Outbound Exchange Student
2008-2009

Our outbound exchange student this year is Adam Byrne, Adam is spending this school year in Belgium.










Adam keeps us up to date on his experience by e-mail:

Final Update

Hey everyone,

So I’ve already gotten home but I just wanted to update you a bit about what I got up to during my last few weeks of exchange.

The weekend of my birthday I spent in a city called Mons in the western bit of Belgium. There was a festival called the Fête du Doudou, which is based off the story of St. George and the dragon and involves lots of interesting customs and events. On the last day there’s a large dragon and everyone tries to run around and pull the hairs off its tail, which brings good luck. Unfortunately there were too many people and I didn’t have the chance to get any dragon hairs but it was still quite an experience.

Just before leaving, I went on my last Rotary trip to the Czech Republic. We started in Prague and visited the city for two days. Then we went into Southern Bohemia and visited a city called Česke Budejovice, which happens to be the birthplace of Budweiser (bet you didn’t know it’s actually a Czech beer, not American). Then on our last day we visited Česke Krumlov, a very traditional and very charming village that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We took the bus overnight to drive back to Belgium and I had that day to get all my stuff packed and get ready to leave and I left the next morning.

The flight home went well. All my host families, a few Rotarians, and some of my friends came to the airport to say goodbye. As I’m writing this, I’m in Washington Dulles Airport enjoying my first inexpensive Starbucks in the last 10 months waiting for my flight to Denver haha

So that’s the end of my Belgian adventures. Thanks to everyone for keeping up with me all year and I’ll be seeing you very soon.

Peace!

Adam

April Update

Hello everyone!

Well, April’s been another busy month. For the first two weeks of April we had school off for Easter vacation. I went to Greece for 10 days with Rotary, which, of course, was incredible. We went in a bus from Brussels to Italy then took a boat from Italy to Greece, so the actual traveling bit there and back was pretty intense, but it was still fun since there were about 60 exchange students on the trip. Once in Greece, we started in Delphi then spent two days in Athens and three more in the Peloponnesus region, where we visited several other sites including Mycenae and Epidaurus. The most amazing part was that it was sunny and warm the whole trip. I even got to swim in the Aegean Sea despite the fact that it was still pretty cold. After the trip it was hard to come back to Belgium where it was still grey and chilly.

Just after we got back from Greece there was an activity organized by Rotex at an amusement park called Walibi here in Belgium. Everyone was glad to meet up with people again from the trips, even though it had only been a few days haha. But it was sad because it’s the last Rotex event organized for the rest of our exchange year. Just reminded us all of how fast time is going and how little we have left.

Another reminder: I changed into my third host family just after the Greece trip. The move was really easy. I already knew the family well since I had spent a week with them at Carnaval and they’re very welcoming and did a lot to make me feel at home right away. I’ve only been with them a few weeks but they’ve already taken me to do a few things in Brussels. One evening we went to a play that they knew one of the actors. It was a very contemporary sort of play and I didn’t understand a lot but it was interesting nonetheless. They also took me to an exhibit in Brussels called It’s Our Earth. It’s an expo that discusses the various problems facing the earth and what we can do to solve them. It was really interesting, especially to see Europeans’ views on American consumption.

We also had a long weekend for the 1st of May, which is Belgium’s version of Labor Day. I went with one of my host brothers and his friends as well as one of my friends to my host grandmother’s house at the ocean. The beach at the North Sea isn’t exactly a relaxing in the sun kind of beach, but it’s always good to go to profit from the fresh, fresh air and get a little change of scenery.

Well folks that’s all until next time. Hope everything’s well back at home.

Adam

March Update

Hey everyone!

I can't believe how fast time is flying I have less than three months in Belgium now :(

As usual, I've had a pretty busy month or so. At the end of February, we had a week off school for Carnaval, and I went to Austria with my third host family to go skiing. It was absolutely amazing. Austria's such a beautiful country, and the ski resort we stayed at was nice. It snowed practically non-stop which meant it wasn't real nice weather but there was awesome snow for skiing. It was clear one day and it was absolutely gorgeous it made me miss the mountains haha. I also learned that apple strudel is one of the most amazing things ever contrived by man.

In March, we got to go to a place called Durbuy Adventure, which is in the southern part of Belgium. It included a series of high ropes courses as well as a zipline, which was a lot of fun. It was also good to see all the exchange students and we got to meet more of the new students who arrived in January.

I also got to go with my school on a few field trips which have been cool. With my history/religion class, we went to a city called Mechelen to visit a museum at a station that was used during World War II to deport Belgian Jews to Auschwitz. After the museum, we went to visit a fort that served as a work camp during WWII. It was a small camp but was considered the third cruelest work camp in Europe during the war. It was so terrible to see but because we don't have anything in the United States that's so directly related to the war it was quite an experience.

With my biology class I went to Louvain-la-Neuve, which is a university town. We got to do an experiment with DNA samples like they do on crime scenes. That was pretty sweet and it was also quite an exercise for my French because the student who presented it to us came from a region in France that has a very difficult accent so it took quite an effort for me to understand but I made it through.

This past weekend was the orientation weekend for the Belgian outbound students. About 30 of us got invited and we got to present our countries and meet the students leaving next year and talk to them about exchange and everything. It was fun because we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for our presentation, which is unheard of in Belgium. We made the students going to the US try them. Most of them made an effort to pretend they liked it haha.

I hope you're all doing well back at home. I miss you all.

A la prochaine!

Adam

January Update

Hi everyone!

Can't believe I've been here for six months! Time has flown by!

This past month has been lots of changes. I changed families just after the new year and then shortly afterwards all of the oldies left. It was hard to see them go, but it's also fun to become oldies ourselves. Plus we get to meet lots of new exchange students as more Australians, South Africans, and Argentineans begin their exchanges. My club is hosting a girl from Australia who is also in my school. It's fun being able to share all my exchange wisdom that I've accumulated in the last six months haha.

The same weekend the newies came my Rotary Club had their biggest fundraiser of the year. They serve boudins, which are a type of blood sausage. Over three days, they invite people to come and they have a meal and there's also a raffle that they can participate in. The money gained is used to fund the various projects and social works the Rotary Club is involved in (including paying for the various costs of hosting exchange students). The other student in my club and I worked the three days delivering drinks from the bar to the tables. The work wasn't too hard but it still got tiring after three days. Each day had between 200 and 250 guests and so that's quite a few drinks haha.

Aside from that, I've been doing various things with my new host family. My host mom is involved with the local Ecolo party (the French-speaking Green party in Belgium) and therefore attends the monthly town-hall meetings and I went with her for the month of January. It was really cool to see a bit how the local government operates and there was even a bit of political scandal with the opposite party and the bourgmestre (the mayor) which made things interesting.

A few weekends ago I went with my host mom to the Folon Foundation, which is in a town near mine. Jean-Michel Folon is a famous Belgian artist who recently died a few years ago. In any case, he's well known world-wide for his man in a hat and other symbols in his work and it was awesome to see more of his art.

This past weekend I went to Aqualibi (a water-park) with the exchange students across all three Belgian Rotary districts. There's over 200 of us with Rotary in Belgium, so you can imagine there were quite a lot of people which was fun, and it was a good opportunity to meet more of the newies. That same evening my host parents picked me up and I went with them and my newie down to the south of Belgium. We stayed the night with one of my host mom's sisters then the next day went cross-country skiing, which I had never done before. The weather was perfect there was even sunshine! Plus it was a much-needed dose of nature! It was amazing to be back with snow and pine trees it felt like being back in Colorado haha.

Until next time,

Adam

December 9,2008

Hey everyone!

I hope everything's going well for everyone back in the states and everyone's enjoying the approaching holiday season!

I've been enjoying seeing how holiday traditions differ here than in the United States. Here in Belgium, the feast day of Saint Nicolas is an important holiday. It's on December 6, and when kids are little, they leave out their shoes by the doors at night and in the morning, St. Nicolas has stopped by with little treats for them. And then to thank him, the kids have to yell to the heavens, "Merci St. Nicolas!" My host family was so sweet and they had a little platter set out with goodies for me and a little note from St. Nicolas. And like a good little boy I made sure to thank St. Nicolas nice and loud :) It was cool because I also got to go with my host family and some Rotarians to see a little St. Nicolas production put on by the children in a home that is sponsored in part by my Rotary Club. The production itself was a little special but the kids were adorable and it's cool to see them do it because a lot of them have very difficult backgrounds.

As for holidays, I also got to celebrate Thanksgiving here in Belgium! It wasn't quite like at home but it was awesome! I had all the stuff I needed to make pumpkin pie, which turned out ok but I was still glad that no one had tried it before so they had no expectations. One of my friends made New York style cheesecake not because it's Thanksgiving-y but just because cheesecake doesn't exist in Europe and so we were all craving it haha. In Waterloo (which is right near my town) there are a lot of foreigners, especially English speakers, so there're a couple of stores with English/American food items. We found cranberry sauce but it was outrageously expensive so we didn't buy it, but I also found boxed stuffing! So I made stuffing and then my friend made gravy, which was really the most important part of the meal. Then my host mom made roasted chicken (turkeys here are like 50 euros for a small one) and some vegetables. I had two Australian friends over and a South African, so I introduced them to Thanksgiving as well as to my host family. Everyone seemed to enjoy and if not, they at least made a really good effort to pretend like they did :)

The day after Thanksgiving I left with two of my friends to go to Ireland! We flew out Friday morning to Shannon Airport and took a bus to Galway on the western coast of Ireland. One of my friends knows some people from Australia who work in Galway, so we met up with them and they showed us around the town. They showed us a café that had the most amazing paninis in the world! On Saturday we went on a bus tour that went from Galway to the coast. The bus stopped at several stops along the way to visit different castle ruins and other interesting little places. When we eventually got to the coast we visited the Cliffs of Moher, which were absolutely beautiful! We even had perfect weather. Even though it was cold the sun was shining and it just made everything gorgeous. After we headed back to town and had dinner and went out for a bit in Galway. We had to take a bus Sunday morning at 3:30 to get back to the airport in time for our plane. A short trip but an amazing one!

The weekend before Ireland a bunch of us got to go to Brussels for a Death Cab for Cutie concert! That was amazing! And that whole weekend it snowed and it snowed well! Usually if it gets up the courage to snow here, it does for about an hour then starts raining again and it all goes away. But that weekend we had a fair bit of snow and it was really beautiful! They actually opened up cross-country skiing runs down in the Ardennes in southern Belgium where they got more snow.

Well that's all for now folks! I'll talk to you all soon!

Adam

November 17, 2008

Hello everyone!

Once again time is flying by impossibly fast and I can't believe another month's already come and gone!

It's been a busy month in Belgium and elsewhere. I've had the chance to do a fair bit of traveling. One Saturday there was a promo to go to Luxembourg from anywhere in Belgium so I went with a couple of friends and we got to check out the city a little bit. There's really not a lot to see there but it's a pretty city and we had a blast anyway. Plus it was cool to say that we traversed half the country twice in one day! Can't really say that back in the States :)

The last week of October was off school for us because of Toussaint (All Saints' Day). I went with about 150 other exchange students on a trip to London organized by Rotary. We were only gone for about 4 days including travel, but we got to see lots of things anyways. We left super early Saturday morning from Brussels and took a bus to Calais in France. There we took a ferry to go to Dover where we continued with the bus to Canterbury. We got to visit the town which was very cool because it was so incredibly English! Unfortunately we didn't get the chance to visit the actual cathedral at Canterbury because we're all too cheap to pay 7 pounds to go inside (p.s. as if the dollar/euro exchange rate wasn't already bad enough, dollar/pound exchange rate is no bueno!). Anyway after we left Canterbury we headed into the center of London near Piccadilly Circus where we were kinda let loose to find food for the evening. We explored the city a smidge while we had some free time before we headed back to the hotel. Sunday morning we headed off bright and early to go to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. The whole thing was incredible! There were a bajillion statues and they are so lifelike! We spent a fair bit of time in the museum and then after lunch we all headed off to Windsor Castle, which was also ridiculously amazing. After seeing how the other half lives we got deposited once again in central London for a food search and a return to the hotel. Monday morning we visited the Tower of London, which was interesting but there were certainly much too many people and the whole afternoon was ours to do what we wanted so we ended up leaving fairly earlier to explore other things. We took the tube around to visit Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and then spent some time exploring Harrods and gawking at all the prices. In the evening we made our way bad to the Hard Rock Café where everyone was meeting up for dinner. After dinner we got back onto the bus and had a lovely little overnight trip back to Brussels. Altogether it was a really amazing trip even though it all went by too fast.

This past weekend I went with my host dad and some of his friends back to my host family's house in southern France. They have about 25 olive trees in the garden and we went down to harvest the olives, which was quite an experience. In two and a half days we collected around 425 kilos of olives...that's 850 pounds! Nearly all of it was taken to a mill in a nearby town and turned into olive oil. It was interesting to taste and see freshly ground olive oil. Definitely not like anything you buy at the store!

Back in Belgium I've just been settling in more. It's been crazy to notice in the past couple of weeks how normal everything here seems. Visiting other places and then coming back I really have the feeling that I'm "back home in Belgium," which is pretty cool.

Well I think that's all I have to report for now. I hope everybody's going well back at home! Talk to you all soon!

Adam

October 6, 2008

Bonjour à tous!

Wow! I can't believe September has already flown by! This month has gone by so fast but it's been a blast.

Not surprisingly, school takes up a significant chunk of my time. Most days I leave the house at 7:40 and don't get back until 4 or 5, which means I have some pretty tiring days, but I'm surviving just fine so it's all good. I take the train to school which is pretty cool for me since we don't have passenger trains in Fort Collins. It's only a 4 minute train ride, which may seem kind of silly, but trust me, it's way too far to walk the whole way.

I mentioned last time that I'm in a sports option. We're currently doing gymnastics, swimming, volleyball, athlétisme (which is mostly running and fitness), and EP Base (which is to learn things that are important for physical education, like knowing what optimal heart rate you should have when doing certain exercises and other such things). Some of what we do, especially gymnastics, is hard for me because they've all been in the same program for the last three years and I most certainly have not. But I just do my best and my teachers are all reasonable so it all works out.

With my other "general" classes, it is already getting a lot easier for me to understand my teachers. I can usually follow the lecture really well in science and math classes because much of the language is basically the same as English. It's still difficult though in classes like history, French (discussing concepts like the Absurd and existentialism in French is still a little bit outside my level of comprehension), and religion because there's a lot more discussion and the subject matter is less concrete. Nevertheless, I could certainly be much worse off with my French. Even though I'm definitely not yet fluent, I can have a conversation and can understand most of what people say unless they talk really fast. In fact, I don't want to sound arrogant, but I've been told that I speak French better now that many of the former exchange students spoke French when they left. I guess I've just had really good French teachers 

Outside of school I've been keeping busy too. My host family knew that I wanted to play tennis and they don't have school teams like they do in the U.S., so my host dad reserved a court for us every Monday for the whole year! So each Monday I go with either him or my host brother and we play for an hour, which is always fun.

Every Tuesday I go to my host Rotary club's meeting with my host dad. The meetings here are so different than those in the U.S., but I really enjoy them. Most people arrive around 7:30 and the official meeting goes from 8:00 to 10:00. Afterwards though, some of the men (there's only men in the club) retire to the bar, where they chat for a while. We usually don't get home until around midnight, so the meetings can be a bit tiring. But the food is always excellent and most of all the Rotarians are all super nice, so I really enjoy spending my Tuesday evenings with them.

In Belgium, Wednesdays are always half-days at school so the exchange students often get together to do something. Most often we just go to Brussels and hang out in a café. Even if we don't do much, it's always great to just get together and talk about school and what we've been up to and such.

During the weekends I usually have various projects with exchange students, Rotary, or my host family. Two weekends ago all the exchange students in Belgium were invited to do the descente de la Lesse, which is a 21 kilometer kayaking trip. It was tiring but it was such a blast! We even had sun all day and the river and the scenery was absolutely gorgeous.

This past weekend I spent with one of my other host families because my current host parents went out of town to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. It was great to be able to spend some time with them to get a little taste of what it's going to be like living with them. There are four boys in the house all younger than me, so I think it's always going to be interesting with a lot going on so I'm excited to live there.

I'm working on making a blog with all my photos from Belgium so that you can all see what I've been up to. It's gonna take a little while for me to get it up and running but I will let you all know when it's ready to check out.

I miss you all and hope you're all doing well!

A la prochain!

Adam

September 4, 2008

Hello everyone!

I hope everything's going well back at home! I've had a busy couple of weeks here in Belgium (and elsewhere) and I just wanted to update you all as to what I've been up to. Sorry if this email gets really long...

So I left Colorado the morning of the 15th and flew to Washington, D.C. I met up with a group of about 30 other Rotary exchange students from the U.S. and we flew together to Brussels. Once we went through passport control and got our bags, we all headed out to try to figure out who was supposed to leave with each host family. Most of them had signs though with the students' names so it wasn't too hard. My host family actually wasn't there because they were on vacation, but I was greeted by my third host family and Sonya and Daniel, who are my host mom's sister and brother-in-law. They drove me back to their house where I was able to grab a bite to eat, change suitcases, and rest a little bit before heading back to the airport to go to Nice, where my host family was going to meet me.

So I got to Nice perfectly fine and was met by Didier, Astrid, Germain (my host brother), and Gribouille (the dog). Driving back to their family vacation house where we would be staying (it's near a town called Tourrettes-sur-Loup, kind of near Cannes), I got really sick so I just rested for most of that night.

The next day (Sunday) we mostly relaxed. We hung out by the pool for a while and then we visited St.-Paul-de-Vence, which is a medieval town with lots of charm and even more tourists. Later in the evening, we drove up into the hills a little to another town called Gourdon, where we had a lovely Provencal dinner.

Monday morning, Didier and I woke up early because he was going further up the mountains to do "parapente" and I was going to watch him. I don't really know a translation for "parapente." You kinda just jump off a mountain with a parachute and glide around for a while. It was cool to see. When we got back to the house we worked on preparing gambas, which are basically big shrimp as far as I can tell. We made a marinade for them and let them sit for a couple hours. In the meantime the four of us went to visit Cannes. It was really cool to see the big boulevards with palm trees and the beach and the venue where they have the international film festival, but there were so many people there. After seeing Cannes, I understood why Didier and Astrid prefer staying at their house and swimming at the pool. When we got back, we finished grilled the gambas and ate dinner.

Tuesday, we mostly just hung out at the house and swam in the pool. In the afternoon, Astrid, Didier, and I went to Biot, a village that's famous for its hand-blown glass. We got to see artisans working in the factory and checked out some exhibits of glass artwork, which was really cool.

Wednesday, Germain, Didier, and I went to MONACO!!! It was awesome to be able to visit Monaco, even if it's a little intimidating. We visited the prince's palace and the world-famous Musée Océanographique de Monaco, which was very impressive, but very crowded.

Thursday, we went to the Loup River and went cliff-jumping. It was super fun and the area was absolutely beautiful. It was deep in a canyon with trees everywhere. It reminded more of Hawaii than the south of France. That evening we went into Tourrettes and had dinner at a family-owned restaurant whose owners Didier and Astrid have know for 20 years or so.

We got up around 5:30 on Friday and were on the road by 6:15. We mostly just drove a lot. By mid afternoon, we got to Alsace, where we were going to spend a couple of days. We met up with Sonya and Daniel, visited a friend of Didier's who's a wine producer, and then went to dinner.

We got up Saturday morning and went to a wildlife refuge. There's a species of stork that's unique to Alsace, and they were almost extinct around 30 years ago. The refuge was created to breed storks and reintroduce them into the wild. There were also otters and various other animals. We had lunch in a little town that could easily have been in Germany (Alsace used to belong to Germany so there's a lot of German influence there) and then went to see a raptor sanctuary. We got to see lots of different birds and there was a little show with the birds that was pretty impressive. That evening, we ate dinner at a super fancy restaurant, which was an interesting experience for me. It was a little intimidating but the food was excellent.

Sunday morning we visited the Château de Haut-Koenigsbourg, which was of course very impressive. For lunch we went to a restaurant famous for tartes flambées, a regional specialty. It's kinda like pizza only lighter. Then we left again and drove back to Belgium. We got back to the house early evening. It was really cool to see my new home for the first time, but we were only there for about 10 minutes before we went to Didier's mom's house for dinner.

I spent Monday just getting settled in and unpacking all my stuff.

Tuesday, I went to Brussels with all the other exchange students in Belgium (there are 192!) to visit the Royal Palace and the Grand Place. The Palace was incredible and the Grand Place is very cool too. We also had a reception at the Hôtel de Ville (town hall). Most of all, it was a blast to meet all the other exchange students and hang out with them. There are a lot of students from the United States and Mexico. Most students either speak English or Spanish, and very few speak French. It was also awesome to meet all the oldies, the students from the southern hemisphere who arrived in January. They have good advice and they know their way around better so they can help us newies out a lot.

On Thursday we went to Sonya and Daniel's house to make tartines, which are slices of bread with fromage blanc with radishes and onions. We're going to be selling them next weekend and a horse show to raise money for my Rotary Club.

On Friday, I went to see the new Mummy movie. It was an interesting experience to go to the movies in French. And there was an intermission after a half-hour or so which was really bizarre for me.

Saturday morning and afternoon I had my inbound orientation. That evening, a bunch of people came over because it was Didier's birthday. The youth exchange officer from my club and his wife came as well as my Rotary counselor's wife, my second host family (parents and 4 boys), my third host parents, and Sonya and Daniel. It was really fun to meet all my future parents and some of my future host brothers.

This week I started school! It's been kinda crazy but it hasn't been too bad. Wednesday we only had to go for about two hours to get our schedules figured out. It's not like in the States where you know the year before exactly what classes you'll be taking and you have a nice schedule printed out. We had to listen for our named to be called to figure out what class we're in and then the teacher dictated our schedule to us. And then today when we started our regular schedule, no one had any clue where each class would be and we actually didn't even have a classroom for my English class. I ended up just following around all the people who were in my class so I knew more or less where I was supposed to be. For school, I'm doing a sport option, which means that I have a lot of P.E. classes and fewer traditional ones which is nice since I already graduated. Regardless, I'm still taking French, English, physics, chemistry, history, geography, biology, and math.

So I think that's all for now! Sorry it's so long...I'll try to cut it down in the future. Miss you all! Peace!

Adam


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