Thursday, May 17, 2012

100 jours and other bêtises

Normally, as the days until the end of the year dwindle down to a tiny 100, schools across Belgium have fêtes de cent jours.  These seem to vary from school to school, (in style and in date... seeing as my 100 jours was about 70 jours late) but all include the rhétos (seniors) dressing up in costumes.  At Liège 1, people in costumes ranging from superheros to cartoon characters to religious figures (I was surprised, too, to see at least four monks, a nun, and a rabbi) had a "flash mob" during the break, followed by a massive squirt gun fight and an after-school barbeque for the rhétos.

Me (a superhero) with two Standard de Liège (soccer) players
and 3 of the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

With a "pregnant" teenager and a character from a French ad campaign
(look hereor here to see a sample)


The flashmob was a little less spontaneous and less well-organized than might have been ideal, but still fun.  We were supposed to do "Thriller" but the dance turned out to be too hard to learn for us and it got changed at the last minute to the "Cha Cha Slide," which somehow ended up still being too complicated, but a good time.

The water fight got a little crazy, and ended up being everyone getting revenge; I would get caught in the crossfire between two classmates, send a little splash at whoever had initiated it, and things would spiral upwards until people were filling up buckets and dumping them over each others' heads.  It was a sunny day, at least, which meant that we dried off relatively quickly, but the floor of the locale turned into a pretty muddy sloop.

We all went out into the carré afterwards, in costume, to show off, which was doubly fun for me because I could show off to all the other exchange students there as well.

(Just to brag a little more, I'm now enjoying a 4-day weekend, including a trip to Gent tomorrow, haha! Go Catholicism being a big deal in Europe!)

À bientôt!

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