yo wassup? life is treating me exceptionally well here in belgium. i love it. i don't believe i could stress that enough. and we have had the best weather imaginable. apparantly it will start raining soon, and won't stop until next april or something, but for now the sun is out every day and i'm walking the streets in jandals and a singlet (two words the canadians don't understand!).

i still haven't begun lectures but i will definitely start tomorrow which will be good because that was the reason i came over here, right?!! ;-) it should all be good though and i'm looking forward to meeting people who are doing my course. i've met one guy from norway who seems really nice.

i have a cell phone... it only cost 79 euros and that included a 20 euro talking card thing. and phone calls over here are like 6c a minute. not bad really huh?!! so if any of you would like my number, send me a message and i'll give it to you. not too sure about leaving it on my site... also if people wish to send me mail (hint hint - my birthday is in october remember...) then i can send my address through also. just let me know and i'll get in touch personally.

so leuven is officially the party capital of the world. every night there is a party. and every night the party is bigger than the night before. it is incredible. the whole vibe and atmosphere of this place is like a gigantic concert. continuous. like a huge school camp or something. people don't seem to go to bed. i am unsure if this will last once uni starts up for good, but i have been talking a lot to ellen, who is my flatmate from ostende (on the coast of belgium - so hopefully i'll be able to go home with her for a weekend and see the sea...) - and she declares that it will be like this all year around until the holidays. amazing.

i have now met all my flatmates and we are a very multi-cultural group. morna has actually moved just down the road to a slightly more expensive place (these fickle canadians) though i still see her at least twice a day. so there is christophe who is from france but is part italian. there is sjourd who is from holland and goes home nearly every second night!! there is katherine who is flemish, andre who is russian and ellen who is flemish. and me of course. but we get on great which is definitely the main thing.

just a side note about photos. hmmm. it may end up being cheaper to send them home, have them developed, and then be sent back to be. my friend sandra took her photos in and asked for a double set (there was only one film). it cost her 26 euros. ouch. that does not quite fit in to my budget i must say!!

today there was this awesome concert in the main park of leuven so me and eric and ellen and joe chilled out there for most of the afternoon in the sun. it seems to be the main place to go, and will no doubt be packed all the time. though remember that when the weekend rolls around, all the flemish, and often people from nearby countries like holland, go home, and leave the international students to be in charge of the town. and it's amazing when they all come back on sunday night and the streets are packed again.

i hope all is well with you all. thanks for the comments and emails. will write again soon...ish...

so here i am again. thanks to those who are checking up on me and leaving me comments. i am liking this new website thing more and more i think. and i apprecaite getting the comments!!

okay so firstly i would like to warn you all about what i would like to call "the pillow saga". if you ever come to belgium, bring a pillow with you. the cost of a pillow over here is unbelievable. i mean really, i cannot comprehend it still. let's jsut sit back for a moment and think about what a pillow consists of. how much a pillow should be. a pillow in belgium, no matter where you look, averages out to around $60 nz. yes, 60 bucks... not really what a student is wanting to pay for a pillow, though sleep of course is a necessity. however in the end we did manage to track down these very small, very cushion like, i suupose cushions for much cheaper so we are quite satisified and can now sleep...

though speaking about sleep, it seems that leuven has had some sort of infestation of mosquitoes. this is not a pleasant experience when you live on the fourth floor of a building where it gets exceptionally hot... everyone i am meeting seems to have bites all over them, which really isn't such an attractive sight... however i am adament that i will destroy them all tonight. it is not just a goal but a desire... i was up at 5am this morning throwing my jandals at the ceiling, which unfortunately is much too high up for me to reach (and this has nothing to do with my height).

so today was the first day of orientation. which was good and gave us all a chance to do the whole mix and mingle thing. of course kiwis have the best reception. they love us. no seriously, they do. and the best thing is, as far as i know, i am the only kiwi in this town. quite a good statement to be able to make. i have even found some friends who want to watch the world cup with me later in the year - okay two of them are south african, but really... they don't have a chance against the all blacks.

better go, it's morna's birthday today so we're heading out and people have just arrived...

time for another excerpt out of the day to day happenings of me i think. i feel like i've done a whole lot of stuff here already and i still haven't been here a week.

but firstly - a special thanks to benn for coming across the channel and making things a lot easier for me in those first few days. i think we'd make an awesome team on the amazing race buster and i wish you all the best as you sort out your own plans for next month or so. i'm glad i was able to share the european experience with you.

also - cheers to both ray and dan (what's the apple, right?), who not only have gorgeous english accents, but who are lovely down-to-earth guys as well... i look forward to taking you both around middle earth one day and you can re-live the adventure (for everyone else - these boys continually argue over who is aragorn - i have my own opinions of course... and roped me into watching the two towers with them - nice new zealand proud moment!!). also thanks for giving me a go at the whole opposite side of the road driving thing. i hadn't been expecting to have had the opportunity so soon after arriving. i look forward to catching up wth you both, either back here in leuven, or in england sometime soon.

hello!! all is looking very good, despite the rain outside - but coming from the city of rain, i am well and truely used to it!! i have a place to live, which was the top priority after arriving here. it is on the top (4th) floor of an early 20th century home - yes, 4 flights of stairs to climb up, but they are very nice stairs... shall send through a picture one day... anyway i guess in the 'olden' days, my room would have been where the maid or butler lived. we have our own mini kitchen / table / bathroom, which is shared between four of us. the room i am in would be larger than my own at home, with a desk, bed, wardrobe, shelf and basin with cold water. the place is very old but not at all cold. i also have a huge window that will get all of the afternoon sun. i am a 5 minute walk to the centre of town, so it's brilliant!!

a girl i met on the first day, just randomly off the street, is staying in the room across from me as i bumped into her when i was going to check the place out. she's from ottawa, canada, and is here with 6 other students doing a kind of exchange programme in their philosophy course. the other guy, stuart, is from holland, and is studying some ancient classical something, and the other girl - whom i am yet to meet - apparantly studies classical languages. so that's pretty cool.

yesterday benn and i went into brussels before he caught the train back to the airport and returned to kent. at the train station we met a couple of poms (ray and dan) who are here in leuven for a few nights visiting a friend. we ended up spending the day with them in brussels, and then when benn left, i spent the rest of the afternoon with them, checking out an awesome art museum. a huge place but a lot of the paintings and sculpture were very dark and depressing. i really only liked all the landscape scenes. also, there were pictures of macgyver (my dog) everywhere! i think the welsh springer was very much the dog to have back in those days!!

last night i met up with the guys again, and ran into morna (canadian flatmate) and all of her friends - it is very easy to run into the same people everywhere because it is such a small place. one thing that i find very interesting is that every different type of beer (and it seems belgium has a thing for beer!!) has its own type of glass with its name written on it. i have never seen so many different shaped glasses to be honest.

today i am hoping will be my first chance at driving over here! ray drove over from england (so the layout of his car is like in nz) and today we're planning to head to antwerp, which we have been told is the most beautiful town in belgium. it was either that or amsterdam - personally i liked the idea of driving into another country and showing my passport out the car window like they do on the movies - but the boys have been there before but haven't been to antwerp. and ray said i was more than welcome to drive his car. cool huh - he knows me for 12 hours and trusts me! must be my smile i guess!

it is so easy to meet people over here though. everyone seems to be in their twenties, and everyone is really friendly. it's hard to explain, because i remember reading about how my friends would go on their O.Es and would just make the best friends, and never really understand how they did it. but now that i'm here, i fully understand. as soon as i heard those boys accents, speaking english; it was like we were all best friends - suppose that is also due to the foreign language thing.

here i am in leuven, struggling to find the right keys because keyboards are crazy over here!!! who knows how i will manage my thesis! the flights were good - had a row to myself flying over to sydney. once there the airport went crazy about security - making people take their shoes off... a businessman who had the profile of bad richard off coronation street ( not that i've studied richard's profile of course!!!) sat in my row from sydney to bangkok, and gave me the famous quote: 'i've always wanted to be an archaeologist'. the flight from bangkok to franfurt was fine and again i had lots of space because i was at the very back of the plane. franfurt airport is HUGE!!! but i arrived in plenty of time at my gate.

and so here i am. and benn is next to me. i love leuven already - awesome cobbled streets and old buildings. i stayed in a youth hostel last night and might have to do that again tonight; because finding a place to live is proving more difficult than i had hoped. we've decided it is like the amazing race - me and benn against all other foreign students - trying to find a place to live. there seems to be a circular problem in that you can't do one thing until you have done another. but all is good.

i am sitting in the registry building and have been searching for flats online. this building used to be an old church and has some very cool statues and pillars. there are a lot of people here, getting their photos taken and enrolling...

i will leave it at that for now. flat hunting comes first at the moment!!! thanks to those that have already emailed me. once i have all of the paperwork out of the way i will be able to reply to you all and give you more details.

until next time...

it is my last day of work today. unbelievable to think i have worked here since 1998! thanks for the good reference rach! it has been such a fantastic job and i have made a lot of friends, not to mention learnt heaps (about students, about lecturers, about equation editor...). so thanks to everyone in Statistics Department at Auckland University for being so welcoming and friendly and taking a genuine interest in my dreams and plans... and i will keep in touch!