First day at Work

23 Feb 2010
My name is James and I've just begun a six month adventure in Belgium. I'm South African but have been living in New Zealand for the past five years of my life. It all started about ten months ago when an afs representitive came to my school to talk about the community service program - a side of afs which is not very well known. This caught my interest as I never really liked the idea of going to school in another country but desperately wanted to travel, particularly in Europe.

So here I am at last, in Belgium (after a few visa issues and a delayed not to mention highly stressful flight). Today is my fourth day in the country and my first day at work. The community service assignment I was given is in an organisation called STAMP Media. It is, in essence, a youth press agency, mainly covering current issues and news from the perspective of young people.

I was a little nervous about today but once I met people and learned about the kind of work I may be doing I felt excited at the prospect of working here. Because it was my first day there was some uncertainty about what exactly I would be doing but it seems that it's fairly flexible. I went out with a couple of my new colleagues to cover a team building exercise involving rope skipping . I was all too aware that I wouldn't be able to do any better than the poor souls attempting some advanced skipping but at the same time I couldn't help but laugh at their enthusiasm in the face of their glaring ineptitude. The fact that every now and again someone would manage to get themselves completely tangled in the rope or hit themselves over the head with the ends certainly did not still my amusement.

The branch of STAMP Media I am working in is in Antwerp. In fact I have never visited the city before today so it's a day of many firsts. From what I've seen today it's a beautiful city, full of old styled buildings with a massive ancient cathedral (from the 1100's I'm told) which I can see rom the window of my work. Anyway, hopefuly I'll survive here. Only time will tell I guess...