Orientation...

Well, this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday, was our touring day of Brussels and two days of orientation.

Thursday at 7am, I arrived at the train station in liege to meet all the other exchange students to go to Brussels. We arrived in Brussels at 9am am started what turned out to be a verylong day.
Upon arriving we were separted by sponsoring country and stayed in our group pretty much all day.

The first thing on our itinerary was to visit the grand Palais. it was very interestign, and beautiful. ( I will attach pictures when I can - computer's boken) What was so amusing about touring with rotary, is that we were touring brussels with all the rotary exchange students in Belgium, all 223! while the Canadians where almost finished to tour, we could see all the americans(USA) still outside waiting to enter.

Then we went to the city hall, and had part one of our banner ceremony. We were called up alphabetically by country and last name to come up present our banner, shake hands with all the head Rotary people from all three districts. Again, ALL 223 students did this.

Then we divided into our three districts to eat lunch. so for my district of 90 students we went to the furthest resturant as possible (or at least it seemed like that) We had meatballs from Brussels and fries. Then we walked all the way back to the Grand Palais to meet the other two districts. Then we walked to Parliament for part two of the banner ceremony. We all took a seat where their government gathers( think of it like sitting in the House of Commons - cool right?), and country by country presented their banners to a government representative.

Everything That we did took hours, because we were such a large number of people.
 at aroud 5:30 everyone from my district went on a double decker coach bus to Huy.

The night in Huy we pretty chill. We ate, got our room asignments, and hungout.

In the morning the long and many hours of orientation started.  Before arriving in Belgium all the exchange students had to read and sign all of the rules and conditions and whatever else. This orientation was re-reading everything that we were suposed to know. Being me, I already read everything three times.
All of the information was given in French, English, Spanish AND Portugese!
what could have taken three, four hours max, took us a day and a half ahhh!!!!

What was interesting was that Rotary gave us a dance,(a better dance than what we get at school) and a bar!!! yup, a BAR, not only were we allowed one drink we were allowed two. For you see the standard rule of no drinking does not apply in Belgium because drinking is part of the culture. so the adapted rule is " no excessive drinking", which means that if you get drunk, you go home.
 oh man, culture shock.
I guess I´ll get used to it, and I did promise I would try everything.
Baby Steps

On Saturday I had the same orientation as the day before but this time with all of my host parents.
AAANNNNDDDDDD.... I recieved my trumpet. Now after a few hours of maintenance, IL MARCHE!!!