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

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

No wonder Colin Farrell hated it.

Bruges I mean. I'm not surprised he wondered if that's what hell was like. After my experience this weekend I'm very much inclined to agree with him.

It started with a waffle. We wanted to share one, but obviously being two people we wanted to eat using separate apparatus. It quickly became apparent this would not be possible. When I first asked for the second set of cutlery I was greeted with 'no'. I thought it was perfectly deadpan, I didn't think he actually meant 'no'. So the very British part of me decided continued to pursue my request, only to be greeted with 'no', again. I looked confused, he stared blankly back and replied with 'If you're sharing the waffle you can share the cutlery'. I wasn't completely convinced that this wasn't a joke until we'd finished our meal alternating with the one set of cutlery we had. Maybe I haven't been in Belgium long enough after all.

Then we had lunch at a place where you can order only drinks but not, it would seem, only food. As we were told 'this is a restaurant, you have to order drinks if you're eating'. Now I've been to plenty of restaurants,in plenty of places, and I'm not entirely sure this is how it works. In fact I know it isn't, because I routinely don't order drinks, especially not in Belgium, because water is very rarely free and I'm yet to start bleeding money. I am however, not routinely thrown out of restaurants.

I think the most depressing part of this story is that even with the €4,50 each we paid for water, the bill still came to less than it would of had we eaten anywhere else.

I also hit an old woman in the face with a door. Although I initially thought I'd knocked over a small child, so breaking an old woman's nose was actually a fairly positive outcome.

Once you get over the emotional trauma though, I guess it's alright. It's really pretty but I was too busy being furious to take any photos.

Oh, and whoever walked past my office on Monday and pressed the intercom button. You pressed it too hard, it got stuck and subsequently set off the doorbell for a good 5 minutes before I worked out what the hell was going on and why all these white plastic phones on the wall were making noise. Some of those phones are in parts of the office I don't have a key for. You better hope I don't find out who you are. You are mine.

On a more serious note, for everyone who has read this, and for all the nice things you've said, thank you very much, it is very much appreciated.

xx

I was ill, but then I got better. So it was fine.

Private Jones: Mitch, I fucking got one!

Corporal Mitchell: What you want a fucking sweetie? Keep shooting you cunt!

This is why all horror films should be British; none of the ridiculous puns of American films, just lots of swearing. That's basically all I've done whilst I've been ill, I watched The Exorcist on Friday for about the 100th time, and no matter how many times I see it I can't help but feel a little annoyed that it kind of has a happy ending. Not that I'm against happiness, it's just not how horror films should be. Definitely not as annoyed as I am at The Texas Chainsaw Massacre though, in which every character is so irritating, I'm actually rooting for the silent serial killer. Seriously if you start walking when the killer is within grabbing distance of you, you deserve to be chainsawed(?) to death.

It's also come to my attention lately, that I have really weird taste in fictional men. Just stay with me on this, this isn't going to be about how hot the cast of 90210 are, I promise.

I've already proclaimed my love for Ryan Howard from The Office, and I know, I know he's emotionally void and he kind of goes crazy when he gets promoted and starts doing shit loads of drugs and embezzling money...but in the 'Grief Counselling' episode instead of telling a story about the death of someone close to him, he tells the story of how Mufasa dies in The Lion King -  and if your approach to grief counselling is to tell part of a Disney story, then we need to get married.

Nathan from Misfits is another one, because apparently if your one goal is to annoy other people and make ridiculously inappropriate jokes, then I will think you're the best thing that's ever happened to the world. He has completely irrational reactions to everything, and is therefore the love of my life.

Nathan: Are you asking me out on a date?
Simon: No... I meant all of us.
Nathan: Did you? ... I am not your whore!

Guy Secretan from Green Wing is probably the most prominent and unreasonable adorations:

Dr.  Dear: It is for a good cause.

Dr.  Secretan: I don't do good causes, OK? A charity shag maybe, but certainly not to raise fucking money for medical equipment.

It's not like I don't know what terrible 'real life' partners these people would make, they basically live to be infuriating and find it impossible to take anything seriously and/or be emotionally capable, and to be honest that's really not what I should be looking for. BUT, they are about 20 million times more interesting than Edward Cullen/any male lead in those films where the someone dies/I don't even want to talk about (500) Days of Summer.

In other news, the key that has the comma on it fell off my keyboard, so I keep accidentally typing full stops instead, I've tried to correct all these grammatical errors, but sorry just in case. Oh and I broke a mug, fused the lights in my room, and spilt tea on my floor. The last two I did within the space of like an hour. I expect a serious injury within the week.

And I'm more than a little frustrated with living here right now; all I've wanted is blueberries and cookies from a supermarket bakery, but to afford the former I'd have to sell my organs and the latter just don't exist apparently. Way to go Belgium, way to go.

But good stuff has happened too! I received confirmation that I'm getting my Erasmus grant at some point in time so I'll be able to afford food (but still not blueberries) and stuff which will be a nice change. I successfully changed the light bulb in my room and overall everyone's been really nice whilst I've recovered from being poisoned by some food. So that's nice :)

I went to a lovely event hosted by my friends at CBI, and today I went to a seminar where the John Harris, editor of Politico, spoke. Politico is basically the nearest Washington gets to un-partisan journalism, so that was pretty cool. And I was persuaded to go out on Saturday night, so we danced on tables for a bit and the learned played chess in a bar until it closed.

I haven't really chatted about work so far, and just as a warning that's probably not going to change because I'm absolutely convinced I'm going to accidentally let something really important slip and initiate a crisis/lose my job.

Au revoir!

xx