La Hulpe

Today when I woke up there was no electricity at the boarding. During the night a tree had fallen on the power lines and cut off all electricity to the Chateau and school. Me, Alina and Olivia then decided to bike to another castle close by, the La Hulpe Chateau. It was extremely rainy and windy while we were biking from Waterloo to La Hulpe, but it wasn't that cold and I would compare the winter in Belgium to mid autumn in Finland.
   The La Hulpe Chateau is located in a park and is open for people to visit. There is a cafe in the castle but today it was closed. The castle is from the early 19th century and is surrounded by 400 hectares of land, fields, lakes, stables and forests. It took us much longer to get to the castle than we thought and we were out and about from 13.45 to 18.15, so almost all day. When we came back the electricity was back too.

               

Merry Christmas from Belgium

Today I'm going home to Finland for Christmas. SSB celebrated the end of this year with an End of Term Ceremony in the gymnastic hall. Students from pre-school to gym performed with music and a couple of speeches were given.
   At the moment there is a Christmas market in Brussels with ice skating, light shows, stalls with Christmas stuff, a stable with real sheep in it and more. Me, Frida and Alina went christmas shopping there last weekend, ate brunch at a lovely café with fresh paninis and had a lot of fun. The light show at Grand Place, covering all the buildings was astounding and definitely worth seeing. The music and colors were amazing. Last year there was a similar amazing light show in Helsinki, on the cathedral, but this one was jaw dropping. The square was full packed and the police had to come and give people directions in which way to walk to get out. This is one of the times I've realised how many more people there are here compared to Finland.

p.s. Creds to Alina for pictures :)

SSB Lucia choir

Since October all voluntary Gym and IB students who wanted to join the SSB Lucia choir, have been practicing all the traditional Lucia songs. We were in total about fifteen students which is quite a lot for such a small school. We sang in Swedish, Norwegian, English, French and German and performed in places around Belgium. Our first performance was at a building company's christmas party, then we had performances at the Swedish representation at EU, the Swedish embassy, VOLVO's headquarters, SHAPE in Mons and the school. I was very proud of our accomplishments and we had a lot of fun together even though some of the performances were in the morning and we had to leave school at 8.00. We were even mentioned on Sweden at EU's twitter page!

Julbalen

Julbalen is an old tradition here att SSB. Students both from the Swedish GYM and IB celebrate an evening together with food, nominations and so on. Everyone was dressed like for a ball with suits for the boys and full length dresses for the girls. We were served festive food and had an amazing evening together.

Finland 97 years!

Happy independence day!

All Finnish students at SSB celebrated Finlands independence day a day early. So yesterday morning I woke up early to help prepare for the celebration. We started off by hoisting the Finnish flag. Then all the Finnish students in the lower classes had prepared some performances for all the guests, after that we ate porridge, gingerbread and joulutorttuja. There was also a Finland quiz for all students in the school and Saint Nicholas stood in the entrance hall of the castle and distributed clementines and chocolate to all in change of a song.
  After school I helped Oda decorate her gingerbread house and me and Olivia, Lisa and Oda watched the Norwegian christmas calendar and practiced doing hairstyles for Julbalen, which is being held this evening.

Waterloo

Even though it's called Scandinavian school of Brussels, SSB is not situated exactly in Brussels, but in a small place called Waterloo. Some of you may recognise the name from a song by Abba with the same title, or by the historical battle in 1815 where Napoleon was defeated by the armies of the seventh coalition.

 Waterloo is located in Walloon Brabant which is a province of Wallonia and is in the french speaking part of Belgium. The easiest way to get to Waterloo from Brussels is taking the train to Nivelles and getting off at Waterloo.
 Waterloo is one of the richest towns in Belgium and many and one fifth of the people living in Waterloo are non Belgian, French (1,237 people), Italians (537), British (503), Americans (445) and Swedish (425).  Even so I've had trouble speaking English in the shops, so now I practice my French every time I go into town. It's surprising how much you know when you are forced to speak French.
    Waterloo has a bit of everything, the main street is the Chaussée which runs through the centre of Waterloo and all the way down to the Le Lion de Waterloo, a lion statue that looks out over the Waterloo battle-field. On the Chaussée you will find different shops, cafés, a cinema, two gallerias and more. SSB is about a twenty minute walk from the centre of Waterloo, into the Wallonian forest.
   It is very calm in Waterloo most of the time and at the moment the Chaussée is decorated with Christmas lights everywhere.
  My favourite thing about Waterloo is that you live a bit out of town and it's not that big so it is much calmer than Brussels. Also we have both nature and town in Waterloo which means that if you want you can take a bike and go to one of the castles that lie on the other side of the forest.

 Welcome to Waterloo!

Thank You Alina for the pictures, Go check out her blog here!

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