Over Halfway

Clearly it's been a while since my last post, and while I apologize for the crazy delay, there have been some...interesting complications. First of all, I am, and have been for the past four weeks, laptopless. Alas, tis a tragic existence, and it also made a whole lot of things a lot more difficult like registering for classes next fall at McDaniel, making sure I got housing at McDaniel, general online schoolwork and papers, and of course, being able to blog! The plus side is that for two of those four weeks I was romping around Italy and France, and for the other two weeks... well I've been dong a whole lot of reading for class, and realizing what generous, caring friends I have.

With so much that has happened, I don't want to bore you with one ridiculously long post, and I also have no access to any of my pictures at the moment from my trips, so I'll divide up spring break and this week into three different posts, and elaborate on those shenanigans later! For now, suffice to say that I'm over halfway done with my study abroad in Brussels! A really strange and crazy fact for me to acknowledge.

I've come to realize that while my French, primarily my speaking and reading skills, have improved a lot, in order to really master the language I need more time! A year would better, several even more so; you really have to immerse yourself in a language, studying it, being forced to use new vocabulary and make conversation, in order to really become fluent. That being said, I did get a little too excited the other day when I spontaneously used an adverbial pronoun in a sentence. As soon as I realized it, my French-Canadian friends cracked up at how happy I was. It's the little things in learning a language.

Saint-Louis, my University here, has a very different system regarding its final exams than McDaniel College does. It's more similar to my studies in Glasgow, but here I'm taking a whole lot more classes and I still have no idea when nearly any of my exams are. This would be one thing I really don't like about the system at Saint-Louis: they don't tell you your exams dates until the end of April. Thus, travel plans and flight tickets are rather tricky to make.

So with the lack of a computer in my room, I have actually been to the library! In all honesty, I've been terrified of working in the library. I was never sure of how the system worked (you're supposed to leave your student ID card at the desk when you go in, but since mine was stolen with my wallet, I've just been sneakily going in...), and there are not a whole lot of computers to use or any printers, so I generally avoided it. Plus there was some rule about no backpacks. However, now I seriously needed the computers, so I entered the library! It's pretty small, and divided a bit strangely in some sort of labyrinth of stairs and levels between real floors. Floors are separated by department, so law books are all together, social sciences are separate as is philosophy. That makes is sound a whole lot easier to navigate than it is- its all kinds of easy to get lost! Despite the limited number of computers (I think there are maybe ten total spread out throughout the library), I've always been able to get on one, and struggle through typing English on the French keyboard.

Essentially, the entire group of Erasmus students has been buckling down a bit this week, realizing that we did nearly no studying over spring break, and really have to get on it now! It was nice to come back 'home' to Moulin (what we call our house), and slowly have it fill up again with friends exchanging stories of trips all over from Moscow to the south of Spain. I think we all realized that we missed each other over the break, and it was so nice to get back into our routine of cooking dinner and eating together, talking in a mixture of languages as usual. Since I just got back from France, I've been in the habit of only talking in French (I'll get into that more on my France post), so it's been easy to converse with people in French. That being said, I was talking French straight for a week, with no English at all. So the day after I came back I was craving being able to speak English with a native speaker from home. Unfortunately, this hasn't exactly worked out (see how this no computer problem extends on so many levels?), so I'm waiting to finally Skype with my family and friends for the first time in over a month next week!

I mentioned that I've been discovering how kind my friends are in the past couple weeks, and it's absolutely true. Everyone has been so generous and helpful to me here since things got rather messed up with not having any money with my debit card being stolen and no computer. People have been loaning me money, lending their computers for a few hours, and even making me dinner on occasion. The friendships I've made in the past studying abroad, and these ones now really become strong ties for life. Being thrust into another culture really brings you together, making a pretty unique bond. So a thank you to everybody that has been helping me, or checking in on me. It's good to be back in familiar Brussels again, (despite our schizophrenic weather of sunshine and rain) and get back in the routine of classes and the occasional drink out in a pub with friends.

Halfway over. I'm going to miss the people here.