Sorry for the recent lack of posts - After not updating my blog for about two weeks, the thought of relaying everything I had been doing in those weeks in one post seemed a daunting task. So I kept putting it off, and kept having more adventures, and as a result wasn't sure how to go about "re-starting" my blog.

Also, my camera broke. Writing posts without pictures really isn't as much fun. But new one is arriving today, so I will be able to take pictures of everything I do from now on to share with all of you!

Rather than trying to write a whole post about every thing I've done, here's a list of what I've been up to:
 - Had a successful Thanksgiving dinner. Everything turned out amazing in the end, despite the few setbacks I had at the outset.
 - Went to Amsterdam last weekend with Anais and Victoria. AMAZING city!
 - Dinant with Victoria a few weekends ago. Climbed up to the citadel, and up to some old ruins.
 - Antwerp for the day a few weeks ago. Did a lot of shopping, and walked around town. It's a really incredible place!
 - Went to a 24 hour party in Louvain-La-Neuve, a town just outside of Brussels (note I was not there the full 24 hours!). It is the biggest student party in Europe, with 40,000 students attending on average. It was crazy to say the least. Also quite disgusting, people pee everywhere, throw up where ever they feel like, and toss beer when they're done with it. Very fun though, definitely a memorable experience!
 - Celebrated Halloween in Brussels - apparently Halloween costumes here are actual "Halloween" costumes. A lot of blood on faces, pumpkins, witches, etc. Our group Rambo costumes were a bit hit however
 - Went to a puppet show in Brussels. It was one of the most bizarre, but wonderful experiences I have had yet. The theatre was in a tiny little house at the back of a small alley. The puppet room was a tiny wood-panelled room with wooden rafters on the top floor of the house. The walls were lined with puppets, and seats were long benches covered in multi-colored cushions. The puppet stage was about a metre and a half tall by two metres wide, and you could see the hands of the puppeteers as they were controlling the movements of the different characters in the play. We saw "Le Bossu", which is "The Hunchback" in English (apparently a classic tale..?), and although I had a very hard time understanding the french being spoken (I'm still not convinced that it was even in french most of the time!) it was very entertaining! Lots of sword fighting between the puppets, dramatic deaths, and puppet strings getting tangled with other puppets. Very wonderful experience!

I'm off to Berlin this week coming up. Very much looking forward to it. I promise I will write a proper post about my adventures there!

Bisous!
Sarah

Dinant

Ruins in Dinant

Victoria and I

Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Puppet stage

Puppet theatre benches

Thanksgiving in Europe

So far, Brussels is kicking Thanksgiving's ass. First of all, Turkeys do not exist here in any season other than Christmas. Great. I will be preparing two lovely (...but small) Thanksgiving chickens in lieu of the Turkey. Picked up the chickens at the meat market in the middle of Brussels. I walked through rows and rows of fruit and vegetable stands, listening to the many vendors yell at me to visit their booth, to find this 'meat market' I had heard about. Finally, I walked in to a buiding full of stalls with huge hunks of meat. Gross. Found the chickens, and asked the man for his biggest one - thinking that, like in Canada, it would be quite large. BOY was I wrong. The largest chicken available was smaller than the size of my head (3 kg). Wondering whether two of the mini-chickens would be enough to feed about 12 people, I decided to get the meat-man's opinion. After repeating myself many times, the meat-man finally grabbed my hands and said (in french) "I don't understand what you are saying to me!". How discouraging. Although in my defence, the meat market was like an auction house, with people screaming everywhere to get the best cuts of meat from the butchers - so you could barely hear in the first place. Luckily, his partner spoke english, and he was able to tell me that two mini-chickens were, in fact, plenty to feed 12 people.
Also, Cranberries don't seem to be sold here, in any form - sauce, the actual berry, or juice! Impossible to find.

So, off to a GREAT start. Need to make sure that the preparation of all this food goes well. I have promised my international friends the best Canadian Thanksgiving ever. Wish me luck!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Miss you!
Sarah
xoxoxo

I have discovered an untapped market in Brussels - Travel Mugs!
I swear, everytime I bring mine out with me, I get AT LEAST one person who asks me where I got it, because it is "such a good idea!".
Good thing I brought mine, and didn't decide it was something I could just "buy over here".

Also, since we are on a semi-environmental topic, I feel I should make note of the AMAZING residential 'waste' program they have here in Brussels. Here it is: NOTHING is waste!
We get three bags; a yellow one for paper and cardboard, a blue one for plastic and metals, and a white one for organics. So nothing really gets "thrown out", everything fits into one of the bags, and so all is recycled!

I love Brussels.

Went last night to the Musee de la Ville de Bruxelles in the old Maison du Roi in La Grande Place. Amazing. They had an entire section on urban planning and the growth of Brussels from the 15th to the 20th century. Was quite amazing to see pictures of the growth of the city, and the different urban planning techniques (or lack of..)  used as more and more people came to Brussels.
As wonderful as it was to learn a bit about the history of the city of Brussels, my favourite part of the museum was the collection of Mannequin Pis' outfits! He has a traditional outfit from almost every country accross the globe, an astronaut uniform, various police/army/navy uniforms, and just about every other thing you could imagine. But one in particular caught my eye. Here Canada:

Miss everyone!

A bientot.
Sarah
xoxoxoxo

I love Brussels! I love Belgium! I love the Netherlands!

I have been having the same wonderful conversation with my friends here. We talk about how even though we've all been here only two or three weeks, we feel like it has been much longer. We don't constantly remember anymore that we're "away on exchange in a foreign country". Rather, we are living in another one of our world's remarkable cities. But every once in a while, we stop and think, wow, I can't believe that I get to be here, in Brussels for so long.
So finally, I feel like I am living in Brussels, not just here studying on exchange. And for the first time since coming here, I realized what it meant to not only be living in Brussels, but also in the whole of Belgium.
I took a trip to Bruges this weekend. Incredible, incredible, incredible! That city is magical. Its beautiful canals, small, elaborate, colorful houses with pointed roofs, and winding cobblestone roads are only part of what gives the city its charm. I climbed up the 366 stairs to the top of the clock tower, took a boat ride through the canals, learned about the history of chocolate at the Chocolate Museum, wandered through the roads of the city, admiring the every beautiful house, church, square, and bridge Bruges had to offer.
The second day my friends and I rented bicycles from our hostel and decided to bike outside of Bruges. We followed the most amazing canal from Bruges to the small but pretty town of Damme, then made our way to Sluis, a town just on the other side of the Belgium border in the Netherlands. It was on this bike ride that I really felt what it meant to be living in Belgium. I realized how beautiful the countryside is, how all the small towns and villages we passed on the way were similar but offered their own charm, and how Belgium's central location really does make it easy to go anywhere.
My first adventure outside Brussels was a grand success, and I can't wait to see where I'll go next!

A bientot!
Sarah xoxoxo

Crossing the Dutch border

L'universite francaise....

The most intimidating thing about taking classes in French is being the only one sitting in the auditorium not furiously taking notes. Sure, I could take notes, but that would require me missing everything being spoken by the prof during the time it took me to write anything down. I never realized before how amazing it is that in an english class you can be writing something down, thinking about what it is you are writing down, all the while still be listening to what a prof is saying. Incredible! So until French becomes a bit more natural for me, looks like I will have to endure a constant battle of listening vs. note taking.

Apart from the whole 'taking notes' situation, first few days of classes have been good. Had a Societe et Environnement class this morning (reminiscent of Geog101A mixed with EOS 110), which was amazing! I knew everything that was going on!  My Histoire de la litterature Francaise class (english translation: history of french literature) however, went not so well. Showed up, BARELY understood a word that was being said, and on top of that was given a reading list of 4 pages of books, and a course outline with 4 exams, and a final oral exam. Knowing that this would be a bit of a feat for erasmus students, the prof had set up a special 2 hour weekly session for us to keep up with the reading material, and our comprehension. Unfortunately, this meant answering pages and pages of reading comprehension questions every week. Not wanting us to get behind, the prof put the exchange students right to work. Class was on Monday, and for Wednesday I was supposed to have read a quite large portion of the bible AND another book AND answered 4 pages of questions. All in French. I think NOT. Am no longer in that class. :) This is the beauty of the school system here. As overwhelming and frustrating as it is to still not have a concrete schedule, it is nice to be able to 'try out' different classes to see which ones you like, and which ones will end up being the death of you. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have a good idea of what I'm going to be taking.

Not much else new over here. Just realized that in the time it took me to write this post, I have eaten half a bag of chips. Well done Sarah. Not only am I having to use every ounce of self control to not consume a million waffles a day, try to stay clear of the most delicious french fries on the planet, and avoid the dozens of boulangeries on my walk home from school, but now I have to worry about potato chips. Oh well!

Still miss everyone so much. Hope school is going well (or if not in school.. just hope all is well!).

A bientot.

Sarah
xoxoxoxoxo

Mannequin Pis' latest fashion

Oh, Canada

I still struggle trying to remember words in french, still never remember that people give "bisous" here (always awkward...one or two? which way?), and i still can't walk on cobblestones without tripping, but other than that, I am finally starting to feel at home in this city!
Finally found an apartment! I moved in two days ago and packed all my things into a tiny little room (good thing there was a 50 lbs bag limit on the plane..) and made a trip to IKEA yesterday. My building is a 5 minute walk from the university and all the rooms are rented to ERASMUS students (the name for a European exchange). So basically I live in an international residence, which is awesome! I have two roommates; one girl is from Spain, the other from Italy! I communicate with the girl from Spain in English, but me and the girl from  Italy have made a vow to only speak french to each other as we are both trying to learn!
I have been meeting a ton of other international students through the club "express", which organizes events for Erasmus students. Went on a pub crawl the other night and met a few Canadians (so exciting!), some Swedish people, many people from Spain, and others  from all over the world (well.. mostly from Europe)! We went to four bars - one, called Delirium - has the LARGEST selection of beers in the world. They have usually 25 beers on tap (the tap is massive, and hoses are everywhere!), and then have 4000 bottled beers available (Not sure of the exact numbers, but there are a lot!)! How you are supposed to choose what to drink is beyond me. Tried Cherry beer for the first time, and I think I'm hooked. Never had I had a beer so delicious!
Another bar we went to was amazing. It was a little tavern/cave with low ceilings, dim light, long wooden tables with wooden stools, live Celtic music (all the musicians were sitting around a table, drinking and playing their instruments), and an endless stream of new little rooms. I found myself in the furthest, darkest corner of the bar with two tables. At one table was a large group of Spanish students, and at the other was the french Canadian and other Canadian students. The Spanish table was singing all the drinking songs from their country, and so feeling the need to show some pride, all the french Canadians started singing their french drinking songs (which I had never heard..), and when they felt truly overpowered by the Spanish's endless repertoire of songs, they burst into the Canadian national anthem. So we sang Oh Canada, half in french, half in English, in the middle of a tavern in Brussels.

All is wonderful in Brussels. Miss everyone.

A bientot.

Sarah
XOXO

View from my bedroom window.

My little room :)