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My trip was a mixture of heaven and hell, being Leeds and Paris respectively. Overall I had an amazing time and I love my friends. I miss them already. But not too much. Only enough! I’ll tell you all tomorrow.

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It’s 2:30 AM. My question; go to sleep and fail my exam or stay awake reading all night and fail my exam? I can’t decide.

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When I was in secondary school I didn’t really enjoy myself very much. A lot of the time I was disinterested in what I was studying and felt pushed to work. I was pushed to work; I had to be. I had no motivation. I was constantly nervous and on edge because I knew, or at least felt, that I was not doing as well as the other boys. Very infrequently did I have confidence or pride in my work.

When I knew this, when I felt I was doing something wrong or not doing it right I would get a ill feeling in the pit of my stomach. This wasn’t a feeling of illness in the medical sense, but a general unease. I was on edge. I get this feeling still when watching suspense-filled movies. I’ve tried to watch the film Match Point twice without success. I can’t stand it.

It’s the feeling you get the morning before a major exam or test. You don’t trust yourself to eat because you’re too afraid.

I got this this evening. My day up until a couple of hours ago has been pretty great. I’ve done lots of reading, went and had coffee with friends and confirmed the result of my French language exam. I passed. I can’t tell you how happy that made me. It means, if nothing else I will have passed at least one exam this term. My politics classes written in French are perhaps another matter.

But my ill feeling came when I got a quick email from my landlord. He’s a pretty nice guy. We’ve had a little bit of minor friction but I have nothing to complain about really. What absolutely terrified me is that asked me:

Maybe I am wrong, but I think I did’t get the rent of January.

Oh. My. God.

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This very table would have come in very handy during my French exam this morning. Well, that’s one mark down, only about 200 left to go!

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I don’t really like doing New Years type things. The whole evening makes me feel like it’s forced. Perhaps it’s because celebrating and the idea of forced dancing with family is kind of like a heterosexual torture to me. But here I’m not really thinking about the night of New Years itself but more the resolutions that are so often obligatory around this time of year.

You may have guessed, but I’m not a huge fan of them either. Why make a resolution if you’re sure to break it? What’s the point but to placate some people who are putting pressure on you to name some banal subject on the spur of the moment. Well I didn’t really name any such subject, other than my desire to go travelling more this year. That’s not so much a resolution as a wish. It’s kind of dependent on my bank balance: it that’s up to it, I’m up to it!

But I do have a resolution, I’ve decided.

Over the course of the last four months I have at times not worked very hard. I’ve allowed myself to become incredibly stressed with the idea of failure and the idea of not appearing to have worked hard during the course of this year. Which, in itself, has prevented me from working because at times like those, I lose all motivation and drive. Tonight is one of those moments. But I have worked, much more of the time, extremely hard and as a result I resolve, in the following six months of this year, to put myself ‘out there’ more and have more fun, thereby learning more effectively. I want to be doing more hard exercise (not that Brussels helps anyone doing that… It’s like a minefield just navigating the faeces on the pavementes) and not just the long trek to my University and back. I aim to get back into it all! My intention of this year is to really have pretty alright french by the end of the year, but that doesn’t have to involve driving myself into the ground by becoming an unproductive hermit. More socialising, less fear and more fun are all called for.

It’s an odd New Years Resolution: Party more, and be good at it.

This, this is just eye candy. And it’s why I love, but cannot yet afford, DSquared clothing. The aim: be more like the boy on the bed, less like the boy in the background!

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It’s really quiet here tonight. It’s one of the last big shopping days in Belgium (où les magasins sont fermée habituellement les dimanches) and almost everyone I know has been out buying gifts for their families and friends or, in the case of my housemate, been having gifts bought for her. She said her own gift to her boyfriend was just being there, that was enough apparently!

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It’s been busy. But busy in a ‘trying to do as little as possible’ kind of way. Here in Bruxelles, I find that doing nothing makes me feel exhausted. Only the last two days, when I’ve allowed myself to think about Christmas presents and gifts instead of lectures, Sciences Po (Poli Sci) syllabi and reading notes. Not that I’m great at doing these things at the best of times, but giving myself a psychological break has been really nice: I’ve needed it.

I’ve been a little absent from the online world, including my Flickr photostream, because when I went with eleven of my best friends to Amsterdam three weeks ago, my beloved camera was stolen. It’s sad because taking photos is kind of my thing. I do it all the time and get in people’s faces in a way that sometimes bugs them but they allways thank me for later when they see the great results. They thank me because they don’t see the ones I delete. I’m no star photograher! I’ve posted only seventeen photos on Flickr since I got here to Belgium, a rather depressing fact I think. I take lots of photos because my memory is terrible and I forget things without having a photographic record of them. The photos spark me to remember.

When my camera was stolen I didn’t want to follow it up with the police and so forth because that would have meant, for at least of couple of my friends, a whole morning wasted out of a three day trip. The sad result of that is that I haven’t been able to claim any insurance coverage on the loss. I wasn’t hit by it until several days later, at which point I really was. It sounds silly something as inconsequential as a camera, but my camera was something to was like an extension of my body for a long time. I took it everywhere and it helped me save some amazing memories.

Within a month I’m going to be sitting exams. They’ll all be in French and the content, even if it were in English, would be near overwhelming. In French it’s near impossible. Christmas for me this year will not be about having a lot of fun but about REALLY improving my language skills and apparently about learning the history of the western world since 1750 onwards.

While the last couple of weeks have been trying to get work done, after C was sadly unable to come on her planned visit, the last couple of days have all been about saying a temporary goodbye to new friends. Some friends who will not be coming back after February, some friends who are just going home a few days early. While Thursday night was a bar-hopping style of night on the town (for what it’s worth, Bruxelles not being a huge party town, full of overpaid beaurocrats as it is), last night was a Spanish friends’ fancy dress birthday party or ’soirée costumée’ as it’s called here. A lot of fun and my housemates and I were some of the best made up of everyone there. Apart, perhaps, from the American guy who showed up in full snowboarding gear. He must have been roasting: it may be cold here but we weren’t in a fridge, we were in a little windowless livingroom four floors above street level.

Friends continue departing tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to everyone’s return, because I’ve met so many amazing people here. On the other hand I don’t necessarily look forward to my own return which implies the arrival of exams in French, my absolute worst nightmare. It’s what I signed myself up for though so who am I to complain.

I’ve had a lot to think about the last couple days. I hope to ‘talk’ about some of it more. Expect updates.

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This is something I’ve been intending to write for quite a while now, but never really sat down to do it. I’ve been struggling recently to not do too much. I’ve been finding myself unable to sit down and work because I’m not getting enough downtime during which I can just unwind and destress. I find living here extremely stressful unless I have time calm down, time to sit on my own, time to think in English or just do nothing at all. I say I need to think in English because a lot of the time, even when I’m speaking English, I’m trying to do a bit of a simultaneous translation in my head into what the conversation would be in French.
I get very tired.

And I’ve realized that I can please everybody. I can’t hang out with everyone. I can’t go to every club. I can’t make every dish that someone would want me to show them. I can’t be on the ball for every class all the time. I can’t be everything to everyone. And I can’t go on every trip to every European city there is.

I think it’s easy to agree to do everything, but the best thing is often saying no. I’m trying now to concentrate on what I need to do rather than what would be convenient or just fun. The fact that the UK Government’s Student Loans system, which was supposed to get money to me in the beginning of December still hasn’t managed, helps me in not doing things. But I would prefer, of course, to at least have the option. Not having money is not a great way of making sure my work gets done. Anyway, my point is that I’m trying to not read much work in English, I’m trying to do more French Grammar reading, and I’m trying to not do much in the evenings. Why stay a shut in, leading a loser-like existance? Because my top priority is learning French and though having great times and making friends is important, I can’t jeapordise failing exams or not becoming highly conversationally fluent in French just to take part in minor side-events. The other incentive is that if I do fail my exams here, I’ll have to pay the UK government around 3000 Euros back and my degree title won’t change to reflect my time here. That would be bad.

So I’m going to try and be a bit of a hermit for the time being.

That being said. First thing I do when I get my money: join a gym, start toning up again and buy some good food! Those are ’side-events’ that have real long term benefits. I don’t think I could even consider not doing them!

[two minutes later...]
I’m sorry if these posts, totally about my personal life and thoughts are annoying. I feel like a 16 year old school-girl just by writing them. I do thing that they’re important to write down though and I can’t think what I would replace them with. My inspiration to have an opinion is, at the moment, not particularly high. I just don’t have anything I feel like I need to say out and proud. Perhaps in time. Give me time.

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If you’d like a warning, this is a highly unimportant post about family and personal stuff. If that’s not your thing, go and read the science category or something.

My parents came to visit over the weekend. Arriving after my early morning Friday class I was late meeting them on their drop off point from the airport. They had so many bags for such a short time. Luckily half of them were for me: extra clothes and bits and pieces.
As one should do when discovering a city, we did a lot of walking. On the Friday when we went to visit a friend at the BBC, when we met up with an old friend of my parents now working for part of the European Commission, when we were wandering the city to see interesting things and amazing buildings. We stopped off for various drinks of beer, good and bad coffee, organic food, a Turkish restaurant and more. It was great to see them but as I should have expected, it brings back all the ideas of missing family. I’ve seen them recently perhaps just as much as I would have done if I’d been in the UK but being in another country does make the distance feel a bit more substantive. When they left it was odd. Empty, like I’d convinced myself forget it could be. But it was great to have them visit.

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