Merry Christmas and well done...

...on surviving the end of the world. We totally showed that calendar system which never predicted the end of the world in the first place. Nice work mankind.

I'm not ashamed to say I've eaten and slept my way through the last week and a half. I also love the fact that we only really 'do Christmas' with my immediate family i.e. the people who live in my house; because it means my Christmas shopping is done within an hour and Christmas Day is a genuinely relaxing time where no one has to cook or eat turkey and we don't have Christmas cake. No one really likes those things and you're just lying to yourself if you think you do.

That doesn't mean that after a week at home I'm not already craving independent living again, because I am. I know my mum reads this but I think she's heard me say the words 'I'm just going to kill all of you' enough times in the last few days for this not to be a particular surprise - they know I love them, it's fine. But I also am loving the people of Leeds, I haven't even been gone that long but I'd forgotten that everyone is so damn friendly here, I must have chatted to like 5 people in M&S alone on Saturday morning. Special thanks to the shop assistant in Tesco who skipped the song that was playing in the book department after I said it was making me lose the will to live. You deserve to have an extra nice Christmas.

So have a lovely Christmas and tell the people you love/like that you love/like them, because that's what this time of year is for.

I will be doing; so if you don't hear from me in the couple of days you can take that as a sign that I can't stand you.

Merry Christmas :)

xx

I'm still too tired to think of a witty name for this

I think I realised exactly how excited I was to go home when Wednesday seemed to be the SLOWEST DAY IN THE HISTORY OF TIME. I'm actually writing this bit before I've even left to go home, so that's where we're at, I'm blogging about my weekend at home before I've even got there. I watched Homeland, an episode of Civilisation, painted my nails, packed, ate large amounts of food, showered, straightened my hair and, in true Halloween spirit, watched Friday the 13th (the original, of course) and it's STILL not time for me to leave.

Now the acting in Friday the 13th is terrible, there's a massive overreaction to one of the group pretending to drown - even if he was actually drowning it would be pretty unnecessary to jump in AND use a boat AND a lifebuoy when he's, at most, 2 metres away from the platform you're on (although this pales in comparison to the ridiculous under-reaction of the guy in A Nightmare on Elm Street; who remains relatively calm whilst his girlfriend's blood-covered body is dragged across the ceiling).

But it remains a classic nonetheless; it's a film with all the questionable moral messages of a American slasher. If you have sex, well, I hope it was good, because it's the last thing you'll ever do. Smoking weed? Better enjoy that joint, because you're about to be stabbed in the face. Although the only surviving character does smoke weed and flirt outrageously with the especially 80's looking summer camp owner. All this whilst one of the first characters to die is a guy who couldn't be less in line to get laid - so what's the message here? Flirting with middle-aged men with disgusting facial hair is fine, but being a socially awkward teenager isn't? Is that what we're saying? I just don't understand your angle here Paramount.

And I'm back.

Okay, so I got back on Monday, but I've only just sorted my sleeping pattern out, just in time to do it all again tomorrow night, where did these last 3 days go?

So since these two weeks of my life seem to have revolved around coaches, it's only fair I share a little about what I've learnt about coach etiquette.

1. It's totally fine to spend like 20 hours with someone and never learn each others names,. To the couple who I befriended on the way there and then met again on my return - thank you so much for making those journeys bearable, and for buying me breakfast! I will always remember how much we all hated the Border Control staff and how angry we were when they started playing music in the bar we were trying to sleep in on the ferry. This also goes out to the girls I made friends with on my 'moving in' journey; thanks for making the whole thing seem a lot less scary, and for the tea. I hope my next set of coach friends are just as nice as all you guys.

2. Apparently if you're a fairly short female, any guy who sits next to you will assume you don't need your leg space and just use it to make their legs more spread out. Now, whilst this might be correct for some, even most girls below 5' 6", it is not true for me, and you should not assume it's true for anyone. For someone who's pretty short, I have pretty long legs, so I'm struggling to get comfortable as much as you are, and if I can't straighten out my knees for 5 hours, then neither can you, so back off my half of the seat.

3. If someone accidentally falls asleep on you, it is not okay to fall asleep on them back to make everyone more comfortable. What is okay however, is to sit there awkwardly and text everyone you know to tell them about this guy that's fallen asleep on your arm. I don't know this because I've actually tried to do it, I just know it isn't okay to intentionally fall asleep on someone you don't know. I can just imagine it would go down badly. But it shouldn't be that way, I think we should just agree that it's fine to sleep around each other, so everyone can have a more comfortable journey. As someone who basically always makes these journeys overnight, and by myself, I think it's difficult enough to sleep on coaches as it is without spending the entire time trying to sleep as far away from the person sitting next to me as I can. Because it isn't actually comfortable to sleep with my face on the window.

Also nice work America, you totally pulled that one out of the bag! I'm not going to delve into all things political here, and it's safe to say Obama isn't exactly living out all of my political dreams. But if you imagine you have to run a marathon, and then just before you start running, you take a machine gun to your feet...the political equivalent of that would be Romney being President.

Have another good weekend and I promise next week's post won't be about coaches.

Well, probably not.

xx

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

Some photos of Etterbeek & an update

Etterbeek town hall

Etterbeek centre

Etterbeek centre

My house :) My room is the lowest one on the right with the balcony

So over the last few days I have:

• Booked my bus tickets to see my lovely Australian friend Alex in Bristol.


• Been told that my parents aren't coming for another 2 weeks (it was this weekend, then next, now it's the 6th of October), so that's just more time I have to spend sleeping in a sleeping bag feeling like a squatter in my own room.


• Discovered that two streets I thought ran parallel to each other, in fact, don't, and so ended up taking the full hour of time I'd allocated myself to find a meeting that was 25 minutes away, thoroughly breaking in my new shoes (and feet) in the process.


• Ordered myself a coat from ASOS, because it's absolutely freezing here already.


• Started watching Jonathan Creek online, and remembering why I loved it so much when I was younger, and also questioning my parents viewing decisions for their child.

Au revoir!

xx