people are leaving leuven. and the goodbyes have definitely begun. andy began the trend on wednesday when he returned home to england, with leigh and ian following not long afterwards. dan's left for the states, and luke and dermot have headed back home to ireland. and as for those of us who will not return home but instead be travelling over christmas - morna left this morning for austria, and before the weekend is out, the majority of my friends here, myself included, will have up and left this little town. and a nice little town it is. i've grown very fond of it to be honest.

but yes, so this may be my last entry for a bit. i have to be up bright and early tomorrow morning to catch a 6:30 train with eric, sandra and sandra's brother peter... 12 hours or so later, eric and i will arrive in munich. everyone else seems to think that 12 hours is a long time. i suppose it is. then again, none of them have ever embarked on a plane ride from new zealand to europe, which took a grand total of 37 hours if i recall! and there's far more space in a train.

and after a few days there, we head to salzburg for christmas - the home of mozart and the sound of music...

it's 6pm and the bells have begun ringing at st peter's church (i still think it is a cathedral though frank!). i will miss the bells when i finally leave this place. they were playing 'hark the herald angel sing' earlier on this afternoon, which put me in a very 'christmassy not wanting to study' mood.

so i'd like to wish you all a wonderful christmas - wherever you are in the world. and especially to my family - mum and dad, stephen, rachel and regan - sitting at home in henderson, eating turkey and wearing hats from christmas crackers, while no doubt reading out those useless jokes that are never funny! and to my grandparents down in nelson with my aunt and uncle and cousins. thanks to everyone for keeping in touch and i'll be back in 2004 with plenty of stories to go around.

take care,
lots of love,
bex

a big thank you to everyone who has been in touch over the last couple of days! it means a lot. i was able to laugh, to reminisce and to remember how special everyone back home (and in australia, benn...) is to me. thanks very much!

i am feeling decidedly homesick. and i probably shouldn't complain, in fact i should really count myself lucky, to have survived three months without suffering from any severe pangs of missing what is back home. but the fact of the matter is quite simply that regardless of that, i am still feeling homesick now, and 'now' is what matters.

part of the problem is, canadians have come to town. this might sound utterly ridiculous, but these canadians are here visiting 'my' canadians. still sound ridiculous? let me put it this way: suddenly 6 of my closest friends are extremely happy because 3 of their closest friends are in leuven. and this is a good thing. a very good thing. but all conversation now revolves around reminsicing - about canada, about ottawa, about university in ottawa, about people i don't know, about places i have not been too, about parties i never attended.

reminsicing is a wonderful thing to do. and, as many of you should be well aware, very much a favourite pastime of mine. however it is impossible to join in a reminisicing moment when you were not present at the event. you know?

and i guess i just feel out of the loop.

all i want to be able to do, is have 7 of my friends here, so that we can reminisice. it's been far too long since i last experienced that feeling.

in other news - sheep have now arrived in the stable and this is exciting!

my thesis. which i should, theoretically, be working on as i type this. due to numerous general enquiries into what exactly i am doing, seeing as the last entry regarding my topic is now completely out of date and irrelevant, i shall endeavour to explain what it is exactly. and hopefully, this will give me inspiration to work through the day!

there is a place called sagalassos. it is in the mountains in turkey. and it was a big roman city once upon a time. and this is the site that the archaeologists here at kuleuven have been working on. all of my professors have some sort of connection to sagalassos. and every year, around june-august, they head over to turkey, with students and workers from all over the place, to continue to discover how the city functioned in antiquity.

sagalassos is the place that i am hoping to work at next year, once i have finished my thesis. i have applied but won't find out until february, so i will keep you all posted.

for all of those interested, check out: www.sagalassos.be for more details about the site itself and the work that is being done there.

now. as for my thesis. which is far more geographically focussed than it was previously. i am planning on reconstructing the environment - the terrain, the vegetation, the geomorphology - during the late imperial - early byzantine periods in the sagalassos region. for a quick history lesson: sagalassos was at its prime in roman times, but afterwards started to decline, and in the middle of the 7th century AD, it was abandoned completely.

by working with brand new satellite images (that were taken a month ago) of the area - i should be able to map the area in detail, and in doing so, maybe shed more light on the reasons people lived where they did, and left when they did (a big earthquake shook sagalassos and is thought to be the main reason for its complete abandonment in the end).

positives:
1: all literature is in english - hurrah!!
2: all lecturers that know stuff and have first hand experience and primary data are in one of two buildings here in leuven.
3: i get to do geography after all!
4: by the end - i will be exceptionally good at computer programmes that are very necessary today for archaeologists - this is good, because often thesis topics are very specialised and don't help much in the future, yet here i will have a lot of useful skills which will be beneficial.

negatives:
1: i have to work with confusing computer programmes (for those geographers out there - this means dreaded g.i.s. stuff) which take a lot of time and effort to work with when you don't know what you are doing.
2: while i can now understand the literature, i cannot understand my supervisor as well as i would like.

i remember when we were younger, my mum used to buy advent calendars. and every day throughout december we all took turns opening the little windows and discovering something inside, all the while getting more excited because one less window meant one less day until christmas...

i have my own advent calendar in leuven. on the first of december i left my house and wandered down through the main square. to my surprise, a large pine tree stood alongside the town hall... a large pine tree that i had never encountered before. and on the opposite side of the square, outside the very big cathedral of st paul, was what seemed to be the beginnings of a stable.

each day i take the time to walk past the square, and each day i discover new things are appearing. the stable no longer seems out of place in the cobbled courtyard, but is surrounded by a fence and plants and gives an impression of always having belonged there. lights now cover the facing pine tree. in fact, more christmas trees in general have appeared - not just in the square, but everywhere; against every street sign and every shop window. and i had never really noticed all the deciduous trees lining the streets, but now they are all lit up. i feel like leuven is turning into some kind of magical forest, complete with a suspended sky of lights, hanging roof top to roof.

but it's not occuring all at once - and that's special for me, because it means each day, just as i did with the advent calendar, i can be surprised and excited by the images and impressions being created in this city as the time for christmas closes in.

i have the best grandparents in the world!!

after a long day of doing work, which, by the way, is actually starting to take place now, i returned home to find a parcel sitting on the table for me. that's right. a parcel. now mail is always exciting. in any form. but parcels have something extra exciting about them. and there it was. a parcel. an exciting parcel. an unopened exciting parcel. and it deserved attention.

and after demolishing (none of this, undoing the string and gently prying off the sellotape to save the paper) the first layer, i discover christmas wrapping paper! and that can only mean one thing... my first christmas present!! hurrah! the paper is green with little santa claus' skiing through the snow (for those of you who like visual images).

so, i got mail. i got mail in the form of a parcel. i got mail in the form of a parcel that turns out to be a christmas present.

and it is sitting unopened next to me.

i love my grandparents heaps. thanks very much.

it's december. december. that means i have been out of new zealand for two months. that means it is almost christmas. and that means it is nearly the end of the semester. which means that after writing this, today is going to be a day of solid work. no more procrastinating and no more 'rests'. yes. i am determined to make this plan work. far more determined than i was yesterday, when i had exactly the same plan, and yet somehow, by means that i'm not yet aware of, didn't succeed...

i am very excited because i have been booking places to stay over christmas and new years. and this is where i will be - leaving leuven on 21st december and heading to germany - namely munich for two nights. then on to salzburg for three nights, including christmas. hurrah salzburg. and the hostels all play the sound of music at least once a day. hopefully it will snow. my fingers remain crossed. either way though, salzburg will be a beautiful place to spend christmas in. plan on heading down to slovenia for a day or so (anyone who has read paulo coehlo's 'veronika decides to die' will understand my desire to visit ljubljana), and then back up to vienna for a couple of nights. both vienna and prague were fully booked for new years so i'm going to be in a little czech republic town called cesky krumlov for the 31st. moving upwards to prague for a few days. and then home. to leuven.