So after a late night the day before, I was lucky enough to get up around 8 and head out for an all day Rotary acitvity! Yay.... not. I mean, don't get me wrong. I really do love my Rotary club and am fully appreciative of everything they do for me. But no one likes to get up early and work an event when it is not their own personal choice to be there... So yes, my host mother got me there right at 10 like we were supposed to be. And guess who was the only YEP (exchange student) there.... Yep, that would most definitely be me! The first bit of the day, when I was all by myself, I had the EXTRA EXCITING job of taking grapes off of the stem and counting them. In the end, there were 711 grapes. Even 2 whole weeks later, I can remember this because I literally sat there for like 45 minutes doing only that! And once I got finished taking all of the grapes off the stupid stem, I got to put three on each appetizer plate. I mean seriously, three grapes? You might as well just not included them, there really is no since because having or not having 3 grapes on a plate is going to make a difference. And to top it off, they were gross grapes AND they had seeds in them.
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| Basically my prison for the day... And I know it looks small, but it actually quite big! |
Finally around 11:30, the other students all showed up. Only the YEP's from the clubs of Verviers, Verviers Vesdre, and Pepinster-Theux came because those were the clubs hosting the event. So if anybody really cares about names, that means there was Claire (from Texas), Riley (from Pennsylvania), and Becky (the Aussie!) from Verviers Vesdre, Tedde (from Iowa, goes to my school...) from Pepinster-Theux and me and Eliza (from Texas) from the Verviers club! When they got there, it was kinda the break between prepping the appetizers and everyone arriving for lunch. So we just got to chill in this garage-creepy backroom thingy to the kitchen were they had been setting the plates up. And, well, I guess working the event does have its advantages because we got to chow down on all of the leftovers that weren't put on a plate. This included some weird meat ham thing that kind of reminded me of bacon, but was super thin and had a funky taste to it. There was also cantaloupe and the gross grapes. Now normally, I don't really enjoy eating cantaloupe and I found the taste of the meat just a bit gross, but when you wrapped the meat around the cantaloupw it was to die for. Well, it was to die for when I was starving from not having eaten breakfast that morning...
Around 12 people started coming into the dining hall and our real job started. First what we had to do was give people their appetizers and take their tickets to make sure they paid for the meal. Once the finished, we bused the table and then were supposed to immediately serve them their entree, which was 3 different types of pasta. And after we cleared their pasta plates, they got Tiramisu. Now, this may not sound too complicated to you, but it most definitely was. The first problem was that unlike at real restuarants, none of us had specific tables to "wait" so we kept going to the same groups of people and getting confused or bringing out too much of something or forgetting about someone. The second problem was that it wasn't like everyone came in at the same time and was on the same course. Little groups of people just trickled in whenever they wanted and sat at completely random places on the 3 super long tables. So, it was nearly impossible to remember what people had had what course. The third problem was that unlike the appetizer, the pasta plates had to be put together. I mean, everything was already cooked, but we had to wait for people to put it on plates and hand it to us. So if there was a group bigger than like 3 or 4, they all got their plates at a different time. For the big groups, it even took like 5 or so minutes. And this is definitely a problem in Belgium, where the polite thing to fo is to wait to eat until EVERYONE has their food. Like, you never eat until the entire table is served. So, I am guessing that some people had the pleasure of eating cold pasta. The fourth problem was that some people really just liked to sit there and talk after they finished their meals. For like forever... And they had new groups of people joining them and talking to them. So of course, we forgot who exactly it was we had actually served, and either tried to serve people twice or thought the new people had already eaten. The fifth problem was that when the tables had been prepped, the silverware was already laid out. But for whatever reason, only like a third of the places had the little spoons that were meant to be used to eat the tiramisu and so we had to keep going back to the kitchen and either try to wash to little spoons, which we didn't really like doing because the way Belgians wash things is very unsanitary, or give them these gigantic spoons that filled the entire little plastic bowl that the dessert was in. And the sixth and final problem was that the plates of pasta were kept on this weird heating thing to try to keep them warm if the were put together a bit in advance, but I think the only thing that they accomplished by using that was burning all of the exchange students hands off... Now, if you weren't behind the scenes like I was, I don't think any of the mistakes or problems were that apparent. Unless, of course, you were an inpatient group of 14 people that complained if we didn't come and take their plates away and serve them the next course in like 2 seconds all together... But hey, that only happened once.
Luckily, there was like 2 different waves of people that came through so during the dead time all of us were able to sit down and eat together. It was around 1-ish by that time so we were all pretty hungry, even after chowing down on the leftover appetizers. The pasta was ok, but food here is just too bland for my taste. The white sauce, which at home would probably be some delicious garlic sauce thing or an alfredo, was just kinda like a thick colored water. Even with a bunch of cheese it wasn't all that great... But oh my goodness, the tiramisu was TO DIE FOR! I think over the course of the day (I was there from 10 to 7...) I probably had like 5 of them. And the justify my pigging out, it's not as if they were really that big of desserts. And it is not like I was taking them away from someone who paid, because even at the end there were extras they were trying to force us to eat when really all of the exchangees had been eating them periodically throughout the day.
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I think people stopped showing up around like 3 or 4ish for lunch, but then we got the pleasure of cleaning the entire place up. And boy was there a mess. I mean, we probably served between 150 and 200 different people, and although we tried cleaning up really well as we went along it seemed pretty impossible. We probably finished cleaning up between 6-6:30, and everyone else got picked up and went on their merry way. But Eliza and I, who were getting picked up by Eliza's semi-spacy host family because Eddy's parents were over at my host house, had to wait at least 30 minutes for her host dad to show up. And towards the end, the few Rotarians who were left came out (we were sitting outside on this little sculpture-like thingy) and waited with us. They probably asked a million times how we were getting home and when they were showing up. I KNOW I was saying the right thing in French, but they went on asking anyways as if the didn't understand the first time. And well, maybe they couldn't understand my horrible French accent, but I think that they just really wanted to go home and thought that by asking us a million times how we were getting home would make her host dad show up faster... Even though we told them that they could go, that we would be fine waiting alone in a safe town for a little bit, the crowd of people around us just kept growing and they refused to leave because we are their responsibility and all... Eliza's host dad finally showed up like 30 minutes after he siad he was going to and I got home just as Eddy's parents were in the car getting ready to drive out the driveway. I felt really bad, because we didn't learn that I had to work this event until Monday from my counselor, Mounsier Albert Reuter, and Pascale had made plans with them quite some time ago for them to come over that night and meet me. I felt really bad, but I know I will get to truly meet them soon enough!
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| Just taking some pictures before we were surrponded by concerned Rotarians... I love Eliza! |
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| Pretty, pretty, pretty |
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| I liked the heart. |
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| More beautiful! Oh and that yellow sign is what all the bus stops look like... |
Oh and I almost forgot the explain my lovely title. Travail in French is work, so that is self explanatory. But as for the epiphany part... Well, after the night walk and talking in French and listening to people's instructions all day and answering people's demands, I just really feel like I can understand the majority of what it being said to me know. The realization that suddenly I can just understand most of what is said to me was a truly amazing feeling. It's like all of sudden, everything just clicked and I can understand people (as long as they don't talk too fast or use too many big words... :) ). But well, as for the whole talking thing, we can just call that a work in progress...
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