It is officially less than 6 weeks until I move to Brussels!!!
Scary or what?! I'd been trying to avoid thinking about it but it eventually caught up with me thanks to all these ridiculous year abroad meetings we've been having. Don't get me wrong, I understand that health and safety is important to talk about prior to the YA, but teaching me not to hold out my purse on busy streets or to avoid living with psychopaths seems pretty self-explanatory. But anyway. These meetings have been getting me really worked up and stressed out about the amount of paperwork I need to get done and also the lack of funds I'm going to have for my first few months in Brussels. Uh oh. I'm hoping I'll have enough in my savings to fund my life up until around September when I should receive my student loan and my Erasmus grant, but it'll be tough going until then.
I've been emailing lots of people to try and find somewhere to live and I think I may have found somewhere! I'm keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that it goes through, but if it does I'll be living with 3 girls; a Greek, an Italian and a French girl. The flat is right around the corner from my work and there's a Lidl 15 minutes away. Winning.
Now that it's getting super close, I've started trying to plan my travelling. I'm hoping that if I have activities planned for each weekend (whether it's with my potential new housemates or on my own), it means that even if I hate my job I'll be able to escape each weekend and see somewhere new. I think my first couple of weekends will obviously just be spent exploring Brussels and figuring out where I am. I also want to try and get the bus across to Paris, although I'll probably try and meet somebody there as navigating Paris alone doesn't sound much fun. Bruges is a definite must; I'll just get the train there as it's only about an hour away. I'd like to get to Cologne when the Christmas markets are on as it's so close to Brussels too. Maybe Luxembourg too, just because I've never been and am intrigued what it'd be like. And finally I'm hoping to get the bus over to Amsterdam and meet Emma there! I think they're the only major cities I can get to cheaply by bus/train, but if I find anyway of getting somewhere else for a cheap weekend I'll definitely do it!
I've also started saying goodbye to my friends which is really tough. I said bye to Emma this weekend (although we've now arranged to meet up again, so it was a sort of fake goodbye haha) and it was so difficult, I cried my eyes out on the train. It's just crazy saying bye to people and realising how long it's going to be before I see them again, and the fact that when I do I'll (hopefully) be settled into a new country! Time flies by so fast...
So again, this was a really rambly post just explaining where I'm at and how I'm feeling about the whole year abroad situation at the moment. I thought it would be nice to document all my feelings before, during and after, kind of like a diary. I'll just write stuff whenever I fancy it and it will be about anything I want, whether it's raving about a great day or ranting about a horrible week. Just my little place to share my life!
Emma
