First assignment and Dutch lesson

24 Feb 2010
Today I got my first assignment from Stamp Media. A nearby school was participating in a march to raise funds for the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti. My job was to take photo's of the march using a professional camera. I had never used one of the professional kind before (thank god for the automatic setting!) and was a little concerned that I would screw-up spectacularly. I joined up with another photographer called Haryo, who still goes to school but works for Stamp Media in his spare time, and Emi who is an intern and who conducted the interviewing of participants in the march. We followed the march through the tunnel under the river Schelde (Antwerp's main river) and once we felt we'd gleaned more than our fair share of photo's and interviews Emi and myself went back to Stamp Media. The powers that be showed me how to play around with the pictures, which I dutifully did and despite my initial reservations I thought they turned out pretty well all things considered.

In the afternoon I had my first Dutch lesson in Brussels. ( 3 hours long!!!) I left a ittle early from work but still managed to completely mess up the train trip. I unwittingly caught a train with lots of stops along the way so I was late, you again, and that's without me going into detail about finding the place from the Brussels station. (A note to the numerous belgian governments: please put up some more obvious street signs!!!) Yes... well it was a mixed afternoon, on the one hand it was nice to finally meet the other volunteers, (because my flight was delayed I missed the arrival camp and so hadn't met them yet) but on the other hand I had to get through a sizable amount of Dutch. Overall it was good. Some of us went out for a couple of drinks and a meal afterward. All the volunteers seemed really nice and easy to get along with, which, you know, I can deal with. So I'm hoping I'll be able to hang out with a few of them at some point soon. Although a lot of them live quite far away which could be problematic. Would be good to start some kind of social life... ( don't judge me okay, I just got here)

Getting home took a while. I left Brussels a little later than anticipated and sadly there were no more trains going directly to Turnhout (where I now live) which meant I had to take a train to Antwerp, then to Lier, then to Turnhout. This took a solid 2 hours, not including the walk home from the station. Man I complain a lot. It really wasn't that bad. Just a little long. (But then I ramble on for ages about the arbitrary facts my life so maybe I shouldn't talk)

The thing about having such long days now is that I practically fall into bed when I get home. Then wake up a few hours later just to start it all again...