Brussels has become Flemish!

On that morning of the 9th of February I got up early to go to the Midi Station of Brussels for my first day at my new school. I took the underground and made the same journey as if I was going to buy my olives on the Midi Market on Sundays. I arrived there about thirty minutes in advance and had a look at some advertisement in the entry which stated: “Jullie zijn welkom op vierenwintig februari bij onze schoolbal” I looked left and saw “Onthaal” : that was where I needed to be thirty minutes later. I had time to look around and I ventured in the schoolyard where the spoken language suddenly was: Dutch. I was not looking for something in particular but I was rather thirsty. So I thought that I could use these twenty-five minutes left to find the dining hall of my new school. I went upstairs and I found its door on my right. A nice and colourful room with just in front of me what could possibly become my relief: a drinks machine. I prepared my coins and paid attention to the note on it: “Deze automaat is defect” so I concluded that it would be wiser to use the one just next to it. But as I looked further on my left I saw another drinks machine at the other side of the dining hall. This would be my excuse to walk slowly through the hall and look for a perfect place to sit without looking strange or “coming out of space”. I bought my orange juice and sat down on a chair with one of the huge tables where other students were sitting and heavily talking about everyday life. I took some magazines and began to read. I couldn’t concentrate as I wanted to get familiar with my new surrounding. They all spoke Dutch or were busy with their computer following the conversation of their mates with one ear. At that time I realised that I made the right choice. Indeed I was in Brussels but in the Brussels I wanted to discover: “the Dutch speaking Brussels”. I knew I live in a multilingual city with its different governments, institutions and educational systems but I wanted to experience that and I got what I wanted. I can indeed travel in my own city. The contact with the class has been very open although the first teacher we met did not know about us. She is not very often at school so that must be the reason why she did not know. We have ten hours class per week. Which is not very much you are thinking but we have a lot to do at home. We need to read four English novels and study grammar and advanced vocabulary. So the first two weeks we had to buy twelve books and we will have to take an exam for it. So it is not what we call “relax months of study”. But I really don’t regret to do it. The teachers and our classmates are friendly and it is always nice to discover who the Flemish students of Brussels are. They have another way to give lesson as they use a lot of media in the class. The teacher uses it to give classes and the students use often the computers too to watch short sequences on “Youtube”. So they all deal with a lot of media and information. The school is situated next to the Midi Station so the majority of them come from towns out of Brussels. I met some of them who live in Brussels and I like to ask them what they actually think of their capital city as the Dutch speaking media too often spreads a negative image of Brussels among them. I could call it a rediscovery of my own town.