Rotary day in Bruxelles

Today was a big day for us exchange students here in Belgium :] All of us (about 200) went to Bruxelles for the "official recognition of the RYE program by the Belgian government." It was a pretty big deal :]

But....the day got off to a somewhat rough start. So, last night my host sister told me, or so I thought, that we had to leave the house at 8:30 to catch the train so I set my alarm for 7:30 thinking an hour would be more than enough time to get ready to go...but, at 7:00 my host mom comes into my room and tells me it's time to get up, and since first thing in the morning I'm not able to translate my thoughts into french, I just got up thinking I'd have even more time. Alas, I was wrong..I got down to the kitchen at like 7:40 and my host mom says, "okay we will just drive to Charleroi because we had to leave ten minutes ago to catch the train here." Oh no, I felt so bad! It turns out we needed to leave at yes, you guessed it, 7:30. This is not the first time or, I'm sure, the last time that I will not fully understand what is going on.

So we caught the train with several other students and the district chairman, apparently each of the three dist. in Belgium has a color, mines is gold, and so all of the girls were given a gold scarf that we have to wear to all official Rotary events and the boys were given ties. So, with my skirt, blazer and scarf (all of which I was required to wear) I looked like a stewardess all day! Once we finally got to Bruxelles and met up with all of the other RYErs, we walked, somewhat resembling a herd, to the Royal Palace where we preceded to take a tour. It was gorgeous, like I think all palaces must be but there was one room that stood out in particular. In this certain room the ceiling was an iridescent blue-green and the cause of this bright coloring was that the entire ceiling was covered in beetle wings! It was sooo weird, I'd post a picture but we weren't allowed cameras inside.
After we left the palace we walked to City Hall, in the grand place. There we were forced to sit, or should I say stand, through the calling of every single students name. When your name was called you had to walk to the front of the room and present your clubs flag to the chairman of your district. It was a cool thing to do but it took so long and by this time it was one and I, having only eaten a piece of toast at 7:40, was starving. Also, it made me kind of annoyed with the other students because before they began the process they had asked us all to be quiet, and of course most of the students just kept talking and had to be reminded several times to "shut down" after the whole ceremony one of the rotarians even commented that he had thought gold fish had the shortest memory of all animals, about two seconds, but today he was proven wrong. I guess you could say I was disappointed in my fellow exchange students, is it really that hard to shut up for a half hour or so?

Finally, it was lunch! We were separated into groups based on our nationality which was kind of a bummer it would have been cool to eat with and be able to talk to people from other places. But it was okay, we had meatballs and frites, which I discovered is a pretty typical Belgian meal. It was amazing, or maybe it tasted so good because I was starving....we'll never know. And after lunch the last thing on our list was to visit parliament. I think that this was a really cool thing, we got a tour of the building and actually got to sit in the seats of the senators and the representatives because at the moment there is no government in Belgium, they recently held elections and are trying to form the new government. The building itself was gorgeous, and what I thought was really cool about it was that in all the rooms there were huge portraits of past presidents of the senate and house, busts of the Belgian kings and queens, and in one room there were tapestries showing Belgium's history and all the various rulers they had, Spanish, Austrian, etc. In the actual senate there were lifesize paintings of various rulers throughout the history of Belgium before it was Belgium. (Pictured right haha)

By this time it was 5:00 and we had a "meeting" with the current president of the senate, he came and gave a speech while we sat, according to country, in the house. It's important that I tell you we were sitting with others of the same nationality because after his speech one person from each country took all the flags of our clubs and gave them to him, and when your country was called everyone stood while the flags were given. So of course with alphabetical order the US was second to last and when the US was called half the room stood up. It was pretty funny, there are like 40 Americans here I think.

So finally the day was done :] and as my host mom and I made our way to the train station, of course she was speaking french, and I noticed how much harder it was for me to understand her and respond after speaking english all day! I guess you could say it made me realize how right everyone was at the orientations before I came here when they said that every time you speak in english it's like taking a step backwards, so now it really is just french for me which is a pain but as the 'Wizard of Oz' said "language learning is like taking off a band-aid, you can pull it off bit by bit and it takes a long time and is overall more painful, or you can just rip it off, it hurts more at first but gets better quickly."

a beintot :]