Benton Bailey's Belgian Blog: 2nd Week of October

I haven’t blogged in a while! I’ve been busy all week, but taking pictures everywhere thinking, “oh that would be a great thing to blog about!” But now the only time I have it seems to blog, is late at night. Ah well. I also have a long list of topics to blog about in one of my many journals. I just haven’t gotten a chance to put them into a blog.

Basically, I go to school, I come home, I sleep, I eat, and do things when they come up. That’s the summary version! I’m going to rely on my pictures again for the story telling.

As far as personal thoughts go, I suppose I’m too tired for many. How about I still love speaking French, but I always wish I were more fluent. I just wait for it to get better, and consider it a success if I remember 2 new words by the end of the day each day. One day at a time though, and I’m not so impatient for the moment. But honestly, I need to get a healthier sleep schedule.

And a better eating regimen! I’ve decided to diet after all, so that the jeans that I brought continue to fit. If my clothes stop fitting, I’ll be more upset than I thought I would be. My diet shall be only a mindset. I must actually look at what I’m eating before I put it into my mouth. I’ll eat more slowly and smaller bites if possible, and I’ll learn for the first time in my life to listen to my stomach to tell me that I’m full! Because seriously, I can never decide if I’m hungry or not, and I think it may be because I haven’t actually been hungry since I got here! But I love it all. Waffles, chocolate, croustillons, lacqements, and the beer, but of course I don’t know what THAT tastes like, because it’s against Rotary rules.

And I love my friends at school. The weeks seem to go by so fast! My Monday and Tuesday are the most boring days of my week. But Tuesdays I’ve started going to an after-school choir. Music is quite different here than it is in the States. It is hardly considered, so the chorale I go to is usually paid, but I think I don’t have to because I’m exchange, and it’s normally held at an academy off campus, but there is one rehearsal on campus, and we are about 8 people. Aparently there are more people at the academy rehearsals, but just to throw things off a bit more even, it’s normally a chorale for unchanged voices, just because not many people do music. So I sing the melody an octave down (even though I want to sing the top line :P ) We’ll see how this 3^rd week goes. Last week we sang a ballad version of “Smells like Teen Spirit” that was pretty hilarious to me, the American. Friday, I have plans to go the foire with mes amies. It’s for the whole month of October, and there are some great rides. Wednesday, hopefully I’ll get a haircut. I’m scared of that though. Will I be able to communicate? Maybe I’ll just get an oldie to come with me. Likely Jarrod.

I also finally figured out how to take pictures of smaller size on my camera! So half of these pictures will take 5 minutes each to download, and half will take about 4 seconds. But they won’t be as good quality. I’ll try to find a middle ground.

Glee last week was WAY better than it’s been so far in season 3. But there wasn’t any this week, and there won’t be one this next week, so we’ll just watch the one that was good over and over until then. Check out the glee version of “Landslide” from season 2, and Fleetwood Mac’s “Never Going Back Again.”

Commence, the photos:

Monday night, my attempt at making Granny's spaghetti sauce!
Cooking stresses me out, but it was pretty comic anyway!

Nervous! But it didn't taste too bad. Once I fixed the spice!
It seems that the spicy spices here are much spicier here.
For example, paprika is really spicy here, and so is chili
powder. SO I needed to add a lot of shredded cheese to
that pot.

the path behind the school right before school starts.

I got a kick out of how dark it was.

there's a pretty good friterie down there on the left. That's a cool (cold) cloudy Wednesday view of the big church up there. I must learn it's name! It might actually be the "citadel."

Look how pretty that sky was! And Belgian art reference! there is a Magritte piece in which he has painted a house with the street and house lights on in the dark, but the sky is a bright, day blue! My camera did that.

Magritte "Empire of Light"

This is the bridge that the bus crosses to get into Liège. The river is the Meuse.
Through the bus window, everything looks a bit green. This is facing south-ish.
Liège is north-ish from here.

I just thought this looked really artsy. It's a train bridge that the bus drives under.
With this photo, I had the sense to edit out the green.

The sky was so BEAUTIFUL this Thursday afternoon! This is the lawn in front of Guillemins. Believe me I took plenty of pictures of Guillemins too, but I've decided to dedicate an entire post to Guillemins photos sometime around Christmas, so you shall see it from every angle in every weather!

This is the southern entrance to the fair. That inflated man on the left is holding croustillants, which are basically beignets aparently, but I've never had beignets, so I wouldn't know. A very Belge fair food. The fair runs one path all the way from the bottom of Parc D'Avroy to the top. It's right down the center of Boulevard D'Avroy.

The ride we rode, Jarrod and I! The seats at the bottom go all the way round, upside down
and then go loose and turn themselves! It was intense. and only 6 Euro!