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:
- 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
- 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
- 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
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