Monday, October 4, 2010

I'm here!



In Belgium that is. (and not actually in either of the buildings that are pictured above)

Today is a perfect October day, complete with lots of misty rain and grey skies interspersed with brilliant bursts of sunlight. I'm currently relaxing in between hanging out at Le Catalpa (trying to figure out what all I'll be doing there from week to week and day to day) and going to Ujeb (a Brussels based youth group of sorts.)

These past few weeks I've spent being initiated and trained at OM, meeting a TON of people and just learning what my days will look like while I'm here in Belgium.

I've also attempted to start LAMP (language acquisition made practical) which involves wondering around the neighborhood and speaking French with people (I'm making it sound a lot less structured than it actually is, there are "routes" and "phrases" and catchy titles to accompany the different steps of the process.) I say attempt because one of the beginning steps is to find people (i.e. people that are mostly complete strangers at this juncture) to help you in this process, such as shop keepers and neighbors. You begin, in other words, by approaching random people. Yikes. It starts to get really tricky when one considers that Belgium is a bi-lingual -even tri-lingual - country (this is particularly evident in and around Brussels.) The first lady I attempted to say my little phrase to spoke Flemish. Of course, I didn't realize this until I had said my sentence a couple of times, nervously watching her confounded face, thinking that I was butchering her language beyond comprehension, until she finally blurted out "Nederlands." Oy.

It is really great to finally be here (even amidst the awkwardness of languages and beginning steps -though it may be because I'm still reveling in the honeymoon stage of my transition -we've been talking about culture shock and descending in the pit of misery before normalization occurs.) Really, though, in complete honesty, it is good to be here.

I'll post more details later, but for now au revoir!

3 comments:

  1. just don't get a je mal a la tete!!! I think I remembered it lol!!!

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  2. So you don't live in Zaventem anymore? Where do you live?

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  3. Ahh, this excites me! :-) How wonderful. Love that picture, too.

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