DERAE's 2ND REPORT

 

To start the month I went on a kayaking trip with rotary. It was a 20 km kayak down the Lesse River. It was cold, long and tiring but of course lots of fun. After that was my first Rotary meeting. The meeting was held in a nice restaurant and went fairly similar to the meetings we have in Prince. They asked me and the two other exchange students in the club (one from Brazil and one from Mexico) to give an introduction of ourselves in French. Luckily I'm not the only one who is horrible in French. Since none of us knew French they let us have our councilors introduce us. We found out at this meeting that at the end of November our rotary club is taking us to Versailles in France. As for school I think I would have to say I'm still as lost as I was before. I still have no idea what is going on in the classes but thankfully all of my classmates help me out A LOT. One of the things I'm really starting to like about Belgium schools is that if a teacher is absent you just don't go to your class. You don't get substitutes. By the way I should mention that I have managed to gain a lot of weight in the last 2 months. The websites were not kidding when they said Belgians eat a lot of chocolate! But I can not stop eating because all of the food is absolutely delicious. Especially home cooked meals. Like I have mentioned before Belgium is a very small country and it is really easy to travel anywhere within the country. So one weekend two friends and I took the train to Brugge. If you haven't been to Brugge before you should go. The town is very beautiful, minus the very expensive restaurants and shops. We spent the day mainly shopping and sight seeing. The weekend that just passed the Rotary had another event for us in Namur. Namur is also another really pretty town. This event was just them giving us rules for travelling followed by a boat ride around the town. I like the events like this because we get to see all of the exchange students in the country and we always have fun together. The exchange students have truly become like family to me and we luckily get to see each other often. After all of the Rotary events all of the exchange students usually go out for a bit and again we always have fun. After that I went to Gozee with some friends. This is the town that they live in. That night we went to an event thrown by the scouts. I should mention that scouts are very huge in Belgium. It's a huge social thing and a lot of people are in it. They throw organized parties and events for everyone as fundraisers and they are usually really big. So this has been my 2nd month so far in Belgium. I look forward to writing my 3rd letter next month and my goal by then is to be speaking French! Until then Bisous! Derae. Ps. I forgot to mention my host family is taking me to the south of France next week so I will be able to write about that in my next letter!