Life.... And I Know It's Been Ages

Hello again, blog. I feel like it's been ages!

Probably because it has been ages. I feel I should have an excuse but alas, it's really just that life is busy.

I've been on a few adventure since we last spoke. Namely, I visited England. It was really fun to play translator for my host family all day, and it was really encouraging to realize that I'm actually pretty fluent in French. I mean, I've been drifting about Belgium, trying to make friends and learn slang and understand how people life their lives here. This whole, I've gotten good at French thing? It passed right over my head. And you wouldn't have thought being in England, of all places, would have made me realise that. In England, hearing English on the radio really freaked me out. Going to a pub and seeing English on the menu was a tad strange. Hearing it as background noise on the street was downright bizarre.

It was weird to realise that this whole immersion-thing seems to be working. And before going to England, I didn't buy Rotary's whole schpeal about "reverse culture-shock", arriving home and finding your old routines and world to be strange. England, admittedly, is not my motherland, but it's a lot closer to home than Belgium. For one, Canada and England share the Queen. For another, people in England have a distinct sense of style that Belgium kind of lacks. Don't get me wrong, people in Belgium look great. They're all dressed well and look good.

But English people have a pluralism about their style that Belgium definitely lacks. Belgium has a very singular society. I think it may have something to do with thousands of years of homogeneity, the fact that you can trace a family name back four generations without leaving a township, and that third-generation Italian immigrants are considered foreigners.  Belgians are very conscious of looking natural, looking normal and not standing out too much from the crowd.

English people don't give fuck. They were running around with tattoos and piercings and fantastically dyed hair; it was wonderful. I missed being normal in a crowd, despite not being willing to just take the purple out of my hair and the metal out of my ears and actually blend in.

It was also really nice to eat bangers and mash that was almost as good as my big brother's back home. The sausages were bursting with the melty cheese and proper spices... Just like Therin's off the barbeque on the deck.

Ignoring the constant drizzle and odd ping-pong of language (and the raging sea sickness I got from the ferry), I loved my trip. Shopping was a bit of an unfortunate loss; despite the wonderful wares available, my wallet wasn't exactly on board. I mean, look at how class all of that looks!

Aside from England, I saw Harry Potter Seven. It was amazing. Some of the jokes in English did not carry over into the French subtitles, so I'm fairly certain I looked like a nut as I laughed in my corner.

I also went to Bruxelles, and saw the Atomium. And I found out that my host dad is the type of person who shakes the rope bridge as you cross it, cackling, "Oh no! You're gonna fall and DIE!"

I don't think I can properly explain this next bit here. The top ball leads down to those two thru the pipes, right? Those tubes are filled with the world's scariest stairs. For one, they're really steep and you're inside of this giant metal tube so it's freaky. But the tube goes down at the same angle as the stairs and the whole thing loans to this vertigo-inducing optical illusion as you walk for almost a full twenty minutes down these stairs.

It's really scary. And my host dad was being a dick and shaking my shoulders and telling me I was gonna fall and die.

And then I went to a circus.

 

So that was a good end to the day.