Advertisement
Published: December 2nd 2012
Edit Blog Post
6/11/2012
As uni students tend to do here, there was a massive party in the hometown of Florence’s uni, and so today afterschool, I headed off to join in on the fete. Having a central flat, we walked around grabbing drinks from her mates flats, and walked around town all together, trying to find something to eat. Pasta it was, and after a few more pre-drinks, off we went to the ‘Bunker’, which is basically like an awesome underground rock dungeon. This kind of night got me so keen to start uni, as they just seemed to know everyone, and they all invited us over to theirs for the next times. Finishing around 2 (during weekdays, that’s the cut-off time here…) we went back to Flo’s pad, and all crashed on the floor for the night.
7/11/2012
Today, instead of slinking off to the carre, I was headed for a three day excursion to a monastery with my class in a nearby place called Wavremont. Having had never been to such a place myself, i was understandably sceptical at what these three days would bring. The purpose was supposed to be a variety of people coming to give
presentations and having discussions on what kinds of choice we have out there to make after we finish school. They'd then sum up their working lives and explain the good (and bad) choices they made in order for them to end up where they are now.
It wasn't all lectures though, and the days were broken up with walks around the local flora. Along with being a generally beautiful place to walk around, it also gave us a nice opportunity to get to know the people in our class a bit better. Having a two hour chat with a Muslim, and an equally interesting one with a three-year metal guitarist, it was a sweet opportunity we don't really get at school.
One particularly interesting thing we got the chance to do was to eat a silent dinner with the monks and nuns there. Having a tortured life-sized Jesus hanging on the wall wasn't exactly comme d'habititude for me, but there we were, singing some kind of pre-dinner number in a Belgian monetary. As soon as it started, it was forbidden to talk, so things I'd taken for granted such as asking for things, and breaking awkward
silence with conversation, we no longer at my disposition. It did however, put you in this kind of state where you're unable to converse with others, so you think about things. But not just normal cognitive reflections, but deep inner thinking. The lack of sound does wonders in allowing a new level of focus when doing something usually surrounded by sound (eating). I dunno, it just seemed that you really had space and time to think. As many of the monks never really leave the monastery, and conversations with the same people all the time tend to get monotonous, it's generally a quiet place to be. There were some students who really didn't like the silence at all, albeit it being only 20 minutes
Following this format of a morning of presentations, lunch, another presentation, some activity, dinner and a final chat, we passed the three days at the monastery reasonably easily and had a pretty chill time.
9/11/2012
Today after school, I got a call from a random number, which turned out to be Mum and Dad, having just come through two night trains to be here this afternoon, to make the planned walk through
the woods tomorrow easier. So they basically said they were arriving, so I walked to the gare and met them there. They were supposed to come tomorrow, and although being a bit spontaneous, Nathalie and Mark were fine with it.
10/11/2012
Got to have a sleep-in today, which in comparison to the last few weeks sleep cycles, a true breath of fresh air. Today we were heading off into the fagne again, with Nathalie and Marc and their friends for a walk. The day started awesomely, but virtually as soon as we arrived, it started raining and getting all foggy. Luckily for mum and Dad there were lots of English speakers there that day, so they could converse quite easily with a lot of people. We walked for about an hour and then stopped. People were getting hip flasks and all sorts of bottles out of their backpacks, and started getting stuck into the alcohol. Mum and dad had never seen this kind of thing before, but as I reminded them, we are in Belgium. This continued throughout the day, and sometime after stopping for lunch, we found a little tavern that Dad and I had a 'Kwak' at. Having had one with pop, I thought it'd be a sort of short-term tradition to have a Kwak in amongst family reunions. As the weather started to get colder and colder, we finished the walk around 5 and stopped at another tavern at the finish of the walk. Getting home after that, we had an awesome cheese dinner like the one we had while nana and Pop were here, and it's fair to say that among the world class fries and beer, Belgium makes danm good cheese too.
11/11/2012
As this was the last day Mum and Dad were staying with us, I went to see them off in Brussels in the late morning. We were going to go to a few museums and the Atomium, but as there was some kind of public holiday on today, this was no longer possible and we went and got Starbucks and chatted about our trips and about home. I had to get to train pretty smartly around 5 as we were having dinner with Nathalie's brother and her family tonight. So we said our goodbyes, and I left Mum and Dad for this final part if their voyage to London, Singapore, and finally back to ol' NZ.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.047s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb