That picture is from my after school french class, and yes, that basket is full of candy!
I went to visit the Grand Place in Brussels because I felt it would be irresponsible of me not to visit during the Christmas season, I was reasonably impressed. I visited in the evening so the light show that they have set up was up and running, allow me to show you a small clip!
Nothing can really fully describe the sights, smells and sounds but I will say that it really felt like Christmas, except there isn't any snow... As a young man coming from Northfield Minnesota the lack of snow is becoming a teeny bit of a bummer. The cold is there but there isn't any snowfall in my part of Belgium. If all goes to plan I will not actually be spending Christmas in Belgium, but in Germany. My uncle, well really my Tio, lives in Frankfurt with his wife and child and I have been invited to spend the holidays there. I am very excited to visit Germany, I have never been before nor do I know the language but I arrived the same way in Belgium and that all worked out ok!
Back to all things Christmasy, I went skating!! That was very fun. I went with a huge group of Exchange students, and due to the size of our group, instead of skating in downtown Brussels we went to an actual full time ice rink, one of the biggest in Belgium apparently. It was a whole lot of fun, I saw my first Zamboni!
Now the experience level of the skaters in our Rotary group went right from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other, we had the Canadians (most of whom have been skating since before they could walk) and then we had the Brazilians. Brazil is a warm country, and the populace does not often have the chance to skate. This is very apparent when you put 15 Brazilians on an ice skating rink. These are kids who have never seen snow, and yet they are bold enough to strike out onto hard, unyielding, mercilessly hard ice with blades strapped to their feet. That ladies and gentlemen is how Rotary kids work, you show us something we have yet to experience and we will want to try it. I would like to say that these brave souls were able to master the art of skating in the 3 hours that we were at the rink, but I don't think master is quite the right word. Grasped is the one I am looking for, many of them were able to grasp the concept and were indeed making their way around the rink at a good speed by the time we had to leave.
One of the great things in Europe is the Metro system. That is something that I never really experienced back home, but here it is a vibrant and always interesting place. Where else would you find a man playing an accordion?
Because for real though, you just don't see a lot of accordions in Minnesota, but stuff like that is all over here, and I love it! It's raw culture, just right there in the street!
I saw Santa Clause! It has been a long time since I took a picture with the old man but we stumbled upon some Coca cola awareness campaign thing, and he was there so I decided I might as well!
I also got, I dunno, 3 cans of free Coke, so that was nice.
I feel like I am forgetting to write something...... OH YEAH! That's right, I went on a limo ride!
A school friend of mine had his 18th birthday party in Louvain le Neuve and thought it might be cool to hire a limo to take us there. Definitely a classy thing to do, limos are just really really cool!
Well, that is all for this week, I hereby promise to be a more consistent writer from this point on, I think I might finally have a system. Any way, lots of love to all you reading, spread it around!
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