March Weeks

As I say I’m never quite sure how to start these blogs, so let’s just go with some pictures this time. Everyone likes pictures. It'd be cool if they were all artsy, let's pretend they are.



This is my one month anniversary cake. It was an entire cake except my host sister and her friends got home before me so it got eaten. It's still a cute idea though :P







Here are some more photos of my host family’s house, one day when it was a massive twelve degrees (double digits! I like almost had a heat stroke or something I was so hot) You can even see blue sky in some of them!



































































And inside…
















Here’s the palais provinciale in Liege. We stood outside here for an hour! I was cold.







We went to Luxembourg on Saturday. I wasn’t even sure if Luxembourg was a country but apparently it is. They even have their own language, Luxembourgish (lol). But they seem to speak French, Dutch, English and Luxembourgish all at the same time, it’s a bit confusing. Like the Macca’s we went into was either Dutch or Luxembourgish but then the next shop was all in French.

We also went to a tiny little brasserie, a beer factory, which only had one room with some big silver beer tanks in them. So the most amusing thing there was the multiple jokes about sticking your head under the taps and drinking all the beer. Then we went and looked at ham for about an hour and a half, so that was pretty scintillating. We saw many, many racks of ham, which apparently sit there for over a year to get the taste. Then we went and ate ham, which was actually very good. I mean, I suppose you’d hope the ham would be good if they take so long to make them.


ham


Beer


In the ham fridge


On the way back on the train, I was by myself and this man who had a broken leg got on and sat next to me. And I swear, he must be the most friendly guy in Belgium. He had a conversation with just about everyone in the vicinity. He started telling me about how the train controller didn’t believe his train pass was his because he’s shaved all his hair off so looked different from his photo. Then he told me some other story that I didn’t understand. And I felt bad because he was so nice and I just smiled a lot and said ‘oui’ and left it at that cause I had no idea what he was talking about.


We went to the Opera on Tuesday night (16/3/10) in Liege. Unfortunately the old opera buildings are under repair so it was held in a tent. At first it looked like a circus tent, but they’d done it up nicely inside (they even had chandeliers).
We saw Rigoletto, it that one with the aria "La donna è mobile" ("Woman is fickle")”. I read a few synopsises before I went and thank god I did. I mean there were subtitles but still. It’s a bit of a silly story really. They all run around swearing vengeance on one another for no particularly good reason. The Duke, who’s a bit of a player, runs around and gets all the chicks and nothing happens to him, whereas Rigoletto who doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong and who’s already a hunchback gets all the tragedy. The singing was impressive though and the costumes were modern but with hints of 16th century style clothing like elaborate masks and ruffles. But instead of the seats being built in gradients, they’d built the stage on an incline and the way they’d set it up gave this surreal effect with the perspective that was a bit odd to look at. Also I don’t think tents have the ideal acoustics for operas.




Oh and today we had slow-cooked chicken and peaches (SO GOOD DEAR GOD) fried potatoes and an endive thing (not so awesome, but only cause me and endives aren't friends) for lunch. And then crepes flambé for afternoon tea.
And I helped make chocolate mousse and a raspberry-hazelnut tiramisu thing, but we didn’t eat them. The mousse was good but didn’t exactly work because we put it in a nozzle thinger to make pretty shapes, but the mousse got stuck so we had to scoop it out and it got a bit eaten in the meantime.