Claire Parsons - 2 Months? No Way!

Hello Everyone!

I've been so busy (in a good way) here that when I finally stopped to figure out how long I'd been living in Belgium, I was shocked to realize that this coming Friday will indeed mark 8 weeks from when I took off from Denver. Wow! And in these 8 weeks I've been so lucky to do so much and experience so many things! Since I can't possibly talk about it all I'll include some highlights!

Kayaking: Two Saturdays ago Rotex put on this Kayaking activity available to all exchange students in Belgium. (There are three different districts in total) Early that morning I took the train from Brussels to Dinant (a small town in southern Belgium) and spent a wonderful, beautiful sunny (sunny? Belgium? YES!) day kayaking down a river with 200 other exchange students from around the world!

Liege: My current host dad works as a lawyer in Liege (a town in eastern Belgium about 1 hr. away from Brussels) so I was lucky enough to be invited to the VIP section of the inauguration of the Gare de Liege (train station in Liege) to see the spectacle at the beautiful train station designed by the famous architect Santiago Calatrava.

Rotary Meeting: My Rotary club here in Brussels is pretty intense which is why I was terrified when I had to make an impromptu speech (in french!) about my life in Steamboat, and in Belgium so far. It went surprisingly well though!

School: School has by far been the toughest obstacle I've encountered here so far. I'm in 9 rigorous courses where the teachers (though very involved) treat me like one of the Belgians. Learning about the economic crisis in French has proven nearly impossible, memorizing french poems weekly isn't easy, and the different methods in math have proved very difficult to master. I keep on working though as I know in a few months I'll understand nearly everything!

Friends: Being an exchange student from America is exhausting really. Everyone here is absolutely obsessed with America and I'm constantly being bombarded with questions about California, New York, Abercrombie Clothes, Yellow school buses, "pom-pom girls"(cheerleaders) and colgate ("the colgate american smile") toothpaste all of the time. I don't mind it though! I laugh and say "c'est pas comme les films!" (It's not like the movies)....and that always comes with a little bit of disappointment. As friends go however some of my best friends so far are my three AMAZING host siblings! At school it takes a little bit longer to move past being just acquaintances, though I know I'm getting there! It's also nice to compare how many kisses I get at the beginning of school everyday now compared to when school first started! (When greeting and saying goodbye to someone one kiss on the cheek is used!)

I'm absolutely loving living here, and having an amazing new cultural experience every single day. I'm so incredibly lucky!

I hope everything is well in Steamboat!

à bientôt!

Claire

Maggie Kriz - Ahoy po Spišská Nová Ves

Ahoj Steamboat Springs Rotary Club!
I have now been in Slovakia for an entire month and I am loving every minute of it. It is hard for me to believe that I have been here for so long, the time is moving so quickly that I can hardly keep up!
My host family is amazing and they have been warm and welcoming from the very start (when they picked me up from the airport they were ready with Slovak chocolates and the video camera). They have introduced me to a lot of Slovak food which is delicious but also very different from the food in the United States, I have to admit that the only thing I miss is Mexican food (which I am planning to cook for my parents just as soon as some spices arrive from America). I have also introduced Banana Bread to Slovakia and I think that it is here to stay, my family and friends cannot get enough! I am living right in the center of town which is amazing because I am only seconds away from everything I could possibly need.
I have now been attending school for about three weeks and it really amazing. All the teachers have been patient with the language barrier and my classmates have really reached out to me. I have so many friends already and have many opportunities to experience Slovakia as if I were a native teen. My friends have also been really great about teaching me the language (of course they laugh everytime I learn a new word and cannot pronounce it correctly). The language is very difficult (I have heard from my friends that it is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn) but I hope to communicate easily in a few months.
I have also gotten to see many of the landmarks in my region of Slovakia (that is the Spiš Region) one of which is the beautiful castle that is only about 15 minutes from my house. It is called Spišsky Hrad and is the largest castle in Central Europe. My town also has the largest church tower in Central Europe and my friends and I climbed the hundreds of stairs to the top where you could see the entire town.
My first district conference was in a small town about two hours from Spišská Nová Ves in a town called Strečno. It was a lot of fun meeting all the exchange students around Slovakia and the Czech Republic (there are about 60 of us!). They organized a trip down the river on these rafts that were guided by men dressed in Slovak traditional outfits and we also went to the castle that is in Strečno which was beautiful.
I wish that I could write more but I need to watch my little cousin (alebo bratranec po slovenský) who we call Dudo and he is not thrilled about watching me type... he wants to play with his toy cars!
I hope that everyone is doing well in "the boat" and thank you so much again for this amazing opportunity!
Maggie

Claire Parsons - La Belgique

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from Brussels, Belgium! Everything is going wonderfully here. I arrived on the 15th of August and was lucky enough to spend 10 days on vacation in Bretagne, France with the Menetrier Family (Celine Menetrier was one of two inbound exchange students this past year who came to steamboat) while my first host family was on vacation in Greece. There I ate some wonderful food, enjoyed the company of many of the Menetriers' friends from Belgium and had some adventure kayaking and sailing in the ocean. Now (since the 28th of August), I am living with the Collins in a town right outside of Brussels. They are all beyond amicable and have welcomed me into their home. The food is amazing, and the weather has been absolutely wonderful (which is not characteristic to Belgium so I've been very lucky). The speaking french part has been hard and I often find myself exhausted early in the day, however, no one ever seems annoyed, and they don't mind playing charades or waiting for my dictionary when it is needed. And I can already tell in these two short weeks that my french has already improved tremendously. I start school on this coming wednesday which is pretty frightening as the population is double that of SSHS and everyone will be speaking french. But I plan to go in with my head held high and try to make it through! Hope everything is well in Steamboat!

Au Revoir

Claire Parsons

Claire Parsons- Belgium

Hi Everyone!

For my year of exchange I will be living in Brussels, Belgium! I have been in contact with my first host family for about three months now and they seem amazing. They have four kids, one of which will also be on exchange (to Argentina). The school that I will be going to is in Brussels and the mother of my first host family actually teaches there!

http://www.lindthout.be/humanites/index.htm

This is the link to my school! Like Maggie said you probably won't be able to read it but there are some interesting pictures.

I leave in two weeks tommorow so I am doing last minute things to prepare because I know that these will probably be the fastest two weeks of my life! I am so excited. I'll post the next blog after I arrive to keep everyone updated! Thanks to everyone!

Claire Parsons