Next stop, Belgium

Well, I'm back! This time I'll be going to Belgium.

For those of you who were fans of my year-long blog of my Korean adventures, thanks for coming back! For those just joining me, thanks for checking out my blog, come back often because I like to update!

Now is a good time to tell everyone that the address of my Korean blog has changed so that I could make this blog a separate one. Here are my blogs now:

iankivellkorea.blogspot.com
iankivellbelgium.blogspot.com

Add to your favourites!! Once in Belgium, I will update often!

Alright, down to business! Here are some technical things about the blog - if anything is written in blue, you can click on it and you will be brought to a page with more information about whatever it is that has been 'linked'. If you want to comment (which I love!) feel free to click the link under the post that will say "# comments".

On the right side you can find links to old posts, which you can check out by clicking the month they were written in.

I think that's it about the technical blog stuff.

In 27 days, I will be going to Belgium to start another adventure. The conditions are a little different this time than when I went to Korea. I am going with the working holiday visa program. This time around, more is left up to me. I will have to find my own job, my own place to live, and arrange for all of the documentation to be completed properly before I go. All of that was taken care of for Korea.

Thankfully, I have been hard at work and I already have most of those things in order. I am still job hunting though.

I will be staying in Brussels which is the capital city of Belgium. Belgium is a country in Europe who's next door neighbours are (starting from the north and working clockwise) The Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg and France and as such, the official languages are Dutch, French and German (in that order). I took it upon myself to represent the data in graph form:


Here you can see that the Dutch community is the biggest at 59%, followed by the French at 40% and the German at only 1%.

The Dutch that is spoken in Belgium is called Flemmish.

I will be in Brussels, which is a French speaking city contained within the region of Flemmish speaking Belgium.

One very important thing to know about Belgium is that everything from politics to personal relationships to job status... everything is centred around langauge. Generally speaking, the Flemmish do NOT like the French, and vice versa.

So. I have been practicing French and lots has come back to me. I feel confident with my level of French.

That's just a quick introduction to Belgium, and my new blog. Feel free to visit either of my blogs whenever you want (this is the only active one at the moment). I will be adding many pictures and stories as time goes on. Thanks for visiting!

I will leave you with this picture - it's St. Michael's cathedral in Brussels. I love buildings and architecture, so you'll see lots of these types of picutres here.

(edit) you can also play with my Belgian fish :) Just run your mouse over them and maybe you can feed them too (just click!)