i saw the movie 'big fish' last night. most probably it's been out in new zealand for ages. but belgium is a little behind when it comes to new releases. but belgium? i forgive you, namely for the reason that the movie theatre chairs are the most comfortable chairs ever (except for the lazy boy in my lounge at home). i didn't want to get up at the end.

anyway, the chair thing was a tangent. i wanted to talk about the movie. and an exceptional movie at that. i was a bit nervous to begin with, because i had absolutely no idea what it was going to be about - which is rather odd when you think about it. generally you have some inkling of an idea about some type of storyline and some type category - whether it be action or romance or horror. but no. i went in with not the vaguest hint or clue.

and perhaps this is the type of movie that is best when you know nothing about it. which is why i shall not disclose its secrets but instead urge you all to check it out. however what i will say is that it did make me jump, laugh outloud, and cry (though really, these can in no way be seen as hints, as those who know me well enough know that i have cried in full house, jumped in macgyver and laughed outloud with tigertaperia).

yes. quite delightful. the type of movie i would see again. though, due to my student budget, next time it will be on the little screen (by 'little' i refer to the classic laptop size which is our only means of watching such things).

spring has sprung
the grass is gris
i wonder where
the birdies is

indeed. you know it's funny. before i came to belgium i did a little research. to find out about the weather and things. to know what to expect. to know what to prepare for. and the biggest conclusion that appeared everywhere i looked was the rain.

when i first arrived here i was told by some of the orientation guys that once it started to rain, it wouldn't stop until may. and that it would start sometime in october.

however i don't think belgium knows what rain is at all. truthfully the last two days have been the first two days in months that it has properly rained. good old real rain. rain you can hear on the roof. rain that you can see on your window. rain that creates puddles in the streets. in fact, without exaggeration, i honestly think it has 'rained' (by my definition) no more than 7 days maximum since i arrived here. i know! this may be quite hard to believe but rain over here is not 'rain'.

what i think is regarded as 'rain' in belgium consists mainly of grey skies. occasionally a light misty wetness will emerge from the greyness above and cast a gentle scattering of something that i could not even define as droplets. sometimes this lasts for half an hour, maximum, and then the grey skies continue to be grey skies and the ground continues to be dry. this is a large part of belgium weather, often mistakeningly referred to as 'rain'. none of this heavy pelting down of large drops that splash as they hit a surface, forming runoff down the streets. nope.

the last few days have been wonderful! i've stayed indoors writing my thesis, and have had real auckland rain keeping me comfort. doing work when the elements outside are fierce is somewhat enjoyable.

nothing much else to say. sadly my life now consists mainly of work-related activities. but in a few weeks i will be landing on spanish soil which shall be a nice, and hopefully by then, well-deserved, break!

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation"

- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1905).

i like this quote. but the thing is, does me liking it and posting it on here somehow conclude that i am just another one of those 'most people'? hmprh. how about i clarify by saying that despite liking the quote, it isn't one of my passions? maybe it just proves there is truth behind such a statement, despite how much we like to believe otherwise.

for a long time i have been very cynical about the media.

to be honest, i think it began when princess diana died. i can distinctly remember a particular scene where you see the car she was in going into a tunnel, and you can see all these motorbikes with video cameras chasing after the car. and i remember that the voice over spoke about how you could see the reporters and how perhaps they had something to do with the accident. and i got so angry. because the coverage we were viewing was not intended to be a video camera video-ing these reporters and their actions. it was a video camera video-ing the car that princess diana was in. the video the news reporter had used as an example of showing the reporters chasing the car was so hypocritical. and it upset me.

when september 11 happened i also got angry with the way in which reporting was carried out. every night the same footage would be shown of the plane crashing into the building, time and time again. it felt like i was watching a hollywood movie. the hype that was built up by the media was quite overwhelming. of course i was genuinely upset by the event, but many events around the world cause numerous deaths, and it is up to the media to determine which of those events we feel most sorry for.

the media can be so biased and slant things into any angle they wish, or someone higher up the scale, wishes. ever seen the movie 'wag the dog'? brilliant movie that always summed up exactly how i felt about the media and the control they have over so many things.

however in this last week i have realised that perhaps i had become over cynical. i have not watched tv since i left new zealand last september. i do not read any newspapers, and only very occasionally do i go to a news website and find out what is happening around the world. due to this i have become lost in my own little life, due to this i have become ignorant to those events occurring around me and due to this, i have realised how important the media can be.

when the bombings occurred in spain last week i did feel sad and upset for those of my friends who are spaniards, those of my friends who have friends that are spaniards, and those people in spain who have been affected by this tragedy.

however, in my ignorance at not reading the news, i have not been affected very much at all by this event. until today. before today i felt saddened, but in no way felt threatened. people have emailed me worried, as they know i am going to spain in a month or so. but i don't feel threatened because i have not been paying attention to the media. i have not heard all the facts. i have not seen any footage. i have not seen any pictures. i have not read much with regard to the tragic stories. without the media, i have become unaware of those important things that i should perhaps be more aware of.

today all of europe held a one minute's silence at noon. we had a lecture and we stopped in order to do this. and it was at this moment that i suddenly realised, suddenly put things into perspective, suddenly discerned where in the world i was and what in the world was happening.

perhaps i disagree with some of the techniques the media use to portray world events. but without them i have fallen into ignorance which is not acceptable.

in the joy of rediscovering weetabix i accidentally missed the first hour of my lecture. i have julian to thank for finding me a supermarket that has enough initiative to be fully stocked in such a great cereal. i have naomi to thank for sending me a text reminding me that i do have classes to attend and that perhaps i should make an appearance.

today i shall gorge on nothing but the divine goodness of weetabix. not as good as the classic kiwi kid 'weetbix' but the finest substitute that exists to my knowledge.

it will be a wonderful feast.

firstly, however, i think i am in need of a nap. it's nearly 4pm afterall. definitely the hour when naps should occur.

i have THE coolest brother and sister in the world. no, seriously. SERIOUSLY. note the capitals. and note that i never use capitals. that must mean something.

here i am on one side of the world, sitting at my computer in utter despair on saturday morning (belgium time) as i cannot figure out how excel works and how to get little graphs to graph stuff that needs to be graphed.

and there is my wonderful brother on the other side of the world, sitting at his computer on saturday night (nz time), about to save my life.

i send him my little excel file. he opens it. there we both are. opposite sides of the earth. in front of two computers. looking at the same data.

then he proceeds, via msn (a simply marvelous lifesaving contraption), to tell me step by step how to make graphs. he says things like 'okay, now highlight these columns, and then press this button'. i follow his instructions. when i get it wrong, i.e. what i end up having on my screen is nothing like what he has on his screen, he figures out what i did. and how to fix it. then he proceeds to say things like 'hang on, let me see, i think this might look even better' and takes me through a different range of instructions that gets me a different graph.

four hours later it is 1pm here in belgium, 1am there in new zealand. my very cool brother just spent his entire saturday night helping me with maths. from one side of the world to the other. i then saved the little msn window dialogue box and used it for the rest of the weekend to remind me how to do stuff. brilliant. absolutely brilliant.

and then there's my sister. also very cool. who just saved me about 20 hours of work. literally.

i have these numbers in a table that was created in this programme i use. the numbers have decimal points. with a '.' point like is used in new zealand. however belgium have this weird system where they use the comma instead of the point in excel. i needed the data in excel to make graphs. so i thought i had to go through and change every decimal point into a comma so that excel recognised it as a decimal. this probably makes no sense. oh well. the point is (ha ha ha, the point. get it? obviously you can tell i'm tired and have spent far too long on this computer when i start making jokes like that!) that i have 35 tables, each with 50 rows of numbers and i was going through one table at a time, converting each decimal point to a comma, on every single row. this takes a long time (hence the bad jokes).

rachel came online. i sent her one of the tables and she said she would see what she could do. two minutes later (yep, only two, actually probably not even that to be honest) and she had the solution. man. now it takes me one second, one button, and suddenly all my points are commas.

i could (and perhaps should) say that i am so glad that such technology exists that i can communicate with no time lapse at all from here to home and back again. and i am glad. however despite technology having good points, it also causes me to want to rip my hair out (more often these last few weeks then ever before in my life).

on the other hand, i am very glad that i have a brother and a sister who are quite happy to interrupt their day or night to help me solve dilemas, that, despite not being such a big deal to them, mean a huge deal to me. and save me from going insane.

so thanks. :)

once upon a time, back when i was a young 18 year old, i was browsing through booklets containing stage one university courses (the whole website thing was not so mainstream back then - lucky, because i always liked highlighting and circling interesting classes - something that cannot be done online - but i digress...).

and my wise father said to me "you know rebekah, statistics will always be handy to have" and notably pushed me in the direction of doing a little stage one course on the aforementioned topic. at the time i was not too eager. coming from a family of mathematicians, it's sometimes nice to be out of the loop and do my own thing. however he persisted, i wavered, and the next thing you know, there i was, 8am, five days a week, semester one, first year of university.

since then i declared i could escape the clutches of the subject. i went off onto tangents involving greek monumental architecture and egyptian hieroglyphics. i pursued geography and how natural and cultural processes throughout the earth mix and mingle. i wrote, i drew, i painted, i lived outside in the dirt discovering what lies beneath the surface we live on. yet, somehow, no matter how hard i tried, statistics always reappeared...

imagine wandering the ruins of ancient greece, taking in the beauty of an ancient estate, that handled olive production for the nearby region in 500bc - only to have the bubble broken by being shown a greek script in the form of a ready reckoner table (to this day i still am unaware exactly what such a table is, however i am fairly confident that it has something to do with maths and that perhaps my former teacher, mr poleki, once mentioned it in class, interrupting my attempts at opening a calculator with my keyring screwdriver).

imagine being on the most beautiful beach in new zealand, with only two other people in the near vicinity. a beach that stretches for 7km in a gentle curve, bright blue sky echoed by a deeper blue ocean. and to suddenly discover that in order to understand the reason for thousands of stones strewn high up above sea level on the dunes, statistical sampling techniques need to be put into action (for your information, the stones are believed to have arrived via a large tidal wave caused by a volancic eruption off the coast many hundreds of years ago).

imagine living in a tiny town of weaving cobbled stone streets and canals in the very centre of europe. where bells chime every hour in delightful tunes of all varieties (just the other day i was reminded of that very humourous musical feat involving bell type instruments, the merrimans, the haines and stella), and where it snows the perfect amount so that it is never all slushy and muddy but allows for snowballs to be thrown. imagine this, and then to find that the supervisor in charge of the dominant piece of assessment due for the year - expects statistical analysis to be understood and calculated for my little village sites in the mountains of turkey.

just as clark kent's destiny was to save the world, it seems that the merriman family's destiny was to be surrounded by numbers. my rebellion on the matter seems not to make the slightest bit of difference.

time on your hands?

check out my two favourite procrastination sites on the right. the penguin one is relatively new to me and is simply a fun game. try and beat my high score of 319.3. as for homestar - strong bad's emails are worth checking out.

meanwhile, tomorrow i'm giving a one hour lecture about soil erosion in greece. the articles i read were ridiculous and i'm looking forward to ripping them to shreds. little does the lecturer know i did four years of physical geography and am not easily fooled by researchers writing biased articles to try and prove their hypothesis.

so it might not be a big deal for any of you, but i have not played minesweeper for one entire week - since i linked it with my odd illness, that magically disappeared with one night of solid sleep (and one day without minesweeper).

this is of great substance. before that vital moment where i informed the world (i.e. those who care to read this) of my decision, i had been playing a sickening amount. no wonder i got sick! i hate to think how many hours i spent, eyes glued to the screen... but then that momentous decision and i have done well. my addiction has waned.

okay so ive found this new game which requires being a yeti and hitting a penguin. but i dont play that very much. not in comparison. and its all about comparisons as far as im concerned.

thesis is not going well. the computer i am working on, which seems to have been suffering for many years, has come to a conclusive death. the files i use are too big to copy anywhere else and thus i am stuck, until next week when hopefully the man will come and fix the machine (or better yet, provide me with a new one!). so once again a weekend approaches and i feel things are not going my way.

however, despite the miserable predicament of work, the weather is keeping me happy, and distracted! it has snowed for three days now. three days. and this morning when i got up at 8, it had been snowing all night and the snow was thick and fluffy, all over the ground. i nearly slipped over about 20 times and found this quite amusing. i walked down streets and paths that were untouched and perfectly covered (until i jumped through them and caused footprints that would probably resemble a rugby team at training).

how can i be disheartened when there is snow??! its just not possible!

so, since i last wrote, a sudden realisation wave swept over me, and work had to occur.

1) next monday i am giving a lecture for an hour to the rest of my class, and yesterday i had to give them all an abstract and a run down on what i would be talking about. this required me knowing what i would be talking about... hence work was required. by 2am monday morning the typing stopped, and after a visit to the lab to print and then the photocopying shop to photocopy, i made it to my 11am class just in time, with handouts to deliver.

2) thesis. ouch. my eyes are blurry after spending the day down at the lab, struggling to work out the elevations and slopes of all of my sites. this is how i go about it: firstly i select one point from one computer programme. this point represents a village and the programme is made up of tables that give data about that village. however i want more than tables so the point must be transferred. so, secondly i export this one point out of the programme into what i shall call twilight zone, where it sits in a form that allows it to be manipulated into other programmes. thirdly, i import the one point into another programme. however, while the point can be seen, the programme does not yet understand it. thus, fourthly, i have to convert it into a file that this programme understands. in order to do that i have to create a fake map to act as a background for the new point, and then once the point is put on that fake map i can give it a name and then, fifthly, put it into the map containing slopes and elevations. the complexity has not yet begun. this little village then needs to be overlayed in such a way that everything is black except the little dot representing the village, which then shows the elevation map, that is behind it. i then zoom in, find the centre of the point. and mark the elevation.

one village down, 34 to go!

and then i do the slopes. and then i put a 1km radius buffer around each of the sites and find a mean elevation and a mean slope. then i compare the over all mean elevation and slope of the entire region (sadly my supervisor mentioned standard deviations and statistics today... so prepare to be ambushed with data if you know things about stats - heh heh, i have a few contacts up my sleeve. heh heh.).

then? i switch to another computer and start to use satellite images that give geology and terrain and vegetation stuff, which in turn can also be analysed. by similar type methods as above.

3) i have much reading to do before friday. but at least im not presenting this week.

enough about work. what else have i been doing? um. well. i am in the midst of planning a week long trip to spain. cool huh? morna, eric and shannon are heading to morocco for two weeks around easter time. and then me and joe are planning on flying down and meeting them in southern spain, hiring a car and driving up the east coast to barcelona. ryan air flights are pretty cheap and hiring a car, not only is cheap, but allows me to stop at every single deserted beach i see... need i say more?!! (ha, of course i will say more, but i have no more to say right now).

today is shrove tuesday. so tonight we eat pancakes.

for once the sun is still shining and its now late afternoon. what a breakthrough (note the literal play on words there). yet, unfortunately i am fighting internally with the feeling of illness upon me, thus dont appreciate the outdoors in the way that i should.

now really, i dont quite understand how this can be possible? i mean, up until now, apart from two days when exam pressure caused my head to hurt, i have been 100% healthy. which i have been quite impressed by. however i am not impressed that it has been less than a month since my last slight under the weather feeling and now the back of my throat is demanding attention. it just will not do.

the only suggestion i can put forward is that it is my body trying to tell me to stop playing minesweeper, which i have become far too addicted too. even if this is not the case, it is a good thing to believe and an opportunity to stop playing!

anyway, i refuse to accept the condition at hand and shall 'soldier on (with coldral, solider on... solider on...) - eh dad?

today i gave a presentation in class. its a class on the origins of christianity and naomi and i were cast into the limelight as we discussed paul and his missionary journeys through asia minor. the limelight was actually more of a spotlight, a spotlight that moved between us and our lecturer who loves to interrupt! ha. but we kept it up for the two hours and he gave us a big nod of approval and a thank you at the end. and now i have a much better understanding about many things.

i think thats all. time for minesw... oh no wait. nope. time for... other stuff.

yawn. am being extemely lazy. so lazy that ive felt the need to update this site three times today! what does that tell you about my state of mind eh?

so firstly, i just came to a realisation that the little ads that appear at the top of the page, somehow have picked words up out of my entries and turned them into ads... i.e. the other day they were talking about buying owl pellets (coincidently after my blog about seeing an owl) and now its all about squirrels. perhaps i should have noticed this months ago. probably all of you did. this obviously shows my disregard for advertising - which i view as quite the positive thing!

secondly, hurrah i got mail! and its none of this 'youve got mail' internet stuff either. but real mail in the post. thanks rachel. am listening to the cd now and am bobbing my head with the rhythm. just like when we used to study (or where i pretended to study and you got terribly distracted and couldnt study, due to my amazing bobbing and dancing abilities).

thirdly, tonight morna and leigh are the djs at a bar called wink. its sort of the international bar - it apparantly has international parties every saturday night. this is exciting. the dj-ing i mean. they will be playing classic indy-rock tunes. but good for them for getting in the door i say. so we are heading off to that. later.

anyone planning to visit me soon by the way? five new canadians have arrived (either they are extremely loyal, extremely rich, or flights here are ridicuously cheap!!). no, to be honest, most of them are studying somewhere in europe. seems half of the humanities department from carlton, ottawa, are on exchange this year, somewhere in europe. 7 of them are here. anyway, its not christmas and im not at all homesick, so i welcomed them all with a 'gday'.

thats all really. might go play another game or two of minesweeper. i need some serious motivation to get work done these days.

today is the most beautiful sunny day. bright blue sky. white fluffy clouds. the sun is beaming, happy to not be concealed by fog-like, overcast-like matter usually dominating the scene. ahhh. after what feels like so long in greyness, sunshine is, quite literally, a ray of light urging me to venture outside. i can almost smell the possibilities of spring in the air. if only the weird grinding noises of some construction drill tearing up the concrete in the very near vicinity would cease, all would be right in the world.


update: hmprh, two hours later and somehow those little fluffy unsuspicious clouds have mutinied into one giant blanket, once again covering the city and in doing so, have merged into the ever familiar greyish tone ive become so use to seeing. meantime - concrete drill work has quietened down, or at least is more periodic as opposed to continuous.

apparantly belgium has squirrels. apparantly these belgian squirrels are big. big and red. and fluffy. as squirrels should be. as i've always imagined squirrels to be. and just how i want squirrels to be. apparantly they run about, up and down trees, collecting nuts, making squirrel-type noises, and just generally being squirrelish.

now i've known about these so-called facts for some time. i've known that if i leave the cobbled streets behind and head to the outskirts - no further than the outskirts of leuven in fact - that squirrels will appear. and they will appear in big and red and fluffy forms. i know this.

and so saturday was 'the day to find a squirrel'. of course this required me leaving those cobbled streets of leuven behind. and finding some trees. because, as far as i'm aware, squirrels like trees. and so that seemed like the logical step to take. in my mind, this is how it should work:

bex + camera + multiple trees (preferably with some sort of nut attached) - cobbled streets = big and red and fluffy squirrels.

and so off i went, camera in hand. and i found the trees, equipped with some nut variation, and i departed from the streets of leuven...

squirrels? no. none. not one. horses? yes. dogs? yes. birds? yes. water buffalo? yes... okay, well they looked like water buffalo but actually ended up being some large 'water buffalo look alike' rocks. but squirrels? no.

in retrospect i am wondering exactly what went wrong. i'm not that much of a squirrel expert. so i cannot come up with any definite solution. though, it has just occured to me, that despite entering a forest, the tracks were all like miniature cobbled streets... perhaps my fundamental 'seeing a squirrel' equation was foiled as i didn't specify that cobbled paths in forests are different from cobbled paths in town. hmmm.

however i will not give up. i will succeed. the squirrel will not pull wool over my eyes and lead me astray. the squirrel will be found. and i shall reign triumphant. (and this is sounding like one of those speeches the president gives in the movies before they attack the aliens...)

so the results are in.

and after sorting out a slight mishap whereby they thought i didn't sit one of my exams, i can now be very happily contented with the following: three 15s, two 16s and one 17. out of 20. so it looks like i can handle a university system on the other side of the world after all!! but the best news? the 17 was for the course my thesis supervisor lectured... i.e. hopefully i'm in his good books, despite the lack of thesis!

and in other news. frank and i have decided to write a rap. i'll be keeping you informed as it comes together.

i have this friend. his name's dermot, which of course means he's irish! and a lovely one at that. he's studying at the music school here in leuven. we met on the very first day i arrived in town, when i was still very sleepy and confused from 37 hours in travel mode.

last night i finally got to hear dermot play the piano. the piano.

now, i know a thing or two about the piano. i myself played it for 7 years, members of my family have, and still do, play... but when dermot played last night, i was swept up into a world i have never been to before.

he played, not with music, but with his heart. i have never heard a piano be played in such a way. i felt like i was inside each note that sounded. and all i could do was shut my eyes and let it all soak into and through me.

one of the pieces, i later was told, he had created himself... at one point, he was joined by another guy who played a bass jazz type rhythm and dermot just started playing melodies - completely ad lib and free, in a way i have never seen or heard or experienced before.

it blew my mind and has left me refreshed. if there could ever be such a thing as musical cleansing, i have just come up from total immersion.

thank you dermot.

so i found this material store. uh huh. and there was a sale going on. a half price sale in fact. which of course requires a rummage about to see what was on offer. typically i found some random orange type material that is always useful to have about. and this great purpley pinky fabric with big flowers - very 70s curtain look i suppose. i am not in need of curtains, i have them already. but i am in need of brightening up this grey and bleak town that consists of people wearing the darkest or dullest possible colours invented. they might blend beautifully into the overcast sky, but really... what this place needs is some colour. some action. some boldness. and of course, that is where i come in. yeah, so there's no sewing machine. but since when has that stopped me? that's what safety pins, and tape and string and other handy devices are for...

ahhh, when there's work to be done, there is nothing more satisfying than putting it off with great ideas about starting new fashion trends throughout europe.

hmprh. it is still raining. and i don't feel like leaving my room.

now this brings about slight complications to my plans. my plans had been to get up bright and early and walk down to the lab and put in a solid day's work on my thesis. it is nearly 11:30am. i am still in my pyjamas. hmmmm. the things is, rain just doesn't inspire me to go outside. unless i really have to. in fact, it doesn't really inspire me to get up either. but i successfully pulled myself out of bed by 9:30 this morning so am quite pleased with myself (despite the fact that i had set my alarm for 7:30...)

this is most frustrating. however i have reshuffled my plans slightly and now will spend the day attempting (no - accomplishing!) to write chapter one. inside. without needing to leave my room. and going to the lab can occur tomorrow. when it will hopefully have stopped raining...

why does it have to rain? and why don't i have a car that would allow me to get to places without getting wet? and why did i leave my umbrella at davis' place?

today is raining. and rain just isn't as fun as snow.

however i currently have my hands on the book 'flowers for algernon' by daniel keyes. hence meaning i do not need to go out into the rain (except to go to the laundromat...). anyway i've read it before but reading it again, now having noticed the quote at the start by plato, gives it such a new meaning. if you've got time on your hands (or even if you don't) - i highly, highly recommend it.

"progris riport 1 martch 3: dr strauss says i shoud rite down what i think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on. i dont no why but he says its importint so they will see if they can use me. i hope they use me becaus miss kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. i want to be smart. my name is charlie gordon i werk in donners bakery where mr donner gives me 11 dollers a week and bred or cake if i want. i am 32 yeres old and next munth is my brithday. i tolld dr strauss and perfesser nemur i cant rite good but he says it dont matter he says i shud rite just like i talk and like i rite compushishens in miss kinnians class at the beekmin collidge center for retarted adults where i go to lern 3 times a week on my time off. dr strauss says to rite a lot evrything i think and evrything that happins to me but i cant think anymor because i have nothing to rite so i will close for today... yrs truly charlie gordon."

first semester in belgium complete! what a funny feeling - to be half way through (though theoretically, with a thesis yet to be severely tackled - it doesn't feel in the slightest like half way yet!). and it is nice to be done. to be able to sit and type this and know that i'm not procrastinating!

snowflakes are falling outside my window. it amazes me: the huge variety of snowflakes. i mean, of course, people always say that no two are alike - and of course i believe them... but i don't just mean that...

the wind is swirling, in a kind of spiral, and large floating fluffy flakes are being swept up in the current and spinning upwards, tipping in different directions, until the wind slackens, ever so slightly, and the snow starts to gently descend, only to be caught in another waft of air.

it reminds me of when i hear my brother play the piano. the wind builds to such a speed and with such a force, and the snow tumbles and collides and turns seemingly out of control. and then things die down, become quieter, and the snow drifts and settles to the window sill and the roof and the tree that the owl lives in - and somehow moulds together with other snowflakes until a fresh white line appears. and it gets thicker gradually - yet not so gradually that you can't gaze out the window and watch it occuring.

truly beautiful.

shall i begin with some updates? i think i shall begin with some updates.

firstly i am now well. all it took were two nights of good sleep and decent food - you know, food like meat (just as an aside - nobody except me uses the term 'mince' - they all call it ground beef. interesting.).

secondly - that decent food came via a trip to the grocery store. and guess what? the 'wet your finger' technique for opening a plastic bag really does work! how brilliant. guess that means i don't need to recycle now. heh heh heh.

thirdly - the owl was white. well, more of a white-ish blur through the tree. but definitely a shade of white. not as big as hedwig mind you.

and fourthly, five exams behind me, one to go this coming wednesday. am feeling quite content with my current situation!

okay, with the updates out of the way i have discovered i have no more news. as of yet. so, until next time...

(also, after next wednesday i'll be putting up more photos...)

today is a great day.

today is a great day despite the fact that i had my toughest exam this morning (which, subsequently, wasn't so bad).

today is a great day despite the fact that i am sick and am about to go to bed (hoping that sleep + sprite will cure me).

today is a great day because i finally saw my owl.

that's right. i have an owl. okay, so theoretically he is not 'my' owl... but that's how i like to think of him.

i discovered i had an owl a few months ago. at first i was a bit confused as to what was making the 'ooo-ooo' type noises. my confusion comes from the fact that my owl is not nocturnal. nope. not at all. in fact he prefers to sleep at the same time as me. at night. and all day, when i'm awake, he's awake too. hooting and whooting and ooo-oooing and generally making rather mournful sounds. all day long.

and today we met. at least, i saw him fly from the tree he lives in - which is across from my window, to a neighbouring tree.

i think i will call this entry 'the day i saw my owl'.

yawn. tonight is one of those evenings. one of those evenings when i really don't feel like doing work. one of those evenings when i know, without a doubt, that i need to do work (after all, wednesday is looming ever nearer, and that is the day that i sit my hardest exam). but one of those evenings nevertheless, when i would much rather procrastinate and chat to all of you instead.

so. here i am.

today i had another exam.

- are you getting tired of me talking about them? sorry, but currently they are all i can talk about. unless i made something up. and i don't seem to have any imaginative abilities at the moment, i think the exams (there's that word again) are causing me to be rather boring. -

anyway, it was oral. again. however each exam i have had so far has been different somehow. i think it is a belgian thing. little surprises all the time. keeping us foreigners on our toes. so to speak. anyway i showed up at the time i was meant to, only to find that the lecturer was taking his time... like, 'really' taking his time. two hours later, i was still sitting in the room, twiddling my thumbs and feeling decidedly hungry. funny how you get hungry at those very moments when it is not possible for you to eat.

anyway it was fine. the exam i mean. the worst part about it would have to be the hunger pains i suffered from. however my stomach behaved at the crucial moment and didn't interrupt audibly as i talked to my lecturer.

afterwards, on the walk home, i scoffed down two mcdonald hamburgers to console myself. mmm. it's a rare occurrence to eat such delacacies in europe. so expensive. far cheaper to go to a restuarant.

and that sums up today. hmprh.

oh, i know what i can talk about. the 'storm'. the 'storm' that arrived suddenly last week. funny kind of storm really. i'm used to the ones where it starts raining, then you hear the thunder in the distance, then it gets a bit closer, then you see some lightning, then it dies down again. belgian storms are obviously like belgian exams. always unexpected.

so yeah i was sitting in my room. as i do. it is raining quite heavily outside, but i'm fairly used to that. then all of a sudden there is the biggest flash of lightning i have ever seen, followed (split second i assure you) by the loudest, most rumbliest thunder i have ever heard. i wish i had words to describe the noise. perhaps imagine a big construction drill digging into concrete. or something. anyway i had a headache for half an hour afterwards. but the crazy thing was that everything shook. all the things on my shelves fell off. the house was vibrating.

it seems the lightning stuck the library's clocktower (which reminds me a little of the clocktower that you see in back to the future). this makes sense as it is the highest point in leuven. the clock still isn't working. the library is, hmmm, two minutes walk from my house perhaps? maybe three. depends on my speed...

so at 2:45 i wander up to the arts building to get ready for my third exam - this time it's written and i feel quite prepared. written exams, after all, are what i am accustomed to.

at 3:10 we're all sitting there. outside the room. waiting. waiting. no lecturer. hmmm. this is not exactly what i am used to.

3:15 and in we go, only to be told that pens are not necessary... hey, wait a minute... how do you write an exam without a pen? this exam is not going at all the way i thought it was going to go...

(i should also inform you that this guy is an austrian with a thick accent that always makes me laugh - so instead of saying "site conservation" it's more like "zite konzervaation".)

so instead we have a "group discussion". and what happens in a "group discussion"? so he asks us individually a question and when people want to add more information, we add more information.

that's it. that's the exam. the "written" exam.

but wait, there's more. oh yes, there's more. after "discussing" for 2.5 hours he returns to the front of the room, sits down and ponders...

"zo, vot do you thinkz you zud get?"

silence.

"vell, you must have zome ideaz vot you zud get?"

i meekly ask "do you mean as a group, or individually?"

finally a conclusion is reached. we all get a 15 (out of 20 - an exceptionally good mark by belgian standards) and if we want more, we say so and he will ask specific questions and then give us an extra mark if we answer correctly.

of course i would like another mark so i answer a question or two, and wham, there you have it - my first mark - a 16!!

one down, five to go... six exams is quite a significant amount i feel. quite significant. but it was fine. the exam i mean. for those interested. and i made the lecturer laugh. a good laugh too i might add. that must be a goodish sign, and i was wearing my orange woolley hat and not looking very formal at all...

also, what is wrong with me? why is it that i can't open plastic bags? no, don't laugh, i'm quite serious. every time i go to the supermarket, i dread the 'opening the plastic bag' process. you know how they have them, on the counter, all joined together in a big heap? and once you're done paying, you pull one off and open it and put your groceries inside? yes, that's what i'm talking about. i just can't figure out the technique. and i've tried a variety. it just doesn't open for me. ever...

it can be incredibly embarassing when there's a big queue (and there nearly always is...) and people are waiting for you to collect your food and leave so that they can leave too...

i think my new rule is to recycle more. who needs plastic bags anyway, right?

so, wish me well... tomorrow i undergo the belgian examination process.

this is how it supposedly functions. in formally dressed attire one student enters the room and is handed questions by a formally dressed lecturer. student then sits down and has 20 minutes to prepare for examination. student then speaks for 20 minutes regarding questions. lecturer intervenes as they feel necessary - asking for clarification or for more information or just generally opening up a discussion. formally dressed student then departs from room.

i don't have any formal clothes! the only shoes i have are sneakers (well i have jandals but it's raining outside)! and i certainly don't have time to check out the shops right now... but surely they'll let me get away with it?

did i mention that i met a guy in the czech republic who knew my grandmother in tauranga?

who would've thought...

so here i am once more. sitting in my pyjamas in my room in leuven. pondering how best to fill you in on my two week trip. pondering how much procrastination i can do before feeling exceptionally guilty about the lack of study i have done (first exam is one week today). so i'm going to try the bullet point entry for a change. not sure if i can pull it off. but i'll give it a shot.

21st december: start the day at 5:30am walking through dark quiet (perhaps the most quiet i've heard it) leuven to the train station. me, eric, sandra, peter. me and eric nearly missed the train. a sign of things to come...

saw a squirrel! highly delighted! the trip is off to an excellent start. little grey squirrel. running up the branches and down the branches. its grey fluffy tail making little wavy movements.

and then snow! yep. it starts to snow. what a way to begin a trip across germany. little snowflakes drifting through the air as the train speeds through german countryside.

14 hours of switching trains later... munich.

excerpt from diary: 21-23 december: "i felt like i was inside one of those glass balls that you shake and then watch the snow float through the air... climbed up a big church tower to view the city... very very beautiful... ornate old churches, palace gardens, old and new town halls..."

saw lord of the rings - jumped, laughed outloud and cried. proud to be a kiwi.

ate sausages in a very typical german beer hall with big heads of deer with antlers on the walls. one litre mugs of beer.

23-26 december: christmas in salzburg! snow everywhere. most beautiful little town i've been in to date.

walked up to the castle and into the abby used in sound of music. saw where they hid from the baddies near the end of movie. also saw "you are 16 going on 17" gazebo. hurrah! not to mention archway that mum and dad always say "we've been there kids" when we watch it...

spent christmas with eric's cousin and his family. absolutely perfect. shared christmas eve and christmas day with them and their two kids fiona and julien (5 and 7) and took delight in them running around and squealing as they opened their presents and then proceeded to jump on top of me and try to pull off my socks. loved it.

despite cell phone issues, was able to get in touch with family back home.

went to christmas mass in the big dom cathedral - gorgeous building - liked it more than st peters in rome to be honest.

went sledding!

26-29 december: grunau - little skiing hostel type place up in the mountains in austria. meet many aussies. walked through the snow. i spend time on my own (eric is skiing) and try to study a bit. nice, relaxing - let my feet rest from all the walking we do.

excerpt from diary: "saw both the big and little dipper - reminded me of the fact i am on the other side of the world - viewing the stars upside down. in a different place. stars hold such a peace. a peace and a clarity at the same time. the night sky is so deep, not only literally but how it can penetrate - right inside my eyes and almost through me... i marvel at the enormity of creation sometimes. the creativity, the uniqueness, the openness. no straight lines, no systematic patterns. it's all random beauty. in a world full of straight lines and codes, where people try to keep their surroundings manicured. the stars defy that thought process."

29-30 december: vienna. despite what so many people say - about how beautiful vienna is - it just wasn't a city for me. the extravagance and excessiveness - everywhere. every direction i turned was another huge building, trying to outdo the building on either side of it. more windows than i could ever count. too much and i felt out of place. vienna to me seemed to be a place that worships money.

the parks had too many park benches in line - so i moved one of them into the middle of the path - just to try and make things not so perfect.

did go to a concert and hear mozart, beethoven, strauss, brahams. that was good. in a place mozart had performed in when he was younger.

highlight - meeting up with sandra and peter and spending an evening in a far too classy for us bar, listening to old american jazz, drinking a drink that was called casablanca and catching up with good friends.

excerpt from diary: "as we walked home in the rain - i finally caught a glimpse of a pretty vienna. perhaps the rain washed away some of the immaculateness. perhaps it washed away some of my negativity and cynacism. but a mist lay over the city and the lights - lighting up the palaces - no longer with an air of disdain. the rain somehow glistened through... vienna isn't the place for me, but it wasn't so bad afterall."

31-2 january: the czech republic is awesome! and it begins with cesky krumlov - little town right on the border...

went to a bar that had a live snake under the glass counter. it was green. it was big. but it didn't move. all very exciting.

wonderful hostel where i met kiwis and spent new years eve dancing with them and people from all over the world. fantastic fireworks display that involved utter randomness and slight danger as people held up strange wand type devices that spurted forth fire and magic into the sky.

hello 2004.

walked up, over and through the castle - to read a sign saying "watch out for the bears" who sadly seemed to be hibernating. instead i made a snow bear much to my delight.

thick powdery snowy snow. fun fun fun.

2-4 january: onwards to prague. gorgeous. far nicer than vienna. most beautiful city in the world. fell in love with it. amazing buildings, bridges, castles, churches...

walked for kilometres and kilometres in freezing conditions where i had to hop and jig to keep myself moving.

went and saw don giovanni - a marionette puppet performance of opera. mozart's gift to the city of prague. funny and very very good.

found and bought orange earmuffs.

missed our train connection (was bound to happen as we had so many close calls along the way) and ended up taking a bus right through germany and back to leuven - a good 14 hour ride i guess, including a crazy 3 hour wait at the border whilst the germans inspected us...

excerpt from diary: "checked out the huge metronome - ticking back and forth, keeping the music of prague in time like a giant conductor - overlooking the orchestra which is all of prague itself. bitterly bitterly cold. could hardly feel my nose. ouch. fingers dying. literally i'm sure."

and here i am. off to study now. hope you all had a lovely christmas and welcome to 2004!!!

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.

there have only ever been two places i have ever heard the macgyver theme song. on the tv. and in my car. i find it a good song to listen to as i wait in peak-hour traffic driving to and from university. and so there i was. just sitting in a bar. not a very uncommon thing to do over this way. and the macgyver theme music came on. i now feel a loyalty and a connection with libertad and it might just be becoming one of my favourite places to be in...

okay, all of you - look to the right of the screen. notice anything new???

this message is dedicated to two exceptionally good friends - frank and paal (sorry but i don't know how to put the little ° above the a?).

today, after class, with no effort at all, i convinced frank and paal to get on a bus with me and mission out to the 'rent a computer' shop. once there, i typically rented a computer. and none of this little laptop business - this is a real computer, a computer complete with a big monitor and a big hard drive, and all the other bits and pieces that a computer comes with.

of course i had hoped, and fully anticipated, despite the fact that the bus didn't drop us off anywhere near the shop on the way there, that the bus taking us home, would appear as we walked out with my purchase. unfortunately this was not the case. try to picture the following. short me holding one end of the box with the hard drive, tall frank holding one end of the box with the monitor, and medium-sized paal in the middle, breaking the height difference, and holding the bulk of the load. just like the three bears.

i love you boys. thanks very much for helping me out!!

i have had an ingenious plan. probably it was an ingenious plan that i actually thought up months ago but somehow forgot about. better yet, i'm sure it was someone else's ingenious plan that i have attached my name to. anyway, the thing is, i've had enough of the computer lab saga and am renting myself a computer. this is the new plan.

and once i have it, i can, instead of writing entire novels about my last couple of weeks, write random anecdotes that don't necessarily have to say anything of extreme consequence.

i haven't forgotten the photos. mike is back from greece today so i just need to get on his computer...

okay so that last entry, about the photos... i obviously slightly exaggerated the timing of when they would appear on the web. i had every intention of having them up and running before leaving for rome. but then, a combination of a variety of events slightly altered my initially well meaning plans. apologies. and now, the guy who has all the photos on his computer has headed to greece for a week or so, so you will all just have to bear with me for a little bit longer.

okay so last week i went to italy. because i can. because i am no longer in the middle of the pacific and it no longer takes 37 hours to get to europe. because there is no such thing as jetlag when you take a plane ride to another country. because the airfares are so cheap that to not go would be ridiculous. yes, living in europe has some very good incentives.

and i had a wonderful time. for a start, the weather behaved in the appropriate manner and the sky stayed bright blue and the sun stayed in the sky (until it was night time of course) and the temperatures allowed me to wander the streets in a singlet and feel the need to squint - not just because of the marble ruins surrounding me, but because of the bright sunlight beaming down on me, as it should have done. i was able to escape the cooler climatic forces dominating beligum, and have a mini summer retreat, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

the trip itself began when i stepped on the train to head towards the airport. due to my brilliant planning, i wanted to be in rome bright and early on monday morning, so opted for the 6:50am flight out of belgium. the hiccup in this plan was that the earliest train to get me to the airport would arrive too late, so i had to take the last train the night before, and spend the night trying to get sleep on the uncomfortable chairs that airports generally have to offer when you need to spend the night. i should have learnt my lesson after my 12 hour stopover in bangkok last year. alas, i thought this airport might hold more luxurious seating arrangements and that bangkok was just a once off mistake. it seems however, that the airports i decide to spend the night in have one thing in common. seats that were not made for sleeping on, much less sitting on. please remind me, next time i have a valiant plan of heading overseas, not to organise my flights so that i sleep in an airport.

arriving in rome was a crazy experience because the central station seems very hostile towards tourists - odd, seeing as rome is a large tourist destination, and the central station is exactly that - central - and they did not have anything helpful to tell me, except that the best way to get to the vatican was by taxi. ha. i was on a strict budget, that allowed for no taxi rides, and i couldn't figure out why the metro would not head in the direction of the vatican. so i walk down into the metro anyway, refusing to believe the taxi lady, to find myself in the middle of what seems to be some huge riot, with police running everywhere, and exits being closed off with huge caged gates, and red tape making the place look like a crime scene. i retreat towards the entrance i had walked down, to find that caged off and have to leave by another route, just in time as the police are locking the gates there also. later i discover that the metro went on strike. okay, so there was no mass murder, there was no criminal on the loose, and no one has fallen onto the tracks and been run over. just a strike. had the lady in the central station told me this, all would have become very clear.

and that marks the start of my 15km a day walking mission. of course the metro were only on strike for a few hours, but i was no longer interested in seeing the tunnels beneath the ground, and wanted to see rome itself. plus the sun was shining and it seemed pointless to go from one place to another by an underground system packed with commuters and tourists. and i like reading maps and getting lost and refinding my way through the streets.

i met my friend russ outside the vatican and we spent two days exploring the city of rome. what an amazingly beautiful city. i took far too many photos and will spend a fortune getting them developed but it will all be worth it. from the pantheon to the circus maximus, the tiber river and the capitaline hill. all the places i had read about and thought about for the 4 years that i did roman history in new zealand. and finally i was there, and able to imagine claudius up on the rostra in the roman forum, and julius caesar issuing statues to be put up in his honour. fantastic.

naples was quite a different experience. the city was chaos. it seemed like it was in the midst of being reconstructed or torn down. it was dirty and dusty, huge holes opened up in the ground on every street, construction work was paramount. the streets were too narrow for the traffic, and no rules of the road code were obeyed. i thought that buenos aires in argentina was bad in terms of traffic. i was wrong. i ened up adopting the 'follow a local' whenever i crossed the road. there were dodgy stalls everywhere, that immediately closed whenever a police car approached. there seemed to be a lot of police, and yet you never got a feeling of being safe in naples. not a place to be wandering about late at night.

however i didn't go to naples for naples. i went so that i could go to the museum and see all the mosaics found in pompeii, and i went to see pompeii. wow, now that is one amazing place. a whole city. i still can't explain or comprehend how big it was. usually you go to places, like rome, or athens, and you see ruins of a temple, or of the marketplace. but here, streets and streets and streets - with houses, and schools and shops. with temples and theatres. it was a real city. and everything was so well preserved. i could eat my banana inside someone's house. i could sit on the edge of the road and know people had walked there. it was a very surreal feeling. i felt like i had been shrunk down and was walking through a child's toy city, that had been abandoned because it was lunchtime and they had left in a hurry. nothing was out of place. to see people, frozen in time and space - see them covered in plaster - their last movements before they died - right infront of me. to see dogs, curled up, their heads down towards the ground. you could see the anguish on their faces. you could almost feel everything taking place. and then to turn and see mount vesuvius, the only active vlocano in europe, looming behind - a menacing reminder that all of this could happen again. it wasn't just a once off occurence in 79 AD, but it sits there, a ticking bomb, long overdue to erupt again.

after two nights in naples, i returned to rome and finished off all the things i had wanted to do, including getting a tour through the largest catacomb in rome, with over 20km of tunnels and over 500,000 christian graves. i stood in the colosseum and imagined the gladiator fights and the lions. i walked up the palatine hill where the she-wolf was meant to have suckled romulus and remus before rome was founded. i had the luxury i walking numerous times through the roman forum and being able to recapture life in the 1st century AD. everywhere i walked i could remember stories dr stevenson had told me in class. and it was a wonderful experience.

travelling alone has advantages and disadvantages. i met a lot of people, including about 5 kiwis which was exciting because i am yet to meet a kiwi in belgium, though i have heard rumors that one does exist somewhere... i was shocked at how clearly i could distinguish the accent. i went out with some boys from liverpool, got to share breakfast with australians, and heard a variety of stories about stolen wallets and passports and people being ripped off in shops. all of which i managed to escape. i think though, that next time i make a journey, i'll make it with friends. for one, i'll then be able to be in some of the photos i take. but mainly, i'll be able to share memories and experiences with people who live near me, as opposed to people i met in hostels who will all be in different parts of the world now.

this has been a long entry. and there is so much more i could say. but i will leave it there for now. hope you are all well.

photos are coming very soon. very soon. i guarantee it. they are on the computer, they are all ready to go, i just need to put them in order and the right way up and put some headings under them so that you know what is going on... then they will be ready for viewing. keep an eye to the right of the screen and very soon, a little new orange link will appear with words that speak about photos... then you can click on that link and finally visit me in belgium!!

i have been busy. busy and yet not busy. if there is such a thing? i don't know. all the same, too busy to come on here and write about my life. and despite still being busy, or at least believing that i am busy, it is high time i enlightened you all, once again, about things going on, over on this side of the world.

my last entry may become redundant soon. i'm not sure. i have been in a bit of a panic for this last week because everywhere i look, all i find is french and german literature. there is nothing in english. nothing. that almost deserved capitals letters. which is a big deal for someone who never uses capital letters. and this is a big concern for someone who knows no german whatsoever and who has very basic conversational french skills (which have somewhat improved since arriving here which is a good thing). but definitely not french 'academic article' skills. not good. i think this is because the topic i have chosen is very much history-based. so i have written to my supervisor and hopefully will meet with him tomorrow to discuss my options. it is just concerning that, if in the first week of very basic research, i have found nothing in english; then 2 months down the track i could well be starting to stress. writing a thesis is one thing, but writing a thesis using only french and german literature is quite a different story!! i am unsure where this is going to lead - but quite possibly i will lean more toward a geographical approach, as, thankfully, geography seems to have a lot more english!! no doubt i'll let you all know at a later date.

food. food is good. when i think of food at the moment, i think of two things. i think of my fridge, and i think of saturday night.

my fridge. one of the big things i miss from home is the fact that i could walk into the kitchen and open the fridge door and be greeted by all sorts of food. food that i could consume and not think about where it came from or how it would be replenished. as far as i was concerned, i had the luxury of eating anything i liked, and to any quantity that i desired at the point of time that i opened my fridge door and looked inside. unfortunately i do not have that luxury anymore. i share a fridge with 5 other people, so for a start, when i open the door, i am limited to only looking at my own little section of the fridge for things to eat. and because i am on a very tight student budget, the food in my little section of the fridge has no resemblance to the food i would have found at home. gone are the days of fizzy drinks and fruit juice and cheddar cheese.

saturday night. one of the girls from my course, eleni, is from athens and she cooked for 4 of us on saturday night. real greek food. real greek food. oh wait, did i just repeat myself? some of you may not be aware my relationship with greek food. some of you may not realise how much i love greek food. some of you may not understand my feelings toward greek food. but i do. and on saturday i was surrounded by greeks salads and pita bread and tzatiki and kebabs... mmmm. a lot of garlic, a lot of olive oil, a lot of generally delicious food. i am still recovering from the experience. i had forgotten how good tzatiki is. i had forgotten forgotten how good greek food is...

on other news, it rained in leuven the other day. now really, this should not be an unsual situation, because leuven, and belgium, are renowned for having rain for half of the year. however, it seems europe has been confused this year, with exceptionally hot summers, snow in october and no rain... i, of course, have not been complaining, because the sunshine is great and the snow, of course, was quite the event for me. but i think it might start to rain more now. it's different rain from auckland rain. lighter i think. and it comes down vertically because it doesn't seem to get very windy here. so it is actually possible to stay dry, even when it rains. good eh? i think so. so the rain is not as bad as people may have tried to lead me to believe. then again, i have'nt really experienced much of it; so my mind may change in a few months...

so i hear we are doing well in the rugby. good. i have not been able to watch the games as i often have a class when they have been played. however i will endeavour to be watching the next few matches, which are the ones that really start to count from now on. and i will attempt to get together a crowd who will support new zealand alongside me. might be difficult in a place where i am yet to find another kiwi - though i'm sure if there is one or two lurking around, i'll find them at the match!!

take care everyone.

my thesis. (i doubt this entry will make me sound like i am winnie-the-pooh!!!) for all those interested, here is a brief (though typically this is me typing here, so 'brief' may not be what you consider 'brief'...) rundown on what i will be concentrating on for the next 8 months or so. but firstly, just in case some of you have forgotten exactly what i am doing here in leuven, due to my entries not really containing much information about studying, and in case you haven't noticed the link on the right of the screen that sends you directly to my course... here's a rough idea.

i am studying my master of arts in eastern mediterranean archaeology. more specifically i am studying the hellenisitic and roman period of the near east. basically the deal is, everyone is living in their own little happy towns, ocassionally fighting with their neighbours but generally in their own world, with their own culture. then alexander the great comes along around 330 B.C. and suddenly the world, from spain to india, is adopted under one ruler. alexander dies and his successors fight ferociously for the land that's up for grabs. the roman empire gets stronger and stronger and then takes over everything. all this ultimately means big changes for the people, who become subjected to new cultures, new religions, new people, new ways of governing... and these changes can be seen, not only through ancient writers, but through architecture, through sculpture, through material remains that archaeologists, like myself, dig up.

okay so what am i doing? the greeks had numerous gods. one of these was the greek goddess artemis, known for her hunting abilities and shown depicted throughout greece with her bow and arrow at the ready. i will be looking at her representation and depiction in asia minor (modern day turkey) through both the hellenisitic and roman period. even though she was a greek goddess to begin with, when greece took over the ancient world, local villages who had their own deities, would adapt their gods to that of the greeks. their gods became greek gods, and greek gods became local gods. at the moment i plan on mapping cult centres geographically and sculptural changes of her image, along with her newfound identity, across space and time.

obviously this is only a vague beginning and as things progress my topic will narrow down a lot. but my supervisor is fantastic and is so inspiring and passionate in what he studies and has already shouted me a coffee and taken me on a whirlwind trip of important journals to read up on. am a bit concerned at the amount of both german and french articles i may, or may not, have to read at some point... but i'll deal with that at the time. so i'm happy, because i had been wanting to study both hellenisitic and roman sculpture, had wanted to somehow relate it to religion, and had hoped to be able to use my geography somewhere. okay, so i'm not studying anything coastal, but maybe as i move down the track, i'll be able to find some relevance to study beach sites... we'll see.

on other news... did i mention it snowed? ;-)

and maybe as a final aside... i'm going to rome! yes, that's right. suppose that really deserved its own entry, rather than be tacked on the end. oh well. i have booked my flights and am going from november 10 to 16 i think. and i can't wait. it's so cheap to travel over here. i'm flying there with ryan air, and it is costing me 1 cent, one way to rome. funny huh? i could have returned home for 1 cent also, but i didn't want to miss too many classes so had to opt for 25 euros home instead. still, not bad!! 5 days for me to explore rome and pompei and hopefully some exotic little beach. i'm going on my own, though one of the guys visiting the canadians, is going to be in the area around the same time so we'll probably meet up and spend a couple of days together, which will be nice.

today it snowed!!!! i am v v v v v v excited about this. also i have a thesis topic. but the snow is obviously the most important thing. yes. snow. snow and me. little white fluffy bits of snow. i am happy that it snowed. HURRAH for snow. i have not seen it snow (i have seen snow, but not seen it SNOW) since i was 9, or maybe 10... anyway a long time ago. there are other things i could talk about. but snow is on my mind. yesterday when i walked home from the canadian's house it was -2 degrees. cold. cold enough to want earmuffs. i am in the process of looking for earmuffs. suppose it is summer where most of you are. i like the snow.

i just spent the most amazing weekend in the ardennes, belgium's natural park. after spending a month only seeing cities, it was time for me to escape, to see the stars, to see a river that hadn't been cut into a canal, with straight concrete edges. i was ready to walk on the grass instead of the cobbled streets. i miss the space that new zealand has to offer. i miss my beaches that i had taken for granted. and camping in the ardennes seemed like the perfect idea, and turned into the most perfect weekend. to be able to escape to the forests, to the rivers, to the open air, and to the caves...

i guess caves and i go back to when i was 14, when i had my first opportunity to walk into waitomo, equipped with my orange overalls and hard hat, with lightbulb attached. from then on, i think i have a very special connection to the underground world of caves. there is something so powerful and old, something in the serenity and the grandeur, that causes me to feel compelled to return again and again to that world below where i live. it was at this time that i commented (or as mum would say, 'made a sweeping statement') 'i could live in a cave'. yet it was how i felt. and how i still feel. i always leave a cave feeling refreshed and alive. and so it was high up on my list of things to do, to go and visit the famous caves at han-sur-lesse and once again delve into another world.

the town itself was a huge tourist trap, where you had to pay to use the bathroom, where small (though on reflection, actually quite big) signs with little cartoon characters pointed people in different directions. where safari jeeps carted people up the road to the safari park, and trams transported even more people up to the caves. yet, despite having my picture taken with a parrot on my shoulder, and despite having to wait in a queue that reminded me of waiting to get on a rollercoaster in a theme park, the 10 euros was well worth its weight in gold. we had the option of taking the french tour or the dutch tour. my option? forget trying to translate the history of the caves and fall behind the tour group...

the caverns themselves were huge. perhaps the biggest caverns i have ever been in. towering above my head with a sense of being in control instead of allowing people to take control. the stalactites hung down from the ceiling, precarious in places, yet having hung there for thousands of years, growing slowly yet steadily. the stalagmites crept up from the ground. seaweed-like rock formations folded down from above, and gave me a sense that i had entered a sacred theatre and the curtains were beginning to close on the final act. solitude was all i wanted and i was able to block out the french voice ahead and feel at such peace as i took in the underworld city that surrounded me like no other. at one point very tasteful (thankfully) music came one, reminding me of the mines of moiria, out of lord of the rings. it was all so surreal. giving me the feeling i always get when i return to the outdoors, that there is so much power within the earth.

our first night was spent high on top of a ridge, that involved general hiking and then some scrambling to reach it. there was no way we were going to stay in a campsite that had a wooden arch over the driveway, or where little swings were placed in the centre of a patch of well cut grass. and we were rewarded with the most beautiful sunset, of oranges and pinks and reds filling the sky with such richness and colour that it was impossible not to be overawed at creation and our creator. despite the stars not being nearly as plentiful as those in the southern hemisphere, they were gorgeous all the same, though it was slightly odd for me not to see the familiar southern cross up there. we had a bonfire and cooked beans and ate bread and wathed the crocodile shapes form in the embers.

the second night was spent after a day of walking through the forests, amidst brich trees, all full to the brim with yellow leaves, just waiting for the call of autumn to drop. a bubbling river, literally bubbling up from an underground spring, flowed alongside. finally a river without straight edges!! and a steep cliff face flanked the edge, tilting into the ground, another indicator of how powerful the earth on which we live, is. that night was cold and a heavy frost surrounded the tent the next morning, allowing for the leaves to fall, in waves, raining down upon us. i promise pictures will arrive very soon...

i dunked my head in the water, refreshing though freezing, and used my macgyver knowledge to make a fishing line to try and catch a fish. however he did not seem to interested in the cheese that i was offering. a pity, then again, he was only 15cm long.

overall i think we would have walked around 20-25km, from town to town, through forests and fields, alongside sealed roads and dirt roads, along old abandoned railway tracks, but most importantly, soaking up the natural environment that belgium has to offer.

i feel at a loss to describe more accurately the beauty of a place that deserves better adjectives than those i have to offer. some things cannot be described in words or even with pictures. to be truely understood, one must experience them first hand and discover life outside of what we have grown to accept.

last night was canadian thanksgiving. of course i have been fully accepted by the canadian embassy and partook in the celebrations. why doesn't new zealand have thanksgiving? i think new zealand should have thanksgiving. i really do. thanksgiving seems like such a nice idea. and the food is good too.

hmmm the food. chicken and mashed potatoes and lots of 'almost' roast vegetables (we had to improvise as none of us have an oven) and apple pie and so much food that our (16 of us in total) plates were overflowing. and there was even icecream... definitely the first time since i left new zealand that i have had a meal like that.

so we sat around and ate and conversed and reminded each other what we were thankful for. beautiful. reminded me a bit of christmas - which is usually when we have the big dinner back home. and then all these phone calls were had as the canadians got in touch with their families, all in their own respective cottages, overlooking lakes and snow-capped trees. an experience i will never forget, and one that i felt very much a part of.

jasper has been here for the last few days so i took him in to brussels and we explored the streets, the markets, the gardens and just the general atmosphere which was nice. it is always so crazy how everyone in leuven speaks flemish, but then you head to brussels and everyone speaks french. strange phenonomen.

in fact, speaking about this division; did i ever mention just how serious it is? leuven is a dutch speaking (okay so obviously there are some english speaking courses otherwise i would be in serious trouble as i can only say hello, please, thank you, ask for bread and give directions) university. louvain-la-nerve is a new french speaking university that is just up the road. when the two split, everything within the university was split. it is exactly like a divorce between two people. the books in the library, for example, were split according to their cataloge number. all odd books moved to louvain-la-nerve, and all even books stayed here. this can cause big problems for people like me, trying to write a thesis.

on other news - i had a wonderful birthday. about 20 of my friends were there, we had a lovely dinner and partyed the night away. a couple of my friends have digital cameras so i will get on to posting up some pictures of amsterdam, my birthday and other random nights when we have been together. yes, i really should do that soon i think!

hope all is well back home. am looking forward to watching the all blacks play canada in the world cup in a week or so...

today is my birthday. so i don't have time to sit on a computer all day and tell you stories about my life. but the day has started off nicely. got to talk to my family back home which was great. thanks for the messages and thoughts. will tell you all about my party after it has occured. love lots, rebekah.

the city of amsterdam. this was where i spent the weekend. and what a weekend it was. it was a very last minute decision, made at 10pm on thursday night, but i think that's the way to do things over here. as soon as my class finished at 11am on friday i met up with sandra (one of the canadians) and we jumped on a train and made for the border. and finally i hit another country outside of belgium which was very exciting... though no one asked for passports and so i have no record of being there. then again, my passport wasn't stamped coming into belgium either, so theoretically i have no proof that i arrived here either. but what is proof anyway huh?

and then the adventures began. we made it to amsterdam in record time (under three hours) as we somehow managed to get a connecting train that left 30 seconds after our train pulled in to the station. so i looked at sandra and said "i think it is time to run, like they do in the movies", and so we did. and we jumped on just as the man blew his whistle and the doors started to close.

first impressions, or maybe just overall impressions are absolute randomness... getting off the train station we wandered towards a hostel and in a matter of minutes were thrown into amsterdam "reality". someone had thrown up all over a footpath, some guy was in the foetal position being put into an ambulance... two guys were getting into a huge fight, and then, get this, the queen of the netherlands drove past amidst a convoy off police cars. everywhere i looked i was surprised... it was like a continuous journey of confusion and amazement. you would be walking down a narrow old street and then suddenly a big oriental temple would appear, out of nowhere, and then disappear just as fast.

sandra and i ended up staying on the outskirts of the red light district (yes, the red light district in amsterdam, which has perhaps the biggest red light district in the world). but no need to worry now, seeing as i'm back 'home' in leuven now. but it was interesting... there are actually red lights that flick on and off to show where the district starts and ends.

got to check out the anne frank house which was very haunting and inspiring and nearly brought me to tears at times. very very incredible to read about how she would look out the window and see jews be taken down the street - and then for me to be able to look out the very same window and reflect on how she had been in that tiny place for over 40 months. climbing the stiars and imagining how she had clibed those very stairs and that her family were dragged down them and taken to concentration camps. hard to picture and yet at the same time, very real.

also went to the van goph museum which was awesome and it was at this point that we bumped into the boys, eric, joe and alex, who also were in town, but due to us being out of the country, our cell phones weren't working and hadn't been able to get in contact. we all wandered around together and took in all the spectacles that amsterdam has to offer.

on sunday i checked out the botanical gardens which even had some new zealand natives. and a gorgeous butterfly house and as i was wearing bright orange (typically of course) and joe had a yellow hoody - all the butterflies landed all over us. nice, as long as you don't have a phobia against butterflies!!! but a beautiful garden...

the ride home was not quite so quick as our first train somehow broke down and we had no idea as they only said it in dutch... but when everyone suddenly jumped up and stampeded out the door to another train, it seemed necessary to follow. then we got off at the wrong stop, but managed to jump back on in time before the train left again. ended up in first class i think, but no one checked out tickets or asked us to move so we made it home sfae and sound!! just slightly later than expected.

all up, amsterdam is like nothing i could ever explain. every corner was different, every street had something unusual going on. but the best part? everything was in orange!!! everything - the trains, the seats, the walls. very cool for one who has some sort of obsession with the colour. i fitted right in!!

so the plans for this week? i am very excited because jasper is coming down to visit and will be here for my birthday on thursday which i'm looking forward to. i'm having people over for dinner on thursday - but i have a little kitchen and we're already up to over 15 people... and the kitchen table here only seats 6 maximum). apart from that, i have lectures (yes i do actually do a bit of work while i'm here, though so far? not much...).

thanks to those keeping in touch. caisey and lachie - you two would love it over here so much, i seriously think you should both consider coming here in your holidays. which i don't think are too far off. start saving now...

right, feels like awhile since i was typing on here. i am in the computer lab where i will probably be spending a great deal of my time writing my thesis later in the year... not yet though right?!! still too much fun and adventures to be had i believe!

so finally i have had a class. environmental geomorphology which was good but very introductory-like and will be much better once we get into it properly. but it doesn't sound too complicated at the moment, though i seem to be very fortunate, having a geography major, as no one else in my course has studied this sort of thing and seemed to hold very blank faces when he was talking about plate tectonics and climatology and tsunamis. the lecturer seems nice enough and is fairly easy to understand. plus he has the brilliant habit of repeating what he says, so if his accent confuses me the first time, i pick it up the second time through. very thoughtful of him i must say!

the people in my course are great. there's 14 of us i think and everyone is very friendly and i think we will have a good year together. a combination of french speaking belgians, dutch speaking belgians, greeks, kiwis (okay there is just one of me) and norweigians. a nice combination with very different backgrounds.

so far i have tuesday and wednesdays off, though later in november another class will begin on tuesday. and then i have two classes on thursday and one i think on friday. it is all very relaxed. and seems very easy - but i think they will expect a lot of reading to be done and a lot of work to be done outside of the classroom. i presume anyway. plus i will have to start my thesis. i need a topic by the start of november so have to start thinking about that soon.

i am yet to leave belgium and explore other countries though there is a good possibility i will either be in munich for october fest or else might head to amsterdam this weekend. all depending on whether we get in contact with people from either city. it has been great meeting people here - there is a solid group of 10 of us that meet nearly every second night, and another 10 on top of that, that we would see over the weekends or on thursday nights. there seems to constantly be international parties and meetings here, even though orientation is over, but it is fantastic because everyone is willing to sit and chat with you and then because we all have cell phones; numbers are exchanged and we'll all meet up at the park to listen to a live band the next day. very lively and exceptionally friendly town.

today i bought a coat. not because it is cold or rainy just yet, but just because i found one that i love for 46 euros - kind of expensive but definitely a necessity that i will probably end up wearing every day over winter. it was from a second hand store and is actually very cheap compared to most of the clothes here in leuven.

speaking of which - you would think; or at least i would think, that a university town would be all about second hand stores - bookshops and clothes shops... you know, cheap things. but no. i think people in europe are quite content not to search for bargins, which is definitely a west auckland way of doing things. living over here is more expensive than i had imagined and while i have not run out of money, i think it will be very necessary for me to search for a partime job. which is a bit annoying because it might cut back on how much i will be able to travel around, but there will be no travelling around at the rate i am going. never mind, i am also aware that the first month in a new place away from home, is bound to be the most expensive - because you need to buy things like a lamp and sheets and a towel and olive oil and salt. hopefully all of these items have now been bought and i can actually keep to my budget in future months to come.

my birthday is fast approaching. my first birthday away from home. next thursday (9th) in fact. but the people here are incredible and some of the friends i have made have become like best friends that i feel like i have known for years. the three canadian girls - morna, desiree and sandra are the loveliest girls and have become awesome friends with me. just last night we sat at this little cafe/bar called amadee and drank tea as we played scrabble and boggle and listened to classical music. it is the cutest little place and the owner is very funny and laughs at us when we try and play english scrabble with spanish or dutch letters.

more than anything i want a white christmas this year and i am thinking about the idea of austria at the moment... or perhaps switzerland though morna knows people in austria, which could be helpful. i'll see, as long as it snows and i am with friends i will be content. as of course it would be highly impossible to return home for christmas - though numerous people have asked me this with no knowledge of just where in the world new zealand is situated!!

i have been inside this computer lab for far too long, but thanks to rachel for texting me which was extremely exciting to get at 11:30 at night when a group of us were walking along the street. for those that don't know, 11:30pm in leuven, is 9:30am in new zealand - until the whole daylight savings thing happens.

take care; love bex.