Right now I am seated in a cafe, surrounded by people speaking French, and drinking a particularly toasty hot chocolate. Outside it’s in the gentle minuses, with traces of overnight snow on the ground, and everybody is running around trying to avoid the freezing wind. I’ve just (finally!) completed registration at the Services des Etrangers, and am quietly dodging the first of the French lessons for which I signed up last night. I’m also waiting for a brie panini. Fuck knows when it will arrive.
Things in Brussels are going rather brilliantly. My French is ещё совсем ужасный of course (hence the lessons), but everything else is great. Just the past week alone..! On Friday I was ‘that girl’ in class (as JFord pointed out, I was always going to be ‘that girl’) when the prof asked if anybody knew the difference between Русский and Российский (hint: one has more letters :p). Then it seemed I was either the only one who had done the readings, or the only one who was comfortable speaking up. I then compounded the whole situation by volunteering to do the following week’s presentation. Volunteering, people!!
Friday night was my first night out in Brussels, and Mr Belgium took me to the centre of town, to some sort of swing bar. Haha I was messaging two of my friends back in Aus during the night (*waves*), and my drunk fingers misled them into perhaps thinking it was a ‘swingers’ bar. To be fair, my phone always autocorrects in the naughtiest possible way, it makes me proud. Anyway it was all rather fun, and drunken me made friends with some kind of Cypriot diplomat at 2 in the morning. Drunk me is good like that.
Saturday was, needless to say, mainly horizontal, after getting to bed after 4am. Then I realised that one of my friends, a guy I used to work with in the UK, was in town. Obviously this necessitated further drinks, with some food thrown in. Not to mention lots of discussions of potential adventures – I can’t recall whether I wrote about it, but this friend is the guy who took on the Mongol Rally in a Ferrari.
Sunday was brain-melted zombie-ing (and attempting to do my uni readings for the week), then finally arranging a trip to Switzerland, so I’m off weekend after next for a couple of days. Haha yeah. I need an income..! Also on the ‘soon’ agenda is a likely trip to London next month for one of the London Comic Cons. Potential costumes thus far: Rikku from Final Fantasy, or girl-Link from Zelda. Haha I’m kind of tending toward the latter 😀
Monday and Tuesday were freaking awesome. I was at a conference arranged by my school, which had high-ranking diplomats and academics from all over Europe and Russia, discussing EU-Russia relations. It was absolute gold. I’d go into more details, but I’m honestly kind of dead. It was brilliant though, as obviously it’s my focus / interest area.
Wednesday was meeting up with a fellow Australian, who’s put me in touch with heaps of people, and has led to my attending a talk by Julia Gillard this upcoming Wednesday. (I mean, who goes to the other side of the world to see their ex-PM? It’ll be brilliant to be fair, Jules is my home-girl.) Then it was learning EVERYTHING, repeat EVERYTHING about Armenia, and particularly its accession to the Eurasian Economic Union last month, for a presentation yesterday. Plus classes everywhere of course. Oh my god I’m tired. Possibly compounded somewhat by the fact I seem to have forgotten how to sleep—bit of a life fail, really.
Okay. No more procrastinating—it’s surely time to head to class.