Thursday, September 15, 2005

And today...

14th September

We again went to Panos for breakfast and it was as good as always. We also had reason to rejoice because the guys apartment got electricity today. I then went to my room to wash clothes and have a bath. Surbhi also moved in to the room today. We then went back to the guys apartment to find a lunch of rice, dal and pickle, the first 2 cooked by Ravi, waiting for us. It was well made and we had a very filling lunch. Those who didn’t help with the cooking, washed up.

We then went to this game organized by the Express Association, to which we had registered yesterday. It was some arbit treasure hunt around the city and after the initial stops, most of us stopped participating in the game and concentrated on getting to know each other. In fact, the main goal of the game was for us exchange students to get to know each other. It was very interesting and I met people from different countries – an Afghan girl from Canada who had lived in India for a couple of months as an Afghan refugee when she was a child, a refugee from Bosnia who was now living in Sweden, a Spanish girl who could sing ‘tujhe dekha to yeh…’ and understand a little hindi, a girl from Portugal who was perpetually late and many other interesting people from Polad, Finland, Germany, Italy, Scotland, Canada etc.

It was great fun. The people were extremely interested when they learnt that I was from India and they would ask a lot of questions. Luckily, I didn’t get any of the Do you travel by elephant’ type questions. They were totally fascinated by the concept of arranged marriages and asked a lot of questions regarding that. They also thought we were pulling their leg when we told them that in India, you could have as many glasses of water as you wanted in a restaurant for free!!

The game was to be followed by a marathon of visiting some of the most popular bars in the city. Ravi and I dropped out and came back to the apartment. I have been on the computer since then, chatting with my Mom and a couple of friends and typing this mail. Ravi went to the supermarket meanwhile and got us some groceries. We had another home cooked meal of soup, rice and pickle for dinner now. The others haven’t come in yet so we Ravi and I are planning to watch a movie or play cards.
And something really strange about Belgium that I forgot to mention is that international calls are cheaper than local calls!! An international call cots between 15-20 cents a minute whereas a local call costs 30 cents a min!!

So that’s all for now. My next post will come soon.

1 comment:

Mihir said...

send ur address and contact details to mihirsaxena at gmail ASAP

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