the netherlands (nederlandis)

so last Friday the son of my 3rd host family took; Page(american), Harry (Taiwanese), and me to Maastricht, Netherlands.

 so in the Netherlands farm animals are really popular, and they have a great appreciation of them. above is a petting zoo in the center of the town that you could just sit and watch animals play with their fellow animal brethren. below is a mural of a cow's head that someone tiled onto the side of their house. the picture is a bit deceiving but the cow is about 30cm in diameter.

this is the stained glass hall of the university that the host brother goes to. these windows were originally in the attached church but were removed and placed here. when we walked through the hall the sun was just coming up and i got this lovely photo just before the room went rainbow coloured and almost blinded us with its reflections. 

 the art there was also really weird these are little coffee table statues, i some people would call it a conversational piece. the rest of us would say its the real life version of a kindergartner finger painting.

 As most of you may know, biking is very popular in Europe. the photo below is the schools English library bike parking. there is over 300 bikes jammed into that little space and they are stacked on top of each other.

 when we were walking past the bikes, the host brother told us that bike theft was a major problem at the university and that one time he had had his bike stolen only to have the man who stole it from him try to sell it off to him on a street corner.

 the photo above is the red tower. im not exactly sure why its red. i think they just got a good deal on red paint but could only get enough for the one tower. we werent allowed in the church but it looked pretty cool from the out side. the photo below is some kind of government building, im not sure what but the name was like a paragraph long so it must have been important.

 after the tour of the city, the host brother took us for ice cream. i got crockenotella(this is not spelled correctly but its close enough, and puffo. puffo is smurf in dutch and this was more like smurf blood ice cream with little marshmallows shaped like smurfs in it, it also had a nice drizzling of dark blue syrup on top(argo the name smurf blood).

 ah, wooden bicycle...ah hipster...cant breath...ah

 so the above photo is a robotic butterfly. i know what your thinking you cant put a price on something as awesome as a robotic butter fly. well they did...and its five euros.

 the high light of this trip however was getting to go shopping. this is how the one store sold their t-shirts. in a milk cartoon. men dont care what a shirt actually looks like, so why not put it is a awesome milk carton. nothing like getting out of the shower going to the fringe and opening up a nice carton of t-shirt.

average Saturday night (nuit du Samedi)

 so yesterday was the "birthday"(actually today) of one of my friends. So we were all suppose to meet up at guillemin gare(the main train station in Liege). While we were waiting on the big stair case for everyone to show up we saw a troop of girl scouts. They asked if they could get a photo with us and they were not dissappointed.

Through out the night we would run around acting like exchange students should. I also learned that spider man, or as the french speaking world pronounces it "Speeder moon", is very popular here. At the end of the night i was sitting in the bus terminal, waiting for my bus. Then some old man walks up to me and say in french "so, its today your day off". then everyone at the bus stop laughed for several minutes. After that a small child wearing a spiderman t-shirt came up to me and wanted my autograph, so i drew a spiderman doodle. And to think all those times when i got bored in class and started doodling finally just paid off. So now i imagine there are 20-30 people telling everyone that they say spiderman on the bus, to bad no one will believe them.

The Belgian school system

So my morning starts out at 6am. I then walk 20 minutes to the train station to get the train into liege. the train takes 40-45 minutes to get to my stop. After that i walk another 15 minutes to get to my school.

The major difference between the Canadian school system and the Belgian school system is the duration. School in Canada starts around 9am with 4 classes each being 75 minutes long, and a 45 minute lunch, and the day ending around 3pm. however in Belgium school starts at 8am and the classes are randomly divided. however they have an hour long lunch, so thats cool. but the day ends at 4:35pm. they also have shortened classes on wednesdays so thats cool too.

Belgian cuisine

so today my mom made me a very "traditional" Belgian meal.

it's mussels and Belgian fries (french fries for most of the world, Freedom fries for the americans). now when making Belgian fries there are many closely kept secrets. first of all they use lard instead of oil. then when their cooking them. they put them in the oil till they start to cook. then take them out and let them cool down. when they are finally cooked down they go back in the oil till they are finally fully cooked. And that children is how you do something that would take a few minutes and turn it into a several hour long cuisine skeptical.

on to the mussels. Yes, the nearest coast line is several hours away by car, but some how these little guys are a staple of Belgian cuisine. the host family did not understand why i thought it was so funny that this was famous in a land locked region of the country. i can just imagine some guy having to make the daily mussels run that would take him a week and everyone would eat them in a few minutes and the next guy would go.

i was also taught the European way of eating mussels. essentially you use the shell of the last mussel to pull out the "meat" of the next mussel. its like watch how chop sticks were invented, but in europe, and with mussels.  

most popular haircut in europe

so in europe the undercut is the big new hairstyle and all the guys are cuting their hair like this.

they then spike it really high, like really high. too the point it looks hilarious. whenever i see a guy with this hair style it automatically reminds me of this picture. 

however people really like so, we all win

what to expect in Belgium

So today i was sitting in my room watching "Les Millers" and the host mom starts yelling for me to come outside. so i walk out and she's running down the hall into my host sisters room. we go out on the balcony and a guy is just casually flying his hot air balloon around. he then "parks" it like a block from the house. i have a neighbor who is a hot air balloonist. turns out that's actually a career.