First part in English, the rest will be in Finnish/Swedish.
Did you know it's saint Nicolas' day today? Yep, and it's like small Christmas :D Let me explain this a bit. Saint Nicolas (Sinterklaas in Dutch) is kind of Belgium's version of Santa Claus. The main difference is that he's a real saint, he's helped by a dark-skinned boy and he has a horse. Oh, and he arrives on the 5/6 December. So this morning I found some speculoos by the stairs...
...a packet of speculoos and some candy on my desk in school... [I don't have a picture of that since a) no phones allowed in school and b) I ate it all during lunch] ...and this sight when I came home:
Please find the random kinder surprise egg that somehow is not related to Easter here.
Merci beaucoup saint Nicolas!
Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää kaikille suomalaisille! Glad självständighetsdag till alla finländare!
Kuva: Wikipedia
Ja tähän loppui englanninkielinen osio. Tuntui kummalliselta toivottaa hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää jollain muulla kielellä kuin suomeksi tai ruotsiksi. Tänään ei ole tullut tehtyä mitään kummallista siihen suhteen koska tämä on muuten ihan normi-koulupäivä jos tuota kauheaa karkki- ja speculoosmäärää ei lasketa mukaan. Kerroin parille kaverille asiasta mutta ei tässä muuta. Illalla on ranskan kurssi toisen suomalaisen kanssa joten siinä sitten toivotellaan hyvä itsenäisyyspäivää.
Och samma på svenska. Kändes underligt att säga det på något annat språk än svenska/finska, det är helt enkelt inte samma känsla. Eftersom det är en helt vanlig skoldag här (frånsett all den där mängden med godis och speculoos) så har jag inte gjort något vidare speciellt. I kväll har jag franska kurs tillsammans med en annan finsk utbyteselev så får man önska glad självständighetsdag till någon annan.
Wow, it almost seems like I have abandoned this blog. But don't worry, I have just been ridiculously busy!
So starting from where I left you last time. That weeks Saturday was the start of my "mini-tour" around Europe. It was autumn break the week after so we had all the time in the world.
The first day was spent pretty much just by sitting in the car. We drove through Luxembourg and France on our way to dear old Switzerland. I had been planning to upload a video from my first day in Swiss but blogger doesn't seem to like me enough to upload it.
That Sunday we first did a small "ballad", a.k.a we went on a small walk, and saw a lot of cows. I'm not even kidding.
Taken in front of our hotel's entrance. I LOVE MOUNTAINS!
Cows! With cowbells
After our promenade-thingy we went to Gruyère. If you have heard of the name before, it's probably because of the cheese with the same name. So we went there and had some real cheese fondue.
And we found this museum. The creator of ALIEN lived/lives here.
On Monday we continued to Geneva. We walked around, bought some chocolate and in the evening we had dinner with my hostgrandparents who live there.
Preach! I love this one
We drove then to a France (sounds like a lot but actually just two hours) and continued to the Mount Blanc tunnel the day after.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and also almost all of Friday were spent on the French Riviera. We weren't really lucky with the weather but I still liked it a lot. Here follows some mixed photos
Menton
Menton by night
Nice
The G20 was being held in Cannes so even Nice was filled with policemen.
Last day, it was quite impressive to see
We also went to Monaco on Friday but we just drove through it since it was raining...
On Friday evening we started to drive back. That night was spent in a hotel, which we realised in the morning, didn't have any other guest then us. It was really weird... But it was still a nice hotel so not complaining.
When we arrived home to Belgium, there were things about how southern France was flooding. Good thing we got out of there on time ;)
That's all about this vacation. The next time I'll continue writing about what I have been up to.
The song above is made by a Belgian musician, Jacques Brel. I have worked with another one of his lyrics for French class in school which was quite interesting. And people say that Finnish music is tragic/sad.
So as the topic suggest, I went to Amsterdam last weekend. We (me, Nana and my hostparents) took the evening-train on Saturday so I had time to go ice-skating during the day with other exchange students. Some of us were on ice for the first time of our lives while others were masters at it. It was really gaie :)
Here are some pictures from what we were up to on Sunday. We rented some bikes from the hotel and were pedalling around Amsterdam the whole day.
We're so Belgian that our cards have pictures of Manneken Pis on them xD
We went for a canal cruise and I got some pictures from the window
Before you start reading, put your headphones on and start listening to this song. It's "Elle me dit" by Mika and has become my song for this exchange year. Thank you.
Nothing really important and life-changing has happened after my last post but I thought you all who read my blogg might want to know how's life.
You know you're an exchange student when:
-you forget you own language
-miss food you never even liked back home
-need to learn all the states of the USA in French (and you've never learned them in English either)
-think that Belgian food is normal
-can't stop smiling when you hear a small child screaming in the supermarket because the child is screaming in FINNISH!
-you suddenly realise that you are doing a presentation in French. The picture below is from when I held a presentation about Finland to my Rotary Club two weeks ago. Some day soon I'll take part in a presentation in French class about Thor. It has been postponed for... two weeks now? At least my pronunciation is better now. I'm still scared to do anything without the paper since the text isn't written by me.
Since there was only one question on the last post, I'm going to save it for another time. I don't really have time to do research about the royal family at the moment, sorry brother. The one thing you need to know is that they have a black sheep in the family.
I went shopping last week for the first time since I arrived here. I even bought a skirt. Those who know me are used to me using only pants/trousers etc. but I have decided that this fact of me is going to change. Be warned :)
I had my first tennis lesson this Monday. I'm a danger to everyone else on the field but I liked it. That's all.
I have been taking French lessons in the evenings, but now I also have "special French" at school instead of Dutch. It's nice, but I get a headache from the teacher's voice. She's supposed to be a librarian but has no what-so-ever kind of indoor voice. We're now reading "Around the World in 80 days". My teacher doesn't know it, but I've been reading it in English afterwards just to understand something.
My French is improving, it's just really difficult to understand people in school. Answering in French is a nightmare. In Art History I might even say something but otherwise I'm quite silent during class. My History teacher was surprised when I told him why I hadn't done the homework (no notes=no clue whatsoever what we're talking about). He's one of those teachers who preach all the course and the students never really say anything.
Next post is going to feature more pictures, I can't find my GSM-cable at the moment.
On Friday I had my favourite course in school, Histoire de l'art. Those who know me *coughschoolfriendscough* know that that's not my cup of tea in Finland. But here it totally rocks my world! It's the only class where the teacher has a powerpoint. I am not kidding. In Finland almost all teachers use powerpoints in class.Here it's just in histoire de l'art. And my prof actually speaks at an understandable speed for me, and since she has PICTURES! Almost understanding everything is a huge thing for me. I still can't take notes but I have awesome friends who I can loan notes from. After school, I hang out with my hostsister and some friends of hers.
On Saturday I slept late just because I could and was really tired. Hearing French all the time makes me so tired... On the afternoon I went to Namur to fête de Wallonie which is basically a huge feast for the French speaking Belgians. I have now learnt to be proud of learning French in Belgium. I have a pin with a map of France (titled France with Frenchies) and Belgium (titled France without Frenchies). Hello, my name is Emilie and I'm a Pinoholic.
I hung out with other RYE students in Namur and we had a blast which means PICTURE TIME!
What I learnt that day: Barbapapa is actually Barbe à papa which means cottoncandy!
Mölkky! The students at the local university brought the game here from France :D They were really excited to meet a real Finn!
Pins from Namur. The one in the upper-left corner is the "France without frenchies" one. The two first from the left on the front row are also mine.
I slept over at Nana's since my hostparents were at a soirée that evening. I came home today and have been copying histoire de l'art notes and waiting for my package to arrive. About 15 minutes ago it actually arrived. SUPERSALMIAKKI <3! And also the edition of my local Finnish newspaper featuring me and the French exchange student who is going to live in my family for some time.
Please post any questions you might have in the comment-box-thingy. They can be in Finnish, Swedish, English or French. For Japanese I have to utilize google translate... It's a bit difficult for me to know what to write about sometimes since I don't know what people want to read.
