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Published: January 29th 2012
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Getting up today, I felt amazing. No more yuck airline food, snorers or the constant whirr of jet engines. Breakfast was bread with this amazing tasting spread that tastes just like Dutch waffles (or Starbucks cameral waffles). By the time I got up it was around 12, and me and my host mum Sonia, went into Verviers to buy a cell phone, get my bus passes and report me to the social services. Verviers has a lot of old style English style buildings I guess, with narrow streets and a lot of infrastructional work going on. It’s crazy, you can pay your parking meter by text, something I’d never seen before. My cash passport card wasn’t accepted in the cell phone shop, so tomorrow we go to the bank to set me up an account I think. Tomorrow is also my first day of school ! I’m in class 5A, but I don’t know what my classes are yet, so I may spend a bit of time wandering around the school. We had eggplant and mince tonight for dinner (Aubergine au viande de boeuf, which I’d never had before, but it tasted great ! I’m so excited to taste more Belgium food. At this point I haven’t tried Belgium beer, chocolate, waffles, fries or snails. I have a lot to look forward to !
25/1/2012
Getting up today was a little less relaxed than yesterday, and I was up by 6:30am to have a shower and catch a ride to school with Sonia. I still can’t get enough of that Dutch waffle spread, I’m going to do everything in my power to try and bring a few bottle back to NZ. It’s worth the struggle. So stepping outside I was hit by a blast of cold air, and I could see every breath. When we arrived at school, Clara went off to her class, and Coline showed me around the school where I met the ’Prefect d’discipline’, and a few of my teachers. I take Drama, maths, English, French, Sport, religion, science, geography. I get tired just looking at all those subjects…. Nearly twice as much as I took in NZ. Ah well, C’est la vie ! there are around 800 students in the school, and it is a primary and secondary school all rolled into one. It’s pretty unusual…
So first I had religion, but I ended up going to a history class I think ? anyway I stayed in there and tried to pretend I knew even a little bit of the constant whirr or words flowing over me from the teacher. I ended up just reading an English to French dictionary. Second I had English, and met some people n my class that I started chatting to. The teacher didn’t like it very much I don’t think, but it was hard to tell. After that I had maths, where I understood some of the concepts, but none of the questions he posed or activities he set. Next was French, where I had to introduce myself (luckily in English), and people asked me questions about where I live an what my home is like ect. Then after that I had another math period, which was painful. I was relieved to find out that Wednesdays in France and Belgium mean that schools have only a half day, so we were finished by 12. I then went with Clara on the bus back home to Thimister, and basically slept the afternoon away. After a quick visit to a bank to open a bank account, I slept until dinner where we had chicken and Ratatouille ! It’s basically a whole lot of veges in tomato style sauce, which was alllgood.
26/1/2012
Today was a fresh new ‘Jeudi’, and after awaking and munching down on some ‘Lion’ cereal (Delicious crunchy nuggets of caramel and chocolate – another product NZ needs to desperately import), we were off to school again. A slow start to the day lead to me being invited by my new friends Islam, Christian, and my African mate who’s name has slipped my mind, to play soccer for their team tomorrow at the school champs in the gym. I was stoked, and this got me through the rest of the day.
27/1/2012
Finally, Friday ! It was awesome playing a game of indoor soccer today with my classmates, and we narrowly lost both games. Their football culture is so strong here though, i hope i can play more, mabye burn off some of the Belgium fries i've been tucking into lately...Anyway, today was my first time going out after school, for a taste of Belgium beer at a local pub called ‘Chicko’. Upon arriving their, I realised I’d left my wallet behind, but this didn’t affect the stream of Beers coming from the students. I tried ‘Hoegaarden’, ‘Duvel’ and their stock tap beer. Now I’m no professional beer Critic by any means, but this beer was fantastic. It had a freshness, and abeit being much stronger than it’s NZ counterparts, a real smooth taste that went down quite easily. Maybe too easily… So after a few hours there, I was exhausted from a week of school, a constant flow of French streaming from every direction, A tad jetlagged, and quite hungry, so I was picked up by Alain and taken home where I slept through dinner.
Waking up at 3am, I was quite thirsty, and so I decided to go downstairs for a glass of l’eau. Now when I arrived at the house, Alain clearly warned me of a burglar alarm setup in the house and how it worked precisely. But in my parched, tired, midnight state, my brain was in no such thinking capacity at all. As I moved down the stairs, I saw a red light up above me flash, and a beep sound. I thought, ‘well if this is the house alarm, this is pitiful’. So being quite scared I might wake up the house, I tiptoed upstairs and fished around till I found the code that Alain gave me to switch the alarm off once it sounded. I went back down to try switch it off, and in my foggy, morning-eye state, I punched in the wrong code.
Wow. Never again will I make this mistake.
This thing just exploded. I mean, try to imagine 1000 screaming babies with megaphones crammed somewhere inside your eardrum, and you’re starting to get the picture of what this monumental alarm was like. I feel sorry for the aural damage it might have given the neighbours, let alone the residents of this house who were probably in the mind set that (a now deaf) intruder was somewhere in the house. But down came Sonia, and quick as a flash typed in the code and silenced the beast. There was nothing more to do than laugh at the situation and offer many sorrys, and so after waking up the whole family at 3am in the morning on a Friday fright, I was off to a great start.
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