Another week, another journey!

Hello! Bonjour a Tous!! Normally I would use Vous, but Tous is a familiar term and if you don't mind I prefer that. I must lead this post with an apology, it has been far too long since I last posted. In my defense, I have been having a really good time. Now, where to start? Well, I went to Liege to see "La Batte" Don't worry about Googling it, I'll save you the time, La Batte is a road in Liege that gets filled every Sunday by the largest open air market I have ever seen. There I found a rather large variety of things which I could buy, rather extreme variety, from the finest quality cheeses:

To suspender sweatpants :)

Yes those are sewn on, I have tell you, it took quite a lot of self control not to buy those, I'm still not sure I made the right decision....

A couple of friends and I decided to check out the Stromae concert in Brussels last Friday. And as Friday was a public holiday we decided to spend the day there as well, we bought some waffles:

Saw the Manneken Pis:

Visited the Grand Place to see Stromae run his soundcheck:

(you can see him)!

And then went to get some dinner!

We also stopped at the Museum of Costumes to view the last 60 years of popular styles, but I didn't take pictures. That evening when we returned to the Grand Place we discovered (to great dismay) that due to the massive amount of people trying to crowd into the space they had to block it off after 7. That was a bummer, technically we saw him perform that afternoon so it wasn't a total bust.

The next day was Kayak day! Descente de le Lesse, an activity organized by Rotex (Older Rotary kids who have already gone on exchange). A more beautiful day for the trip could not have been asked for! Sunny but not hot, I believe the most accurate term would be pleasant. About 100 kids participated in the activity, which was  sight in-itself. Luckily for us all the Descente de le Lesse is a family activity, I can't imagine what would have happened if we had tried rapids. As it was we still had our fair share of swamps. We all descended in pairs, which is something I am not used to, but thought was a good idea, buddy system and all. It took about 5 hours to get from the Gendron-Celles start to the Anseremme end. 

My lovely Kayak partner and myself.

That was Saturday, a couple friends stayed the night at my Host parents house and we explored Namur together. Lucky for me Sunday was very relaxed, because at that point I was very tired and not at all ready for Monday.

Then Monday came, and I went to FIFF! What is FIFF? The Festival International du Film Francophone of course :) 

 As it happens, since I am in the Audio Visuel program in IATA we are going to be spending most of this week viewing various award winning films, today we watched "Offline". It was very well done, I even managed to follow along, which I am very happy about, after the movie my class attended a Q and A with the main actor, which was cool!

Well, I think that is all for now, I need to remember that it is easier to post more often then all at once, I will write again soon, that is a promise! A ton tot!!!!

1 Month in Belgium!

Hello ladies and gentlemen! Tomorrow, the 23 of September is my personal celebration of 1 month in Belgium!! I have made a video in honor of the date. Well, really, I just made a video, and then I remembered that the 23rd was coming up, so I decided to link the two. In the video I take you through my average Friday, and do a little dancing..... Now, when I upload a video to Blogspot, the quality always gets taken down to a level I really don't like, so I decided to post it on Youtube and just put a link on here:

http://youtu.be/5O1kYHxCp1Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O1kYHxCp1Q&feature=youtu.be

Yeah, since I am in Belgium, I am not sure if the link will work for those watching from the states, if neither of those links work let me know and I will find a work around! Thank you for reading, and hopefully for watching my video!

Stilt fights, German gymnastics, and a little bit of folk dancing.

Right, so in my last post I said something about a nice quiet Sunday, well for half the day I achieved just that, I sat around, read a book (on my Kindle, Thank you Papa) and was overall lazy. But I had already decided weeks ago that I was going to check out the Combat de l'Échasse d'Or (Fight for the Golden Stilt). This is a time honored tradition that has been happening in Belgium for a very long time. Wiser, more learned men could tell you how long exactly..... But I am not one of them, and a Google search would take a bit of effort on my part. All you need to know is that the fight is between 50 Echasseurs (Stilt Fighters), 25 on stilts colored Black and Yellow, half on what I affectionately dub candy canes (or Candystripers), but in reality are white and red colored stilts. All fifty of these Echasseurs march in to much applause, drums, trumpets and a variety of festive sounds, they mill about for a few minutes displaying their stilt skills and then separate to the different sides of the square in which they are fighting. They face off, for a moment its very quiet, then the drums start again and that is the cue for the attack, and all of a sudden the fight has begun!! The fight is a very interesting thing to experience, I am not sure what to compare it too. The Echasseurs stay in close knit groups, never straying from the pack, because if they do, they are isolated and by the opposite team, cornered, and put to the ground. It is fascinating to watch, the Echasseurs shuffle around a large part of the time but when the moment comes to strike they move with astonishing speed and take down the unfortunate bloke who got separated. I want to show you some pictures I took of the fight:

Here you can see all the fighters filing in

Here (below) you can see the youngest Echasseurs, they have their own fight away from the rest and are left alone till they knock each other over.

 


Below the fighters are lining up on opposite sides of the square

Here you can see the two kids going at it, with an older fighter keeping watch.

Most of the fighting looked like the picture below, all huddled up waiting for an opportunity to strike and take down.

The falls were a little brutal, everyone went down hard, right on cement, without any padding, can't say I'm jealous.

These two black and golds attempted to take down a candystriper but he defended and ended up knocking the man on the left off balance.

A disappointed fighter on the ground 

Below is an example of some of the viscous swipes the fighters would take at each other.

This was a very common take down "move", one fighter would wrap a stilt around the other and attempt to force them down, if they are successful they put down the other fighter and walk away, if not, they both go down, which is what usually happened.

Some falls were really really bad, this poor soul twisted a foot on the way down, luckily paramedics were on site.

After about 45 minutes of fighting, the Echasseurs who had been downed created a barrier and shrunk the combat area.

 Here you can see the last Black and Gold fighter battling against 7 Candycanes!!

He survived for over 15 minutes! All by himself, it was very impressive.

Finally a Candycane took him down, the fighters celebrated for a moment and then after a few moments the remaining "Teammates" turned against each other and started battling to decide the last man standing.

These two below ended up knocking each other over and leaving the two who were hanging back to finish the fight.

And finally, the last two combatants facing off. 

Below the victor is shown being awarded with the Golden stilt, the last fighter from the Black and Gold team was also awarded with a stilt, I didn't get a picture of that one though.

There were quite a few other things going on that day besides the stilt fights, quite a bit of dancing actually, traditional dance and also some German gymnastic type dancers.

I even got some video for you!

I believe I said traditional dance:

There were also some very gaudily dressed fellas that had some fun with flags.

They had some pretty cool moves, definitely made me rethink my position on flag bearers.

Well, my Sunday definitely went different from what I planned, but I didn't mind too much, this cultural side of the Wallonie celebration was eye opening to say the least! I hope everyone enjoyed the post, keep checking back!