of minutes.

<3

New Years Belgian Style

Every year New Year’s is a totally different experience. Sometimes it’s mellow and kinda boring like last years of driving home all day from visiting with my sister and being too tired to stay out late at my friend’s house or years when I decided to not go out and instead babysit for someone.  New Year’s has been spent at home with my family, at sleepovers with friends and even in Disneyland. This year’s New Year’s was by far the coolest, fun-est, and best so far.

Yesterday I spent all day at home lying around, and getting ready. Around 6 my friends Isa (Mexico), Jasmine (U.S.A.) and Morgan (U.S.A.) came over and we all finished getting ready and headed to the train.

We started our night out meeting up with other exchange students and getting dinner at Mc Donald’s. As sketchy as this sounds, we met some of the coolest people last night. Because we were such a large noisy group whenever people would hear us speaking English they would come up and talk to us, most of them were tourist from all over the world and it was cool hearing about what they were doing in Brussels.

Then it was time to meet up and head to the countdown. When we got to the Grand Place and were waiting for the countdown, we started singing our exchange student song, and the people standing around us seemed really impressedJ.  I think my mom has some magical powers, because as soon as we finished doing the countdown, I glanced down at my phone as I was waiting for a text from a friend who was supposed to be meeting up with us, and I saw a text from my mommy. J After celebrating and sharing hugs and kisses with everyone, me and a couple of friends ran out of the Grand Place and up towards the Palace Royale to see the fireworks.

 I’d never seen so many people around the Grand Place before, and my hockey playing skills came in handy as I ‘bumped’ and pushed our way up the hill, so did my Canadian charm of over apologizing as I pushed through people like a mad man trying to get as close to the Palace Royale as possible. The fireworks were really cool, but also really short. Well we were watching the fireworks; we were packed like sardines in a can. Now everyone knows that at night Brussels gets really dangerous and you always have to be on the watch for pick pocket-ers, and as we were watching the fireworks, people’s hands were all over the place. One of my friends I was watching the fireworks with, had someone try taking his wallet of out his pockets, and I’m sure that after the fireworks a lot of people noticed things missing from their bodies.  After the fireworks it was time to hunt down a waffle stand and a taxi. Waffles were a billion times easier to find then a taxi… First finding an empty taxi was hard enough, but then finding one that would drive us all the way to Genval was even harder. Finally after a really long time we found a taxi man who agreed on driving us, only for me to ask how much it would cost and being told “We’ll cause it’s so far away and it’s New Year’s around 150 euros” (150 euros=about 200 Canadian dollars) Finding that out, we walked away and called my host parents, wondering what we should do. My host parents are the best!!! Not only did they let me out for New Years, and let me have a couple friends sleep over, but when I called saying that taking a taxi home like planned was impossible, my host dad left the party they were at to come and pick us up and drive us home. We got home, watched a movie and fell asleep.

A couple good points to add:

1. Because my dad came to get us, we all saved about 15 euro J which will be helpful this week as it is ‘Sale time’ in Belgium with stores having huge sales for the whole month of January J
2. I’ve recently mastered an electronic ordering machine at Mc Donald’s so instead of having to wait in a line for 25 minutes just to order our food, we used the self-ordering machine and ordered and had our food in 5 minutes J
3. After the fireworks, I was text-walking (walking and texting at the same time… doesn’t seem that hard, but quite often is impossible to do) and accidently called my family back home instead of my friend, so I got to talk to my mom, and tell her how amazing my night had been and how much I loved Brussels during New Year’s Eve.

And the not so good point… I was curling my hair when I was getting ready to go out and I guess the mix of not blow-drying my hair completely dry and using a super-hot curling iron, plus  the product’s in my hair I managed to burn my hair, and now it smells like burnt… FML my poor hair must hate me!!! Also as me and Morgan were walking down some stairs, I slipped on a wet spot and fell down a couple steps, getting a pretty bruise on my leg, and as Morgan was making sure I was ok, she fell in the exact same spot. Ha-ha nothing like getting laughed at by a drunk guy who watched the whole thing happen.

Last night was my favorite night I’ve had in a while and was exactly what I needed to go out and do J Tons of fun spent with good friends and lots of memories to remember for a long time. Spending New Years in Europe is something everyone should experience at least once in their life time. Something about the way Europeans celebrate makes it just awesome. I know I will defiantly be back for another New Years in my life time! J