Last Blog Post

It seems that a popular theme with exchange students is posting a final blog. This is something that I should have done a long time ago, but hey, I'm doing it now! I was not able to post anything for pretty much the last half of my exchange, during that time I made several trips, I visited Italy, Denmark, France, Spain, England, The Netherlands, and Budapest. In that order. When I write it down like that it actually sounds pretty cool!

As you can see, I took a lot of photos with my hogan brothers shirt on. I'm hoping they will give me a hoagie per photo, but I'm not too attached to the idea.

The trip to Italy was with an orginization called BRESA, it was a trip that involved a lot of other Exchange Students, 84 to be exact.

We hit a lot of the big sites, Rome:

Venice

Pompeii

All of the Gelato shops we saw... Every single one.... Seriously I had Gelato twice a day for 9 days. 

Amalfi Coast 

Nope, that's not the same coastline, there is just so much beauty in Italy, this one is the island of Capri

It was an amazing trip, I made a lot of bonds that I will never forget, road trips are a great way to get close to folks, let me tell ya. 

I did a lot of other traveling as well, some with friends, some with family, all completely within the guidelines set by Rotary. Wait, what's that? Oh yeah, my exchange is over, ok now I can be honest! Belgium Rotary never actually responded to any of my travel requests so I took their silence as a go ahead. The only officially sanctioned trip I took was the BRESA organized one to Italy. You probably don't want to hear that but rest assured all of my travels were carefully planned and I made sure that my parents (both host and paternal) were well informed of my whereabouts. This is part of the reason that I did not blog about them before... Part of the reason.... The dots imply that I'm lazy.... 

Anyway, sorry Northstar, all I wanted to do was travel!

So, now that I have that off my chest I can continue, I went on to visit a whole ton of extraordinary places. Europe is just chock full of the coolest stuff on earth. 

The sky is the limit right? I have so many pictures, and yet the thing I regret most is not taking more pictures. There are a ridiculous amount of things I wish I had gotten a photo of. Why didn't I? Well, I only had my camera on me for about 35% of my exchange. Part of the idea is to try to blend in with the culture, try not to look like too much of a tourist. Which I accomplished very nicely. When I would travel with big groups I didn't care too much about standing out, and I went full tourist then. Which is why I have a large amount of photos from Italy. 

So I wanted to make this blog as full as possible, it being the last one and all. I hope I accomplished that. I would like to leave this blog with a final message. Everyone should go on Exchange. I doesn't matter where. My exchange was the best, and also the hardest year of my life. Sometimes it felt like the worst. I faced a lot of hardships, this is not something exchange kids like to talk about, everyone always shares the good parts of their exchanges, because people loving hearing about those exciting, fascinating, happy new experiences. Not about the times when you felt like it was too hard, and that you just wanted to go home. 

It happens to everyone, but DON'T let that be something that turns you against exchange. It may be hard, but dealing with those issues, and forging ahead, alone, helps you discover yourself so much better than you could imagine. Rotary says that the average exchange student grows 4 years on their exchange. It is spooky how accurate that is. 

So yes, exchange can be hard, but it's a package deal. Because with those hardships come the stories, the amazing friends, the trips to foreign fantastical places, and a drinking age so low you could faint from excitement.

I had the most amazing year of my life, there's no debate there. And do you know why? Not because I did awesome things and met the coolest people ever (well I mean partly). But no, the reason I had the best year of my life, is because I have the most amazing Grandparents in the world. None of my exchange would have been possible without them. So this entire post is dedicated to them. 

Thank you.

6 Months....

Once again it's been a little while, I find myself tired of using that phrase, I apologise in advance for any and all mispellings, to further my immersion into Belgium I have converted my computer into a French one. According to my spellcheck software every single one of these words is mispelled. Be impressed therefore with my spelling capability as it is all directly from my brain. 

Let's see, what's new. Well, clearly Christmas is over, as is New Years, Bon année by the by! How was your New Years? Mine was fairly epic, it isn't everyone who gets to say they spent New Years eve in Brussels! I wish I could show you pictures but I decided not to take my camera for its own safety, a valid concern as it happens that several of my friends lost their own cameras that night.

The night was spent doing a lot of dancing, walking, and getting losting (yes I am aware the last one isn't a word). The entire world decided that Brussels was the place to be that night so it was rather ridiculously packed in the city. The whole tale of how I spent the night is long and tedious so I won't go into it, but I saw the fireworks, kissed at the drop, and somehow ended up paying 9 euros for cut up tomatos (fancy restaurants are overrated). 

I have changed families! When we last spoke I was living in Jambes, juste à côté de (just next to) Namur. Now I have moved to a little village called Gesves. It is about 25 minutes away from Namur by car, same by train. It's a different sort of living here but I like it!

Other new things.... Ah Yes! I went on a little excursion to London! 

Boom! How you like dem apples?? Yikes, sorry not sure where that came from. But hey! London baby! 

It was absolutely amazing!! London is completely different from Belgium. I got to speak english again, with people in the street! The english was perhaps a little different, but it was still english! I got to ride on the London underground:

They have these helpful little signs all over the place that clear things up a bit.

I found the TARDIS.... I don't know how many of you watch Doctor Who, or even know what that is, but when you are as big a fan as I am, finding the TARDIS in London kind of makes your week.

Shout out to Simon, who is either a fan of this football club or the other one... Who can remember.

Below is Kings Cross train station, perhaps the name rings a bell. If it doesn't well, then maybe you haven't read the Harry Potter series. 

Of course I had to journey in, what would a trip to London be without a little magic??

The pubs have the greatest names!

How British is that?? 

Maybe you won't understand this, but one of the highlights of my visit was finding a chipotle. Allow me to elaborate on why. You see, sometimes we take things for granted, actually a lot of the time we take things for granted. And when you are seperated from these things you come to realise just how important to you they were. So it is between me and chipotle, I had been craving a chicken burrito for over 5 months, and when I saw the sign..... Well let's just say it was magical.

I have a whole list of things that I am going to do right when I get home, and another list of places I am going to get food at! 

This week at school my class went to go see two exhibits in Brussels. The first was on Radio, the history, the development, the utilisation of the radio throughout time, lots of stuff. I must admit it wasn't the most interesting exhibit I have seen in my life, but it was more fun then school so I'm not complaining. We also went to see a filme at the cinematek, two filmes in fact, both silent ones. In addition to the filmes we got a tour of the little museum they have there. I got to learn all about the different methods of filming, and the ways that people used to do things in ancient times before there were even cameras. We have so many ingenius methods of making images move you know. 

All in all it was an fun outing. The greatest bit for me was observing the differences from an outing back home. You see, we didn't take a bus or anything. We took the train, and we weren't designated a car or given reserved seating. Our teachers just gave us go passes and told us to split into groups of 5. Once we were in Brussels, we all went to the Radio exhibit, but somewhere in between the radio exhibit and the Cinematek, during our lunch break, we lost about 25 students. This didn't seem to bother the teachers so I guess thats normal. Then on the way back there was considerable confusion taking roll call, and half of us got on the wrong train. I thought the whole thing was a huge catastrophe and that the teachers would be angry. But once again, it seems that the students getting seperated from is normal. I am not quite sure if I understand the system completely but it is a lot more independant so I like it!

I almost forgot to mention! It's my 6 month marker in Belgium today... 

My bedtime is long past so I am going to hit it but has been great to write again! See you next week!