A Day in my Life at Leuven: Has it Really been a Week!!

Has it really been a week?  I just can’t believe that one week to the day I arrived, jet-lagged, disoriented and excited, in Leuven.  I figured one day I would want to remember this first week, and so here is a little reflection of a day in my life at Leuven.

I wake up around 6 am each day. The city is quiet.  The sun is out—this is an improvement since it rained the first 5 days I was here!!!  A good friend gave me his coffee maker.  It makes dark, black coffee.  Yes!  I throw open my windows without any screens and sip my coffee while praying, sitting in my bed, and munching on granola bars and bananas.  The bed is absolutely awful.  The pillows are misshaped.  Yet I actually sleep well in it.  Go figure.  I don’t normally shower in the morning.  In fact, I’m not showering regularly (yep, I wrote that).  When you have to walk down one flight of stairs and share a small, impossible to turn around in shower including a malfunctioning head you probably wouldn’t shower much either.

I dress, brush, and sanitize, then I am out my door.  I walk quietly in the house because my one roommate is still sleeping—in fact he will be sleeping at least until noon.  He is from the Netherlands, though with a Chinese mother.  Speaks a little English.  Studying Chinese.  We don’t interact much because of our schedules.  Out the door I go praying I don’t forget my keys.  I don’t know what I would do if I got locked out.

Then it’s walking the streets.  I’ve never walked so much in my life.  I bought new Nike’s for running and now wear them everyday to save my feet.  The cobblestone streets can do a number them.  Dodging cars and praying I don’t get hit by a bike (yes, it will be a bike that does me in here) I take in this ancient city with its Medieval layout as I make my way to the German school about a mile away.  I enter class and am always the first one there.  The teacher smiles and doesn’t even attempt to talk to me in German except with Guten Morgan.  We have a mutual understanding!

The class is one of the most humbling things I have ever done.  I knew no German (null, nicht) before coming here.  All the other students except one man are just out of high school and I’m thinking I could have had them in a youth group in another life.  And they know some German.  Or at least they know Dutch, which is so close that they all understand the teacher who doesn’t speak any English at the beginning. I don’t know what the heck is going on.  I can’t even follow a basic dialogue.  Drowning, I begin to master the art of observing everyone else.  I begin to float and even swim. Little by little I make progress.  I will get through this.  I actually love it.  But boy it takes patience. 

We are in class for 8 hours a day.  8 hours!!!  I have lunch period where I run errands: groceries, bank (I am still trying to get money lined up), and the post-office.  I cook myself some food and then run back to class.

We end class and I walk quickly home to change.  I throw on my clerics and I’m off to Mass.

The church I found here is glorious.  It is truly like a Mother.  It gives me a sense of community and stability.  It’s made up of people from all around the world.  It provides a home for so many looking for spiritual nourishment in this once Catholic stronghold. I can hardly pray, though, and hope I say a valid Mass since my mind is mush from the German.

After Mass I walk some more to get home.  I then either pass out on my bed for 10 minutes or proceed to cook supper.   I love having to cook, even if it takes time.  I have just enough cookware to get by (thanks again, Thomas!).  Eating out here is expensive, though sometimes necessary.  But the grocers have good variety and I am finally learning what I am buying (it is in Dutch, of course).

After supper (and Evening Prayer) I go to my room.  Now it’s study time.  Using a great Internet program and also my notes I try to make sense of what I learned this day.  I can tell my brain is tired, though, but ironically I have good physical energy.

Usually I’m up until midnight or later as I continue studying, sometimes Facetiming with my family (I am in contact with them more now in some ways since I have been here, despite the seven hour difference).   My sister just had her first child.  I am an Uncle!  Wow!!

Sleep pretty much just about overtakes me and I discern whether or not I am going to shower. Sometimes yes, and it is flip-flops on down the stairs into the closet bathroom (I think Harry Potter had it better).  Sometimes, its no.

Back in my room my fan comes on, Night Prayer commences, and then I lay in bed trying to shut out the German phrases.  Morning will come soon.  I just about fall asleep and I hear footsteps.  My housemate is going to the bar.  Yikes. 

It’s a crazy experience.  But I am so thankful to be here. Has it really been a week?!?