Last week of October

TOO late to be really detailed, but I prefer posting pictures here than on Facebook, so here they are: specially selected and beautifully edited for the viewing pleasure of all who wish to regard.

I found this on the internet.  It's a picture of Liège around 1650.

This is the galleries de belle île.  it's another mall in Liège, but more posh.  and harder to get to.

and here's a fountain from it.  My host mom and I walked in it for a while in order to pass some time before my ride left for:

Probably the largest cinema in Liège.  Not in Liège proper, but it still counts.  My Rotary club invited me to a special Rotary before premier showing of the new Tintin film!

Tintin is an extremely famous comic strip character from here in Belgium and is known worldwide.  Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg directed a film in English, but because he is Belge, Tintin came out here 3 months before it will come out in the States.

Check it out.  Rotary has class. Private room.

Wednesday we had "le cross."  a cross country event for the whole school.  It's to give good pr for the school.  We do sports and are healthy!  plus it's fun.  We run in the woods, and lots of the rhetos (seniors) dressed up.

Mes amies et moi!

On the starting line!

I got a HUGE kick out of taking pictures while I ran.  I just laughed at how I knew they would end up really blurry!

I think it looks prehistoric right there.

3.5 Kilometers.  I did it in about 22 minutes!

If it doesn't make you dizzy, it's really quite pretty!

Oh yeah, music helped too.  I listened to "Blame it on the Boogie" by The Jacksons

I was not in last place!  In fact I was in the middle somewhere.  but that one was the blurriest :)

After the cross, they gave out free hot chocolate.  It was quite cold, but I forgot that hot drinks after excercise make one feel not so good.  It turned out fine, but I needed real water too!

This Wednesday there was also a strike planned!  I don't know if I blogged about it before, but one of the big big factories on the river near Liège in Seraing was shut down, and the citizens of the area apparently got in the streets and made a strike!  It was supposed to stop the buses all morning!  But there I was, on the bus, passing the factories.  To tell the truth, my first bus didn't come at all, but the next bus came and was on time, so not too many problems there.

That's a view down the street (from the bus window) that crosses the Meuse on the Pont de Liège.  It's really modern looking, there on the left.

I got lost trying to find a train stop for fun, so here's what the top of Rue St. Gilles looks like before you cross under the train tracks over the street and under the highway!  I thought it looked cool anyway.

Thursday I carved out a pumpkin in preparation for halloween and for Fanny's birthday!

I took out all the stuff, and a bunch of chunks of pumpkin, and smoothed it all out. 

Champagne for Fanny's birthday Friday night!
Françoise, Fanny, Alain, et moi!

Such a pretty table!

Yes, this is the pumpkin.  It now has pumpkin soup inside it!  Cannibalism.  But is reminds me of a similar belgian tradition, fish soup.  It's not really fair to put a fish back into water and eat it there is it?

An apple tart that my host mom and I made!

ANd this is the Halloween party at the primary school across the street from me!  The kids here do trick or treating the Friday before Halloween.  But that's just my town.  They warned everyone first.  Halloween is still considered just an American holiday and very commercial.  The main holiday is Toussaints (all saints day, the day after)

Zizou and the pumpkin, Saturday night.

Fanny ended up carving it, I slept too late.

Sunday afternoon, my host grandparents came over and we chatted for a long long time.  I drank 4 cups of coffee that afternoon and we ate a bavaroi that Françoise and I had made the day before.  Unfortunately it sortof fell when we took it out of the form, but it was good an raspberry!  These grandparents are Alain's mother and Serge, and I like them very much!

proud of myself and the amount of walking I've done today

I made a really great map and I want to post it now!
I love walking in Liège!  even more because it's cheaper than the bus!
Today I walked a very very long way, and took all sorts of pictures.

I woke up at point J, at a friend's house on the Montagne Beuren with all the stairs.

I walked to my train stop at Palais, point I.  On the way I passed through Place du Marché and beside Palais des Princes Eveques.  (this was about 11:00 in the morning)

Place du Marché by day.

I took the train from Palais to Guillemins  (that's the green arrow with no line or letter).

This Flemish newspaper was on the train.
  It was abnormal.

I walked from Guillemins to Place Général Lemen at point C.

leaving Guillemins

en route to Place Général Lemen.  The Place itself is
little more than a widened street so more buses can stop.

On the bus, crossing the Meuse, in the daylight

At C we  I met up with Charlotte and we took the bus to approximately A, though we missed our stop and had to backtrack on foot a bit (not shown).  A is a climbing hall called Top Rock!  My host sister goes there often.  She's quite good.  I am not.  But we had a good time anyway!

Pauline showed up too, and we had some good climbing!  My arms are sore.

At about 4:30 we left A and walked to B, the mall that I went to on Tuesday but haven't explained yet because I haven't posted that blog or those pictures.  It was closed for Toussaints of course, but Quick was not!  We were starving after all the climbing, so we ate Quick.

The little bridge between A and B that crosses to Belle Ile, the mall.

QUICK.

After Quick, Pauline took her bus home from the bridge there in between B and C, and Charlotte and I walked back to C, Place Général Lemen, where I put her on her bus home to Flémalle.

On this bridge again, walking this time.  and in the other direction.

From Place Lemen, I walked up past to Boulevard d'Avroy and the foire d'Octobre, (which actually goes well into November apparently) waving at Guillemins as I walked by.  I walked the length of the fair, and it took almost 45 minutes (30 minutes longer than usual) to do it because there were so many PEOPLE there!  I loved it!  and I bought croustillons.  So that puts us from C through D to K.

Impressive, right?

Up at Pont d'Avroy, I went down to Cathédrale to have a look around, had a look into the Palace theatre on blvd Cathedrale, and then walked up and explored some side streets between cathedrale and  sauvengiere.  (E,F,G) 

This was only 6 o'clock.  It drives me crazy how early it gets dark right now.
But fortunately, everything is well lit.  Well, everything worth seeing.

I was thinking about actually catching a flick, so I went to Cinema de la Sauvegniere, but they didn't have showings until 7:45.  They did have free bathrooms though, which is really rare.  They probably would have preferred it if I had seen a movie or eaten at their café, but it was a good find.  Sauvengiere is G behind F.

I then walked from G to H, Place St Lambert, and then back up to Palais at I because last night when I was trying to get from Palais to Montagne Beuren, apparently I took a less than direct route, so I wanted to try to find the right street, which I did, and ended up back at Montagne Beuren, J.

It's nice that they have benches on these stairs.  There are a lot of them.
You can also feel safe here at night because it's pretty well lit, extremely
residential, and the only people that hang out on the mont, are lovers,
residents, and me.

Time to go home, it's 7:30 at montagne Beuren, my ride comes at 8.  So I walked back from J through H, through all the rest (though taking slight detours when I felt like it) back to K.  (the more exact route is hidden by those flags.)

Place du Marché by night.

I got there with plenty of time, and wanted to try another route that I had gotten wrong in the past, and that is from Pont d'Avroy up Rue St. Gilles to Jonfosse, the train stop between Palais and Guillemins, and a school.  So I walked from K up

PROOF I found it.

St. Gilles to L.  Apparently there is a
faster way, but that's the route I was
 told to find and messed up last time.
Now I know it for sure.
     Here's what Jonfosse, L, looks like.
















I then walked back to K, pont d'avroy, my regular pickup spot, and we drove home.  I'm proud of my march!!  and of my map!   Fyi, people just don't walk all over Liège.  There's too much public transport for that to be practical.  Fortunately, I had the time, and the desire to do it, so I walked ALL over the town.  But then I realised with dismay, I walked to every spot in Liège that I know today.  WALKED, that's impressive, but clearly I have much more to explore in this city!
lol

25 September

My host  Rotary president sent me these pictures recently, and I didn't want to find the proper blog entry to put them in, so here they are!

It was the night we went to the play and I read about Polio Plus on the stage in front of the audience!

Ben, M le Président (Frédéric), Santi (Argentine)

French lips

lol

Liegeois

     I caught some really good ones I think!  I'm pretty sure they're really Liegeois, or specific to my region.
When I talk to myself in franglais, even if I complete a sentence in English, I end with "hein?"
and that's sortof like the "huh" at the end of "that was great, huh," but frenchy sounding and used in way more cases.  I know it's all around French, but I think it's really Liegeois the way I use it!
    There's also putting "ou quoi" (or what) at the end of sentences, even if it's not at all necessary.  Language of the people.  And whether it's ACTUALLy a proper improper usage, I do it because I think I heard it.
     Apparently there's also a stereotype among Francophones that Belgians always put "une fois" at the end of sentences, meaning "one time", or "once."  I haven't really heard it except in stereotype.  That's probably another region who does that, like Tournai or something.
    Of course there are typical "street" words that we say are really Liegeois, but it's sortof like ebonics, and so it's a dialect, but each area has it's own version...  Actually I can't go so far as to say it's a dialect, but it is definitely an accent with it's slang.  "kiffe" (to like well) "bouffe" (a club in lower manhattan recommended by a popular guest contributor to Weekend Update with Seth Meyers [booooooooof].  or, "to eat")  and there's a word like "sous" which means dough (in the sense of money).
And plenty more!  that I'm not really current on yet.
lol

3rd week of october

Again, I haven't blogged in a while.  I've found more fun things to do mostly haha.  But all I can say is basically the same thing as last week.  I know this is extremely unhelpful, but I'm not even going to copy/paste what I wrote last week about this week, and just suggest that you take a look down below if you care for a silly summary of what living is like, but then again, everyone knows what that's like.  Whatever.  HERE are some pictures from this week!  And the stories will be told as they come up.

well dang, these are out of order.  I went to the fair with mes amies on Friday last!

we rode that.

too fun!

that's some of the foire.

STILL haven't ridden that yet.  unfortunately my camera died before the sun went down.
We also went into the pirate house where there were moving stairs and
funny floor shakers and a big slide and stuff.  too fun!

Tuesday was picture day.  The morning was normal pictures, the afternoon was the costumed picture!  I'm way up in the back with sunglasses on

The rest of the school looked on during a break

The theme was hollywood, and I went as James Bond, sortof.  I'm not entirely sure
how anyone else decided what to be.

But oh, do they know how to have fun!

Wednesday we went to explore a new town for me, Louvain la Neuve

The sky looked pretty on the train ride there.

This is Louvain la Neuve.  My host mom told me the whole story:  The original Leuven is a college town in Flanders, and during the 70s, the Flems kicked the francophones out, so the walloons just built a new college town for the francophone half of the university.  They share a library and stuff.  Notice the sameness of the architecture throughout the whole city!  Different for a city in Europe in that it was all constructed recently and over the course of a few years, and not thousands.

freak hailstorm durning the day!

Saturday, we trained Bruxelles where I rode a subway for the first time in Belgique!

This was the goal of out trip: Patinage!

The zamboni!  (that's for my mother.  Not entirely sure why)

Tintin!  The film premiered in Brussels that night, and the directors: Peter Jackson and Stephen Spielberg were apparently there.  I'm going to the Liège premier tomorrow with my rotary club!  Even though it's technically an American film, the comic strip is of course Belge, and so it comes out here 3 MONTHS before it does in the states.  Eat your heart out.

And this is me the rest of the weekend, and today.  It's what it looks like to be really sick and sleep 17 out of 24 hours.  All will be well.

Have a great week!

lol