A-B-C - go!
Time for another hobby post - last spring I wrote about my leisure activities in Finland (in Finnish), and I figured it would be time to do that in Belgium as well. Already six weeks (or seven?) have passed, and I have had plenty of time to slip into some kind of routine life rhythm.
Dancing classes which I started promisingly in the beginning of October were annoyingly cut for some weeks because of a very persistent cough, which is now slowly fading away (I hope!). I have been able to go to flamenco classes for a few times, ballet and last Sunday also for a sabar class (Senegalese dance).
A in the title of this post refers to another favourite sport of mine: the annual football league of the trainees is about to start. I was hesitant to join the team of our Directorate-General first, because it looked like I would be the only woman. In the end, that was a requirement for the team to play - to have at least one female player on the pitch during the whole match - and I'm now one of the two women in our team which we proudly named Aidletico-RELEX. AIDletico refers to AIDCO, our department of development cooperation, and RELEX is the department for foreign relations with whom we joined forces. Our amazingly stylish badge was photoshopped by our captain Nick, and some football-minded readers might recall its style from somewhere...
B is for Belgian beer. I never imagined I could start liking beer enough to actually voluntarily order it in a café-bar, but it has happened in Brussels! The local one (well, there are 800 of them) beers are often quite treacherous since they can be triply strong compared to the normal ones, with 11-12 percent of alcohol. Enough about beer :)
C is for carols: today was the first rehearsal for annual European Commission Christmas carol choir. It was unlike anything I expected - the choir leader was a British chap who seemed to be walking straight out from a Monty Python show. No warm-up, no playing through the song once with a piano which was there, just singing the songs off-hand like that.
I could barely manage with reading (and singing!) the notes, but the lyrics were even more tricky. Although I have been used to singing songs in various languages in the Kassandra choir in Helsinki, we have never had this many languages during one rehearsal: Dutch, French, English, German, Polish, Slovenian, Czech, Romanian and Latin so far. More to come next week! It was a bit of a shock, but most of the choir members had participated in this for many years already and were much more accustomed to the style. Other trainees were quite devastated as well, it seemed...
Besides kicking, dancing and singing, I have also been doing voluntary work (surprise, surprise!). Although now it is for selfish goals: EuropeAid trainees are fund-raising money for an eventual field trip after the end of the traineeship, in the beginning of March in 2010. So far we have had cake-sales, selling gluhwein (glögi) outside the European Parliament on a square, organized a speed-dating event (photo is from there) and contacted some companies for sponsoring. We also have our own blog, http://aidco2010.wordpress.com, where all the latest and upcoming events will be reported!
This week has been particularly Finno-Ugric: on Tuesday I went to see a documentary by Imbi Paju at the European Parliament called "Sisters Across the Sea" (which will apparently be also shown on Finnish TV, FST5 on 30 November according to an article in Kaleva).
I quite liked the documentary which verged on the brink of being too cheesy, but stayed on the better side. It told about the relations of Finnish and Estonian women's and girls' associations before the Second World War - for Finland the obvious organization was Lotta Svärd. This event was organized by the Estonian Representation, and the hosts were two MEPs, one from Estonia and another one from Finland, Heidi Hautala who is also the president of the sub-committee on Human Rights in the European Parliament.
Yesterday there was another Finnish-Estonian event, this time organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute, but held in the Goethe Institute. Sofi Oksanen, Finnish-Estonian writer presented her latest book "Puhdistus" (FIN) / "Puhastus" (EST) / "Zuivering" (NL) / "Purge" (ENG, upcoming next year) and was interviewed by another Estonian MEP, Indrek Tarand. This Tarand became famous even in the Finnish newspapers for running as an independent candidate and getting almost 30 percent of all the votes for himself in the last EU parliament elections in Estonia. Pretty impressing!
All in all: it's busy in Brussels, but I like it! Although I wish I had a few more hours in a day...
Dancing classes which I started promisingly in the beginning of October were annoyingly cut for some weeks because of a very persistent cough, which is now slowly fading away (I hope!). I have been able to go to flamenco classes for a few times, ballet and last Sunday also for a sabar class (Senegalese dance).
A in the title of this post refers to another favourite sport of mine: the annual football league of the trainees is about to start. I was hesitant to join the team of our Directorate-General first, because it looked like I would be the only woman. In the end, that was a requirement for the team to play - to have at least one female player on the pitch during the whole match - and I'm now one of the two women in our team which we proudly named Aidletico-RELEX. AIDletico refers to AIDCO, our department of development cooperation, and RELEX is the department for foreign relations with whom we joined forces. Our amazingly stylish badge was photoshopped by our captain Nick, and some football-minded readers might recall its style from somewhere...
B is for Belgian beer. I never imagined I could start liking beer enough to actually voluntarily order it in a café-bar, but it has happened in Brussels! The local one (well, there are 800 of them) beers are often quite treacherous since they can be triply strong compared to the normal ones, with 11-12 percent of alcohol. Enough about beer :)
C is for carols: today was the first rehearsal for annual European Commission Christmas carol choir. It was unlike anything I expected - the choir leader was a British chap who seemed to be walking straight out from a Monty Python show. No warm-up, no playing through the song once with a piano which was there, just singing the songs off-hand like that.
I could barely manage with reading (and singing!) the notes, but the lyrics were even more tricky. Although I have been used to singing songs in various languages in the Kassandra choir in Helsinki, we have never had this many languages during one rehearsal: Dutch, French, English, German, Polish, Slovenian, Czech, Romanian and Latin so far. More to come next week! It was a bit of a shock, but most of the choir members had participated in this for many years already and were much more accustomed to the style. Other trainees were quite devastated as well, it seemed...
Besides kicking, dancing and singing, I have also been doing voluntary work (surprise, surprise!). Although now it is for selfish goals: EuropeAid trainees are fund-raising money for an eventual field trip after the end of the traineeship, in the beginning of March in 2010. So far we have had cake-sales, selling gluhwein (glögi) outside the European Parliament on a square, organized a speed-dating event (photo is from there) and contacted some companies for sponsoring. We also have our own blog, http://aidco2010.wordpress.com, where all the latest and upcoming events will be reported!
This week has been particularly Finno-Ugric: on Tuesday I went to see a documentary by Imbi Paju at the European Parliament called "Sisters Across the Sea" (which will apparently be also shown on Finnish TV, FST5 on 30 November according to an article in Kaleva).
I quite liked the documentary which verged on the brink of being too cheesy, but stayed on the better side. It told about the relations of Finnish and Estonian women's and girls' associations before the Second World War - for Finland the obvious organization was Lotta Svärd. This event was organized by the Estonian Representation, and the hosts were two MEPs, one from Estonia and another one from Finland, Heidi Hautala who is also the president of the sub-committee on Human Rights in the European Parliament.
Yesterday there was another Finnish-Estonian event, this time organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute, but held in the Goethe Institute. Sofi Oksanen, Finnish-Estonian writer presented her latest book "Puhdistus" (FIN) / "Puhastus" (EST) / "Zuivering" (NL) / "Purge" (ENG, upcoming next year) and was interviewed by another Estonian MEP, Indrek Tarand. This Tarand became famous even in the Finnish newspapers for running as an independent candidate and getting almost 30 percent of all the votes for himself in the last EU parliament elections in Estonia. Pretty impressing!
All in all: it's busy in Brussels, but I like it! Although I wish I had a few more hours in a day...
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