Welcome to my blog!

So, it's been over a year since my year in Linkebeek, Belgium ended. Sometimes that year feels like a different life, other times it feels so close that it almost brings me to tears. Life has changed since then, but I know that the experiences that I had during that time never will.

No matter if you're prospective exchange student, a past exchange student, or just interested about Belgium, feel free to take a look around the blog. Think of this as a documentation not only of a trip to Belgium, but also a documentation of my life as an exchange student and of life in general. I wrote these posts throughout my year there, so they change based on my experiences and the new things that I saw. Later in the year, you'll notice that there are a few months where I didn't post very often-- those were the months when I was most immersed in my new life (see the post entitled "Normal").

You may also notice that I never really wrote a concluding post-- that's because I didn't want that level of closure. My year in Belgium has stayed with me up until now, and Belgium will always play a part in my life, no matter where I am. I don't think exchange trips are ever truly over-- you continue to feel a connection to that country no matter what, and it jumps into your daily life in unexpected ways.

If you're a prospective exchange student, I do recommend reading posts in the section "Being an exchange student," because I wrote those at certain moments of my experience, starting with the arrival. You can see how my life changed as you read through those posts.  If you're on an exchange trip right now, keep in mind that others know what you're going through, and if you're feeling out-of-place and foreign, I truly would recommend "Normal."  If you've been an exchange student, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

I've organized links to my posts into the three main categories below, which are pretty self-explanatory. Each set of links is listed chronologically, so you can read the posts in some kind of order, which may make better sense. These links aren't the only posts in the blog-- they're just ones that I think best fit the categories. Use the list on the side of the screen to access all the posts.

And if you're simply interested in learning more about Belgium, I had a lot of fun writing the posts called Belgian portraits: the supermarket, Belgian portraits: Three meals and "A walk around Linkebeek." And finally, I recommend reading "Little things about Belgium" a post I wrote soon after I arrived.

This will probably be one of my last posts on this blog, mainly because it is fulfilling its main purpose: to document my year as an AFS exchange student in Belgium. So now that my year is over, I want to keep it as a story. I'm happy to share it with you-- I hope you enjoy it and learn something new.

Being an exchange student
The Arrival
On rusty English, time perceptions, and expanding worlds
On the Christmas season, missing home, and multiculturalism
Four months... about
Cinq Mois. 
Halfway. 
6.
Normal.
Wait, what? Quoi? I'm leaving...?

Writings about Belgium
Observations I 
Little things about Belgium
A discussion of pop culture
Saint Nicolas!
Carnaval!
Belgian portraits: Three meals

Photos of Belgium
A walk around Linkebeek
Follow me to school
Château de Beersel
Belgian portraits: the supermarket
A spring run
Photos from a packed couple months, part 1: Easter Vacation
Photos from a packed couple months, part 2: Looking back at my Belgian spring 

Love, frites, and warme wafels,
Austin Cope

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

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

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.

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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.

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Tulips on my street....

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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Belgian portraits: Three meals

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.