Brussels with My Rotary Family

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Wow, I am so proud of myself. I am getting so caught up on my blog! Sorry if my reports aren't quite as detailed or informative, but I am on a mission to get them all done today! So, my morning started out really early (way earlier than I wanted it to) because I had to meet up with other exchange students at the main Liege train station so we could in turn all take a bus together to Brussels. On the bus, I sat by Becky and her "newies" (all of us who just got here are newies, and the people from Australia, South Africa, and parts of Brazil that have been here since January because of their school system are oldies). They were really nice, a girl from Texas and another girl from the US somewhere... So we had fun talking on the bus, and during the ride some people walked up and down the bus and handed out their business cards and pins so then everyone started trading information and pins as well. So, by the time that I got to Brussels, I at least had quite a few pins for my blazer! Once we actually got to Brussels, we stood there for what seemed like forever waiting for everyone from the other districts to arrive. There, I kind of floated around talking to everyone and actually met up with a couple of people that I had actually been talking to on Facebook. So that was nice, that I semi knew people. And we did even more trading of the pins... People just came up to me and handed them to me, before I ever got the chance to give them one in return. So really, I got a lot more pins than I actually gave out.


Waiting, waiting, waiting




Rebound (went to Florida) , Reno, Florida, Washington, Florida

 After what seemed like forever while we stood around waiting, the whole group of about 250 exchange students were finally ready and we headed into the Royal Palace of Belgium. They acted like it was this huge deal, going in. All of the girls with purses had to put them into a little safety room for the time being and there were absolutely no photos allowed inside. But really, we walked around the entire building and sure, the architecture and the chandeliers were pretty, but there was hardly anything more than a few chairs and a table in almost every room. We literally walked into a couple of rooms, and I thought we had already been there... But hey, we ARE in Belgium, so I think that the Royal Palace is a must-see, even if it is practically empty and no one lives there...  I seriously would have just been satisfied with wandering around the outside, because that's really where it was the prettiest! (there I go again with my obsession of buildings... but they are all so beautiful in Belgium!)


La Palais Belges

After being herded through the palace, we then proceeded to walk through the middle of Brussels to get to another set of buildings. Now that, that was cool. it felt amazing to be walking down the middle of the city, of the capital of Belgium. I just wanted to scream "I'm in BELGIUM! For a YEAR!" It just felt crazy, like the exchange was finally hitting me. It was also fun to just get to talk to a bunch of other exchange students and hear their experiences (HEY, my family eats a ton of food too! I always feel so bad when I can't finish my plate... And so on...) I think we must have looked crazy to the random passerby though. Here is this huge group of teenagers, walking through the middle of the city wearing these jackets with a million pins on them. And all of the students seem to be of different ethnicities all talking in different languages, none of them French or Dutch. We definitly got A LOT of stares, and some people even went so far as to take a picture of us. I just wanted to turn around and take a picture of them too, yelling in perfect French: We're not any different than you guys! But then again, I guess we really were... Haha


Belgian Buildings <3




Watch out Brussels, there are exchange students coming to take it over!




Le Centre de Bruxelles

Once we finished our nice little walk through the city, we ended up in the Grand Place of Belgium. it's this little square, where you are surrounded by beautiful old buildings and it's just wonderful. In that square, we waited for at least another hour... But this time, it was really fun. I got to know even more kids from the U.S. (we were being shuffled around by country) and everyone just went crazy taking pictures with flags. And of course, everyone got so rowdy that we started yelling the names of our countries and then we yelled Belgium and then a group of us sang the entire national anthem, very loudly, in the middle of a main square with hundreds of other people around. It was pretty fantastic if I do say so myself...

The Grand Place

Just look at all of the detail on the buildings...

Gator Chomp with my Florida Girls :)

Classy, Belgium. Classy.



Brussels!

USA! WOOHOO! (that is only like a fourth of us...)

After waiting around in the square for what felt like forever (and at this point, we were also all starving..), we entered into this small part of the building into this wood room where we did the presentation of our host club flags to our chair people. Although this is apparently a very important thing for Rotary, everyone was tired of standing and hungry and didn't really care at this point. And having to hear everyone's name called, their host country, and their host district got particularly boring. Because there were only a few seats in the room, people were just sitting on the ground in their formal attire. So needless to say, this was NOT my favorite part of the day...

After the presentation of the flags, we FINALLY got to eat. The other girl I was with, we were like the first people in line at the restuarant and were so excited when all of a sudden we realized that we needed a ticket for lunch, and we didn't have one. Then slowly as the entire group of U.S. kids went into the restuarant ahead of us, a couple more people joined Klaudia and I in the non-tickets holders line. the group of kids had been one that we were hanging out with earlier, but we still don't exactly know where they were handing out the tickets and how in the world the six of us missed them... After eveyone else had already been let through, someone gave us tickets (it was obvious we were Rotary) and let us in. But by that time, almost all of the tables were full so our little group got seperated and I ended up having to sit at a table with all guys. One was an exchange student from Fort Collins, CO so that was kinda cool to be able to understand where he lived. The other two guys were from Belgium, and one spoke absolutely no English. So, needless to say, the whole lunch was a bit awkward, but the food was delicious and very Belgian (meatballs with a tomate-y sauce and frites which actually were invented in BELGIUM, not France).

After the lunch we went to parliament building, which was definitely a bit more exciting than the palace. But it didn't really make sense to actually have the parliament building, considering that Belgium hasn't had an official elected government for over a year now... But hey, if it works for you Belgium, who needs a government? In the parliament building we did ANOTHER presentation of the flags. But this time, a representative randonly chosen from your country walked down and gave them to a representative from the Rotary while the rest of us stood up and had our name announced. Now, for the smaller countries this was a great thing and they represented their countries well. But then, when they called the US and a third of the students stood up, now that was crazy. Everyone kind of did a gasp of suprise because I don't think that anyone really realized how many kids from the U.S. there actually were... After the whole flag thing, everyone came down by country to take a group picture (it was a tight fit for us...) and then were dismissed to start waling back to were the bus would come and pick us up.

Parliament!

Just doing so more waiting... No big deal.

Flags! (mine is the mountain in the lower left corner...)

Me, Chelsea (SC), and Emmaline (SC) reppin' the US

Pretending to be someone important...

Luckily, the bus ride back to Liege was a lot faster than the bus ride there (less traffic!), because I was really tired by the end of the day. When I finally got back to my house, it was really nice to be able to go and get changed out of my formal attire and just relax. Dinner was kind of late that night because Eddy and Pascale had been planning on letting me experience the Belgian culture and giving me exactly what I had already had for lunch. So instead, Eddy whipped up some dimsun or whatever it was called (like potstickers, but not) and we ate that instead. By the time we finished, it was like 11:30 and I was absolutely exhausted after an early morning and long day of walking and waiting, so I immediately went to bed.

Dang, I think this is the longest post yet! Hopefully it didn't bore you, but a lot of stuff happened and I had a lot of really good pictures too...