Some things are the same everywhere, and one of those things is the magic and excitement that come with the first snowfall.... here in Brussels, it snowed on Friday night! A good few inches came down and, before it all melted away and turned into muck, it was quite pretty! Unfortunately, it also resulted in our trip to German Christmas markets being cancelled. Instead, Cassie, Jo and I went on a shopping expedition to Carrefour (the wal-mart of Belgium). Not nearly as fun as Germany, but it had to be done...

Thanksgiving dinner was weird but fun... I got to call home and talk to everyone, which was great. (Although I did answer the same questions about 10 times...) My uncle Kurt sent me a video from that day, with everyone saying "hi!" and Lutsen was even in it!! The wonders of technology!!!

The term is winding to a close here at school... report cards, visits from St. Niclaus (Dec 6th), planning for Christmas sing-alongs and parties... only two weeks left after this one... I'm getting really excited to go to Barcelona!
The first graders are having a bake sale tomorrow to raise money to help the victims of the earthquake in Pakistan. That should be fun, and it's great to see the concern they have after we watched a video about the earthquake and the way it affected kids like themselves.

That's about it... nothing too exciting... in the home stretch before break....

Something to ponder:
The saying "saying you're sorry means you won't do it again" is quite a good one to remind young children of... but I had to laugh when I heard this on the playground:

"Saying you're sorry means you don't have to tell the teacher.... and I won't do it anymore"

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

It is 5pm here, and soon I will head to a Thanksgiving dinner put on by ISB. It is weird to think that it is 10am at home and the house is starting to smell like turkey. Soon the house will be warm and cozy and filled with some of my favorite people in the world. This may be the first time I really miss home.....


Well, Boitsfort has been a happening place lately! Monday night, I fell asleep on the couch (reading, of course!). At about 11:30 I was awoken by loud sirens and flashing blue lights, first on one side of the house, and then on the other. At first, I thought an emergency vehicle had circled the block, but I soon realized that there were in fact TWO fire trucks, one at each end of our little Rue du Concours. They firefighters went into a house across the alley. I watched out the window as the neighbors came outside to make sure there was no fire that could spread to them. The firemen assured them it was alright, and they went back inside. I watched from teh window as a fireman entered with a chainsaw, followed by one with a ladder. After a while, there was some loud noises and they started bringing out crates of something and dumping it in the alley. they then dumped water on top... it sounded like glass or bricks (it was bricks). I could not, however, see into the house because it is at an angle to ours. I woke Cassie up to look out her window, but still couldn't see, so I went to bed....

Another story: we had some friend over for a late dinner on Tuesday night and we were sitting in the living room playing cards afterwards. It got to be about midnight and suddenly Cassie gave a gasp, pointed at the window, and said "there's something out there!" There were two guys outside on an electronic lift, stringing Christmas lights up! (We are on the corner, so they attach to our house) So, being good people, we offered them a beer. Being good Belgians, they accepted, and polished them off im about 2 minutes!

It's getting cold here. No snow yet, but the rumors are flying that it could snow soon.... I"m hoping for a snow day!

School is going well, my days are full of activity and that makes it go so fast! I can't believe it's only three weeks til winter break!!

Katie headed back to Pittsburg this morning. We will miss her, but I'm glad she will be back right after Christmas break!

I'm going to a Christmas market in Germany this weekend, which should be fun. Last weekend I went to a conference in The Hague, in the Netherlands. I saw a little of the city but basically I saw Holland from a bus... but I can say I've been there!!

Well, that's the end of it! Til next time!

Update....

Katie: is out of the hospital (!!) and is back here in Boitsfort for the next week or so, at which point she will be heading back to the States for a full recovery. She'll be back in Belgium in January if she gets medical clearance... it's going to be weird to lose a member of the Rue du Concours intern branch, but obviously living in Belgium, land of narrow twisting stairs, cobblestones and public transportation, is not a good idea for a person with a broken toe and wrist and a bad back! (Handicap accessibility is not such a big thing over here....)
Leuven is now the city outside of Brussels I have visited the most! Cassidy and I were there four times in the past week, though we didn't see much of the town. the University Hospital pretty much could be its own town - it is HUGE! (at least a five-minute walk from the parking lot to the Green Wing - rumor has it that they made all the signs for the color-coded wings without the names of the colors on them, just simply an arrow on a colored background, and then realized that they hadn't considered those people who might be colorblind, so they had to go back and add the names of the colors! we also learned some Flemish words, as that part of the country is Flemish.... uitgang means "outgoing" for people, but uitrit is "out" for cars..... the parking poo is the parking garage...)

School is pretty hectic this week, so I am holding on for dear life and flying by the seat of my pants a lot (can i do both those things at once? or would i just be grabing onto my own pants???) regardless, it's all just part of the fun!!
this weekend i'm going to a big conference run by the European Council of International Schools (ECIS), kind of a last-minute thing; it's for the day on Saturday and there's some interesting-sounding sessions... and it's in the Hague, so I can say I've been to the Netherlands even if everyhting I see is from a bus window!!

Another pretty short post, but nothing too exciting has happened lately... for those of you that are wondering, none of the violence from Paris has spread here, though there have been rumors of planned riots, nothing every came of it....

That's all for now!

The Latest

Katie B is having a procedure to fix her back at approximately 9:30 Friday morning Brussels time (that's 2:30 am for all you Minnesotans), here in a nearby town called Leuven at a really great university hospital, and then she will have a brace for about 6 weeks. the good news: no more lying down, and she could be out of the hospital by midweek! yeah!!

We had a 4-day school week, thanks to Armistice Day (end of World War I)! It will be quite nice to sleep in!

Short and sweet! that's all for now!

It’s always amazing how life can throw you curves; how circumstances come together in ways that throw you for a loop… early this morning Katie B, my housemate and fellow intern, was in a car accident. She’s now laid up in the hospital with an impacted vertebrae that requires surgery, a broken toe, and a broken wrist. She may be going home to the States to have the surgery and will be out of commission until Christmas. It still feels unreal that this happened, and I can only imagine that it is ten times more unimaginable for her. It could have been worse – the car flipped over – and luckily her parents were in town for a visit, so they are able to be here with her and help figure out the logistics of things.
We were out last night for a going-away party for one of our friends, and Katie went along to bring him to the airport while the rest of us headed home, On the way to the airport, the accident occurred. We didn’t hear of this until about 11 this morning when Katie’s dad came by to fill us in.
It just doesn’t seem fair. After everything she went through to get over here, with all the same paperwork issues I had, it seems so wrong that she will have to go back home for awhile. As I said, it could have been worse, in a lot of ways, but it still seems so unreal that it happened at all. Our house won’t be the same without her here- she is such a fun person and a great running partner!


The good news is that before this happened, I had a fabulous time in London - see below.

London!


I went with Cassidy, Ashlee and Laura. Ashlee is interning in Antwerp and Laura is student teaching there. We left early Monday morning and took the Eurostar (train) directly from Brussels to London via the Chunnel, which was 20 minutes of darkness and not as freaky as I thought it would be. It only took two hours to get there! When we arrived, we bought all-day tube passes, grabbed a map of the Underground, and set off to find our hostel. It was about a half-hour out of the center of town, and it was fabulous! It is open 24 hours, has an internet café, free breakfast, nice rooms, nice bathrooms…. All for affordable prices! WE stayed with two girls who were staying there for awhile and were pretty settled in, though we didn’t see much of them.

After ditching out stuff, we headed back into town, where we caught the Original Bus Tour – the double-decker, open-top red bus tour! It is a ‘hop-on, hop-off’ tour, but we just stayed on and rode the loop around, looking at everything and taking in the city. We got off once to eat lunch, and when we got back on we had the best tour guide ever – he knew lots of interesting facts, (example: someone bought London bridge, thinking they were buying the Tower Bridge, the really cool one, and got a big shock when they ended up with a plain-jane bridge that’s now somewhere in Arizona!) and he was also really funny. It was a good time, and we got to see everything. I like to take pictures of clocks, and there were a TON of them, so I was happy! We were all pretty tired, so we made an early night of it, eating dinner at a pub and heading back to the hostel.

Day 2, Tuesday, was absolutely beautiful! This was a good thing, because we spent a lot of time outside! We met up with Jenny, a friend of Laura’s and fellow Lutherite, and headed to the Tower of London. We spent quite a bit of time there, as there’s a lot to see! It’s been used as a royal palace, a prison, a fortress and other things as well, so there is a lot of history there. We saw the crown jewels, which are amazingly huge and beautiful, and wandered around in the various towers and buildings for a few hours. We ate lunch outside, gazing at the River Thames and the Tower Bridge…. We discovered this chain of stores that sell pretty cheap sandwiches and stuff and it’s just called ‘eat.’ They are on every block downtown, or so it seems. After lunch we walked along the river and across London Bridge. We passed by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (though it’s a reproduction, not the original), and went to the Tate Modern, the museum of modern art. One whole floor was temporarily closed, so that was a little sad, but we did get to see a lot of interesting pieces. I have a hard time understanding some of it, but it definitely made me think about my definition of art….. one piece filled a hige open space and was huge stacks of plaster casts of cardboard boxes…..


We checked out a local pub for dinner and then spent some time playing cards at the bar that’s in the hostel. Wednesday dawned rainy and cold, but it was okay because we spent most of it inside. We spent the morning in the National Gallery looking at art that is a little more straightforward…. It was amazing to see paintings by Monet – they are so amazing! I love landscape paintings especially, and I bought a small print of a painting of a silver lake with an island that just jumped out at me, probably because it reminds me of good old Minnesota. After a few hours, my head was spinning… it’s a lot to take in!

Our next stop was Westminster Abbey, which is absolutely stunning! It’s still used for worship, coronations, funerals, etc. but there’s also a lot of history there, so it’s fascinating. I did the audio tour as I walked around, which helped me make the most of the experience. There is a shocking amount of people buried there… I wonder how many…..the architecture and decorations is what amazed me the most – there is so much detail in every aspect of the building, it must have taken meticulous planning and a lot of time to plan and build. The soaring ceilings were especially beautiful, and the space is just so impressive!

This was our last night in London, so we made the most of it by going to see a show! We saw “Mama Mia” which as really fun and really good! It’s a musical based around the songs of ABBA. Now, I’m not really an ABBA fan, but I know more of their songs than I think I do, and it also doesn’t matter because they are in the context of the show. It was really enjoyable, a really fun production, and quite uplifting with a lot of comedy… a feel-good show, basically. We were all grooving to the songs in our heads on the tube on the way home…. Seeing musicals makes me want to sing show tunes, too!!

Thursday morning, we headed to the train station and returned home… it was a great trip, but I was ready to come home….

Overall, good things about London:
STARBUCKS!!
Logging many miles on the tube and hearing the voice say “Mind the Gap!” over and over.
Seeing Ashlee and Laura
Seeing lots of sights

Bad things about London: The English pound! 1.70 euros to 1 pound….. it was quite a shock to get home and see how much money I spent!!

I’m sure there are some things I forgot, but I’m also sure this is really long and it’s time to be done now!! So I am.

To see pictures, click on the pictures link!