Blogs from Charleroi, Hainaut, Belgium, Europe

I woke up feeling fed up again. The reason was self-evident: it was my birthday and I was going to be spending it alone in a foreign city. And not just any foreign city, but Charleroi, one I knew next to nothing about apart from that it was in Belgium. I opened my laptop to find out more. What is Charleroi all about? Charleroi, it turned out, was the fourth largest city in Belgium. It was, by most accounts, a dump, long past its heyday, with some of the highest unemployment rates in Belgium. The city was wallowing in its faded industrial past and only had one tourist site of note – a photography museum. In 2010, a Dutch newspaper described Charleroi as the ‘ugliest city in the world’. More recently, a reviewer of ... read more

Hello Everyone once again! I just got back two days ago from my trip to the region with the most history in France! The day after i got back from my trip to spain my fourth host family (Laurent, Danielle, and Julie) picked me up to sleep over at their house for the night. At three oclock in the morning we all woke up to start our 8 hour drive to La Dordogne(a region in the south) of France. I slept must of the way in the car. We got to where we were staying in the afternoon. It was a big old cottage house that was divided into rooms each with a little kitchen and bathroom. It was really cute and the countryside around it was picturesque. Then during the afternoon we went to the ... read more

Hello Everyone, i know its been awile since my last Travelblog but being in Belgium now just seems normal to me-like a home so i dont often take many pics-but ill try to change that! Im really happy here still and im always busy with somthing to do Anyways about te Carnival-Lots of European countries have the tradition of Carnival which is to scare away the winter and to weclome the warm sun again. In belgium they have many differnt festivals for that-most of the little towns have a big bonfire and everyone dresses up. But in the town of Binche its pretty specail. They have all these people-manly guys who dress up as Gilles and throw oranges into the crowd, nobodies really sure the reason for this anymore cuz it goes way back, but the ... read more

Hello evryone sorry this took a while to write but here i go... I went to Paris by car with my host mother Karin, her sister and also my third host mother Katey, Danielle who is my fourth host mother and her daughter Julie. I was really tired because the night before i was at a Reto party for the sixieme so i didnt get a lot of sleep. I ended up sleeping in the car all the way there. We got into paris and i saw the Eifel Tower for the first time in the distance. All i could think is that the city of Paris was beautiful, with all the leaves yellow, red and orange all falling ontp the streets. We finallly got to our destination which was the Chateau of Versailles. It was ... read more

Hello everyone, This weekend was a pretty busy one for me. Friday I went to the theatre with my host club and the 4 other exchange students of my club. It was about a show with one African who tells the stories of his life growing up in Africa and also about moving to Belgium and how he found it. It was in French so i couldnt really understand a lot of it and i was also really tired so that didnt help very much. I got home at midnight and i had to wait till my host father Pascal and his friend Laurent to get back from their wine tasting because Laurent was driving me back to his house in order to be able to go to Luxemburg with them in the morning. So by ... read more