vendredi 4 juillet 2008

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location: Belgium, Flemish Brabant

43 kms bicycle tour in the surroundings of Lubbeek. Very nice landscape! Only minor disagreement: hills = UP & DOWN!

start of the 600m sprint, after lunch ;-)

Chapeau à Nathalie qui a roulé 2 étapes avec les freins arrière bloqués!

Tir à la corde: 4 filles contre 3 gars, 1 fille...

Goûter pomme.

mercredi 2 juillet 2008

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I'm on the roads since last Thursday. (actually I wrote this message last Sunday) Now is time to share the good moments...

I left Milan Thursday morning. I had the heaviest luggage I ever had. So I decided to take the train (Malpensa express) from Cadorna station... Guess what? The line was not working: "no electricity" they said! Did you think you can fit the passengers of a train in a two bus rotation (travel time = 50 min)? I don't for the simple reason that 200 passengers every 20 minutes is far more than a 50 seats bus every hour!!! Last solution: taxi sharing. That was the first obstacle of the day.

Then as I had more than the 20 kilos baggage limit in went to the bathroom and changed my clothes to wear some of the heaviest: jeans, hiking shoes, tee-shirt + pull-over + leather jacket (with 35° outside ;-) Even though I had 10 kg overweight but the kind lady didn't say a word... I was very relieved!Arrival in Bruxelles some hours later. I met my mum and I felt like the characters in "Où es-tu?" from Lévi.

I was finally in LLN at 5pm. Time to go to my old house, take my post and say hello. Next step, return to my friends kot*. There started a typical student evening. You gather in a "commu" (kitchen) to chat and decide what you are going to do. As the time goes on, new people arrive or leave. The girls prepared a pasta salad and we decided to go to the lake in order to eat it outside. Of course on the way you meet at least ten people you know because everyone is going there for BBQ ;-)




At that point the sun goes down and is becoming very humid so you go back to the kot and there starts the pre-party. In the afternoon they bought alcohol and now it's time to drink it. And it's going on until we prepare ourselves to go out again. You put your worst clothes and shoes on because some surprises are coming soon... Some time later, everyone is equipped and we are ready to go. On June 26th, it is the last party of the year: Le Bal des Busés. It takes place outside on a parking. We arrived early enough to have some space but in deed you have to push back the people all the time, a kind of sport, especially for me because I'm weighting usually much less than the others. The nice surprise is that glasses of beer are flying, so you end up with a beer in the hair, on your clothes and in your shoes... smelly, I can assure you! Nevertheless good people makes good fun and we were a nice group. No problem of drunk people in our group that time. We just ended up very tired.




Back at the kot, we still have to organize the sleeping place meaning put 4 people in the kitchen on mattress and two in the rooms.

Next day, back to work! I met my tutor and did some administrative tasks. In the evening we had the "proclamation" ceremony. It means that all the students who finished their year are announced by the President of the Faculty and the Dean. It was a little bit more formal than usual as it was the final year proclamation. However many people were missing because the official graduation takes place in November (Nov 21th). Then we left Louvain for Leuven...



*kot = student flat