LIGHTBULB MOMENT

What can I say, something about being on the Eurostar just inspires me. 

I'd been thinking for a while what I was going to do with this when I no longer lived abroad and I had nothing to document; and then yesterday I had an idea. 

Before you ask, this is not becoming a beauty blog - realistically I don't think someone who only wears £1.99 tinted moisturiser and sometimes doesn't re-do her hair for over 24 hours is at all qualified to write about beauty. 

Or really even qualified to be called an adult.

So we're going to do themes. 

I feel like I just announced a party was going to be fancy dress. 

We're going to do a theme every month so it stays fresh and interesting but also I can post regularly. I've already got a list of about 10 so we're good for the next year pretty much but any suggestions are always welcome and I'll be asking for ideas every time we change. 

Also this is going to start right now - so for June I'll be doing BEDIJ (Blog Everyday In June). I thought it would be a good way to document my last 28 (how did this happen) days in Brussels. I know I'm already behind but I went home for the weekend so we're going to recap those now and I'll start properly tomorrow. 

I'm also going to try and do a 'Photo of the Day' but my life isn't that exciting so they might just be photos of general Brussels - but I might as well try. 

This might be one of those bright ideas that completely crashes and burns - I apologise in advance.

BEDIJ a.k.a. I wish this had a better acronym 

#1

 

Okay so due to the poor timing of my inspiration I didn't take any photos on Saturday so we can have a Video of the Day instead. The relevance of this is not only because in this video he basically sums up exactly how I feel about everything, but also because as part of my best friend's birthday present to me - she had the John and Hank Green sign a book for me. She's amazing and I'm very grateful that I got to see her on Saturday because we've both been all over the globe in the last 3 years and I definitely don't see her face as often as I would like. I am very lucky to have had her in my life for a whole 10 years.

#2

Today marked my last Eurostar journey to Brussels, and so the last time I'm going to enter St Pancras rather than leave it (at least for a while). I also have a new phone because my last one was so inconsistent that it could cope with being constantly dropped but with one drop of rain the screen stopped working. So I'm back to my old LG, also known as my 'I-don't-do-anything-but-I-run-out-of-battery-in-a-day' phone, or my 'If-you-get-more-than-one-text-at-a-time-I'll-turn-myself-off-from-stress' phone, or just my 'you-can't-use-my-keyboard-but-you're-not-sure-why' phone. 

The journey was good and I've realised that there is something quite relaxing about travelling late on a Sunday because everyone is exhausted and just trying to get home.

N.B. I'm going to post these retrospectively so tomorrow will be #3

Let's hope I can do this hey?

xx

Only 6 weeks left...I'm sorry, what?

It's that point, where we realise how quickly our time here has gone and how soon it will be over. 

Well that sounded dramatic. 

But it's definitely thepoint where we can't have a conversation without bringing up who's leaving next, or that we're leaving soon, or how we're going to get all our belongings home again (spoiler alert: it's going to take 2 trips and possibly a bag sent with anyone who visits me between now and then).

Last weekend we went to Amsterdam and until the early hours of this morning we were in Ghent and May has just been the best month so far and that I only have 4 weekends left in Belgium until I leave is the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

So I'd really like to spend the time I have left accidentally staying out all night because we lack the organisational capacity to check the time of the last train back to Brussels before about 11pm (the last train was at 11.30pm - we tried), and having lunch in castles and making full use of the best maps I've ever seen.

Although it's probably a good thing that I'm going soon because for something that's so important to my job and the general conduction of my social life; my laptop has an awful lot of bare wires showing and bits of plastic falling off it.

I wrote another article for StudentNoodles.com ->5 THINGS THAT HAPPEN EVERY TIME YOU START A NEW JOB

Also I joined Tumblr recently and I was hoping to find loads of good writing and gifs from good films but all I seem to have found is pictures of hot girls and really depressing quotes and I just feel like this isn't what I came here for.

Probably just your poor spelling and grammar though isn't it really.
http://clairegillesp.tumblr.com/

The next one will be more detailed I promise but I wanted to get this done and I've only had 4 hours sleep so...well, I've only had 4 hours sleep. 
 À la prochaine!

xx

It was my birthday and other things.

It was my birthday! I celebrated turning 21 by going home and getting plenty of sleep and eating too much food. Also a massive thank you to everyone who celebrated with me on the Friday here in Brussels - the perfect start to a perfect weekend. 

So now I give it about 6 months until I stop telling people I'm still 20. 

I started writing here - so not only is that really cool and exciting for me but also I got named their very first blogger of the month, which is just amazing.

It's like good things are happening and I'm not really sure why or how to properly process them.

I dealt with a bee. By which I mean I opened a window and ran to the other side of the room to shout abuse at it.
 So not so much I dealt with a bee, rather that I hid from a bee and vowed never to open my window again.
Then I went for a run and a bee flew into my eye - they say these things are dying out but I just can't agree; from what I can see they're fucking everywhere.

 I started learning new things - sort of. I started watching the series below because sometimes it's nice to learn about something which isn't your degree subject, or your job, or constantly surrounding you via media coverage.

Also May is the month of bank holidays so I've already had a day off this week with another 2 to come next week and then another Monday off after that - Belgium, I'm not sure what you're doing, but I love you right now. So for next week we were trying to plan a trip somewhere, but it turns out planning things is hard and also eurolines was struggling to keep it together when I tried to check coach prices. 

Quick update on this - we finally booked something, we're going to Amsterdam on Friday morning and despite my initial reluctance I am actually very excited.

À bientôt!

xx

Things I haven't done on my placement year

 SO FAR.

There's still time.

• Spill water during a meeting.

• Drop food on myself/someone else/the floor (there's one tiny exception to this, but we don't need to go into that now).

• Trip over something.

• Trip over nothing. 

• Accidentally hit someone/stand on their foot.

• Accidentally hit myself/stand on my own feet.

• Cause a fire. 

• Cause a flood. 

• Forget my own name when I'm introducing myself.

• Listen to and remember anyone's name when they introduce themselves.

• Not use my entire body weight to open the office door. 

• Not look like an idiot whilst opening the office door.

• Break something.

• Describe where I'm from as anything but 'near Manchester'.

• Correct any of the people who assumed I was Scottish. 

• Lose my accent - not even a little bit. 

• Make any real or substantial life choices - "I'm sure my placement year will help me decide"...who were you kidding. 

• Do any reading for my dissertation - as above. 

• Improve my French - and again. 

• Go running more - so many broken promises. 

• Release an alien species into the streets of Brussels and subsequently ruin the entire ecosystem of Belgium and its neighbours - see, so it's not going so badly.

• Use Windows XP and do anything but swear/sigh/shout at it. 

• Find a hand gesture that really captures exactly how angry I am at drivers in Brussels. 

• Fully grasp the cheek kissing etiquette in any given situation - I haven't yet been reduced to yelling 'WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME' in someone's face; but with every awkward greeting, I get a little bit closer.

I should point out that this really only applies to when I'm at work, because out of work I spend most of my time covered in any food or drink that's to hand and falling over what is essentially flat ground.  

I still don't spend it making life choices though. 

April has been a really bad month for this. 
xx

THANKS FOR THE SNOW, MARCH.

That's exactly what I wanted after the awesome weather we had last week. 

That's just a fucking dream that is.

---

The irony is that I started writing this before I realised I was late to go out to dinner, and on my way home from dinner I fell over and now I can't really walk/sit down/function as a proper human being.
Well played snow, you win this round.
The worst part is that if I manage to sit in a position that's comfortable the pain kind of goes away, and then I forget why I'm so bed-ridden in the first place and I try to get up and do something and...well there's a lot of swearing going on after that put it that way. I also keep throwing my phone casually onto the bed and realising I can't bend down to pick it up. So I have to do a weird kneel-then-roll kind of movement and my life is just a series of ridiculous movements at the moment.
There's also a really attractive lump on the back of my head.
Only I could possibly injure myself so severely from slipping over in the street.

And although I'm obviously eternally grateful for the people who stopped to ask if I was okay...they were probably a bit too quick to try and call me an ambulance.
I think proportionality here is key. Yes, I was in a lot of pain, but I sat up almost straight away and I only really wanted to stay sat down because I'd just travelled a 1.65m downwards in about half a second, so I was confused. I wasn't sure what I was doing on the ground to be honest. It's not like I'd been shot.

In all fairness even if I had been shot I'd probably still get up and persist that I was fine. I find talking to strangers pretty awkward at the best of times, so if I'm going to be writhing in pain, I want someone I know to watch me do it. 

And now I'm doing weird things to protect myself from further pain, like physically stopping people who are trying to pass me in shops and moving away in case they accidentally brush against me and cause me to burst into tears. I'm giving no explanation to these weird gestures though, so I either look overtly polite or like I have serious social anxiety problems.

This hasn't been that interesting and I apologise, but if there's one thing being in constant pain does not make me want to do, it's write. Or anything at all for that matter.

Au revoir.
xx

Last week was not my friend.

Last week left my questioning my decision to move house.

First I was greeted by a hole outside my door (actually my whole street was a hole), and apparently no one felt the need to put any sort of bridge between my door and the part of the road that was still intact. Also apparently it's completely acceptable to ask the person who lives on one side of the hole you just dug to 'jump' to the other side.
Good thing I'm a part-time acrobat.
Good thing I don't wear a pencil skirt to work.
Good thing that I'm not the most likely person to fall into a hole in the ground, IN THE WORLD.

I also forgot my phone that day so I had to go back, and apparently 'you're here a lot aren't you' is an acceptable thing to say to someone who's front door you're digging around. I'm here a lot? This isn't a bar, I live here! What are you doing here? How can you be standing 2 feet from my doorway all day and think it's noteworthy that I come here a lot?

Then I went out on Friday night and got in at 4am and was woken at 9am by what I could only describe as a small fair. Like with cheery music and shit. I've yet to work out exactly where in Brussels this could have been held, but I didn't appreciate it.

Also every time the kettle boils I think it's someone hoovering. Every. Single. Time. Even though the kettle is in my room and I will have switched it on 5 minutes prior to the noise, it always takes me a little bit of time to work out where that noise is coming from.

AND my phone isn't loud enough for me to hear it when I'm outside, but it's so loud that whenever it goes off when I'm at home, I have a little heart attack.
So loud that I smashed a glass in the sink in surprise the last time someone text me.
Because I dropped it - I don't just break glasses when I'm surprised.
That would be an inconvenient reaction to surprise.

That's probably enough complaining for now.
 Apart from having my life ruined by inanimate objects nothing has really happened, but everything's pretty good. So last week wasn't so bad I guess.

If you change the 'e' in pixelated to an 'i' to make it pixilated, then it means to be led astray by pixies. 
Best (incredibly common) typo ever. 

 I just couldn't not share this with you, she is so talented.

xx

If you think I'm tired now.

This is literally nothing on how I was on Saturday. If you need a little example of how bad I was, then I saw a billboard for Les Mis on the way into Leeds (I can't find a picture of it, which will make this story more difficult for everyone, but stay with me), which had on it the word 'Unmissable'. But in my tired and evidently fairly stupid mind I read the first few letters and assumed it said 'Unmiserable' to which I thought 'Oh wow, that's a bad review' and didn't really realise how stupid that was until about an hour later. 

If you ever need to feel better about yourself, I am right here.

 As I was leaving Brussels I also saw a car with some carpet attached to it wrapped in a Carpet Right bag...is Carpet Right still a thing? (I've googled it, apparently it is very much still a thing, my bad).
 But this along with the amount of laundrettes and internet cafes, the dress code in clubs and the lack of appliances in my kitchen sometimes leaves me feeling a bit like, rather than moving to Belgium, I've moved to the early nineties.

And that's pretty much it, apart from sitting at Calais for like an hour checking everyone's passport because someone decided to be a maverick and get on the coach without having their name ticked off the list, so it looked like we'd gained someone between Brussels and the ferry port.

It also occurred to me that my preferred method of travel is also probably the preferred method of travel of organised crime because there aren't any baggage checks at customs...so that's good.

But my weekend at home was excellent, I got a job for the summer out of it and it was just so nice to be at home. Also I have to mention the amazing coordination between myself, Elle & Lucy. Managing to all come home on the same weekend without forward planning is a feat we should be proud of.

Oh, and to the guy who was so distracted by me being startled by a pigeon that you walked into a bin?
You got what you deserved.

Fun fact: Women in some cantons in Switzerland weren't allowed to vote in local elections until 1994. 1994. I had already been born by then. Switzerland, what were you doing?

Life Lessons

But don't worry, not the-'I can achieve anything if I try'-kind.

Not that I can't achieve anything if I try, just, you know, this isn't Tumblr. 

1. I would rather wash my clothes in the sink than get up and take them to the laundry. Really, I would rather take 4 days to wash/dry my dirty clothes than leave the house and go to the laundrette, pay 3 euros and wait for 2 hours.  I can't decide whether this is impossibly lazy or brilliantly  frugal.

2. In the same vein, I would rather drink black tea than carry milk to the office every day.

3. I cannot be alone. Now, this one I already sort of knew; but after 3 days of self-imposed quarantine this week when I was ill it became painfully clear that I either a) really like other people, or b) can't stand myself. But it did give me a lot of time to hand-wash my clothes...and paint my nails...and put on a face mask...and apparently to have a break down.

4. Almost a year after I left my job, turns out the music they played wasn't so bad after all. If you haven't heard Jamie Lidell or Mayer Hawthorne, then you should. 

5. I don't hate Brussels. Even with its impossible-to-navigate streets, and its weird weather, and that one missing bit of pavement outside the European Parliament that I fall into EVERY TIME. 

 I don't like it either, but the move to indifference has proved much more relaxing.

I also dislike it for very different reasons to the reasons I dislike Bath.  I don't like Bath because it's so nice. It's like if Zooey Deschanel were a small English city; it's incredibly lovely. 

It's so lovely that it bothers me.

I'm going home tonight, have a good weekend everybody.

xx

I'm definitely going to be hit by a car.

I've lived here too long and now I'm just strutting across the roads like they aren't filled with 1000kg metal blocks coming towards me at 40mph, with only a raised arm and the hope of eye contact with the driver to defend myself.

It's the combination of the metric and imperial systems in that sentence that I enjoy the most, welcome to Britain everybody.

A couple of months ago I was walking to a meeting and I dared to cross a road before the lights had changed (because it's not like the cars pay any attention to them, so why bother), and a traffic warden (I didn't even know they had these here) stopped me and asked if there was something wrong with my eyes. At first I thought he'd just asked me if there was something wrong and I just presumed I'd been looking particularly miserable, so I smiled and said no, I was fine. Then he repeated himself, and I wanted to say no, no there wasn't anything wrong with my eyes, but there were serious flaws in Belgium's application of traffic legislation, and that was the problem here. But I don't speak French that fluently, and it was early, so I just shook my head and walked off.

Last week I was actually nearly hit whilst crossing the road (define 'nearly hit' as you will, but he looked shocked to see me on the pedestrian crossing, put it that way), and as fate would have it, he parked on the road I was walking down. I just couldn't let this opportunity pass me by, so I felt the appropriate course of action was to point and shake my head in disgust as I walked by.

Anyone who knows me will know I would never do this even remotely seriously, but sometimes I forget not everyone I meet day-to-day knows me. This is one of those times.

He definitely tried to mime an apology to me from inside the car but I wasn't having any of it.

Read as: I definitely don't speak French well enough to lip-read it. Therefore I actually couldn't have any of it, because I have no idea what he was saying. He looked apologetic though.

In less life-threatening news, we discovered a really cool band this weekend when on a night out in the bit of Brussels near the canal - yeah, I didn't know there was a canal either - and you can hear them here:

https://soundcloud.com/mustacheeosapaches

Oh and I'm going home this weekend, which is pretty exciting.

See you soon Leeds.

xx

Claire talks about love?

No, of course she doesn't.

I'm not even going to talk about the finer points of being single or in a relationship on Valentine's Day because I can't remember the last time I cared.

This shows I'm doing really well with my New Year's resolution though, because it means I've managed not to be riled by (or even read) any of the 10,000 articles Huffington Post have tweeted on the matter.

I spent the majority of Valentine's Day in meetings, encountering my age old nemesis once again; the coat wardrobes. I seem to be the only person who goes to these meetings who doesn't have a photographic memory of which one they put their coat in, but needless to say I'm the first one there and everyone after me must think someone's kindly opened all the wardrobe doors for their ease of access.

They haven't, it's just me, and it's just because I'm that one idiot who can't remember where she put her coat.

It would seem however, from the overwhelming smell of bleach on the streets of Brussels, that other people spent it cleaning. Or murdering their husbands for forgetting the date. Either way it's always nice to have a clean house.

But we weren't the only ones struggling with romance, Delhaize didn't seem to know what it was doing either, I'm not sure they even had any chocolates or wine on display until the day itself. They did however, for weeks in advance, have Valentine's themed signs above a display of cod fillets and baskets of crisps that were on special offer.

This is why you're single Delhaize, your idea of romance is just...weird.

I did spend the better part of the day having dinner with the girls though, I say dinner, we went to a pizza place (the kind with stools rather than chairs) on Place Luxembourg to avoid being surrounded by couples. I've never really understood why you'd want to go out for dinner on Valentine's Day anyway. I wouldn't want to be surrounded by half the population of any of the cities I live in at the best of times, least of all when I'm trying to have a romantic liaison.

Apparently a 'liaison' is also a mix of yolk and cream used in soups (it actually said 'by soups' on Wikipedia, but I'm going to presume that's not what they meant).

Well, that was off-topic.

Also I've decided I much prefer this when it's centre aligned, but I'm just not going to go back and change the last however many posts. Sorry guys.

And here are some cool things I saw last weekend when Francine was here.

xx

I guess I didn't hate January.

The never-ending saga of my moving house has finally come to an end. This also means I've achieved probably my only really serious New Year's resolution: to stop putting up with things that annoy me. Which unfortunately meant my landlady had to go. Or rather I had to go. Because she owns where I was.

I'm failing spectacularly with the other ones by the way, although I am now mentally berating myself for forgetting my glasses every time I leave the house, so that's something.

This victory didn't seem so sweet on Tuesday however; because cleaning nine flights of stairs rarely screams 'I've won!'. Being told to clean the last flight again even less so. And no, I'm not the sort of person who cleans stairs just because someone tells them to, but this woman has my money, and without a common fluent language between us, argument is just too tiring.

That doesn't mean I wasn't angry, and it certainly doesn't mean that I didn't vent to everyone I know. I mean the stairs, why do the stairs have to be so clean? Also why is it such a surprise that they don't look that great even after I've cleaned them? They're covered in years old linoleum and 5 people walk up and down them every day, how nice are they ever going to look. They're not even covered in the same linoleum all the way up. And the bottom flight are just badly painted. I'm not an interior decorator, and unless you're planning on using the stairs to eat from then I'm pretty sure they're fine.

But my new place is so nice I don't really care. It still doesn't have an oven though. Why do I never live anywhere with an oven? It's near an Aldi too, so maybe I'll be able to afford to eat all 5 food groups now.

Claire, I wouldn't eat meat from Aldi, you'll get ill.

Yeah well I've already had food poisoning since I've been here and I haven't cooked red meat in about 4 months. So quite frankly, Aldi can come at me.

I also have a double bed for the first time in my life, so I can now sleep alone in more space than someone of my size could ever need. Hurray.

This is all sounding a little bit too good isn't it? Probably a good time to mention that the walls have that 'distressed' look about them which makes it look ever so slightly like the house from The Blair Witch Project.

But I've got my own sink so, you know, whatever.

January didn't just mark the end of everyone listening to me complain about my landlady though, it involved planning things to look forward to, some really good films, some really great nights out, a lot of The Sopranos and it shouldn't be forgotten that I spent the first week of it at home with a lot of the people I love.

Oh and Justin Timberlake released a new single. So you know, it was a pretty good month actually.

Happy February everyone.

xx

Like dating but worse.

I was showing people my room pretty much from when I arrived back 3 weeks ago, and this didn't only given me the opportunity to gain lots of Facebook friends in a bid to avoid the charges spare room websites try and put on you if you want to reply to your emails, but also to be emotionally traumatised.

Finding someone to take my room has just been filled with rejection, criticism, and people who never call back; just when I think I've finally found someone they tell me they're 'seeing other places' and I never hear from them again. And whilst this is obviously not a reflection on me at all (since they don't have to like me, because I won't be there), I found myself feeling genuinely hurt every time someone didn't want to rent the room.

Some people even said it was too expensive, which isn't a complaint I've had before.

That definitely made that worse rather than better.

One girl was actually mortified that the toilet wasn't in the bathroom, and yeah okay, so that's maybe a little less convenient than you would like (you could actually argue that it's more convenient, but whatever), but I'm not sure it would shock me as much as it appalled her.  It's not like the toilet is that far from everything else, it's on the same floor as the bathroom and kitchen, it's not even a yard from them in fact, it's literally the other side of the stairs. It's not like it's in a separate building, you don't have to walk for a mile through a forest to get there, you just make a decision to go right at the bottom of the stairs rather than left. Quite frankly I think that if you can't deal with that situation then you should seriously consider if you deserve to live in a house at all.

That was probably a bit too angry, so you can see what I mean, I became pretty emotionally invested.

But the most important thing is that I now have somewhere to go when the time comes for me to end my contract on Friday, well sort of, I intend to have somewhere to go and I should be going there. Although given my success so far the house will probably burn down between my visit tomorrow and my being made homeless on Friday. Or they'll find asbestos in it, or it will be the only house in Brussels to flood. Something.

So I can say goodbye to Rue de Chambery with it's far too numerous stairs and dingy kitchen and shower that won't stay hot for more than 20 minutes and weird serial killer-esque extra rooms that we weren't allowed in and door that I couldn't open with just one hand free. I can say hello to somewhere with probably just as many flaws and annoyances but with the bonus of not spending my time avoiding the owner of the house because most of what she says makes me want to be fluent in French just so she would understand how angry I am. So that will be nice at least.

And I think it's a good indicator of what the current owner of my house is like that how nice and relaxed about my signing/deposit paying the owner of my new place is being is causing me a great deal of suspicion.

Maybe the house is filled with asbestos.

Merde.

xx

I've been really bad at this lately.

I've just been crazy busy and I'm trying to move out of/find someone to move into my house - more to follow when I've actually sorted this out and have a new place to live. But at least it's the 16th , so we're officially half-way through the worst month of the year. I didn't think the 'January blues' were a thing, and then I got back here last week and discovered they were a thing, and I had them. There is of course, every possibility I was just home sick and in a horrible mood, but blaming the time of year is just easier.

And if anyone's looking for a room in Brussels let me know - because apparently this blog has also become a sales pitch.

Then it snowed. It looks great don't get me wrong, I like snow as much as the next person, but I've been running maybe 3 times since I got back here and now it's too dangerous for me to even walk. I'm very lucky in the fact that I get to work from home quite a lot at the moment so I don't have to risk my life walking to the office, but even a trip to the bank this morning took about 3 times longer than it should have; and to those people who saw me nearly fall on my face - I hope you enjoyed it, I really do. In all honesty everyone else probably isn't finding it this difficult to get around, but I'm not that stable as it is, I'm not really expecting to make it out of January in one piece.

And yes, I know the picture of the snow isn't the most artistically brilliant one, but it's largely melted in the bits of Etterbeek that look nice because those are the bits where people move around a lot.

But in more positive news we went out on Saturday night and had probably the best night out since we got here (I say this a lot, I know, but it's for real this time) - I've really fallen back in love with going out since moving here, thanks Brussels.

This is another really short and uninformative one, I swear I'll be better at this once I've stopped showing people round my house every day/worrying about being made homeless very swiftly. I'll also explain just how I got to the point of needing to move out in the first place, I promise.

So I'm gonna take some time here to recommend some other people Youtube/blog wise you might want to check out just because I feel like this post should be good for something at least.

Touchdemode.com - This girl can put an outfit together, and her site looks brilliant, check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/user/thatssojessicaful   - I hope she doesn't mind me putting this here, but sometimes I watch this girl's videos and I just feel like she's stolen my brain.

And if you follow @thirdyearabroad on Twitter they always re-tweet some pretty good stuff from other people who've decided that moving once to go to university wasn't enough, and want to do it again 2 years later.

À bientôt!

xx

Happy New Year/I'm back

Today I’ve nearly been in Brussels for 4 whole months, and I’ve got 6 months left. I don’t know how that happened, and I’m pretty concerned that it means I probably don’t have an excuse not to know where things are anymore, and that my French should be far better than it is.

Okay so this is a bit late, apologies, but I hope you’ve had a good first week of 2013 and haven’t already given up on those New Year’s resolutions.

Usually when people ask me if I’ve made any I just reply with ‘get my shit together’, which I like because it allows me plenty of scope, and because it’s an ongoing process and will clearly take longer than 12 months no one can say I haven’t achieved it.

I very rarely make proper ones however, for the same reason I never made revision timetables, or set myself deadlines, or planned my essays properly. Just because I ignore myself and because I can’t shake the knowledge that there aren’t actually any consequences if I don’t keep my promises to myself. That maybe doesn’t apply to the essay planning one; I think that’s more stubbornness, and I’ve gotten a bit better at it, but not much. We’ll see how serious that one actually is when I fail my degree.

But my actual New Year’s resolutions, although I only thought of them in the past few days, are as follows:

1. Stop pretending you don’t need glasses – i.e. stop never taking them anywhere and then just telling everyone that you can’t read things like signs and bus timetables. Just take your glasses with you and actually be able to see.

I have no idea why I do this in the first place but since I moved out here I don’t think my glasses have moved from my desk. I certainly didn’t take them home with me, so I’ve just spent the last three weeks repeating the phrase ‘I haven’t got my glasses on so I can’t see’.

2. Stop looking at things that you know will annoy you – I’m not really sure why I do this either, and I mean this one actually makes no sense, I don’t know why I hate myself so much that I feel the need to irritate myself on purpose.

So I’m going to stop following people on Twitter when I know everything they say annoys me, and I’ve definitely hidden a few people’s updates from Facebook in the last couple of days.  I guess you just like some people better if you never have to hear what they have to say.

I’m also going to stop looking at any links anyone posts to anything from the Daily Mail/The Sun online; because then I really do only have myself to blame.

3. Find a way to clean your laptop screen/underneath the keyboard – it’s pretty bad. I’ve tried to clean the screen a million times but whatever’s marking it is beyond the cleaning power of mere face wipes. I’m 99% sure it’s just coated in hairspray, making it 100% my fault.

I’m writing this on the train and the guy who was meant to be sat next to me all the way from Retford to London sat down for all of 10 minutes and then got up and left. That was about 40 minutes ago and I don’t think he’s coming back. The guy opposite me also just caught me looking over at his Uni notes trying to work out what he was doing, so that’s good. Maybe resolution number 4 should be get some social skills.

Au revoir!

xx

Being an intern means...

Writing your number on scraps of paper whilst everyone else exchanges business cards.

Hanging around the buffet, because you know you're not gonna eat this well until the next event.

Being served drinks at those events by someone who's at least 3 years older than you, and knowing there's a good chance you'll be standing exactly where they are when your internship finishes.

Having a tiny, personal celebration every time you make a new friend. Don't lie to yourself, we're all doing it.

Still assuming that if someone lives in/went to university at the same place as someone you know, they will know them. Even if however-many years of university has taught you that this is almost never the case.

Finally having a legitimate reason to be tired all the time.

Learning to use the photocopier, and in my case, taking about 20 minutes to find where the copies come out...all 10 of them because you were convinced it just wasn't printing at all. It would be easy here to jump to the conclusion that I'm an idiot, but it's mostly just an absolute refusal to ask for help. It's the same reason I get lost so much, and that I avoided using the phones at work for a whole year after I accidentally ignored the person who tried to show me the first time.

Like I said, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that I'm an idiot.

I'm going home in 7 DAYS, and it never feels like Christmas unless I'm home, so right now it's just like it's cold and there's Christmas stuff everywhere but it may as well be like, October as far as I'm concerned. But it did snow on Sunday morning, so to anyone from home who I told that it was 'so much milder here', I'm sorry, that was a lie.

Oh and this happened:

What so just because I work 9-5 I'm not allowed to fan girl anymore? Please. I was super excited. And if you don't know who this guy is, he's 1/2 of these guys, and they're really funny.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/mKJBB9rqfyE]

I'm sorry this is short and pretty uninformative and it's taken me like 10 days to write. I just seem to have been crazy busy and have about a hundred things to do in the next two days before Sally gets here (hopefully should have stopped freaking out by the time you get here, I'm ridiculously excited to see you, by the way), and my brain can't really focus on anything else. The next one will be better I swear!

So much love

xx

I've stopped getting those 'WELCOME TO...' texts from my network when Icross a border.

Which is probably the biggest 'stop doing these ridiculous coach journeys' sign you can get, if my own phone company can't be bothered to acknowledge how much I'm moving around, then I should probably stop doing it. At least for a little while.

But yet this coach is always full, who is doing this journey from London to Brussels in the middle of November on a Sunday night? Apparently the answer to that is shit loads of people. And the guy sat next to me on the journey to London apparently found it acceptable to do a mini work out next to me. So many hours in the day and you couldn't just not do weird breathing exercises for those 2 hours? Really? But on a happier note London looks beautiful now all the lights are on, and I'm lucky enough to drive down the street with both the Harrods and Harvey Nichols Christmas windows on them, they're amazing.

I also met someone on the coach who said my accent made me sound intelligent, something I'm still trying to process to be honest.

And I need to find somewhere else to travel from, so I can stop being harassed in the train station. Just a heads up,  if I've told you I don't understand a word of French (lie) and from the little English you understand I've also managed to tell you I have a husband and a child (also lies). Then you need to step back, and stop hitting on me. Cheers. 10/10 for persistence though, I'm not saying you didn't try. Just that you didn't really realise when you'd failed.

So a quick update on my day, it would appear that I am ill, so today has so far been spent watching Alex Day read Twilight on Youtube. Now no one can attack me for saying I hate it and not having read it, because now I sort of have, at least in the sense of watching someone criticise it chapter by chapter. What got me in particular was that there seems to be a real interest into why Edward saves Bella from being hit by a car,; does that really need an explanation? Isn't that actually a pretty normal thing to do, would you really sit there and wonder what potential sinister motives they could have? Also apparently in Twilight it's totally okay to start talking about marrying someone when you've only known them for 2 weeks, and in the same conversation discuss how easily they could crush your skull. Don't even get me started on the 'forgot to breathe' thing when she faints.

Anyway, my weekend was awesome, it started off with a Post-Election Party, during which I watched a man who looked like an older Hugh Grant dance very well.

Dear whoever you are, I'm modelling my future husband on you.

It continued with a trip to Lydney to see Alex, who for some reason left her summer in Sydney to do winter in the South West of Britain, but I'm very glad she did. For some reason I've only taken about 4 photos from the past 2 weekends so I can't even show you what we did, something we did do is make sweet potato at like 10pm on Friday night. The lesson there is that watching too many cooking programmes set in the English countryside will give you irrational cravings. And then I went to Bath for half a day, and Bristol for about an hour and experienced my Uni life again and as a result was pretty sad to leave and come back to reality. But on the upside we've started house-hunting for final year. I'm still in that stage where I'm looking out houses I clearly can't afford, in other words, I'm looking for a house in Bath.

Here I am with Chepstow Castle.

I'm not one to absorb joy - Jon Richardson.

I know how you feel babe, I know how you feel.

xx

I'm really struggling to think of titles for these posts.

 

And photos to head them with, so if I can't think of anything relevant, it's just gonna be pictures of street art, I hope that's okay.

For some reason I've been really productive over the last couple of days, maybe it's the realisation that if someone asks me a question in French on the street I can answer them in French without them laughing in my face.  Or it might be that after my post last weekend I realised that I didn't really have a plan.

I know, I know, it's still ages until I graduate and no one really knows what they're doing, but until now (and to be honest, still now) I had nothing.

Nada.

Niente.

Rien.

And I'm never really sure if I should do anything about it. Most of the people closest to me seem to be telling me not to worry and I'll find something eventually, that I'll be fine. But there are always some people (and it tends to be the people who initiate the 'future' discussion) that can't keep the worried look from their faces when I answer with 'I literally have no idea'. I used to nip the conversation in the bud with 'I'm going on placement in my third year, so I'll decide then'. Which was fine, until third year was actually now, and I'm still no closer to having any direction.

So I started thinking about it, but then I realised it wasn't my refusal to think about it that was the problem, it's that I genuinely don't know. I've changed my mind a couple of times over the past 6/7 years about what I wanted to do, it just so happens that the last time I changed my mind I was left without a replacement idea.

But I'm okay with that, I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. The closest I got to an actual conclusion was just that after I graduate I'd really like to stop moving house. Just for a bit. Just living somewhere for longer than 9 months would be good.

This obviously wasn't the productive part of my week, that part involved deciding on my dissertation topic (sort of), doing washing, going food shopping, replying to all my emails, going running and still managing to have a social life. Unfortunately the last part involved the significantly less productive conclusion that I'd happily spend every night at Open Mic sessions in bars, and another defeat served to me by public transport.

That's now Claire - 0 Brussels transport - like, 50.

I promise I'm going to try and find more interesting things to write about than just whatever I'm thinking at the time, but I am basically excluded from the fashion/beauty realm of blogging due to a) not having any money to buy clothes and therefore wearing the same outfits to work over and over again, and b) not actually using any beauty products. In fact the no money thing prevents me from reviewing basically anything, but I'll find a way to work around it I promise.

Now to finish, a fun fact: Malta does not have a railway system, but then it is made up of 3 small islands, so as you might expect, boats are much better.

Jake Bugg's debut album is awesome, so if you haven't already, give it a listen.

Oh and Mobistar? The last 3 letters of my name are not 't-n-e', but I wanted you to stop calling me when I'm at work, so whatever you think you heard is fine.

Ciao!

xx

P.S. Unlimited thanks to the guy from Omnitherm who was just at the building I work in, not only is my office now toasty warm (and I'm no longer burning my ankles using the electric heater),  but at no other point would I have been able to drop my key down the drain outside and not just burst into tears. You are amazing. Merci beaucoup.

Happy 1 month in Brussels!

Can you believe it, as of last Saturday I've been here an entire month. I was actually crawling into the house at 6am Saturday morning - marking the time to the second that I first got here just 4 weeks ago. Needless to say I was just as tired but had spent the last 14 hours having much more fun than the first time around.

Aside from that, this week I have:

• Been kidnapped by a metro driver - apparently hilarious to close the doors before Marika could get on and drive away cackling like The Child-Catcher, leading to an epic journey, actually mainly down to the fact that we stayed on a tram for farrr too long and so basically went in a circle...


• Used translation headphones for the first time - getting the volume and language changing buttons mixed up when I was trying to write at the same time was a particularly confusing moment.


• Become increasingly angry and whoever shares a wall with me in the house next door - your alarm is your phone vibrating, and evidently it doesn't wake you for a good 15 minutes, but it does wake me, an hour before my alarm is due to go off. I will find you, and I will set you a more effective alarm.


• Bedding! - And as a result have just had the best 2 nights sleep (and possibly a nap on Sunday evening) of my (Belgian) life.


• Gone for my first run in about 8 months - my body definitely knew it. It can only get better.


• Finally been to a club with like, other young people in it, and good music and everything - that would be the getting in at 6am I mentioned, the best night I've had in a while.


• Done tourist-y things with my family - like see the Atomium, Mini Europe, eat overpriced sandwiches from a tiny cafe and be made to pose for countless photos with everything we saw - apologies for the ones included below, after 4 hours sleep, I was not photo-ready.


• Made exciting plans - including a home visit in November and a visit from a very good friend (Sally, I know you read this, and yes, this is you) in December so we can enjoy Belgium in all its festive glory.


• Finally caught up on Homeland - cannot believe I left it this long, brilliant.


• Probably used Skype more than the rest of my life put together - this would be the disgusting bit where I say thank you to anyone who's Skyped/messaged/spoken to/seen me this week - but that would be highly embarrassing, so I would never do that.

Songs of the post:

Placebo - Nancy Boy

The Vaccines - Ghost Town

Jay-Z & Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean - No Church in the Wild

Rolling Stones - Start Me Up

The Black Keys - Tighten Up

Royal Crescent, Bath. My piece of my second home in my third one.

Due to Italian traffic, the closest I've ever been to Pisa.

Bonne journée!

xx

Good news

It feels like I've done a lot complaining in these posts since I moved here, although that's hardly because I'm not enjoying myself, and mostly because posts saying 'everything is great!' would be short and not very interesting. So this post is going to be some good things,one tiny tiny bad thing that was so disappointing  it can't go without comment, and some photos.

Good things:

• Well first of all Brussels is lovely, I'm settled and very much enjoying myself, also we get 2 new housemates this weekend and meeting new people is never a bad thing.


• Turns out the 'third time lucky' myth really works, third time walking to my meeting building and I got there absolutely fine (and without wandering round streets I had no reason to be on), have since made the journey twice more with great success. And never without an umbrella.


• My coat arrived, it's actually way too warm to wear at the moment but I'm now fully prepared for the infamous 'Brussels weather'.


• The self-service machines in Delhaize don't have a bagging area, which is probably the best idea I've ever heard. They also don't yell at you like the ones in British supermarkets do, it's definitely all-round a more relaxing experience if you dislike human contact/are in a rush.


• It's only 5 days until my family get here! I've never been so excited to see them, in 2 years of university I was barely homesick, but I feel so far away over here, and this isn't helped by their inability to use Skype because the home computer is so slow it's actually more time-effective for them to wait for me to come home at Christmas.


• I found a shop that sells these things:
  I think you can still get them in the UK but I haven't been able to find them for years and I'm so picky about sweets that I end up giving away the majority of a normal packet of fruit Mentos, so this is pretty exciting.


• It's only 50 cents for a hotdog in IKEA, and you can get 2 and a drink for €1.50, a packet of 4 donuts is only €1.60. I don't (and probably don't want to know) why it's so cheap, but I'm definitely not swimming in money at the moment, so it was good to see.

One tiny tiny bad thing:

• This barely deserves its own section but it was a pretty big disappointment; basically, when I first visited Delhaize I spotted some pre-cooked waffles with jam in the middle, obviously having just moved to Belgium this was pretty exciting. So, finally, when they came on offer this week I bought some, excitedly went home, only to be completely disappointed. Far too much jam, they tasted nothing like waffles, I only ate half and was so devastated I had to throw the other away.

That bit wasn't very interesting, I apologise.

Some photos:

Au revoir!

xx

There were going to be more photos but...

it rained. The it rained some more, and my measly completely-made-of-paper notebook took the brunt of the bad weather, so now it's just some paper stapled together rather than an actual book because the cover came off. Yes, this was made worse by the fact that I got lost, and yes, this is the same place I got lost finding last week, but finally I've realised where I've been going wrong, something I could have done much earlier by paying more attention when I walked home...

But it's good to know that the weather is just as bad at home at least, although I am still missing things from home:

• A hairdryer - So I don't get temporary pneumonia every time I wash my hair.


• An oven - Which I didn't realise we didn't have until I got here, and even though I barely cooked in the oven at uni due to its inability to cook anything evenly, I've just been continuously craving oven pizza for the past 3 weeks.


• My running shoes - So. Many. Carbs. Even with the lack of pizza I've been eating terribly and to be honest, I need to do some sort of exercise when the office is only 5 minutes away.


• Central heating - That's not a Belgian thing, we just can't turn the heating on until November in the house, which I assumed would be fine, until I had to start wearing more clothes in the house than outside of it.


• The time - Or rather not converting it for no reason in my head every time I look at a clock, even though it's just an hour I can't get out of the habit of knowing what time it would be if I was in Britain.


• Not living with my landlady - it's only for another couple of weeks now, and I'm not exactly untidy...but it's a bit like having your lecturer or boss follow you home to make sure you're doing enough work, it's just a bit weird. So I've taken to hiding things I haven't had time to wash up yet in my room, like being a student, but in secret.

Also a fun fact: If you get your bike stolen from the street in Brussels, you'll probably find it at the bike market at Gare du Midi on a Sunday, where about 90% of stolen bikes turn up.

Just one photo from something we visited at the weekend, it's Porte de Hal, a city gate from the second set of Brussels city walls.

À la prochaine :)

xx