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

the calendar says it's christmas time

Well it’s Christmas Eve…

Blue skies, sun shining, and a temperature of about 2 degrees. Snow nowhere to be found. It defiantly doesn’t feel like Christmas this year. Sure there are Christmas decorations, a tree, presents, and a mall filled with restless shoppers trying to get the perfect gifts, but there isn’t Christmas baking, Christmas music, stockings hung over the fireplace or the traditions that I’m used to.  I know this is all a part of becoming a part of other cultures, creating new traditions and making new memories, but I have to say, being away from home at Christmas sucks!!! Maybe it’s because Christmas just came super-fast this year, maybe it’s the fact that I still had school yesterday, or maybe it’s because I’ve been so caught up in everything else going on in my life, but I looked at my calendar one day and realized that Christmas was only a week away and I hadn’t even started shopping yet.

Thankfully when my family sent my presents from Canada they also included a present for my host sister and for my host brother. That made Christmas shopping a little easier, but still I have to say I hate Christmas shopping. Spending hours in a crowded mall, over heating because you`re wearing your big winter jacket, arms filled with shopping bags, standing in checkout lines for what feels like forever.

Where is the Christmas spirit in that? After dealing with all of the hassles this year, I’ve decided that I am going to start Christmas shopping in October next year so I don’t have to deal with all that.

I don’t’ really know the plan for Christmas with my host family cause I haven’t asked, but from what I have gathered I think we are opening presents tonight at midnight, possibly after a big dinner, and then tomorrow we are having another big dinner with a turkey!!! I know that’s happening because my host mom asked me to make gravy for it! J

In Belgium Santa Claus is called Pere Noel, but he doesn’t bring presents on Christmas Eve when you are sleeping. St. Nicolas brings presents and candy and puts them in your shoes (stockings) on the 6^th of December.

Christmas is defiantly not as commercialized here as it is back home. There isn’t Christmas specials on TV, or at least that I know of.( I haven’t watched TV in a month, partially because I don’t have time, but also because the TV never works when I try to watch it…) I haven’t heard about a lot of Christmas party’s besides the one I threw! J Which turned out great, and I think everyone had a great time!  My favorite part of Christmas in Europe is all the Christmas markets. Every town seems to have one, and I love looking around seeing what everyone is selling. I even took a trip to Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen, Germany) on Tuesday with my host mom, Cat (Canada), Marina (Brazil), and Rodrigo (Argentina) to go shopping at the Christmas market. Germany was beautiful, with a lot more snow then Belgium has (which is none btw). There is so much more of Germany that I want to see, so I’m hoping to take a trip to Germany for a couple of days during Carnival in February! J

I should probably go get my day started now. It’s 2:30 and I haven’t gotten out of my bed yet today! J

Plan for the day: hang out, paint my nails and chill at home! J sounds like a perfect day to me! J

Country Count

One of the things I wanted to do this year was see as many countries as possible, and I am doing just that! :)

Countries I've been too.
-Canada (well no duhh)
-U.S.A.
-Mexico
-France
-Holland
-Belgium
-Germany
-Italy
-Vatican City (well technically it's a state)
-England
-Luxembourg(BORINGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!!!!!!!!, lasted about 1.5 hours before we jumped on the first train back home)

Countries I want to see this year,


-Czech Republic(hopefully in June)(just not enough time, permission, or money :( ))
-Denmark(as much as i want to go, i just don't have the time or the money to go this year :'( ))
So far the country count is at 9(&and a state), by the end of my exchange I want it to be at a minimum of 10! Challenge accepted! 
Challenge Succeeded! :)
edited-december 21st
edited-april 23rd
edited-may 20th
edited-july 2nd