Linking to Linkebeek

Wait, what? Quoi? I'm leaving...?

2011-07-08T01:19:00.000+02:00

The moment has arrived for me to do what every exchange student who keeps a blog must do: talk about the end of the exchange trip. So here we go:

In two days from the time that I write this, I will be on American soil for the first time in almost eleven months. I will be back in the land of big cars, wide open spaces, and straight streets...my giant country will be once again all around me.

Really, as I write this, I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that I'm leaving Linkebeek, the place where I've lived for eleven months. It's like I'm looking at my life from afar... I'm disconnected from what will happen within 48 hours. I guess it'll hit me on the plane...that's what I keep telling everybody.

However, I will worry about that when it comes... right now I want to describe where I am at this moment.

I'm sitting at the computer in my host family's house, a pair of headphones over my ears playing music from a CD that my friend Clémence gave to me, just before we said goodbye for the last time. Right now, as I write this sentence, I'm listening to "Travel the World," by Superbus.
I'm sorting through hundreds of photos...trying to figure out which ones to start putting on the internet. The house is dark, my host family is asleep-- it's 1 in the morning. My American exchange student friend Johanna just chatted me on Facebook, asking in French whether I was ready or not. Non, pas du tout. Not at all.

I feel just normal, sitting here at the computer with my headphones on. I can't think that in less than 48
hours, my life will get turned upside down.

I'll talk about that in more detail when I'm on the other side of the ocean. Because I have one day left in Belgium.

Photos from a packed couple months, part 2: Looking back at my Belgian spring

2011-06-19T14:35:00.000+02:00

You could say that the summer has "started"-- especially in the U.S.: school is out, the weather's getting nice, and the days are the longest of the year. Here in Belgium, however, school hasn't completely finished, and it's currently the end-of-the-year period of craziness. I'm completely immersed in it-- I have been trying to cram everything I need and want to do here before I leave on July 9th. So, needless to say, there are quite a few things to do.

This spring that I have passed in Belgium has been a spring unlike one I have ever experienced, and unlike I will ever experience again. Describing it in words would be pretty tough, so I will do the majority of the description with a somewhat random assortement of photos. Scroll down the page--the text that is above the photos corresponds with each one, and the asterisks divide ideas and places.

*****

I took a bike ride to the Waterloo lion (about 10 km from my house), passing beautiful old farm houses on my way down the Chausée d'Alsemberg...

and arriving at the famous Waterloo lion, marking the battlefield where Napoleon was finished.

*****

Tulips on my street....

*****

Each weekday morning, I rode the bus...

Passing the Square des Heros (the monument to the war veterans) in the middle of Uccle, which is in the southern part of the Brussels-Capital region, or about 20 minutes on the bus from my house in Linkebeek.

After getting off the bus, I walked up this street...

Toward my school, Notre Dame des Champs.

Up the creaky wooden stairs...

To the "rassemblement," where the teachers take roll, and then to class...

A classic classroom scene...

The corner where my group of friends and I meet for lunch

Mes amis!

*****

With the English class one day in March, we went to see an exhibition called l'Amerique: c'est aussi notre histoire (America: it's also our story). It told the story of the interactions between Europe and America from the European colonialization up until modern times.

In that exhibition was an old American Field Services ambulance... the American Field Service ambulance drivers during World War I were the ones who started the AFS exchange program.

*****

This year, I particpated in the Belgian scouts-- I helped organize activities for kids ages 5-8. The Belgian scouts aren't at all like American scouts-- it's a bigger deal here, and much less formal. Their final party of the year was in April--here are a few pictures:

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My friend Trey (another American exchange student) and I photographed his AFS backpack in St. James' park while we were in London in April. AFS rocks!

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My friends and I at the Bal de Rhetos-- the Belgian equivalent to the senior prom, only a lot more relaxed. No worrying about grand marches, dates, prom king or queen, who drives to the dance....just dressing up European-style (cool yet fashionable) and dancing to a DJ who plays the right music. And--the strangest thing for me as an American-- I bought a (totally legal) beer from my geography teacher.

*****

Odd violins in the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels-- a collection of musical instruments from all over the world.

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Belgian countryside taken from the bus between Libramont and Bastogne. I went to visit the town of Bastogne with some other American exchange students-- Bastogne is where an important part of the Battle of the Bulge was held during World War II.

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A couple weekends ago, I took a two-day trip to Amsterdam. On train at 6:20 A.M. Saturday morning from Brussels, and back to my house Sunday night at 11:30. I took around 200 pictures...here are some:

My camera was straight...the buildings were slanted.

I have grown to love bright red flowers with a European city background.

*****

Recently, I explored a part of Brussels called Ixelles, snapping pictures along the way.

A classic Brussels street, somewhere near Avenue Louise...

one of the older Brussels trams-- they go all over the city.

One of the Ponds of Ixelles

The streets in this area are lined with houses that look like these...

or these...

and you sometimes find cars like this...

I wandered around the grounds of the Abbaye de la Cambre, an abbey that dates back to the 13th century...I walked between the hedges and took a look inside the beautiful church.

****

As I returned back into Linkebeek, the bright red flowers that I passed in the planter in front of the Delhaize supermarket seemed almost flourescent with the sun shining through them.

The blue, patchy-clouded sky provided a beautiful background for the church in the center of the main square.

I slid down the handrail rather than walking down the stairs toward my house.

It seemed like the right thing to do.

*****

Belgian portraits: Three meals

2011-06-09T18:35:00.006+02:00

A few months ago, I wrote about what you can find in Belgian supermarkets. I'd like to continue that idea and describe a very Belgian set of meals. The foods I will talk about here are some of the things that I have eaten the most throughout the time I've been in Belgium.

Generally, in Belgium, you have three meals a day, plus a goûter, or snack, that you eat after school. Or, that's at least how it goes in my host family (I have three teenage host brothers, so we eat quite a bit). There's also an apero, which isn't really a separate meal, but I'll describe it here as well.

I have tried many new and different things in Belgium, including duck liver (fois gras) at Christmas, beef bone marrow (it was odd...), and chicon (it's a green, somewhat cabbage-like vegetable). However, for this post, I will discuss some of the most ordinary food I eat here. I'm describing the meals of a weekday, when I go to school. That means the breakfast isn't very leisurely (depending on how late I get up), and the lunch is simple. However, it's normal. So here goes.

Le Petit Déjeuner (Breakfast)

First thing in the morning, you eat bread. Bread is the base of the Belgian diet-- I don't even know how much bread I've eaten since last August. The bread here, though, is much different than American bread. First of all, it doesn't come in a plastic sack-- you go to either the bakery or the supermarket and get loaves of bread. Secondly, it always has an actual crust, unlike the soft American breadcrusts. And finally, the main difference from American supermarket bread, really, is that it is good, and worth eating daily.

You buy bread maybe three or four times each week (we do, at least, with six people in the household), each time in loaves that you slice at the supermarket. It comes in paper sacks. After two or three days, your loaf of bread goes stale (it's humid here), so you have to make toast out of it. If you have any left, you put it in the compost.

Along with the bread...Nutella. Like the bread, I don't know how much I've eaten since I've been here. In one week, my host family goes through at least two 1-kilogram jars of Nutella.....that's a lot. For those of you who don't know what Nutella is, it's a chocolate-hazlenut spread-- it tastes almost like chocolate icing. It's very sweet, and delicious. Almost everybody I know eats it. And eating it with bread is very simple-- spread it on with a knife, in as thick of a layer as you like. It's called a tartine-- a word for a sandwich or bread with something on it.

Other things you can put on your bread in the morning...

Dark chocolate spread,

Speculoos spread (Speculoos are little Belgian cookies that taste a bit like a cross between graham crackers and gingerbread-- this is a spread that tastes exactly like the cookies),

Chocolate sprinkles....you put them on bread with butter. This is a very Benelux breakfast-- from what I've heard, only people in Belgium and the Netherlands eat this.

Déjuner/Dîner (Lunch)

So, for breakfast you eat bread, pretty much every morning. For lunch, you eat...more bread.

Generally, for lunch, I pack sandwiches. Belgian sandwiches are very simple-- you don't generally put more than one or two things on them. I often eat bread with a spread on it, such as the ones below. There are lots of different spreads, generally a meat such as chicken, turkey, tuna, or crab mixed with mayonnaise or another sauce. Also, you can put lunch meat, such as ham or salami, or cheese, between two pieces of bread and it tastes perfectly fine, because the bread is so good.

However, on the day I took this picture, I had bought a sandwich à l'américain. Contrary to its name (américain=American), this is something very Belgian.

Filet américain préparé is raw beef, mixed with mayonnaise, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and sometimes mustard or egg yolks. The first couple times I tried it, I didn't know what it was (it was the classic exchange student experience, really: me: "what's this?" host mom: "[something I don't understand] American [something I don't understand]" me: "ok, I'll try it"), but I liked it. It was after a month or so that I learned that it was raw beef.

de l'américain

But my fellow Americans, don't get grossed out yet. Beef here isn't like the growth-hormone-and-chemical-filled American beef-- it's taken good care of. Each producer of meat has to keep very meticulous records of each cow they get their beef from, and if they don't they're closed down. And the cows come from nearby-- not some feed lot 800 miles away. So, the filet américain préparé is fine. You never hear of people getting ick from eating it.

My sandwich

Funny thing about l'américain: nobody knows why it's called "American." I tell people that most Americans would never think of eating raw beef, and that you could never get it served on a sandwich. They're often surprised. But farther into the conversation, the grim joke about it being the processed meat of my compatriots often comes up....

Goûter (snack)

Usually, in my host family at least, we come home from school and have a snack, generally consisting of a drink and...more bread.

A favorite drink is iced tea... the sweetened Lipton tea is called the same thing in French, actually: de l'ice tea. Here, my host brother Diego models the bottle.

For the goûter, the first choice (of me and my host brothers, at least), is...Nutella! Just like at breakfast. Here, Quentin, Diego's twin, demonstrates making his tartine à Nutella.

Dîner/Souper (Dinner)

Before the dinner, there is a somewhat stronger tradition than in the U.S. of eating a snack-like "apéro." Generally, it consists sometimes of potato chips (the two main flavors here are either salt or paprika), sometimes of olives, sometimes of bruchettas....at least in my host family. I'm sure it depends from family to family.

In this case, we had ketchup-flavored potato chips. I don't remember if you see those often or not in the U.S.

Also, drinks are sometimes served with the apéro. My host brothers generally drink Coke or iced tea or something like that, and I do much of the time as well. However, I'm allowed to drink alcohol here (the minimum drinking age is 16), and I can't easily (or legally) drink Belgian beer in the U.S. So sometimes I have a beer. Below are two basic beers: Jupiler, a pale lager and the beer you see the most often in Belgium, and a kriek, which is a beer brewed with cherries.

The apéro is by no means something formal-- just a time to chat and have something to drink before dinner. It's quite nice.

Here are the ingredients for the dinner we had the night I took these photos:

Steak,

(My host mom Aude preparing the steak)

Frites,

(la friteuse)

Salade.

Steak, Frites, Salade.

Probably my favorite dish here in Belgium. They go very well together-- the meat, the fries, and the salad-- you can eat the fries with mayonnaise if you like, if you want to act very Belgian.

Let me just talk a second about the fries. This is something I, and probably the entire population of Belgium wants to communicate to the U.S.A.:

"French Fries" are NOT French. They are Belgian.

This has been a subject of many conversations I've had here. People know that Americans call them "French" fries, and they remind me (somewhat defensively), that they're Belgian, not French. After living here, I'm quick to agree, and quick to denounce the stupid name that Americans have come up with. In Europe at least, every other country thinks of Belgium as the place where fries were invented, but somehow in the U.S. we've missed that. So, now that i have that cleared up....I return to my original discussion.

This is a very Belgian meal.

Le dessert (dessert)

Fraises Belges! Belgian strawberries! I never knew that they grew strawberries in Belgium, but they do. Tasty ones, at that. And they're quite pretty. So, after a dinner of meat, potatoes, and salad, strawberries finish everything off nicely.

Voila. What you would eat during a normal day in Belgium.

And, just one more thing...

I figure I can't mention the normal food here without mentioning the normal chocolate. Côte d'Or is the chocolate you can find anywhere here. It's delicious, of course-- and I have never seen it in America.

Really, Belgians don't eat much more chocolate in general than Americans. They just eat much better chocolate.

Here is what we had in the cabinent when i took the pictures:

Milk chocolate with chopped hazlenuts,

Dark chocolate with whole hazlenuts,

and 70% intense dark chocolate.

Aaah, la bouffe Belge. Delicious.

Photos from a packed couple months, part 1: Easter Vacation

2011-06-07T19:57:00.001+02:00

Though the Easter vacation was almost two months ago, I still want to talk about it, because it was amazing. My host family and I went to the Belgian coast, and we stayed at a beach house in little town called Duinberg. This break was in the middle of April, and two weeks long-- long enough to get a great feel for a classic Belgian vacation, and to go to London as well. In this post, I'll describe it, even though it's a little out-of-date....

***

Duinberg, Knokke-Heist, West Flanders, Belgium

On the Belgian coast

Classic scene of the Belgian coast-- appartments, the dike, the cabanes, the beach, and then the sea off in the distance

Scene from my bike, looking toward the port of Zeebrugge

On vacation at the Belgian coast, you can rent tons of different kinds of wheeled vehicles that you pedal along the dike. The ones with four wheels are called cuisses-stax (pronounced kwees-stacks)

It kept striking me how beautiful everybody was, well-dressed and polite, walking or riding along the dike.

Everywhere you go here, you hear two languages-- French and Dutch. You can never tell which one a group of people will be speaking until you hear it...

You go everywhere on your bike-- it is completely flat on the coast.

Classic breakfast at the ocean...bread or pastries (in the paper bags), chocolate sprinkles (in the yellow box), and...

...tiny shrimp on pistolets (small round pieces of bread) with butter.

Scene from nearby our vacation house

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Sluis, the Netherlands

A twenty-minute drive away

Knokke, the town where we stayed, is very close to the Dutch border. One afternoon we went to the little town of Sluis and wandered around for a little while.

Dutch cheese

wooden shoes,

tulips,

and of course, a windmill....

Just five kilometers across the border, and things really change-- you can tell you're in the Netherlands for sure.

***

Le Coq/de Haan, West Flanders, Belgium

Visiting my AFS counsellor

At another point in the week, I biked to the little town of Le Coq (in French)/de Haan (in Flemish), about 15 km south of Duinbert, to visit Elsa, my AFS counseller. We toured around, and rented a cuisses-stax

Elsa, my AFS counsellor, and her boyfriend Vincent on a cuisses-stax

Woo!

Then we went and got ice cream, and I got this picture of a stack of Belgian waffles...complete with Belgian flag.

***

London, England

A three-day trip across the channel

My friend Trey (another American AFS exchange student) and I took the bus from Brussels to London, for a whirlwind three-day trip. I could fill this post with pictures, but Google has only given me so much space. So here are some highlights.

***

Back to

Duinberg, Knokke-Heist

For the last few days, I returned to the coast, thanks to the Belgian train system.

I took a walk on the beach with some other fellow American exchange students, and took a bunch of pictures there too. Throughout the entire two-week-long vacation, the weather was AMAZING. Everyone was on the beach in swimsuits, though normally in April people are still bundled up against the wind and the rain.

A Belgian sandcastle. Belgians build their sandcastles seriously, with full-sized shovels. However, they sacrifice aesthetics for force...the goal is to be able to stand on it as long as possible as the tide comes in.

You can also "buy" crèpe-paper flowers, in shell-currency. You have to find a bunches of a

specific type of shell (kind of like a little clam shell), and then pay the flower-makers-- generally girls between the ages of five and twelve years old--using this shell as money. Some of the flowers are beautiful-- I would have paid real money for them. I managed to find 15 shells, and got a little tiny flower. The ones you see in these pictures would have cost me 50-70.

The next day was Easter-- I found the breakfast table filled with chocolate eggs, pistolets, and easer decorations.

The bells of Easter had come (instead of the Easter bunny) and hidden chocolate eggs all over the yard. It was a battle between my host brothers and me to get as many eggs as possible.

Later on in the afternoon, my host dad and I played a game of mini-golf. I'm horrible at it, but the golf course was very pretty, and it's another classic thing to do at the coast.

Finally, in the evening, we pulled out the cerf-volant-- the giant kite. It was a beautiful evening on the beach... we spent a couple hours flying the kite, throwing frisbees, and wading in the water.

The sunset over the North Sea was a great way to finish off my Easter vacation.

***

Normal.

2011-06-07T17:27:00.000+02:00

Where have I been the past two months, since the last time I posted on this blog? Where have I been the past nine months? Where has my life taken me from the moment that I stepped off the airplane in Brussels into a new and foreign world?

Nine months has taken me into a world that's no longer foreign.

When I got here, Belgium was a foreign country. Linkebeek was a dot on the map in a web of paths and narrow streets and railroads. Things were new, strange, exciting... yet scary. I didn't understand the language, the system, the culture; I could hardly do anything for myself. I was disoriented, disconnected, floating by myself in a new world, letting its currents take me wherever. I was vulnerable--there was a world around me that I didn't understand. And I didn't know where I would end up nine months later. I knew I would be different-- speak differently, think differently, look at life differently, but I didn't know what I would look like. How would that feel, thinking in French, speaking normally in French with my host family and my friends, going to school and understanding what was going on? What would life be like?

It is now nine months later.

The thing I didn't realize is that getting to the point in a foreign exchange where you can communicate normally and live life without confusion or strangeness doesn't feel like a giant change-- it just feels normal. Normal in the sense that you don't feel like you're consciously changing a part of yourself to fit in. The changes are there, you just feel them less. They have become habits.

I am immersed in this life, in this language, in this world-- and it feels normal. It's no longer a total immersion that presses onto me, but an immersion where I feel part of what goes on around me, part of my world. I can control my life here completely, or as completly as the world will let me. Being comfortable in this culture is not an odd feeling, or a foreign feeling, or a much different feeling from how I felt one year ago. It's just that one year ago, I felt comfortable in my own culture. Now, I feel comfortable in another.

***

And so, here I am writing again, a little over two months after my last post. In the weeks that come, I'm going to try to document some more of the life I'm living here-- because soon it will be changing.

A spring run

2011-03-27T22:15:00.001+02:00

This afternoon I charged up my camera, made sure I had a lot of memory card space, put on my running shoes, shorts, and bright yellow AFS t-shirt, and headed out the front door down the street.

It's no longer winter in Linkebeek. The birds are singing; bright green little buds are appearing on the brown branches of the trees; tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths are pushing up and placing spots of color onto the lawns and into the gardens. This past week the weather has been warm and sunny-- even t-shirt weather. A couple hours ago, I was hitting hockey balls around with my host brothers in the back yard-- barefoot. The world outside is waking up.

I traced a path through the narrow streets and trails, taking pictures of what was in front of me. I made my way from Linkebeek into a neighboring village called Holleken, then into the some neighborhoods of Rhode-Saint-Genèse (a town in the Flemish region, south of Linkebeek), then back north into Uccle, a commune of Brussels. Then I returned into Linkebeek, taking some pictures of the town square and church before returning down the stairs towards my house.

The following pictures show what I saw on my run.

And I returned into the back yard. It was a beautiful run.

Carnaval!

2011-03-19T01:07:00.003+01:00

Back in October, I realized that Halloween was nothing special here. A scraggly group of ten or so kids came trick-or-treating at the door, and that was it. I wondered if there would be anything like it here.

There was. On the first Wednesday of march, my school celebrated Carnaval. In Uccle, there were no street dances, parties, or anything like that, but people at my school certainly dressed up. Better than Halloween last year at my high school in the United States.

Here are some pictures...

Me. I dressed up as an American tourist-- this photo is before I put on the I ♥ London shirt. Ironically, I had to borrow the shorts, the white socks, the fanny pack, and the London shirt...all from Belgians. But I had fun (intentionally) butchering French for a day. It provided a good switch from continually trying to improve my pronounciations.

Anywhere you went in the school, there were people dressed up.

(Jupiler-- the most popular beer here in Belgium)

...?

My class:

My host brothers, Quentin and Diego, introduced me to something new with their costumes. 118-218 is a directory number you can call here, and there are TV ads that everyone knows about. They dressed up as the main characters-- cent dix-huit and deux cent dix-huit:

Here's an example of the original publicité:

It reassured me that, yes, other countries besides mine create obnoxious television commercials.

New views in Paris

2011-03-19T00:03:00.000+01:00

A few days after the six-month mark of my stay in Belgium, I went on a trip to Paris with around 130 Belgians.

Unlike in the United States, schools here in Belgium organize an annual trip for all the students of each grade, called a voyage d'étude. At Notre Dame des Champs, the rhetos (senior) class went to Paris.

The four days that I spent on this trip are four days that I will never be able to imitate in my life. I was in an environment where I don't think many Americans find themselves-- with a giant group of Belgians, speaking totally in French, yet still visiting a foreign country. Damn. I felt lucky.

A school trip to Paris with a bunch of Belgians is quite a different experience than travelling with a bunch of Americans. People are not all that interested, for example, in "sightseeing." Everybody on the trip had already been to Paris multiple times, so they'd seen all the big landmarks (the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral, etc...) that tourists come to see. So there I was, taking tons and tons of pictures, while they were more interested in hanging out and partying.

Partying--that was the huge difference. Here, it's no problem at all (almost normal) to drink alcohol on a school trip. The teachers don't care (as long as the alcohol's not in the rooms and it's not past the curfew) if students go out drinking. That made it very strange for me-- a complete contrast from the United States, where students get arrested and expelled from school for drinking. So it was definitely different.

But it was an amazing trip. I slept very little, laughed a lot, and tried to take in every moment of the four days that I knew I could never imitate.

Like I said earlier, I took a ton of photos. Because I took so many, I'm not going to describe them in great detail, but most of them are pretty self-explanatory.

***

Uccle, Belgium

Getting ready to leave

Between Brussels and Paris

Paris, France-Montmartre

Basilique du Sacré Cœur

Performer across from the church

View from the bottom of the hill

Cathédral Notre Dame

Hostel, where we stayed

7 kilos of junk food!

Paris-sized coffee

Palais Garnier

The ceiling, painted by Marc Chagall, provides an... interesting... contrast to the rest of the operahouse.

Louvre


Ever wondered what's across from the Mona Lisa?

Bateau Mouche, on the Seine river

Quartier de Marais

Eglise Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis

Rue de Rivoli

Place des Vosges

Avenue des Champs-Elysées

Moi et l'Arc du Triomphe

On the Pont Marie(?)

Quartier de la Défense

Class picture. Pretty cool, huh?

Versailles

Desk of Louis XIV

(This is all marble)

La galerie des glaces, or the Hall of Mirrors, inside the palace

Outskirts of Paris--on the way home

Four crazy days that I will never forget.

6.

2011-02-20T19:25:00.000+01:00

When the car pulled out of the driveway in Cortez, I wasn't thinking at all about this date. When I saw the outskirts of Cortez in the rearview mirror of the Toyota, when I got on the plane at Albuquerque International Airport, when I checked into the motel in New York, when I and the group of American exchange students left the ground and watched our nation disappear in the fading light, I wasn't thinking about this date. And when we hit the ground in Brussels, I wasn't thinking about this date either. As I looked ahead at the upcoming year, I had no idea where I would be in six months.

Six months later, I write this after having just returned from a trip to the other side of the country (Arlon), where I danced to techno music with at least 900 people last night. After I finish this post, I will pack for a school trip to Paris this upcoming week, where I will spend four straight days with a group of around 120 of my French-speaking classmates. After that, I go on a trip with 25 six- and seven- year old Balladins (Belgian Scouts) for the weekend. And then I return to school for a week, before leaving for the French Alps to ski with a group of host family friends.

I have lived half a year of my life in this European world. I have experienced things, seen things, discovered things that six months ago, I would never have dreamed of. Here I have found new perspectives, new views, new habits, and new friends. My world has expanded.

I want to write a lot more, to talk about things more specifically and go into more depth than the words I've written here. My experience here is complicated-- it will take more words to give an adequate description of my sentiments at this point in my journey.

So I post today to just mark the date, the date that marks half of a year for me as an AFS exchange student in Belgium. At a later time, when I don't have to prepare myself for a full week of craziness, I will try to describe things a little better.

Until then, I will continue to live my experience.

Belgian portraits: the supermarket

2011-02-10T17:49:00.005+01:00

After school one Wednesday, I headed down Rue Zecrabbe with my camera about 500 meters to Delhaize.

Delhaize is one of the main chains of supermarkets (called supermarchés in French) in Belgium-- you see a Delhaize in almost any town here. The best American comparison for Delhaize, I think, would be a Safeway or an Albertsons. Basically, it's a good example of a normal Belgian supermarket. This one, I admit, is in Uccle, one of the higher-class regions of Brussels, which means it's a little bit...prettier...than some. But that's generally the case anywhere you go. So at any rate, I think that you can learn a lot about a country by seeing what's sold at its supermarkets. So here goes....

Entering the parking lot (located on the roof of the store), you can easily tell you're in Europe by looking at the cars. No Dodge pickup trucks here....actually, the silver car you see near the center of the photo could be considered "big" by European standards.

Anyway, the first glance at a Belgian grocery store looks like any grocery store in the United States.

You see the cash registers, the flourescent lights, etc... things don't look much different.

Same with the produce section-- it looks almost identical to something you'd see in the States...except for "Belgium's finest" pears.

However, there are some vegetables that are distinctively Belgian.

Belgian Endive, for example, called chicon in French. It's a bitter, whitish-green vegetable that's eaten a lot here-- my host mom loves it. It tastes a bit like a cross between cabbage and dandelion greens. At first, when I tried it, I wasn't much of a fan, but I'm starting to develop a taste. It's very Belgian.

Also eaten here quite a bit are leeks, called poireaux in French. They're very mild, and tasty in soup.

A group of popular Belgian vegetables. On the far right you can see choux de Bruxelles. Any guesses on what that translates to?

Moving into the bakery, it begins to look different than the United States.

There's at least ten different kinds of sweet pastries each day, plus dozens of different kinds of bread. They're baked each morning, so they're almost never stale.

Same with the bread. You pull out the loaf, put it into a slicing machine, and then slip it into a paper sack. You never have to buy soft, preservative-filled bread in plastic bags. And no matter what kind of bread you buy here, it has an actual crust. Crazy, huh?

Moving into the cookie/packaged foods aisle, you see something very Belgian...

Waffles! In plastic sacks! Who would've thought...? People here eat them a lot, actually, just as a snack. In my opinion, they taste a little like stale angelfood cake. Not bad, but not as good as fresh waffles.

Speculoos! Mention these to any Belgian, and he or she will smile.

It's always weird to see American brands. In fact, there's a lot of them here-- chips, cookies, sugary cereals....more or less good American junk food.

However, in the chocolate section, there are no American brands. You can't find Hershey's...in fact, nobody here knows what Hershey's chocolate is.

There's tons of chocolate here. The chocolate section takes up half an aisle-- a good 50 feet of boxes and boxes of amazing chocolate.

Aah, Belgium...

However, you can't forget the gommies. For all the good chocolate, the Belgians love gummy candy as well.

Another place where you can see the difference in culture is in the alcohol aisle. Well... the alcohol aisles plural. In Colorado, where I'm from, the laws make it so no alcohol apart from 3.2 beer can be sold at supermarkets. That makes a huge change between Colorado and Belgium.

Here, there are three different (full-sized) wine aisles, with wines and champagnes from all over France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, (maybe a few from Belgium), plus North America (I think), South America and Australia.

And that's only the wine. There's another seperate aisle for the liquor...

Yeah. You could say that people are a little more easy-going here when it comes to alcohol.

Ok, so, as someone from the southwestern United States, I had gotten somewhat used to a good-sized selection of Mexican-style food (pinto beans, green chiles, tortillas, etc...) available in the grocery store. In Belgium, because the geographical distance to Mexico is about ten times greater than that from Colorado, it's not like that at all. The "Mexican" food is crammed in along with the Asian noodles, the British boiled beans, and nori for sushi. There are not even any canned green chiles. And the selection you see in the picture below (pretty much everything in the red wrappers-- the section is no more than 5 feet across) is the most diverse I've ever seen ehre-- look at how many different kinds of salsa there are (3!). It's funny to see a cuisine I'm so used to seem so exotic.

Heading into the meat section, you see more or less the same things you'd see in an American supermarket--chicken, steaks, pork, etc... but there are some other things I've never seen in Cortez City Market:

Beef tounge...

Beef bones (people boil them in soup and eat the marrow...)

And beef heart.

While the American food system is more oriented to grinding up these different parts of the animal and turning them into hot dogs, the Europeans generally integrate things like beef heart and tounge into fine cuisine.

Moving away from the meats into the breakfast aisle, you see lots of American cereals...

But also other very Belgian things: chocolate spreads, for example:

Chocolate spread, on freshly-bought bread, is a great breakfast.

And, of course, you can't forget the Nutella. Probably one of the most consumed products here in Belgium. While Nutella in the U.S. is generally sold in little tubs that are the height of your ring finger, here in Europe the normal size is 750 grams-- more than 1.5 pounds. A normal family can finish one jar within less than 5 days. And somehow, Belgians aren't fat at all.

A lot of times, the differences between the American and Belgian grocery stores are really subtle-- the types of things that you don't notice unless you really pay attention.

For example, the milk. You don''t find it in the refrigerated section here; you find it in bottles at room temperature. You refrigerate it at home. It tastes exactly the same-- it's just not in gallon jugs. After four months or so living here, I realized that-- "oh yeah, there's no such thing as gallon milk jugs..."

The freezer section looks pretty the same as one you'd find in the U.S.... ice cream, frozen pizzas, frozen vegetables, etc...but you can also find ten or so different brands of pre-cut potatoes to make fries, and "croquettes," which are like tater tots made with mashed potatoes (they're delicious). Also, you can't find very many "ready-made" foods like frozen dinners. They exist, but they're considered kind of a "novelty" item, and you hardly ever hear of people who eat them on a daily basis.

When you look up at the signs for the aisles, they're written in two languages-- Dutch and French. That's the same with all the product lables (unless they're not in English), all the ads in the windows, and the reciepts you get after you pay.

Finally, going into the aisle listed on the sign above, you see the beers.

Bam. They stack these crates over 8 feet high, and each has 24 bottles of beer.

Aand, below is the thing that, in my opinion, says "Belgium" the most. Look closely at the picture.

On the left side is the water-- probably 15-20 different brands. And on the right side is....the beer. Probably at least 50 different kinds, stretching for 50-60 feet.

That's how you can tell you're in a Belgian supermarket--when the beer and the water are sold the same aisle.

Halfway.

2011-01-27T23:29:00.002+01:00

As I write this, through my headphones, I'm listening to "On Danse," by Stromae, a Belgian francophone song that will forever remind me of my stay in Europe. I'm going to continue a techno-European-ish playlist of music to celebrate where I am right now: literally right in the middle of year as an exchange student in Belgium.

***

Today marks the point exactly between the day I started my life in Linkebeek, Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium, and the day that I will leave it to recommence my life in the United States.

Periphrasing what I read in another exchange student's blog earlier this year (she was in the Southern Hemisphere), halfway is a lot of time that has passed, but still a lot of time that remains.

And the imminent question is, "does it feel like I'm halfway through?"

I can't answer that question.

But I'll talk about it anyway.

Halfway.

There's no way I can look back on the time I've been here and say, "it seems just like yesterday that I landed here," or "it's gone so fast!" The month before I left my hometown seems like an entirely different life; taking off from New York seems like ages ago, and my first day in Belgium is a distant, brightly-colored blur.

The next three or so months after that really are a blur as well. It's very strange to look back on-- there are points that stand out, but others that run together. I can't look back and distinguish the difference between a random day of school in mid-September to a random day of school in late November, but I can remember seeing the Grand Place for the first time, or my first day of school.

I can also see the progress of the year--things have certainly changed since August. Of course, my French is a good indicator of that-- as I got here I could introduce myself in French, and talk about the weather and my cats, but that's about it. Today, however, in English class, I spoke more French than English, and after I came home I had a conversation with my host mom about French grammar: comment est-ce qu'on peut utiliser le temps subjonctif. I can walk into a store and have a conversation with the shopkeeper; I can shout directions in French to a group of 25 five- and six-year-old Baladins (Belgian scouts); and I can hold relatively deep conversations (albeit with lots of mistakes) about pretty abstract subjects like psychology or social theory. The constant feeling of not knowing what's going on because I can't understand what people are saying is no longer here, and I feel now more or less in control of my life--I can make my way throughout the day without being completely incapicated with a language barrier. I also am familiar with more and more of Brussels, and more and more of the country around me-- I've visited the other big towns of Belgium and found new amazing places outside of Linkebeek.
I can see that the year has progressed, and that it has changed me-- I am habituated to things today I'd never thought of before I left: I don't worry about eating raw meat; I wear a scarf when I go outside; I greet my friends in the morning by kissing them on the cheek; I eat Nutella on bread for breakfast almost every morning. I compare myself to who I was five months ago and who I am today, and they're not really the same person.

So, in some ways, halfway is a long time. I know that I've changed; I know that I have become able to communicate--not fluently, not perfectly, but at least communicate--in a second language; I know that I've learned a lot. But I know as well that I've been away from my hometown for half the school year already, and that I haven't seen mountains or smelled wet sagebrush or petted my cat or seen my family in person for five and a half months. So, I do feel the time.

But, it does seem fast at some points. As I look back on my time here, there's another part of me that says, "holy crap--am I really halfway through?" In the course of a lifetime, 5.5 months is not a whole lot, and I know I'm never going to have another five and a half months like the ones I've just had. After today, I will have the same amount of time that I've had since August to discover this country, to learn this language, to learn all I can and create as many memories as possible. I think to myself: will that be enough? Will, at the end of my stay here, I feel that I have lived my life here as best as possible? Or will I be wishing I'd tried other things or seen other places?

Looking forward into the year, I have lots of plans. My host family and I will be going on vacations, I'll have school trips and parties and scouts and lots of other things-- I'll be keeping myself busy. But I also know I need to make time to just be here-- to get all I can of the European lifestyle that I may never have again. And that is what I will try to do--that is what I hope I can do.

All I can say is, within the past half of my stay here, I have seen many new and amazing sights, met many new and amazing people, and captured many new and amazing memories. And it's those things--those memories and sights and people-- that will stay with me throughout my life. And by the time July comes around, I hope to have twice as many.

***

Cinq mois

2011-01-20T22:58:00.002+01:00

This week marks the five-month anniversary of the week my life changed.

Just thought I should mention that-- five months ago Monday I left Cortez, five months ago yesterday I left the United States, five months ago right now I spent my first evening in Belgium. Tomorrow will mark five months with my host family in Linkebeek.

I'll save the philosophical reflections for another time-- a time when I'm a little more awake and a little more concentrated. But for today, I'll write a quick portrait of today.

Right now, I'm seated in front of the computer writing this with my host brother Gaëtan playing on the Wii behind me. I just ate dinner-- a blended soup of poireaux, carottes, cèleri, et courgettes--leeks, carrots, celery, and zucchini, followed by une salade, des pommes de terre (potatoes) and de l'agneau (lamb). A typical Belgian meal-- soup followed by meat, potatoes, and another vegetable.

During dinner, I talked normally with my family in French.

At school today, my classes consisted of three hours of French, where I took notes about picture analysis, then two periods of English, where we watched a BBC video clip looking back at the A&E of 2010 and wrote about things we found interesting, then lunch, and then two periods of Dutch, where I sat and looked through a beginning-level Dutch vocabulary book as the other people in the class read articles that I didn't understand at all.

For lunch, my friends and I traced our usual path to the sandwicherie (where I bought a tuna sandwich on a baguette) then to Delhaize (the supermarket, where I bought a bar of chocolate, partly to wake me up and partly to celebrate my Belgium anniversary), then back to the school. There, we sat and talked, finishing our lunches and throwing Kinder chocolate bar wrappers at each other.

I understood probably 98 percent of the French that I heard today. A couple times I had to have people repeat themselves, and a couple times I ran into an expression I didn't know. But that's a lot more than I would have understood five months ago.

And speaking French has become a lot easier in five months as well....Even though I still make errors, it no longer is hard for me to carry on a conversation. I'll talk more about le français at a different point in time.

After school I got on bus 43, direction Braves, headed toward Linkebeek. I got home, changed clothes, and took a run, winding my way through narrow paths between houses, cobblestone roads, and forest trails. The entire time, I knew where to go.

And tonight, as I write this sentence, the time is 22:43, rather than 10:43 p.m., and I need to go to bed. Because tomorrow, I need to wake up at 6:50 so I can get ready to catch the bus to be at school by 8. I have P.E. class tomorrow first thing in the morning-- we're going to play tennis.

So, I should go to bed.

Mais voila-- described above is a normal day for me in Belgium . I think it's perfect kind of day to mark five months here.

Brugge/Bruges/Bruges

2011-01-20T20:49:00.000+01:00

Voila--my third set of pictures of my adventures exploring Belgium. The day after I went to Ghent, I went to Bruges (pronounced brooje in English) with some other exchange students-- six Americans and one Icelandic. It was a cool trip-- great to see the people who instantly became my friends as we left our home country.
It rained the entire time, however, which was annoying... cut down on our motivation to wander around the narrow streets and alongside the canals.

Also, for that reason, I didn't take as many pictures as I did for the previous two posts. But I took a few, and my friend Lila let me steal some off her Facebook album, so below are some photos. At another point, the next time I go (and maybe there will be sunshine), I'll take some more-- it truly is a beautiful city.

Anyway-- Bruges is another of the old, old Flemish cities--it's been around for a good 1000 years. In the middle ages, it was one of the most thriving cities in Europe-- it was a seaport, which brought merchants and traders, importing and exporting goods.

Full of canals, beautiful old medieval buildings, and history, it was pretty cool.

View of the city from the top of the belfry (belltower)

Unicorns!

Inside one of the many churches in the city

Even though it was somewhat touristy, the carriages added a nice historic flair

The courtyard of the belfry

Groot Markt/Grand Place/Central Square

The Americans, in the top of the belfry.

Bruges was pretty cool-- it made me really want to return on a day with better weather.

But as my friend Liam and I got on the train headed southwest, I was content with the day.

****

It was January sixth, which marks the day of Epiphany. After I got back to Linkebeek and my host family and I finished eating dinner, we had the traditional galette des rois (king's cake), a cake with a pastry crust and fragipane (sweet almond paste) inside. Also inside the cake is a little fève-- a small trinket. The person who gets the fève in his or her cake gets to be the "king"-- complete with crown.

Tradition says that for the pieces to be fairly distributed, the youngest person has to go under the table and say to whom each piece goes.

In this case it was Diego.

And, he was lucky-- the little plastic statue was in his piece, so he got to be king.

A little bit of culture--even if it's simple. J'aime bien.

Gent/Gand/Ghent

2011-01-15T16:02:00.001+01:00

This is the second post about my Belgian adventures during the Christmas vacation. Last Thursday, I went to Gent.

Gent is a city in Flanders, about a 40-minute train ride northwest from Brussels. Like most of the cities here, it has been inhabited for over 1000 years with a long and complex story of rises and falls, successes and declines, buildings and plunderings. During the middle ages, it thrived-- it was one of the biggest cities in Europe, second only to Paris.

Many of the buildings from that time period remain, so I headed there to see what I could find.

§-*-*-*-*-*-*-§

Getting off the train, I headed through the train station that looked rather medieval in itself (well, not really--it was built in 1912, but still...), with low arches underneath the tracks.

I got out of the station to find a square court, completely full of bikes. There were tons--it was pretty cool. Flat Flanders and its fiets...

I circled around this square a few times, trying to figure out how to get into the city center (the train station is maybe 2 km south of the main part of the city). The first thing I noticed was the complete and total lack of French, and therefore the lack of a language I could understand. Everything here was in Dutch-- not at all like the signs in Brussels written in two languages. I wandered around the square, looking at the tram maps and trying to figure out where I was supposed to find the tram stop to go to the centrum. I finally found a sign that said something along the lines of wil u narr het centrum? and it told me to take tram 1.

That seemed logical, so I got on.

And, with the help of another exchange student I happened to be sitting next to on the tram, I got off at the right stop.

After a three-minute-or-so walk, I came upon this cathedral, Sint Baafskathedraal (thank you Wikipedia, on the spelling), known as St. Bavo's cathedral in English.

An amazing building, it has sat in the same spot (albeit in different forms--sometimes getting expanded, sometimes getting plundered by reformers) for over 1000 years.

I went inside, but respected the posted request to not take pictures.

Across the cathedral was the belfry ("belltower" in more popular English), which has been around since the 1300s.

I decided to check it out.

Going up the stairs, I found myself in a high, arched stone room. In it were the old dragons that had lived on the top of the tower. If you click on the image above, you may be able to see the current dragon perched on the top of the tower. The one pictured below is about 150 years old.

I went up the elevator (I couldn't find the stairs), and the in next room I found was the drum for the carillion. Each little black nub on this drum pulled a lever which rang a bell overhead--similar to the principle of a music box. Every 15 minutes or so it would play a song.

Up a few more stairs and I was on the higest accessible level,

with a gorgeous view of the city.

I was intrigued by the other church I saw, so I headed back down the steps to check it out.

I stopped for a second to look at some of the old bells

And to capure an interesting perspective through a tiny window

and to get another picture of the belfry,

and of some statues of jesters on one of the roofs.

Finally, I got inside the church (Sint-Niklaaskerk), and was breathtaken, as I usually am whenever I enter one.

After a little while exploring inside, wondering how many tons of stone were in the building, I entered back onto the street, and crossed the bridge over the river:

Ghent was built on the intersection of two rivers, the Scheldt and the Lys, which has made it a capital for merchants and traders--they built many of the beautiful buildings on the just facing the river.

I decided to play a classic tourist and take a on a canal boat tour-- mainly because it was freezing cold and I wanted someplace enclosed. So I joined the group of people on the glass-covered boat, and heard narration in three languages (Dutch, French, and English) as the boat idled slowly up and down the river.

The three towers--St. Nicholas' Church, the belfry, and St. Bavo's Cathedral, viewed from the canal. Very picturesque, I thought...

They were quite pretty-- I got a good view of the buildings and some of the other boats from a nice perspective.

This, according to the tour guide, was the only remaining building in Gent with a wooden façade. She pointed out how it was built with overhanging levels to keep the rain from destroying the wood.

The castle. In the keep, according to the tour guide, there was a very well equipped (and well-used) torture chamber, used in the middle ages.

After the boat tour, I hung out a little bit longer around town, taking in the setting. Some of the buildings were really cool, radiating a sense of old richess.

There were lots of other things I wanted to see, including a folklore museum and the place where the Treaty of Ghent was signed to end the War of 1812, but it was starting to get dark and my hands were freezing, so I decided they could wait another day. So I found tram 1 and took it back to the train station, getting there (luckily) in time for the next train back to Brussel-Suid.

§-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-§

It had been a pretty cool day.

Antwerpen/Anvers/Antwerp

2011-01-15T13:21:00.002+01:00

For the vacation, I made a goal for myself: to explore Belgium. I fulfilled that as best as I could--I visited some new places, looking beyond Linkebeek and Brussels. In the next few posts, I'll share three new cities I visited (all in Flanders): Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges. First is Antwerp.

Called Antwerp in English, Anvers in French, and Antwerpen in Dutch, it is the second largest city in Belgium and a giant port-- the second largest in Europe. There have been people living in the area for over 1500 years, and the history of the city is colorful, complete with religious wars, riots, occupations, seiges, and plagues. Today it is the capital of the Belgian province of Antwerpen, the most populated province in the country, with around 1.7 million people.

I went to Antwerp with my host family-- we drove 45 or so minutes almost directly north from Linkebeek through the fields and over the canals of the Flemish region of Belgium.

The first thing we looked at as we got there was the train station. Built at the turn of the 20th century, the architecture is incredible.

Allegedly there are tourists who come to Antwerp and think the train station is a church.

After taking a look at that, we headed towards the center of town. On the way, we passed lots of bikes, both with riders and parked on the sidewalk like this. Because Flanders is almost completely flat, biking is really easy-- almost everyone owns a bike, it seems. It made me a little jealous-- it's not that easy to do in Brussels....because in Brussels not everyone owns a bike, there's a huge risk of your bike getting stolen.

We continued down the streets, passing old, Flemish-style buildings, built in the 15- and 1600s, when the artisans and traders in Antwerp were some of the richest in Europe.

Today the streets like this are still very chic, filled with clothing stores, waffle stands, and chocolateries.

One of the chocolateries caught our eye-- this one had chocolate sculptures:

They also had a flavors of chocolate pralines I hadn't seen before, including banana, mint (made with real mint leaves) and...wasabi. Weird. Gaëtan, who tried it, said it didn't taste very much like wasabi at all.

We came into the center of Antwerp. The tower that you can see is that of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, the city's cathedral.

Here it is from a closer view:

We came into the Grote-Markt (Grand Place in French), which was like a smaller version of Brussels'.

From there, we headed towards the river. My host mom Aude got a picture of me with the cathedral in the background:

And here's the Scheldt river, which connects Antwerp to the North Sea. This river is what has made Antwerp so important throughout the years-- it allows ships to reach the city, and from the city these ships have been unloaded and the cargo distributed all around Europe.

Like any old European city, the castle at Antwerp still stands. I didn't get a whole lot of history on it--it's all very complicated-- but it was an impressive building.

Here's a view of an Antwerp street from the other side of the castle:

After seeing that side of the river, we went down two old wooden escalators

into a 1/2-kilometer-long tunnel, that went underneath the river.

From the other side, I got this panoramic view of the city--click on it to get a larger version. The bank isn't really curved like that, it's just because I didn't have a tripod, which made the angle kind of messed up.

After trip back through the tunnel, we passed a rommelmarkt, kind of like a flea market/giant yard sale. There was someone selling beer glasses--lots of beer glasses. It was quite a Belgian thing.

After lunch, we visited the Museum Plantin-Moreus, the preserved estate of Christophe Plantin (pronounced plahn-TAN) , an influential 16th-century printer who lived in Antwerp.

The museum had preserved the look of a 1500s mansion, full of Flemish tapestries and beautifully carved heavy wooden furniture. It showed the type of place a very well-off merchant at this time period had.

Christophe Plantin was a French printer and bookmaker who moved to Antwerp and started his trade. At the time period, books were just becoming a big deal because with the invention of the printing press, books no longer had to be written one-at-a-time by monks. This made them marginally more common, and allowed printers like Plantin to get very rich.

In this museum were thousands of books Plantin had printed--mostly bibles and books relating to religion. Below is a book with chants for mass:

And an old bible, printed in Latin, as was the custom:

These books were printed with removable type-- something pretty impressive. Thousands of lead pieces (called "sorts") with every character imaginable were lined up--by hand-- to create the books' words.

The workers would ink the letters, and press them onto the paper using these presses.

This museum actually held the world's oldest surviving printing press:

Maybe it was just because I was in journalism and got interested in typefaces, but this boggled my mind: you know the font "Garamond," that you can still find in Microsoft Word today? All seven sets of the original typefaces--the typefaces that Garamond himself made-- are at this museum. I know it's nerdy, but I found that pretty impressive.

And to look around at the books in the shelves and think that they contained thoughts and information from 500 years ago-- that was also pretty incredible.

One of the things where this idea was really evident was looking at the maps. You can see how Brussels was laid out in the 16th-century-- the Grand Place is right in the center, and many of the streets around it look the same today.

Also incredible was to look at the globe:

It really showed how people here in Europe in the 1500s viewed the world. In the display case, the globe was tilted the wrong way (which resulted in a somewhat blurry picture), but the representation you can see below is what people in Europe knew of North America:

The strangely-formed country is what we know now as the United States and Canada.

After a long time at that museum, we headed back onto the streets of Antwerp. We passed some pretty impressive architecture:

Another thing that Antwerp is known for is its diamond trade. Each day, billions of dollars worth of diamonds are traded in the 1-kilometer-square "diamond district" in Antwerp. It amounts for about 7 percent of Belgium's GDP.

As it got dark, we took a quick look into the some of the windows:

And these weren't even the best-- it was too late for us to go all the way inside the district--most of the stores were already closed. I'll check it out another day....

Finally, right before we left, we went to one of the two Starbucks in the country of Belgium. While I normally campaign against Starbucks in the U.S., this was the only place I've seen where I can get a cup of American-style drip coffee. It was a little bit of nostalgie.

I ordered a very large coffee and felt the effects of the caffiene the entire ride home. Buzzzzzzzzzzz....

*******************

Les fêtes

2011-01-09T12:39:00.004+01:00

The holidays are finished; 2011 has begun. I'm a little bit later than I should've been with all the pictures-- I've been away from the computer for a lot of break. But here is the story of my Holidays in Belgium.

It's been a new style of holidays for me-- I've experienced ways of celebrating Christmas and New Year's that I've never experienced before.

I'll talk about them here. The descriptions organized in chronological order, along with the pictures.

December 24--During the day

I walked down the snow-covered path, on the way to the train station. The amount of snow here was crazy by Belgium standards-- about the equivalent of having four feet of snow fall in Cortez. The buses stopped running, cars were sliding all over the roads (nobody has four-wheel drive), the commune of Uccle ran out of salt to clear the roads (that's the only way people "clear" the roads here), and my host parents said that they'd never seen so much snow in their lives.

Total, there was 8-10 inches of snow...

Yeah.

Anyway, that's why I took the train into Brussels. Because there were no buses.

I met up with a friend of mine, Jónfríð, another exchange student from the Faroe Islands--a little country located between Britain and Iceland. I shared some delicous American candies with her.

We headed to the Grand Place, and saw the sapin de noël, covered with snow.

The town hall under snow, as well. The whole snow business...not seen very often here.

We wandered a little around the marché de noël, with its stalls vending bunches of different things, from cheap santa hats to beautiful jewelry and clothes.

And into a little shop that specialized in speculoos. Often times, speculoos get molded into forms-- here we have père noël.

We continued along through Brussels, found a new street with some cool Medieval buildings

We wandered towards the only remaining section of the original wall that circulated Brussels during the Middle Ages.

And we made snow angels under it! Gave a more festive atmosphere...

It was a good day in Brussels.

December 24--Evening

After I came back from Brussels, my host family and I went to my host mom's parents' house, to celebrate Christmas.

The parents of my host mom come from an aristocratic background, so this was a very traditional, very polite European gathering. It was a group of my host mom's brothers and sisters, their children, and some of their children's children. Everybody was dressed beautifully and being very polite-- and also very very nice.

Here in Belgium, the traditional christmas food is interesting: oysters (huitres), foie gras (there's no translation-- it's a special preparation of either goose or duck liver--in this case duck), smoked salmon (saumon fumé), and lobster (homard).

Below, the first I ate--the foie gras with toast and the oysters.

Some of my host cousins

And...just before trying the oyster. It was interesting-- it wasn't bad, but it did taste rather ocean-like.

My extended host family

At midnight (it went late), they brought out a birthday cake for me-- the 25 is my Birthday. It was so nice of them!

And of course, there were really good chocolates.

In Belgium, Christmas morning is not at all the same as in the United States. Santa Claus doesn't come during the night-- he actually comes when none of the children are looking, and then they all open the presents. Also, there are no stockings--generally presents are given from parents/grandparents to the children, but that's it. Anyway, that meant that on Christmas morning the whole family slept late.

When I woke up, the table was set with small loafs of bread, called cougnou. They're filled with either raisins, chocolate, or little bits of sugar. The idea is that they're formed in the shape of Baby Jesus, but the resemblance is pretty abstract.

Also, you eat it with a candy Baby Jesus.... It's an interesting tradition.

But it was definitely delicious along with hot chocolate,

Made with real Belgian Chocolate.

After breakfast, we went to my host dad's brother's house (my "host uncle", if you want to get specific), to celebrate Christmas day. He lives in an apartment in Etterbeek, one of the regions of Brussels, with a view out onto the roofs of the city.

After I met the family, we sat down to the first course--smoked salmon again. It was delicious.

Second was the traditional Christmas day dinner--turkey (dinde). It was all amazing.

The atmosphere was very amiable, as well.

The American candies as a christmas gift went over well with the family.

Diego with the Nerds...

Quentin with a light-up sucker

Even just looking at the wrappers can definitely be interesting....

And, the Nerds, in general, were a big hit. Everyone loved them

Especially mixed with M&Ms on the floor.

The atmosphere was very relaxed--it was a nice way to spend Christmas. No stress, très cool

And, they brought out another birthday cake.

As the sun set over the roofs of Brussels, I got a few pictures:

At about this time, we went sledding on a hill near the apartment. I didn't take any pictures-- it was dark by that point, and I spent a lot of the time evading snowballs between sled rides.

At home, later that night, I opened presents with my family over Skype. The time difference made it great-- it was mid-christmas morning over there, and night here. My bed was somewhat of a mess, with all the wrapping paper and beautiful gifts I recieved.

It had been a Christmas unlike any I've ever had.

One week later: Evening of December 31-- early morning of January 1

In Belgium, Christmas is the time to spend with the entire family. However, on New Year's Eve, people usually hang out with friends. I had been invited to the house of Raoul (in the photo just below), one of my friends from school, to celebrate the New Year. There were 13 people there-- all friends of mine from school.

Preparing les apéros (appetizers)

Seated at a nice table, we had a beautiful three-course meal

With a bûche de noël for dessert.

We listened to music, danced, talked, and I enjoyed the friendly and open atmosphere of the party.

Things were pretty chill, at some points...

And the energy did pick up at some points too...like when I mentioned square dancing, and I taught them the little bit that I had learned in elementary school. I guess it was good for something....

(Merci à Vanille pour le photo)

And, like any classic European party, the glowsticks did come out for a while.

Here's the picture of the group-- I'm directly in the middle.

And here's one with a little more energy:

(Et encore un merci à Vanille pour cette photo et la précédente)

But... we went to bed eventually-- at 5 in the morning. It was a good way to start 2011.

*************************************

And, we're nine days into 2011 already. Whoa. It's going to be an interesting year for me-- I'm spending more than half of it in Belgium. I won't get to say that about every year of my life.

On the Christmas season, missing home, and multiculturalism

2010-12-24T02:09:00.001+01:00

The Bilans de Noël (the huge tests at the end of the trimester) are finished; the bulletins (grades/evaluations) have been passed out, and les vacances de noël/Christmas vacation have begun. Whoof.

The past couple weeks have been relatively crazy-- the bilans happened last week, and for the weeks before them everyone was studying hard. I took five (everyone else took more-- science, Dutch, math, Latin for some): of the tests Art d'Expression (Theatre), FGS (Geography, basically), English (which, surprisingly, wasn't easy-- I had to write an essay in French about a topic given in English), plus two in French. For these exams, I played it cool-- I went into them not really knowing what to expect but ready to do my best. So, I can now say that I've experienced the exams of Notre Dame des Champs-- I'd call them a cross between finals and standardized tests (without bubbling or the stupid time limits-- they gave us two and a half hours to finish).

Anyway, the weeks leading up to the bilans were rather crazy at Notre Dame des Champs-- everyone was studying, somewhat stressed, and the teachers were continuing to assign work. That along with a crumbling bridge which has stopped the buses from running through Linkebeek (in the mornings my host mom drives me and my host brothers to the nearest stop) and the beginning of snow and ice (the amount of snow here right now is breaking records-- there's over ten centimeters!) has made the days rather tiring.

But, now, after everyone knows the results of the tests (I did well), tout va bien. And Christmas is in two days.

Christmas.

With the tests, and the days of school that began to seem identical, Christmas has seemed to come extra fast this year. And, for me, it's been strange.

People say that the Holiday season is one of the harder parts of the year for exchange students, and I agree with that. For me, I haven't been crying myself to sleep missing my family and my town and my country, but there are little things that trigger bits of homesickness. I can definitely shake them off-- I know my experience is amazing here and that I shouldn't worry too much about the American Christmas I'm missing this year, but they still come.

One of the biggest things for me is Christmas music. Here in Belgium, you don't hear it as much as you do in the U.S. In fact, you listen to the radio, or walk into almost any store, and most of the time you hear the same pop music you hear any other time of the year. When you do hear a Christmas song, it's American, and often along the lines of "Santa Claus is comin' to town." Thing is, when I ask people here if they can understand the words, they're happy to tell me that no, nobody does--they just like the sound, the jingle bells and so forth. So, that makes it a little weird. For me, even though oftentimes the words are... should I say... not all that deep or meaningful, it's still nice to at least be able to sing along with them and know what's being talked about.

Another thing is the fact that there are not all that many Christmas lights here. It makes perfect sense-- most houses are at least three stories high but maybe only 20 or 30 feet across. That makes it almost impossible, and rather pointless, to put up a string of lights across the top of the house. It would look ridiculous. But at the same time, it makes the streets seem a little bit dark at times.

Also-- this is where it gets difficult to describe-- the feeling in general about the Christmas season here is just different. The thing is, I think the celebration of Christmas is less of the "big deal" here that it is in the United States. Americans seem to be, in general, more ostentatious and excitable about the idea of a Christmas "season." In the U.S., it seems like the whole month of December is filled with Christmas concerts, Christmas parties, Christmas celebrations, etc.... There's Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho and mistletoe and presents for pretty girls (quoting Lucy from A Charlie Brown Christmas), and almost all the streets, all the houses, all the businesses are dressed up in garlands and lights. In the weeks before Christmas you can feel the anticipation and the excitement for the upcoming holiday. Here, it's a lot lower-key-- there are not tons of parties and concerts and celebrations--even in Brussels, a big city, you don't see the craziness of the Christmas season like you would in, say, Chicago. There are decorations--quite nice decorations, in fact-- there's a big Christmas tree in the Grand Place and lights over the streets-- but they just have a different feeling. It's a feeling very hard to describe....I guess the best way to describe it would be just more...European (I know you're thinking "like, duh," but it's the best I can do). Here, I guess you could say, the celebration of Christmas seems to be something much quieter--a day to spend with the entire family, give gifts but not tons, enjoy oneself but not necessarily make a huge production of everything. Really, a critic of the American way could say that Christmas here focuses less on consumerism and food, and more on family togetherness and quiet celebration. But really, I think the best way to describe it is as AFS told us before we left: "It's not good or bad, just different."

I guess the thing is, being an exchange student isn't only about seeing castles and becoming fluent in a new language. It also means spending a year-- Christmas too-- away from home and things familiar. And it means finding the differences-- not only the differences in food and sizes of cars, but in the subtleties of the culture like the attitudes about a holiday as well. As I left, I was ready to start in on that--in fact, that was one of my main motivations for becoming an exchange student-- to learn about and connect to a new and different culture. But it's a different perspective to be inside and experiencing that-- discovering a new culture and missing the familiar one at the same time. But as I'm doing this, I feel myself developing new perspectives-- new perspectives on how to celebrate a holiday and new perspectives on both the culture of Belgium/Europe and of America.

****

However, in the midst of this cultural experience, I've found myself whistling/singing "Let it Snow," in all its jazzy style. It's worked, too--it has snowed like crazy. My host parents say they've never seen snow like this in their lives, and the commune of Uccle has run out of salt to clear the roads, which means there are no buses, and cars are sliding all over the place. For a Coloradoan, it's rather funny to watch someone with a squeegee or a broom trying to clear four inches of snow from their driveway. But oh well-- in extreme circumstances like this, I mustn't laugh.

Finally, back to the theme of multiculturalism, on the giant Christmas tree in the Grand Place, there are bunches of little star-shaped papers with Christmas/Holiday messages on them that visitors have written. Yesterday I took some pictures--

And, the buses even wish happy holidays.

I'm going to try to post more holiday-type pictures tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'll have the time. If not, I wish happy and peaceful holidays and joyeux et heureuse noël to everyone!

Four months... about

2010-12-21T13:17:00.000+01:00

Each time there's a landmark date for my time in Belgium, it's always hard to figure out which day to mark. Do I mark four months after the day I left Cortez? Or four months from the day I and the other American AFS students left New York? Or four months after the day we landed in Belgium (which still screws me up because of the eight-hour time difference)? Or do I mark four months since the day that I first came to my host family? And, somewhat strangely for me, it's hard to remember which days were which-- my state of mind was so weird at that time.

So, in short, all I know is that this week marks that, four months ago, my life changed.

And where am I, after four months? I'll write down everything I can think of right now. Though it might not be very deep or very well explained, I feel it needs to be said:

Four months later, I:
--ride buses and trams around brussels and know what I'm doing
--can get lost in a large European city without freaking out
--wander around a city where almost everything's written in two non-English languages
--can walk outside and estimate the temperature in Celsius
--know about how long it takes to walk a kilometer
--ask for directions in French, and understand them too
--dream in Franglish
--complete full streams of conscious thought in French
--think in Franglish (in general--it's weird, I'll talk more about Franglish/Franglais in later posts)
--read books in French, and understand maybe 85-90 percent of the language (I've read Le passeur [Lois Lowry's The giver, translated into French] and Les justes, by Albert Camus)
--can make it to other cities in Belgium by train
--understand mostly everything on French-speaking television
--understand a tiny bit of Dutch
--say "I am Austin" and "I speak English" in Dutch
--want to learn more Dutch
--can hold a conversation in Frenchd, though not without mistakes on my part
--can finish an essay in French (even though it contains many mistakes)
--can type on an AZERTY keyboard as fast (or faster, in the case of accented letters) as I could on a QWERTY
--accidentally type the character µ when I chat online with people (it's right next to the enter key)
--understand the content (not everything, but the jist) of a lesson in school
--can hold philosophical discussions in French
--can have conversations with some people better in French than in English
--take runs around my town and don't get lost
--wear a scarf to school
--no longer love the rain as much as I did
--eat dinner in the European style, with my fork in my left hand and knife in my right
--eat raw meat (filet américain préparé!) and not worry about poisoning myself (I'll explain that one later)
--know the difference between waffles of Brussels and waffles of Liège
--know about speculoos
--eat Nutella on bread for breakfast
--put chocolate sprinkles or chocolate spread on pistolets
--participate in conversations at the table with my host family
--can walk across a major border in Belgium-- between the Flemish region and the Brussels-Capital region
--make stupid little mistakes when I write in English (and hopefully correct them)
--sometimes accidentally insert French words into an English conversation
--unconsiciously make my writing in English long and complicated
--have participated in a flash mob (one of my dreams)
--am beginning to know about Belgian political issues
-- am great friends with people who, four months ago, I never knew existed.
--am great friends with people from places I had never heard of (the Faroe Islands, for example).
--am living just outside of a city that, four years ago, the only thing I knew about it was that Brussels sprouts were named after it
--am part of a school play
--can go to the theater and understand what's going on in the play
-- meet many people who don't know where Colorado is
--have met people from all over the world and discovered that we laugh about the same things

Voila...I've written as many things as I can think of right now. I know it's not all that well explained and not all that detailed, but you get the idea. Another time, when my frame of mind is a little more analytical, I'll try to discuss some of these things in a deeper way

Finally, here's a picture of me and my host brothers taken yesterday in the snow:

I've heard it hasn't snowed this much here at this time of year since the 1920s. Crazy...

La Neige!

2010-12-18T18:03:00.001+01:00

Well, this past week it has snowed again. Compared to the Colorado mountains, it's not a whole lot (no more than two inches), but I've heard that for this time of year it's not very common to have snow on the ground.

Yesterday I went into the center of Brussels and wandered around, and I took some pictures. The weather stayed BEAUTIFUL the entire day--clear and cold-- something rather rare. So I took advantage of it for photography's sake.

With these pictures, I'm not going to run much of a commentary like I've done with a lot of other sets-- most of them are pretty self-explanatory. Pretty trees, pretty sun, pretty houses, etc...

Each bold heading refers to the pictures below it.

My back yard in Linkebeek

Linkebeek

Grand Place, Bruxelles

Cathédral St. Michel, Bruxelles

Parc Royal, Bruxelles

Tour de Wim Delvoye, on the roof of the Palais de Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles

****************************

Voila--a little bit of winter in Belgium.

A discussion of pop culture

2010-12-11T16:28:00.001+01:00

This past Thursday, we had two hours of English class, and it was basically free time. Some people plugged into their MP3 players and studied, but some people talked.

During this time, I had a great conversation in Franglais with some of my friends, Alba, Ava, and Odille (Odille declined the photo...).

We got on the subject of TV-- and it really started to overwhelm me. Throughout my life, I hardly ever watch TV-- compared to a lot of my friends I'm very disconnected from the world of television. I wouldn't say I'm against watching TV-- apart from the commercials which bother me, I don't have huge problems with it. But generally, television has never been a huge interest of mine. At any rate, I am familiar with the names of the more popular television shows, and for some I can even describe what they're about. But in general, I'm quite disconnected.

Having this conversation in English class, however, was crazy. Seriously-- people here, in a foreign country, know TONS more American TV shows than I've even heard of.

After a while of saying, "non, je connais pas," or in English, "never heard of it," I decided to start writing them down. I pulled out my notebook, and had them list every American TV show they knew.

Check this out--these are what they came up with-- and there were maybe six people who all contributed-- by the way, I got a picture of Tom and Steve, too, who joined in the conversation partway through.

It doesn't mean that my friends love every single one of the shows below, just that they have seen them before:

Fringe
Dexter
How I met your mother
Friends
Six feet under
Niptuck
Gossip Girl
Glee
Beverly Hills 90210
Twin Peaks
Blue Mountain State
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Smallville
CSI (called Les Experts here)
Gray's Anatomy
Breaking Bad
Chuck
Misfits
Heroes
One Tree Hill
Prison Break
Steins
Flash Forward
The Mentalist
Dr. House
True Blood
Cougar Town
Californication
The Big Bang Theory
Everybody Hates Chris
Hard Times of Archie Berger
Dr. Who
Newport Beach
That 70's Show
Supernatural
Gilmore Girls
Dawson
Weeds
Pretty Little Liar
Degrassi
Hannah Montana
Drake & Josh
Ned Bigby
Queer as Folk USA
Desperate Housewives
24 (Called 24-H Chrono here)
The Simpsons (Les Simpson)
American Dad
Futurama
Family Guy
South Park
Greek
The Shield
Madmen
Soprano
Rome
Sex and the City
Seven Heaven
Chips
Starsky and Hutch
Dream on

Seriously, for me it was strange-- I'm an American, but I've never even heard of some of these shows, let alone watched them.

In fact, it's always strange for me to have pop culture discussions with people here. Honestly, Belgians know much more about American pop culture in general than I do. They ask a lot about movies I've seen, whether I've watched such-and-such movie or know such-and-such actor. There are some movies that I've seen, and some actors who I'm familar with, but a lot that I don't know at all. True, a lot of it is just me-- I don't watch a broad spectum of movies or keep up on which actor plays in which movie, but at the same time it's pretty strange-- someone who has never even been in the United States knows more actors and movies than I do.

Also, bands. Probably 65-70 percent of the music you hear on pop radio stations is American, and another 10 percent on top of that is British. Personally, I listen to a lot of different music, but much of it is very random, very eclectic-- the type of music that will probably never make it overseas. So when I talk about music with people here, they're really surprised when they mention an American band I haven't heard of.

"But..." they'll say, looking confused, "it's American, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I'll say, "but there're lots of bands that are American."

And it's true. Think about it-- is there a way to be familiar with every band/singer in the United States? There are tons of American bands, and generally each person listens to a relatively small fraction of them. But here, people expect that since I'm an American, I automatically know all American music.

The thing is, there are very few popular Belgian bands or singers. It's a pretty small country compared to the United States--less than 11 million people in the entire country, and they speak two different languages at that. So when I ask about Belgian bands, people say-- "well, we Belgians really don't have a whole lot of bands..." As I've been writing this, I asked my host brothers to name some Belgian music off the top of their heads, and they said that all the popular Belgian artists "are all dead."

However, Toots Thielemans-- a harmonica player-- is Belgian, and pretty awesome. If you're interested, look

him up. And there's a couple other songs I've heard that I haven't yet caught the names/artists yet. But when I do, I'll share them.

Château de Beersel

2010-12-10T19:24:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago, I visited the Château de Beersel with Frederick, my host dad. It's an old medieval castle, and it's located around 5 kilometers-- a twenty minute or so bike ride-- away from where I live.

I want to share some picures of it-- it was pretty incredible. The weather was very "Belgian"-- misty and gray, which gave the scene a great, if a little creepy, ambience. The castle was built in the early 1300s as a defense castle-- the classic castle you think of when you think of the middle ages. Throughout the years it changed hands repeatedly-- the story is always complicated. At any rate, it was built for war-- built for keeping attackers out and peasants, their livestock, and the noble family safe. Here's some pictures-- they were taken a little bit earlier in the year, which is why things are still really green. It's frosted (and snowed!) a few times already, so now the grass is no longer green like it is in these pictures.

Anyway, here we go...

##########

First of all, I took some pictures of the countryside on the ride to the castle. It was very pretty-- classic European, if you ask me.

Entered into the limits of Beersel, another commune like Linkebeek, located in the little strip of the Flemish region of Belgium between Brabant-Wallon and the Brussels capital region.

This is the first look you have at the castle. You can see the moat under the drawbridge, and straight ahead is the entrance into the courtyard. During the period when this castle was in use, drawbridges like this were built to be burnt if attackers came. That made it much harder (obviously) to get access to the castle.

In the courtyard.

Notice how it's not the old stone castle that you might think of when you think of medieval castles. In fact, you see lots of stone castles in England, but not around here. Here, in the Benelux area, bricks were much easier to make.

We climbed a narrow staircase, and my blurry photo captures somewhat of the creepy feeling-- not quite like a horror movie, but it could be if you think about it too much. Actually, more than anything, it's blurry because there just wasn't very much light, and I avoid using the flash when I can.

We came out onto one of the outside walls.

We descended a staircase (a lot of them looked like this-- narrow)...

...and came into one of the rooms-- you can probably make a guess what went on here.

Yes, it is the torture chamber. This is not at all a castle of prince charming. Take a look at the hooks on the ceiling. Nice, huh?

We went into one of the three towers-- this is where someone could

Shoot arrows

Or keep watch.

We went back down the stairs, which spiral always in a counter-clockwise direction, so the (right handed) person coming down the stairs can swing his sword freely, while the person going up the stairs has a much harder time.

La toilette. Sympa?

I'm sure it was a little bit more developed back when it was in use, but still probably not all that comfortable.

You can see that some of the windows still have a little glass left in them. In fact, it was inhabited (and used) up until the mid 1700s.

The view from one of the other towers. The round turrets and stair-stepped roof were built in the early 1700s, if I understood correctly. It was the style back then-- it makes it look a little bit bigger than it actually is, and adds a bit of decoration.

Picture of a staircase without a flash. Pretty dark

Back on the outside, you can get a good view of the full castle.

Notice it only has three towers-- there were four, but the fourth one was built entirely out of wood, and it fell down after the castle was abandoned.

The castle was restored starting in the early 1900s, and today is now controlled by the Koninklijke Vereniging der Historische Woonsteden en Tuinen van België. Catch that? In English it's the "Royal Association of Historic Residences and Gardens in Belgium." They have lights around it and inside it which they turn on in the evenings, making it look a little bit more home-y.

After a chilly bike ride home, we came home to freshly cooked waffles, cooked by my host mom Aude. It made me happy to not have to live in the 1400s in a drafty castle.

Saint Nicolas!

2010-12-06T23:00:00.000+01:00

Today, December 6th is the day of Saint Nicolas (pronounced a little like San Nicolah in French).

I can't go into much detail about the holiday right now-- it's a school night-- but I want to at least post a few pictures and give an overview of what it's about. Also, I don't want to get too technical in each of the facts, because the details differ a lot on who you talk to. I'll give the story that I've heard from my host family-- it's very simple.

Here's the story that they showed me-- it's an old poem in French about how Saint Nicolas saved the children. Below it is a (not-completely-direct-but-you-get-the-idea) translation into English.

Saint NICOLAS (La Légende de Saint Nicolas)

    Ils étaient trois petits enfants
    Qui s'en allaient glaner aux champs—
    S'en vinr'nt un soir chez un boucher:
    "Boucher, voudrais-tu nous coucher?"—
    Entrez, entrez, petits enfants,
    Il y'a d'la place assurément! . . .

Ils n'étaient pas sitôt entrés
Que le boucher les a tués,
Les a coupés en p'tits morceaux,
Mis au saloir comme pourceaux.

Ils étaient, etc.

Saint Nicolas, au bout d'sept ans,
Vint à passer dedans ce champ,
Alla frapper chez le boucher:
"Boucher, voudrais-tu me loger?"

Ils étaient, etc.

— Entrez, entrez, saint Nicolas,
Il y'a d'la place, il n'en manq'pas."
Il n'était pas sitôt entré
Qu'il a demandé à souper.

Ils étaient, etc.

"Du p'tit salé je veux avoir
Qu'il y a sept ans qu'est dans l'saloir."
Quand le boucher entendit ça,
Hors de la porte il s'enfuya.

Ils étaient, etc.

"Boucher, boucher, ne t'enfuis pas;
Repens-toi, Dieu t'pardonnera."
Saint Nicolas alla s'asseoir
Dessus le bord de ce saloir.

Ils étaient, etc.

"Petits enfants qui dormez là,
Je suis le grand saint Nicolas."
Et le saint étendit trois doigts.
Les p'tits se lèvent tous les trois.

Ils étaient, etc.

The Legend of Saint Nicholas
freely translated from the French

Three little children sought the plain
Gleaners of the golden grain.
They lingered past the angel-song,
And dewy shadows swept along.

'Mid the silence of the wood
The butcher's lonely cottage stood,
"Butcher! lodge us for the night,
Lodge us till the morning light."

"Enter in, ye children small,
I can find a place for all."

The butcher seized a knife straitway,
And did the little creatures slay.
He put them in a tub of brine,
In pieces small as they were swine.

St. Nicholas, at seven years end,
His way did to the forest wend.
He sought the butcher's cottage drear:
"Butcher! I would rest me here!"

"Enter! enter, St. Nicholas!
You are welcome, St. Nicholas!
Enter! enter, St. Nicholas!
There's place for you the night to pass."
Scarce had the Saint his entrance made,
He would the supper board was laid.

"Will you have of ham a slice?"
"I will not, for it is not nice!"
"Of this veal you'll take a bit?"
"No! I do not relish it."

"Give me of the little swine,
For seven long years have laid in brine!"
The butcher caught the words he said,
And forthwith from the portal fled.

"Butcher! butcher! do not flee,
Repent and God will pardon thee!"

St. Nicholas the tub drew near,
And lo! he placed three fingers there.
The first one said, "I sweetly rest!"
The second said, "I too am blest!"
The third replied, "Tis well with me,
In Paradise I seem to be!"

From www.stnicholascenter.org

Freely translated from the French by English poet James Henry Dixon (1803–1876), Centro Studi Nicolaiani, Bari, Itlay, 1983.

Anyway-- it's a little greusome, but there you go. Gives you a basic idea of the background. Again, the butcher story is what my host family says is the right one-- I'm pretty sure there are many others others, though, depending who you ask.

Anyway, on (or around, depending if it's a weekday or not--he came yesterday for us because we didn't have school) the sixth of December, Saint Nicolas comes to each house, on a donkey, and enters through the chimney.

He brings bunches of gifts to the kids of each family--candy, speculoos cookies, tangerines, (of course) chocolate and toys, just as long as the children have been good throughout the year.

Sometimes, younger children will write him a letter, making sure he knows they've been good and asking him for specific gifts. The address, in case you're interested, is this:

Rue du Paradis, 1

Le ciel

I've heard that if someone writes him a letter, he answers....

If they hadn't been good, Père Fouettard, back in the olden days, accompanied Saint Nicolas with a whip, to spank the children who had been naughty. For obvious reasons, he's not around anymore now.

Like I said, each of these details changes depending who you talk to. There's some people who say he comes on a horse; some people don't agree that he comes in through the chimney; some people don't believe at all the story about the butcher.

There really are a lot of parallels between him and Santa Claus, but don't confuse the two. Saint Nicolas was the precursor to Santa Claus-- the Dutch settlers in the Americas are said to have brought the tradition, which evolved into Santa Claus. But here, Saint Nicolas comes only on the 6th, and Père Noël comes on Christmas eve. So people here are happy to say that they get "double the presents" as the rest of the world.

----

I saw Saint Nicolas a few different times-- he comes around this time of year, visiting. So he doesn't come only one day-- he's like Santa Claus in that you see him a lot.

I was in Namur (hour on the train from Linkebeek), and I saw him on one of the streets...

At a reunion we had with AFS...

Woo!

At the Linkebeek Maison Communale...

...with a line for the photos.

Yesterday he came by our house!

I got the poinsetta in the foreground, along with some candy I'd never tried before. Diego got an iPod charger; Gaëtan got a pair of pajamas, and Quentin got a little remote controlled airplane.

Here's a speculoos cookie shaped like St. Nicolas-- it was delicious on a pistolet, the belgian name for a round little loaf of bread. It was a new taste sensation-- I've never tried a cookie on a slice of bread. Lots of carbs, I'm sure-- not a good idea to eat it every day.

Quentin with his plate of sucre

Today, Saint Nicolas came to our class! After we sang the Saint Nicolas song, he tossed us some candy

Ô grand Saint Nicolas,

Patron des écoliers,

Apportez-moi des sucres

Dans mon petit panier.

Je serai toujours sage

Comme un petit mouton.

Je dirai ma prière

Pour avoir des bonbons.

Venez, venez, Saint Nicolas,

Venez, venez Saint Nicolas,

Venez, venez, Saint Nicolas, Tra la la...

I also got my photo taken with him, which I don't have yet. But once I get it, I'll be posting it!

Alors, merci, Saint Nicolas!