Navigating in Namur

Yesterday, I travelled to Namur for another orientation with WEP (the organization partner here). I took a train at 8:40 from the Arlon train station and met up with some other students before arriving. When we did arrive there was a giant market going on with pastries, fruit, clothes and waffles! Sadly, I was not able to actually visit any of the stands, only walk through to get to our destination. We spent 11:00 to 4:00 going over rules and responding to questions from our coordinators, I feel like I knew them pretty well to begin with and now just even more so. Though it was quite boring, meeting up with old friends made it really worth it! Having met so many people at the orientation in Brussels, I was able to catch up with some friendly faces and even hang out with them for a little bit after.

My Australian friend, Jessie and I

I had asked my coordinator if I could spend a little more time in the city after, just to explore and look around. For people that know me quite well, know that when I go somewhere I tend to want to look at EVERYTHING. So I had to prioritize quite well to see the main things I wanted to in my 2.5 hours. My first stop: the cover of my "Hidden Belgium" book courtesy of some family friends, Bruce and Lucille! Originally red, the boxcar is the only remaining and very, very tucked away. My friends from Australia and Slovakia came along with me to find it, and we had walked by the road it was said to be on and were completely confused as it was nowhere in sight. But then I realized the book has the word HIDDEN splashed on the front and then I noticed a small sign that was mentioned in the book. You needed to walk through an alley of a restaurant into a courtyard and lookup. I was so happy when we found it! Also, on our way there I found an NZ All blacks rugby store and you can only imagine how happy I was to see something rugby related in a country where it's pretty non-existent. Speaking of which, it is very hard to find any Rugby World Cup coverage here so I've been having to watch highlights afterwards (GO ALL BLACKS!). I also bought myself a nice hot (and I mean HOT) Liége waffle and some gummies (Julia, I found livewire type things!!!) for a little later. I also had to try the pickle chips when I saw them, put them under the microscope to compare them to our family favourite, Dill Pickle. They're not bad...

Me, my book and my found object (1956 Swiss cable car)

I still haven't been able to find any sports teams and it is making me quite antsy. The swimming pool is closed here, so when I went swimming with my host brother, Jordan last Sunday we had to drive to one in Luxembourg. I think I may have possibly found a girls soccer team in Arlon, so I'm going to try to check that out as soon as possible. I was quite disappointed to find out that gym classes here just consist of running around a park every Tuesday afternoon for 1.25 hours. I do not enjoy, but at least it is a little bit of physical activity.

Still quite homesick every once in a while, but it's easing up with the help of new friends. My French teacher asked me to present a project about Canada/Calgary/my family, but there's so much to talk about that I need to narrow it down. So question for you guys, what is the most important piece of information I should add into this project?

Hope all is well back in the True North and all the love,

E