The promised pictures

Here are a few pictures that I've taken here and there - just in time for my one month anniversary of being in Belgian (it was Saturday).
I am planning on posting a better picture of the house when I get around to taking one. But for now, this is my new lovely house in Arbre, Namur, Belgique.

This is the chateau (the castle) - not the chapeau (hat) which I always want to say in placeof chateau - next door. I literally live next door to a castle. Only in Europe...

My host brother, Alexis. We were just starting off on a short bike ride.

I mentioned the obstacle course that Belgian's put out for their drivers - here's an example. There are a lot of these, randomly placed on the roads.


I saved his life! I thought he was kinda cute in a slug sort of a way.

This is one of the many pastures that cover the countryside around my town. This one runs along one side of the house - this picture was taken out the window of the room that contains all of the closets in the house.

A few houses along the main road in my little town of Arbre.


In the big city - Namur - the buildings run right along the river, La Meuse.

During a weekend outing with the family, we stopped at huge old church in a nearby town. Actually an abbey now become a church plus boarding school.

The youngest of my host siblings, Amelie, caught in the middle of a bounce.


My host sisters Emma and Amelie at a different nearby town, one where my host mom's parents live on the weekends. This spot at the river was amazing - it felt like it had been pulled from a movie. It was your iconic European village, with charming houses, and a stone bridge crossing a stream that ran down past green fields and trees in the distance.


The same stream, looking the other direction.


The fireworks of the Fete du Wallonie - photo taken by Emma.

After the fireworks, we waited on the bridge, and looking up the river, the city lights along the street reflected quite beautifully into the river.





Wallonie - the name of the French-speaking region in Belgium - projected on to the citadelle (see below) along with the rooster, Wallonie's mascot/symbol for the Fete du Wallonie.


The citadelle in Namur - basically an old fort - lit up at night after the fireworks.


My host sister, Emma on one of our bike rides around the countryside.

It's always the little things

So schools been coming. The classes really are not that hard - I'm basically back into junior year. Here it's called cinqieme. I've covered the math, the science, the geography, and so on - but the language barrier brings the classes right up to my level. Being a math nerd that I am, math is one of the classes I look forward to - I don't have to worry about understanding French quite as much because so much of the classes is numbers. I understand the material and after a short refresher remember what exactly I need to do for most of the problems. But the other day was stuck - I couldn't figure out how one graph had two intersections on the x axis, at 2,5. I was sure the instructions (in French) we referring to one point, but then why were there two numbers - 2,5? I sat there, totally lost, and finally called the teacher over to explain it to me.

I swear, I really did know that in Europe, 2.5 is written with a comma. Two and a half is not two point five, it's 2,5. I knew that little detail, but the change hadn't really settled in to my mind, fixed itself as the new normal way to do something.


Let me assure you, I remember now.

Who knew heaven was covered in Nutella?

So Saturday night I went to the Fete de Wallonie, which is basically a full out, all day, all night, 4 day long (if not longer) party. I think it's a celebration of Wallonie, the French part of Beligium, but my impression is that for the majority of the population it’s really just a party for the sake of a party. I went with my family, wandering around among the three or four different stages with different bands playing at each. The streets inbetween the stages were blocked off for cars, and food stands and other fesitval type jewelry, clothing stands. At one of these I bought my first real Belgian waffle. I’d had waffles here with the family – but these were the street vendor, still hot, still fresh kind. It's different. And amazing. I can't even describe how heavenly - the dough was soft, almost melty and warm inside the glazed outer crust, and mine was slatherws with Nutella.... Wow wow wow I want another one so badly.
After an hour or two, around 10 o'clock, we headed to one of the bridges over the river that runs through town, to watch the fireworks. The city turned off all the lights in the general section of streets near the river where the fireworks would be, and the show began. The firework were accomanied by music - an interesting mix, from an old Belgian singer, to a popular modern Belgian rapper, to the Black Eyed Peas, to the old song that goes "Yes you're lovely..." and "Just the way you look tonight..", to the Abba song "Dancing Queen". It was a good show, and a nice night.

So I've found myself something else to enjoy doing here in Belgium - bike riding. My first time here was a maybe a week or so after I arrived - Erika offered to show me the village, so we went on a short ride - not more than 15 minutes. I had to reremember how to ride a bike, which didn't take long but did event in, I'll admit, a couple embarrassing false starts as I tried to get going for the first time in a little while. It was a nice day – if I remember correctly, the sun was actually shining, so we took a small shortcut up to the top of the hill of the village, then biked back down the hill and home in a sort of a circle. And I loved it.
So the next day I went again by myself, and had the perfect bike ride. It was sunny, but the air was too chilled to allow it to be hot. I drove up into the village, but then instead of following the short loop back to the house, I continued on upwards, driving past the many small pastures and not-so-small houses that make up the countryside here. The road, thin and winding like almost all the roads here, was a slight uphill grade on the way up, which meant on the way back I could coast the whole way. I was all alone, with just the occasional car passing by, so I just enjoyed the solitude and beautiful country. That was the first time it struck me that I really am in a totally different place than Rio Rico, and I love it here, too.

The first day of school (followed, quite unexpectedly, by the second day)

Well, I lived through the first day of school! It was extremely difficult and quite exhausting - not just because everything was in French and my mind was overloading trying to comprehend even a sliver of it, but also because it is slightly discouraging when you are overwhelmed by tons of people who have their group of friends and are happy as they are, and you can't try to join their conversation because you don't know what they are saying.
So basically, I was drained, exhausted, and at least slightly discouraged.
But I forgot that it was the first day, and the first day is followed by the second day. At the end of the second day I am sitting here writing this feel not hardly discouraged or stress, only slightly drained and in an overall better mood. The classes were more comprehendable today, I felt like I actually made some progress with making friends - all sorts of positive things. And of course the free period I had first thing this morning certainly helped.
Classes here are not like those at Rio Rico High School - a classroomfull of students are each in what is called a class - mine is 5b - and they have a bunch of their subjects, what are called courses together - they see eachother a lot basically, sticking together through many of the courses. And each day has different courses - my first hour Monday is not the same as my first hour Tuesday or Wednesday.
There are 8 hours worth of classes each day plus a lunch period and two ten minute breaks during the day. Monday I started with Geographie, and we spent mot of the period on the basic introduction to the rules of the classroom, the basics of the course, the usual first day in most classes. It almost all went over my head, but I didn't sweat it because it was just the usually pretty common-sense rules.
Next was Complementaire de Francais - basically extra French classes. This class was the hardest I've had so far - we started writing in French basically immeadiately. I was confused and lost, and my poor neighbor was stuck with a partner (we wrote our stories in pairs) who was basically of no help. This class was a big part of why I felt so tired and discouraged at the end of the day.
However, after that hour, I had two hours of Spanish - i should remark that an hour is actually just a 50 minute class period. I understood the most in that class that I had all day because the professor spoke almost solely in Spanish. But more than that, because we were all not fluent in Spanish, I think it was the fact that she spoke slowly. Anyway, I was pleased with myself - I understood a lot and as this is a first level class, I'll be keeping Spanish in my mind without having to worry about getting lost trying to learn a hard level of Spanish in French. Lunch was followed by my second hour of Complementaire de Francais. Again discouraging and tiring, though I am determined to make it not that way next week. I next had my easiest class of all, English. This is more advanced English than the Spanish class - they read articles and have discussions basically trying to get the students to think, speak, read and write fluently. I just enjoy the break, breeze through the homework and am used as a prop by the teacher as needed, for example when no one else in the class can answer the question.
Two hours of religion followed but it was more of the basic intro that I didn't understand and didn't sweat.
Because this is so much longer than I'd hoped it would be, I'm just going to say that today my free period was great, my classes weren't quite as hard, and I had a couple Belgian students to hang out with during class. I'm feeling much more positive about the year than I was and am ready to tackle dreaded Gym tomorrow (especially since tomorrow, like every Wednesday, is a half day).