Brussels Sprouts

Train rides are always the most interesting experiences. In the metro, it's the norm to avoid eye contact at all costs or glare at the foreigners talking about how cool such-and-such was (normally I get the glares!). Then on long distance trains you have to fight for your right to sit in the seat assigned to you.

My most recent fight of this nature began on my first train on my trip to Brussels. Luckily, with a polite smile and a lot of politesse the woman gave up the window seat when I explained I reserved it especially because I enjoy watching the country during train rides. We ended up talking, and she inquired whether I might be from Lille, the destination of the train. Now, for poor little old me who had felt for the few previous days that I was fumbling in French in the most terrible way, this was one of the best compliments ever!

Then there came the train switch at Lille. There was a woman sitting in the aisle seat next to mine, and it was quite an effort to even get her attention to ask to get by her. Once I had her attention, she rolled her eyes and said "c'est sale (it's dirty)," and looked away. I looked over at the seat, and indeed it had an empty coffee cup and a bag of chips. No doubt the remains of her breakfast. She didn't make eye contact with me again, and I said that I reserved the seat and I was going to sit there. She stood up long enough to let me in, but did not give me the space or the time to pick up the items from the chair and put my bag in the overhead holding area. I dropped the trash to the floor and put my bag on my lap, thanking my lucky stars that this ride meant only 45 minutes of sitting next to her. Within minutes, an even greater stroke of luck befell me when someone else came up and claimed to have reserved the seat she was in. After her immediate refusal and eventual compliance, I had the opportunity to situate myself better, allowing for a more comfortable journey to Brussels.

Upon arrival in Brussels, I did what any American tourist would do: I bought lunch from Subway.  Then I went to the tourist office and got a map and started to walk to my hostel.  The check-in time for the hostel wasn't for another couple of hours, so I dropped my bag off and decided on what to do for the afternoon.

I went to The Atomium, which was built in 1958 for the World Exposition.  I guess you can say it's Brussel's version of the Eiffel Tower (both were build for world fairs, and now they're both tourist attractions).  It's design is an iron atom, but it's magnified about 165 billion times the real size.  You can pay to go inside and go from sphere to sphere, which I did, but in order to get the really good view you have to go to the restaurant, which was reservation only.  Inside the spheres there were exhibits set up on the world's fair.  I would say it was worth it to go see the outside of The Atomium, but I wished there was more to the inside of it.

While in The Atomium, it began to rain, and it continued for quite a while.  After I left, I went back to check in at my hostel then I grabbed dinner at a restaurant that's specialties were grilled meats.

The next morning I decided to grab breakfast at a place called Mokafe that has a pretty good reputation.  While I was less than impressed at the establishment (perhaps I should have gone in the afternoon), I did like that it put me both in the center of Brussels and in the center of a cute indoor shopping area.  I couldn't help walking through the chocolate shop and trying out a few of the goodies.  I'm not sure, but I sort of think that just being in Belgium makes the chocolate taste better!

After wandering the mall, I went to the cathedral which was built on top of the old cathedral.  In the basement there were the ruins from the old cathedral.  Also, right across the street from the cathedral was a modern building that apparently attempted to mimic the architecture of the cathedral, but it just comes out as an eyesore to most people.  However, this is apparently one of the things the people of Brussels pride themselves on: the variety of the architecture.  No two buildings are really alike, and there are gorgeous buildings right next to ones that are falling down.

Next, I headed to the Gröt Markt, the main square in town that is home to expensive restaurants, people selling flowers or paintings, the City Hall, and the city museum.  There was gold all across the buildings in the square, and the architecture was something else.

When one goes to Brussels, apparently the thing to see is a famous fountain that has been around since the 1600s.  This fountain must be something spectacular, right?  Well, it's a fountain of a little boy peeing.  One of the versions of the story behind it is that a fire had started and everyone was panicking, but the little boy peed on the fire to put it out, and that is what he will continue doing forever.  It's a tiny statue of the boy, but there were tons of people there to take pictures of it, myself included.  I will say this, though, this fountain brought me to my first waffle in Belgium, and it was delicious!

I was a bit tired of 'aimlessly' sight seeing, so I decided to get the Hop-on Hop-off bus ticket.  The guy gave me a fairly large discount since I was alone, and since I bought the ticket by the final stop on the route he pointed me to the starting point which was about a five minute walk.  Once on the bus, it was nice to see the layout of the city and I noted a few places that I wanted to return to later.  There was a man sitting in front of me that seemed a bit odd, but I figured he was with the people sitting next to him since he talked to them occasionally.  About 45 minutes into the ride, I noticed this man suddenly fall over.  I couldn't believe what I'd just seen, and looked around to see if his 'family' was concerned.  He got back up pretty quickly, and since the people I thought he was with didn't pay it any mind I just let it go.  Then, these people got off at the next stop without him.  Another couple moved to their seat, and he tried talking with them a little and they noticed that there was something majorly wrong with him, then he fell over again.  The man went down to try to get the bus driver, but the driver didn't think much of it at first.  Apparently this man was a regular on the route, and the driver just let him ride around since he thought the man had no one in his life.  He often slept on the bus (which I'm now wondering if he was really sleeping or if he was always having these attacks).  The driver finally pulled over and came up to check on the man, and he decided to call an ambulance.  The couple helping him out looked through the man's bags and found a diabetic card, so they tried to get him to drink some Orangina until the paramedics arrived.  We met the first response team at an intersection, and we stayed there for quite a while.  I could hear people downstairs speculating that the bus was broken down, and it seemed silly to me that they didn't put two and two together that emergency response workers had come to the upstairs section of the bus.  The entire time that all of this was happening, I was kicking myself for not going up to the man the first time I saw him fall over to make sure everything was all right.  When they had us switch buses, they told us that the man was going to be okay.

The next bus was packed, and there wasn't really room for all of us.  I just rode until we were back at the Manneken Pis stop again, and walked back to a beautiful church garden I had noticed on the bus ride.  Then I walked up to the Courthouse where there was a nice panoramic view of the city.

I was thinking of using the hop-on bus as my way back to my hotel but I waited and waited and none ever came.  So, I decided to take a chance on a tram, which I've done in the past and have ended up even more lost than when I started out.  This tram actually took me within a few blocks of my hotel, for which I was grateful, and then I grabbed dinner and called it a night.

One of the things that everyone told me to do in Brussels was to go to the Comic Book Museum.  To be honest, I wasn't blown away by it.  Yes, there were a lot of comics that came from Belgium, and I never would have known it had I not gone, but I guess since I'm not really a museum person this was just another museum to me.

I got back on the hop-on bus to finish out the part of the route I didn't get to listen to due to the switch in buses the previous day.  I probably should have gotten off to see the Japanese Pavilion that was built there, but I wasn't sure if you could actually visit it or if it was just on the side of the road, and I didn't want to chance sitting around forever waiting for the next bus.  I ended up riding the rest of the route, and I honestly hadn't missed much.  At the end of the ride, I grabbed lunch at a pizza place.  I sat down on the bar stools in the joint, and looked over to see the same Japanese family I had sat next to the previous day at another restaurant.  With all the restaurants in this part of Brussels, it was really odd that we chose the same restaurants two days in a row.

Since I had already started out the day at a museum, I decided to visit two more: the Chocolate Museum and the museum about the city.  I enjoyed the chocolate demonstration at the chocolate museum and they had quite a few cool chocolate sculptures.  The city museum had a lot of old stuff, but I most enjoyed the models of the city before it was destroyed and rebuilt.  Then, on the top level of the museum they had all of the costumes for the Manneken Pis and a video of people's reactions to the fountain, which just confirmed to me how ludicrous the fountain's popularity is.  A security guard walked by as I was watching, and we exchanged an 'isn't this ridiculous' look that made me feel that I'm not alone.

I then stopped at a little waffle restaurant to get my third waffle of the trip.  There was a woman working alone, and she seemed to want to be so precise and make everything just perfectly.  She was concerned about asking all of the people whether they liked the food, and was sad if they said they didn't.  When it got a bit busy, it seemed like she was going a bit out of her mind, but she was trying to seem like she was keeping her cool.  When it was my turn to pay, she asked if I liked the waffle, and she told me that she wasn't sure since I have such a 'happy face' that she didn't think that I would tell her if I didn't like it.

After the waffle, I wandered through a ton of stores and tried to go to a few of the recommended spots in my young traveller's map, but most of them I couldn't find and it didn't seem worth trying to find (a urinal on the side of a church, for example).  I ended up buying my traditional playing cards from a store run by an Indian man, and he told me in French the equivalent of "Don't you see anything else you like?  I have lots of beautiful things for a beautiful girl, and I can give you a discount."  When I just said no thanks, he countered with the exact same in English, and again I had to just say, Thanks, but no, but it made me smile that he used that 'beautiful things for a beautiful girl' expression.  I decided to try to go to the Porte de Halle, a building from the old city, but by the time I got there it was closed for the day.

That night I tried a Thai restaurant down the street from my hostel, and it was delicious!  I was the first customer of the night, and by the time I left several others had come in, but I was shocked that every single group that came in was speaking English.  Maybe it's just a place with more tourists...

The next morning I grabbed a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice from a tiny grocery store, and just spent the day going into stores and buying chocolate.  I grabbed lunch at a tourist trap in the main square, but the vegetarian lasagna was great!  I walked to the train station and finished the trip by getting a final waffle from Haagen Daas, and then it was time to go back to Paris.

First Impressions

After a too-short stint spent on the home turf, I have returned to France.  I think the anxiety of my return to teaching made me terribly antisocial while I was home, so I didn’t contact as many people as I would have liked.  I did make it out to the Fair Grove Fall Festival, though, which I really enjoyed.  In all, I felt that my zombie time served me well as I was still recovering from the shouts of three-year-olds.

Now that I am in France, I can still feel that ‘funk’ that I was in, but I hope that I am slowly creeping out of it.  You see, I visited my schools this week.  The first thing I noticed was the lack of screaming.  Due to my experience with Spanish schools, I never would have realized that the building even had children hidden behind the doors, until recess that is, but kids need to let their steam off sometime.  My first impression was that this year actually has the chance to be completely different from last year.  I am working with slightly older children (8-11 compared to my majority of kids between 3 and 5 last year), and these kids actually seemed like they pay attention to the teacher.  Who knows, it may have been because I was walking around with the director, but even just walking through the hallways it seemed like there was very little noise from the classrooms.  So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve bought into the notion that a child is to be seen and not heard, right?  But I’m actually thinking it is less than that.  There were very few times when I felt I had the attention of even a few of the kids last year, and just going through the classes it seemed that here the kids were giving their teachers their undivided attention.

My welcome was also much better than last year – someone from the school district showed me around and she introduced me to the director and the teachers, and then I went into all of the classes I’ll be with and told them my name and what I would be doing with them.  Throughout the day, I think my French held up all right, but I could tell I was really starting to waver by the end of the day.  Maybe I’ll have a better rapport with the teachers since I can speak French, and they all seemed shocked that I could.  But maybe having that ability to socialize with them at lunch will also make my time in their schools less awkward than it was last year, as well.

Then, I had my first days of official work, which I spent observing / assisting.  I guess it went all right, and it is still a lot better than Spain, but it seems that each teacher will want something different from me and I’m not really sure how that will work out.  Some want me to take groups from the class and work with them in a more personalized setting, and others want me to just assist during their class.  And while the level of English of the teachers teaching English seems to be higher than in Spain, there is still a wide range of proficiency.  And it seems that the ones less comfortable in English are trying to get the children to understand concepts that are still way beyond them.  I tried to say this, but it didn’t go over very well…  Oh, well, I guess I’ll just see how it goes, and hopefully since I only work two days a week (yes!) it will go a lot better than last year and that 'funk' will move away from my life.

On getting settled in France, I suppose you could say I’ve cheated a little bit compared to the other assistants.  I already had a bank account from my previous stay (which, I was chewed out a little bit for leaving it open, but at least I already have an account!).  For lodging, I just used an agency so I would have a place to stay as soon as I got here.  I’m only in this apartment for the first month, and then I’m moving closer to my train line.  I’m currently near the most famous cemetery in Paris, Père Lachaise, and while it seems to be a good enough area, I still feel like I’m cut off from other parts of Paris.  To get to the center, it’s taking me about half an hour by metro, and to get to my train station so I can take the RER another hour to my two towns it’s taking between 25 and 40 minutes.  My new place will be near Bastille, which is only one stop away from the train stations I need.  So, that will be much better to cut down my commute time.

I have heard that a few people have already left the program because they haven’t been able to find a place to live.  I know a lot of assistants feel that they were deceived a bit about how easy it would be to find somewhere, but it’s all a part of the game, really.

As far as the other assistants, I feel like I’ve started to make friends with a few of them.  I don’t think we’ll have any other official time together as our two days of orientation are now over, but we’ve exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, and I feel that I've been staying busy between school and going out doing things.

Last Saturday was La Nuit Blanche here in Paris, when a lot of museums and special exhibitions are open for the entire night.  I went out with Kelly and Max, and also invited another assistant, Rebecca, along.  We had crepes at Creperie Josselin, and then walked for ice cream and just wandered around to find things going on.  It seemed that everyone was out!  We went into the Police station to see a marble sculpture exhibit, there was a light show on at Notre Dame, and we went across a bridge that had a huge square metal structure built over it.  I’ve also been to a one-man show with a couple of other assistants entitled “How to become Parisian in one hour” which was quite good, and picked fun at the French, Americans, and several other nationalities.  And tonight I’ll be going for Chinese food with a few people, so I guess you could say I’m staying busy.