Shelby's Year in Belgium: Maastricht & Viva for Life Gala

Wow it has been a while since I have posted on my blog! A lot has happened in those few weeks. First I want everyone to know I am doing perfectly fine regarding the attacks. I live in a small city 30ish minutes from Brussels and approximately 4 hours away from Paris. Not much happens here and I feel safe here. More of my thoughts on terrorism later in this post. As for where I left off on my last post. It was fall break and I had just returned from Paris. I was sick so majority of break I spent catching up on sleep so I could feel better for school. On the Friday of break I did go to Maastricht, Netherlands with a fellow exchange student. We spent the day exploring the city, visiting the churches and shopping at stores. We found one church that they converted into a bookstore. They sold English books so of course I bought one. We also found a super expensive department store and a market right in front of the town hall. It was a pretty decent day weather wise and it was a good experience for my first time in the Netherlands. Our train coming home was super late. It took me almost 4 hours to get home when it’s usually about 2. The weekend of November 7-8 I spent in Brussels with my host dad. We went to see 2 movies that weekend, The Intern and Specter (the new James Bond movie!!). Both were super great films and I am so glad I got to spend the weekend in Brussels. I also got to walk around place Louise with my host dad and we peeked into a couple stores. Place Louise is what I call the Belgium version of Champs-Elysees (minus all the tourist). It is also where Stromae filmed his music video for Formidable!! School started back up the next week. It was a pretty normal week besides the fact that we had Wednesday off for Reembrace Day. My host mom and I decided to take a day trip to Lille, France for the day. We did a little shopping and visited the Grand Place of Lille. It is such a beautiful city in France! She also showed me a traditional Lille specialty, gaufre vanille. It is really hard to describe but the transduction is vanilla waffle. Except it isn’t really a waffle because it is really flat and the vanilla is on the inside. SO GOOD! I also bought some cute riding boots from a little shoe shop in Lille too. The next big thing that happened that week was the Paris attacks. My first thoughts about the acts were heartache for the people who were a part of it and shock. Lots of shock. How could a city that I had just seen 2 weeks ago be attacked like that? It was absolutely horrible. I woke up Saturday morning with many notifications for all my social media accounts from people asking if I was safe and what not. Thank you to everyone who thought of me, fortunately I was safe and sound in Belgium. 2 major things I can take away from the attacks in Paris are: 1. you can’t be afraid because that is what the terrorist want. If you are afraid, they win. And 2. Not every Arab or Muslim is a terrorist. ISIS is an extremist group and I often think people forget that. These attacks reminded me a lot of 9/11 and the pain many Americans went through on that day. It is so heartbreaking we live in a world where these things happen. Paris is one of my favorite places in the world and it definitely hurt to see them suffer. Security across Europe has definitely increased after the events. Sunday, my host family and my host uncle (Samantha, Ilan and Elliot) went to Waterloo. I really enjoyed learning about it because it was such an important part of European history. The memorial they have about it is really interactive and super cool. I learned a lot and got to climb to the top of the Lion of Waterloo. We were the only ones up there at the time so that was really neat too. Monday at school we talked a little bit about the attacks. A lot of the students at my school had the same reaction I had: shock. I think that everyone was a little on edge from the attacks so we didn’t really have a lot to say. Other than that, school this week consisted on preparing for a big banquet and taking lots of quizzes. We have exams in a few weeks right before winter vacation. The banquet we had this week was to raise money for Viva for Life which is an organization that raises money to give to underprivileged children. Tuesday, my class made chocolates to serve with the coffee. Wednesday we have half days so I went to Namur with other exchange students and we received our exchange student hoodies we designed together. Friday was the big day of the banquet (which I took no pictures of :( )! I left my house around 7:40am and got home around 1:40 in the morning. I was at school helping set up for it. The gala started around 7 o’clock and I was working salle so I had my own table to serve. At the beginning of the night, I was really nervous. Serving a table of 11 people with all the tips and tricks like serving the soup on the left side and the wine on the right and on top of that everything being in French definitely wrecks the nerves. Fortunately, the people at my table were super understanding and very helpful. By the end of the night I felt pretty confident! At the end of the night, the check of the money earned that night was given to Viva for Life by 2 students. I was one of the two students who presented the check! I went up on stage with an older student, Pierre who was the mastermind of the salle portion of the night. I didn’t really know what to do so I acted like Vera from the Wheel of Fortune and just held the check and smiled. All of my classmates started chanting my name which was so funny and really cool. They are some really great people and I am really really lucky I have the opportunity to meet them. After the people left, we cleaned up and went home. It was a very long day but I learned a lot! Today I had lunch with my host mom, uncle and grandparents in Waterloo and tonight Samantha and I are going to a jam with her friend. Right now Brussels is on level 4 alert regarding terrorist and attacks. I am not in Brussels but just outside but my host family and I will be super careful for the moment. I know I am safe here and that if it wasn’t safe, I wouldn’t be here. Tomorrow we are going to go to a city near Luxembourg and I am super excited for that because I haven’t seen that area before! Thanks for reading and for all the thoughts. I will keep y’all updated through Facebook although I think all will be well.

Until Next Time,

Shelby