Historical Week, Political Ending

Bowling with Martin

One Happy Slovak

Matt giving it a whirl

Week of 11/8 – 11/13

It’s amazing how time slows when you’re falling. The second you start floating through air, it’s as if, for only a moment, the clock stops. The sky was blue, with graying clouds in the horizon, as the birds overhead screeched while migrating south. I was racing toward the gym, a little earlier than usual, but trying to get in a lifting session before the day was wasted away. Sitting atop of my 1960’s style bright orange bicycle, I cruised around the corner and prepared to take off down the hill. That was when I saw them: an elderly couple, stopping to read the historical signs on the side of the road, 12 o’clock. I jumped from the sidewalk over the curb and onto the cobblestone. I had assumed all had cleared - then I heard the grinding.

It only took a second, and then I was on the ground, in shock. I think the last time I fell of a bike was, well Tuesday, but before that, I can’t even remember. However, I’m pretty sure that my reaction was the same. The problem with accidents, or just things that hurt in general, is that you can usually see them coming about a split second before you feel the pain. In my case, the moment where the world stopped, I knew that I was in for an inevitable amount of pain, but that I also had no way to stop it. So, with my one leg trapped under my bike, and the other flailing through the air, I came crunching to the ground. I had successfully completed my first (and hopefully last) bike accident of the year.

Hello my loyal readers, and welcome to this week’s blog-oid. Unfortunately this week was pretty slow for me and I have fallen behind on most of my blogs, but I will try and put them together of the next couple of days this weekend.

Though I did no traveling this week/weekend, the last seven days have had a certain number of highlights that I wish to discuss. Last Saturday, we decided for the first time to try bowling abroad. We took Martin along for his first round of bowling. When I asked him if he’d ever done it before, he said, “On the Flintstones.” I smiled and thought about one American tradition teaching another. So we headed over to the small, 6 lane, Belgian bowling alley (which turned out to be an AMF lanes) that looked more like something on MTV cribs than a real bowling alley in the states. Martin took the spotlight that night, never winning a game, but also getting two strikes. I would have paid for the games alone just to see his ecstatic look again when he hit his first batch of pins.

The next highlight came on 11/11, Armistice Day (Veteran’s Day in the US), which is a national holiday in Belgium, and most of Europe, to commemorate the date that the Allies of WWI signed the peace treaty to end the war. Essentially, the entirety of Western Europe closes all of its shops, stores, post offices, and schools as a day to celebrate peace. As a result Leuven was dead, and being that we expected as much, none of us ventured out that day. Instead, our unit (our huis is divided into 6 different units, mine being unit 1) decided to host a unit game night. We gathered as a group and with a mild budget from Christel, were able to amply supply the 7 members of my unit with enough chips, snacks, and microwavable foods to have us bursting at the seams. We first played a couple of rounds of UNO, which was an interesting feat to try and explain to the Europeans who had never played it before – especially with the different rules about colors and numbers and skipping players. However, soon enough everyone caught on and the game got going.

That was until Martin decided to describe to us a native Slovakian game. Which essentially was a Slovakian version of UNO, except played with a deck of cards, and Martin was the only one who knew the rules. Essentially we would just drop the cards on the table and he would giggle then tell us what it meant – as you can imagine our confidence in this game quickly waned. Though I was very impressed with the Mighty Slovak’s new found confidence in English – it was encouraging to say the least.

Then the Belgians took their turn at describing a game called “Jungle Stick” which involved playing cards, with a specific deck that had a variety of shapes and colors on it. You go around the circle each person taking one card at a time. When the shape, or in some cases colors, of your card match those of another card, then you lunge for the “Jungle Stick” (a wooden object that is situated in the center of the table) and hope that you get it first, otherwise you have to take the other person’s cards. However, the Belgians added an appendix to this game that involved not just lunging to grab the stick, but also fighting over it. Now I’m not just talking your average go-of-the-mill yank back and forth. What I’m talking about is how two of the Belgians were fighting so hard back and forth that they completely dislodged the table, and one ended up biting the other for the glory of not losing the stick. Naturally, this game got particularly interesting when the two heavyweight champions (Martin and Matt) when at it, wrestling each other to the ground – and almost decapitating one of the more quiet Belgian girls in the process. Either way, it was a great way to spend Armistice Day.

Finally, the completion for this week, Howard W. Gutman, the US Ambassador to Belgium, visited KU Leuven this week to deliver a message of hope and peace to the upcoming “future of Europe.” The crowded auditorium rose to its feet as a flurry of camera’s preceded Ambassador Gutman into the Belgian auditorium. The room was warm and a steady fervor quieted as he took to the podium. The Ambassador brought with him the message of the new Obama administration, preaching to the students in the crowd hoping that they would be able to “grow old in a world that was more harmonious than the one you were born into.” After speaking for about 20 minutes on any issue from American leadership in world affairs, to the US Chinese Relationship, to healthcare, to terrorism to US – EU Relations, Gutman also took a series of question from the audience. Though he didn’t go in depth on any of his answers, he also didn’t shy away from the responses to his questions asking the audience to trust in Barack Obama and the United States.

Well that concludes one of my less event filled weeks, but nonetheless an entertaining one. Though it took me a while to get this blog out, I hope to have a pound out a couple more in the upcoming days, so keep posted for my tales of Amsterdam and Madrid.