Life on the farm

Over the last few days I've really got to feel how it is to live in the country. First it was the pumpkin fest. Which was a cool event, lots and lots of pumpkins and other different stuff. Amongst other things the local alcohol "Peket". This is a drink which is about 20-40% and is flavoured with an extreme variety of tastes, from Absinthe and Cannabis to chocolate and Speculoos(a cookie which tastes kind of like gingerbread). The whole repertoire can be seen in the photo album below. And the people here are awesome at making sculptures as you can also see in the album.

And today when me and my host brother was on our way home he told me that I would have to help them capturing two of the sheep as they were going to slaughter them. And to your pleasure and amusement I didn't film this one. But if you really want to have an idea, picture the spray from when you cut the throat of a fish combined with a small garden hose. But as they sheep was killed two things came into my mind: Does sheep ever realize that this is the end? It certainly didn't seem like it as one of them started eating just before his head got pulled up and a bolt was fired into his skull (sorry for the lingual image there, but that's how you kill them). Another thing which struck me was how close in reaction the sheep were to a fish. If you've ever gutted a fish you know how it have got post-mortem muscle spasms. But with the sheep it is a lot more, real. Like you see the sheep in the back of the garden just walking around and suddenly they are lying there blank eyed (yes, that actually happens, kind of creepy) and their feet are running on in thin air. And I also wondered, does all house held animals suffer from the Stockholm syndrome or do they actually like it?

I've also figured out one of Belgium cultural differences, which almost got me in trouble. The thing which I'd done was to not ask for permission to go somewhere, as normal I just told someone in my family (in this case my host brother) which apparently didn't suffice. And for some reason which is still not clear to me they called my counselor to say that I was gone instead of calling me on my cellphone and ask where I was, with who, and when I would return, which is apparently the information they need to let me go places.

But as I've done lately I'm going to stop here. Keeping it within reading length ;) So if you want to have all my photos and stuff before anyone else be sure to subscribe and make sure to comment ;) Oh and a mini-vote, if you like the short posts better than the long ones, thumbs-up, otherwise thumbs-down (please judge solely on length and not on content)

Oh and I added two photos of the AFS students at a water-pipe bar to the my Liege album (don't worry, smoking is not my style, just went with them as we was out on the town):