One Month in Belgium

Whoever said time flies when you’re having fun knew what he was talking about. I have already been in Belgium for a month and it feels like just yesterday I had gotten off the plane. I have experienced so much already in my first few weeks here and I am really looking forward to my next 9 months here. I remember talking to people about how difficult the first few months would be here. My first month in Belgium has had its ups and downs but overall I would say it has been pretty good. I can already tell my French has improved a lot over the time I have been here and I know it will get even better. I understand a lot and think the major thing I need to work on is speaking. I always get super nervous having one on one conversations with people in French (which is so weird for me). It will get better with time and practice. I remember my French teacher telling me how tired I would be all the time and he was so right. I have been really tired my first month, but that’s normal. Living in a different time zone and speaking another language drains you. I take a lot of naps after school and go to bed as early as I can. I started school Tuesday the 8^th and I remember coming home after school and crashing on my bed until dinner time. School here shares similarities with school in the USA but is also so different. To get to school, I take a 40ish minute bus ride from Lasne (my town) to Wavre (the city my school is). My first day, I had no clue where I was going so the secretary pointed me in the right direction. My school is called IPES and it’s a high school for certain occupations. At IPES, you can study anything from chemistry to optical. I am in the restaurant/cooking category as a senior (6eme here). So the first day of school we had an assembly where we go over the rules and expectations. It was a little overwhelming but I understood majority of the speech. Afterwards, we split to our classes. In Belgium school, you stay with one “class”. These are students who are studying the same thing and have the same courses together. I am in the 6eme (12^th grade) technical qualification for cooking. There are 5 other students in my class; Valentin, Lionel, Elodie, Flavien & Madani. We are together every day and they are all helpful. On the first day, I started in the professional option instead of the technical qualification option so I had to switch that. Fortunately, the students in professional and TQ have cooking courses together so I know majority of the people in that class now. The morning of the first day was really easy, we stood around and talked about our schedules and summers and then had lunch. Everyone in the school is very welcoming and inviting which is really nice. In the 6eme class for cooking there are 4 girls (including me) so we stick together. We ate our sandwiches together outside the school. Elodie, Chloé, and Bérénice are all very nice and super helpful. And they don’t speak a lot of English, so it’s a good way for me to work on my French. After lunch classes started. I had oenology and salle for my first day. They were really easy classes because we just talked about the content of the course. In salle, we are going to learn about various coffees, wines, cheeses and teas. Oenology is the studying of wine. That class was really difficult for me on the first day because I know very little about wines in English and much less in French. As my language improves, I think the class will get a lot easier. Wednesday is probably my favorite day of school for a few reasons. First, we get out of school early. Most days I start school at 8:30 and finish at 4:30. Each class is about 50 minutes. Secondly, my first 2 hours on Wednesdays are English class. How could I not love that?!? On my first Wednesday, we talked about similarities and differences between Belgium and the US. It was a great way to get to know them and help them learn about my country and English! After English, I had French class. I totally forgot that French class here would be like English class in the States so I walked in to class looking for a more elective style course and got a more literature based course. In French, we are going to be studying Cyrano de Bergerac which I had studied in my French class at Central. We also have to do four book reports throughout the year. My host mom has a ton of French books at the house so I can easily find a book to read and write about. I understood everything we talked about in French class and I feel super confident with that class. Math classes follows French class. To be honest, math in French was one thing I was super worried about but the class I am in is statistics. I took statistics in the US so I understand the math part. The difficult part is the French part. My teacher is very understanding and really nice too. My final class of the day is organic chemistry. This class started off super hard. The teacher talked so fast and I had never seen organic chemistry before. After we got some papers with pictures it started making a lot more sense. Science comes easy to me (Thanks, Dad (my dad in the US is a science teacher)). Wednesday afternoon I shopped for school, ate lunch and relaxed at the house with my host brother. Some courses I had Thursday and Friday are gestion (which is management), Economy, Geography, Dutch, and many cooking classes. Gestion, economy and geography are all semi new for me but I understand what is going on in the class. Dutch class was super new for me. Fortunately, the teacher understood that I was an exchange student who had never seen a word of Dutch and gave me everything in English. I think it’s going to be super difficult to learn a language in French but I am going to try. My first cooking class was super overwhelming. The teacher gave us all these papers full of information we have to know for our exams in December and June. We also got a schedule of when we work the school cafeteria and the school restaurant (yes my school has a restaurant that people can come to, its super cool!). I am nervous that I might mess something up because I didn’t understand what someone told me. Luckily, I have Madani in my group. Madani is in my group (6eme TQ Hôt) so I know him pretty well because we have all our classes together and he speaks some English. I hope after a few months it will be a lot better. Friday night, I spent that the night at my friend Alyssa’s in Waterloo. Alyssa, Rachel and I went out to Touchdown which is a sports bar and had a lot of fun together. It was a really cool environment for students to come and hang out together on a Friday night. Saturday, Rachel and I went shopping in Brussels. I always go shopping for clothes at H&M, which I feel so bad about because I know they exist in the states. The reason I go there is because I know I will like those clothes when I go back to the states and the European stores are really expensive. Saturday the tram I normally take was closed so we had to take a bus and the bus took forever so we spent like 3 hours travelling to City 2 (a wonderful mall in Brussels). We were so tired and so hungry but after we had lunch we were ready to go! After we went to a couple stores I had to leave to go to my Rotary counselor’s house for a dinner. I went the wrong way and kind of got lost in Brussels but found my way back. At the dinner, all four exchange students who are sponsored by the Genval club were there; Cami from Boliva, Pusiut from Thailand, and Dani from Mexico. Nicola and Carrie (my counselor and his wife) were so hospitable and we all spoke English together so it really felt like home. Carrie is actually from Idaho so it was fun to talk with another American in Belgium. They are both really wonderful people and I am so lucky to have such a great Rotary contact for the year. Today is Jewish New Year so tonight with Léon and Sao we are going to dinner with family. I am really excited to experience a holiday in a different religion. I also get to skype my family today! We decided to wait to skype a month after I got here so I could settle in. I have already skyped a few of my friends at home and it has actually really helped me out because seeing them happy makes me happy and of course they want to know all about Belgium. It is still so surreal for me that I am staying here for the next 9 months. I always feel like in a few days I will be hoping on plane to go back home but then I realize Belgium is my new home. I am so excited for the next few months and I know they are going to fly by!

XOXO
Shelby

My School Schedule

Brussels Saturday

Walk from the Bus Stop

Touchdown with Alyssa and Rachel