February 16th, 2014

So, I have now officially been to France, finally! The ESN group here in Liege organized a trip to Lille, in France. Named Lille because it was originally an island (L'isle), the city of Lille became part of France on the 17th of August 1667. King Louis XIV personally directed the siege of Lille and triumphantly entered the city after only 15 days of resistance, after which Lille became the capital of the Northern Provinces. 

Our trip started yesterday morning at 5:30 am when we had to meet the bus at Place du Vingt Aout, which, luckily for me, is right outside my front door. We drove for 3ish hours from Liege to Lille where we went straight to the hostel to put away our luggage. I was with Franny (Canadian) and I believe her name was Justine (Latvia). We were on the top floor, up several sets of staircases. We had a couple minutes for lunch (they passed out huge tuna sandwhiches, with the works on them!), then it was outside for a walking tour of Lille. I must say, I wore my parka, and it was still pretty chilly out. 

The walking tour was really cool. They separated us into groups of 20 and the heads of ESN in Lille showed us around their city and all the highlights. For example: 
The gate to Paris

City Hall

Palais des Beaux

After the walking tour, we had a couple hours of free time. A few of us went shopping at the mall near the train station. No word of a lie, it is shaped like a boat!

At 6 we all met back up at the hostel for a pre-party before supper. Chips, beer (all included in the 65 euros we paid to go on this trip), socializing. Then we walked to supper. Oh my goodness did we have a wait! They knew about us ahead of time, we had tables waiting but apparently they didn't start cooking until we arrived, if then! We arrived at 7 ish I'm guessing, and it was 9:30 before we saw any kind of food. I swear, some of the other students looked like they might eat each other. In an attempt to appease us, they had a gentleman play guitar and sing for us. He was very talented! Supper was ham and french fries. 

Once we finally got out of supper, closer to 11 than 10, we went to the local student bar for a party. It was waaaaayyyyy too crowded! But the bar was cool. It was called La Plage, which means the Beach! It was all tiki themed, they even had sand under the tables! Anyways, so we hung out there for a few hours, dancing, having a wonderful time! Until the bar tender decided to be a jerk. They had a small tiki bar upstairs where we were dancing, and I feel a tap on my shoulder. The bar tender asks me to take the glass that someone put on his bar and move it. Not my glass, not my problem. He started yelling! So I grabbed it and basically threw it on the table, didn't break, but seriously? You work at a bar, if an empty glass is in front of you, put it behind your bar... Cultural differences I guess! 

Around 1 am, Franny and I decided to walk back to the hostel, and, being Canadians in a foreign city, got lost. Not very lost! We were just turned around for a few blocks, no big deal. Once we got back to the hostel though we basically collapsed onto bed and fell asleep, not even waiting for our other roommate to get back. We were two of the first people back as well!

At 8 am, we had to be downstairs for breakfast, cereal and baguettes. Then we had to pack up the rooms and put our luggage back on the bus. After, we all walked to the Covered Market. It was such a cool experience, vendors all over the place selling everything from fruits and vegetables to tea sets and underwear! It was super crowded, super busy, and super cool. I bought an infinity scarf, which is a scarf that is sewn together at the ends, for 2 euros, and a really pretty watch for 5 euros. I think they were both good deals.

Then it was time for lunch. The girls I was with decided they wanted to eat closer to where we had to meet up later on (to go to the Art Gallery as a group), so we walked to La Palais des Beaux Arts, which is the square in front of the gallery. Two girls went to the health food cafe while I and the other girl, from Poland, went to Subway. I love subway so much! I'm sad that there isn't one in Liege, but it did make for a nice change. The line took forever though! 

The art gallery was amazing! They were having a showcase on Jan Fabre who is a really famous Belgian artist. He works with beetle shells to make is pictures. The exhibit was all about the atrocities that slaves went through in the Congo. It was definitely an exhibit for adults, but how he does his work is amazing. These are all beetle shells:

After the gallery, it was time to get back on the bus and drive back to Liege. I'm pretty sure everyone slept on the bus, including myself. 

February 10th, 2014

So it has been another interesting week here in Liege. I've now been to the first of all of my classes and let me tell you, it's going to be a LONG semester! My shortest class is 2hours, which means that they are throwing a lot of information at us with very little time to absorb it before moving on to the next topic. Also, over half of my courses are "Master level" here, so there is a ton of course work for very little credit. That being said, aside from my evening French course, I only have classes regularly on Thursday and Friday. I say regularly because my Diversity Management is only on 4 Mondays of the entire semester. That is the whole course. 4 classes, 3 1/2 hours each... Lord help me!

Probably the hardest part about being on an exchange semester is you have to start from scratch. Back home, I have a TV, blu-ray player, dishes, pots & pans, printer, car etc. Here, all I have is clothes and my computer, meaning I have to buy all of that again or make do without! I had to buy a printer today, because the nearest printer to my apartment is a 20 minute walk, and they charge roughly $0.50 a page for black. In the long run, with all I have to print for my Finance class, it's roughly the same prince as buying one, plus having my own is more convenient, and I can sell it at the end of the semester (hopefully!).

Another huge sticking point here is that everyone drinks. And I don't mean, its Friday lets have a good time drink, I mean, the sun went down lets drink until it comes back kind of drinking. It doesn't matter what day of the week it is, if its night, everyone is partying. And I'm the complete opposite. I prefer to hang out with friends and watch movies or play pool. Apparently here, I'm alone in this sentiment. Oh well, the good part is that if I do ever need to blow off steam, there will be someone I can go out with.

Also, the faculties here are not very helpful. Nothing is marked properly to figure out yourself, and people aren't really interested in helping you. I had a class on the Sart-Tilman campus today (10km south of my regular campus) and it's huge! It's basically the size of the U of A, but with forests everywhere. I found the correct building right away (I had a map thank goodness!) but it took me an hour to find the right classroom. I asked EVERYONE and no one knew where this classroom was! Finally I just started opening doors and checking inside until I found the right room! Thank goodness that's my diversity management class so I only have to go 3 more times.

This weekend I'm going to Lille in France with the Exchange Students Network (ESN) here at the school. We leave 6 am Saturday morning, stay in the youth hostel overnight, and come back by 8pm on Sunday. It's 65 euros and that includes transportation, accommodation, two meals and entrance into the museum. Which is not bad, its roughly $100. It's my first trip since arriving and lots of my new friends are going so it should be a lot of fun.

February 4th, 2014

So today was a ton of fun! I started classes yesterday, well, I've really only had one class, Strategic Stakes in Globalization, and it seems pretty straight forward.

Today my new friend Natali (from Ukraine) and I went to the Aquarium in the Sciences building on the other side of the river. It was a lot of fun, looking at all the little fishes. They even had a shark! Plus Dori and Nemo (there were even signs saying as much) were in one of the tanks. Upstairs, they also had a museum with stuffed animals and animal bones. They had everything from guinea pigs to a couple of whale skeletons.

Natali is really cool. She's done a couple of exchange semesters so she had some good tips. She's also a huge Harry Potter fan like me! So we've made tentative plans go to Potter World in England in a few months.

Natali is an Economics major, also at HEC so I'll get to spend a lot of time with her, in class as well as outside. 

Tonight was the Sports themed party at one of the local bars for all the International students. I'm not a big sports person, so obviously I didn't bring anything really sports related. But I have my Olympic Canada hoodie and goggles for swimming so I figured that would be good enough. I met up with Camille, from Montreal, at the bar and we hung out with all the extremely entertaining drunk exchange students for a few hours.