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

10 things I've learnt about travelling

 /people who travel/I spend too much time on modes of transport.

1. Your luggage probably doesn't come with a neon sign attached to it, so sometimes people won't see it and will walk into it, this is your fault. 

2. Also sometimes if you don't come with a neon sign attached to you and you're small enough to be looked over, people will walk into you, this is also your fault. 

3. Seats on any form of transport are measured using tiny children, because there is no way even a small adult would have given the okay to seats that size. 

4. Seat reservations are to be taken seriously, and if you've had the impertinence to misread your ticket and sit in the wrong place you deserve to be publicly shamed through a collection of excessively loud declarations of your error and exasperated sighs as you get ready to move. 

5. Some people will crave human contact so badly they will sit next to you even if there is plenty of other space available.

6. Travel is the time to live your dreams. People who sit behind appear me appear to have dreamt of playing percussion (read as: you are not Keith Moon; stop tapping on my chair).

7. If you're carrying a hiking rucksack as opposed to a suitcase, you are obviously a student or on your gap year, and therefore less worthy of the respect or courtesy of everyone around you. 

8. Most children will be quiet most of the time, on the occasion they dare to make noise it is customary to exchange pained glances with everyone around you. 

9. Sometimes all the stars and planets align and you get two seats to yourself  for a whole journey-this is impossible to enjoy at the time however, due to the fear that will grip you at every station that someone might get on and sit down.

10. 99% of the time, everyone has a pretty firm grasp of social convention and knows exactly when it is a appropriate to make conversation and when it is not. That 1% is the worst 2 hours of your life.

But I had a really nice Easter and now it's moving into double figure temperatures (that's right, people of Britain, it's cold in other places too) we can do things outside and I know I've been really bad at this recently but I'll try and get better I swear.

Until next time!
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?

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

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

Je suis arrivé!

I am officially living in Brussels now! Well, in the sense that I occupy a room here and I pay rent and work here and basically do everything here, but not legally, because I'm not registered as a resident.

The journey was actually quite enjoyable, although not being able to straighten my legs for the last 4 hours did make me a bit crippled, but despite this I managed to pass the time from London to Brussels very well after I made friends with 3 girls sat near me who were going to Amsterdam. I didn't sleep, but doing the journey by myself and only saying a fleeting goodbye to my parents on Friday morning meant I was pretty all over the place, so the distraction was nice and they were lovely people to spend the journey with.

My room (pictures below) is quite big, lots of storage space etc., and I look forward to having a cup of tea on the balcony in the mornings. Yes I have already bought and made myself a cup of tea, what can I say, I just can't resist home comforts. I also accidentally bought chocolate filled with rum truffle, which will teach me not to wear my glasses when I go shopping and everything is in French and Dutch. I now have a phone number, and I've explored Etterbeek and some more of Brussels with my house mate Rosa, we went to Saint-Catherine, saw Grand-Place and 100s of stalls selling waffles for €1.

I met my landlady when I arrived, she  is so lovely and helpful ( which is exactly what you need when you arrive when it's still dark and you haven't slept since that time yesterday), and everyone else pretty briefly and me and Rosa were out all day yesterday and everyone works during the week. Everyone has been very welcoming and nice and I'm sure I'll enjoy it here. I definitely feel much further away here than I did at University though, despite the fact that I'm basically speaking to everyone as much as I would do if I were still in the UK, but I'm sure once I'm more settled I'll feel much more at home :)[gallery]

That's all for now!

Au revoir!

xx

Packing up

So I'm less than 2 days away from moving my life to a little room in Etterbeek, Brussels and I thought I'd start blogging because it's probably the easiest way for anyone who cares to see how this move pans out given that I will no longer be easily contactable by phone and sending out group emails is a bit weird. This also might end up being where I post stuff I think is cool, or it might crash and burn within a couple of weeks, it's basically completely dependent on how interesting my life is.

I still have a list as long as my arm to get done before I go, most of it will involve making phone calls and being stuck on hold for longer than the conversation will actually last and printing things (which I'm still struggling to do despite the fact the printer is literally a yard away from me). I also don't have a phone number, a bank account, or a map. Oh, and I don't really speak French well enough to have meaningful conversation. So overall, it's probably fair to say this is going pretty well.

But despite all this, hopefully, the journey will run smoothly, my lovely landlady has agreed to meet me at the house herself, which is also luckily not too far from where the bus drops me off, and only ten minutes away from where I'll be working. All of which is much appreciated when I have to travel by myself and I don't arrive until 6am on Saturday. Another piece of great news is that I'm not expected to dress too smartly in the office, so (fingers-crossed) I won't have to buy any more clothes on top of the minimal shopping I've already done. This might not sound that exciting, but if you were my bank balance, I promise you would be ecstatic.

I think that's all I've got for now, realising only yesterday that I had no currency has confirmed to me that I think I've still got ages to prepare. I have not. So I'm going to go and panic for a bit and hopefully make it to Brussels in one piece :)

À la prochaine!

xx