Kayaking In Belgium

Today, Saturday, I woke up at 7am. Why, do you ask? Because I had to meet up with two other exchange students, Talia and Gaby (Mexico), at 8am to go kayaking with Rotex! Rotex is an organization through Rotary that is formed by people who went on exchange in past years. They organize all kinds of fun activities for the exchange students. It's a great program!

All of the exchange students met around 9am at a train station, Houyet. There, Talia and I met up with our fantastic friend Oakley (from Oklahoma). From there, we all walked over to the river to prepare for our "descente de la Lesse". We stood around for a while, talking, paying the twelve-euro fee, eating, and checking in. Finally one of the people from Rotex stood up and gave us the instructions for what to do. And I am proud to say that the first time around, he spoke in French, and I understood every word! That is when we found out that we would be doing 20 kilometers!! The next step was to pick our partners. I went with Oakley. Each pair was then to get a bucket, which we filled with the things that we wanted to take on the kayak with us, but we didn't want to get wet. Oakley and I put our lunches in there, and I also took my camera. We sealed up our buckets, threw the rest of our things on a truck to meet us at the end, picked up our paddles and life-vests and waited to get our kayaks. While we waited, we decided to have some fun taking pictures with the ridiculous life-vests and paddles.

Finally, it was time for us to go. We got in our kayaks, two by two, and they slid us down a sort of slide that let us out into the river. Luckily, the splash was not that bad, and we were able to start right away! It didn't take long for Oakley and I to realize that we are a fantastic team of kayakers! We took off right away, and kept going full force until the lunch stop. It was absolutely gorgeous. It reminded me a lot of the campground that we used to keep our trailer at back in Ohio. The river was beautiful. There were trees all around that towered over us. The only downside was that the weather wasn't so hot... It was actually quite chilly and it threatened to rain. Although there were patches of the day where the sun would come out and it would be nice and warm with blue sky. But, just like Cleveland, it would change in the blink of an eye. Oakley ended up getting really soaked, because that's what happens when you go kayaking. Luckily for me, I had an extra rain jacket that I draped over my legs so that the water didn't soak through my jeans. Ingenious, I know. But a little ways in, we came across a group of guys, not with Rotary, that decided it would be a lot of fun to block our kayak and splash us with the paddles. Needless to say, we were not amused. I was lucky and didn't get too much water, but Oakley kept getting hit my water. Eventually, we were able to pass through them and get ahead.

By the it was time to stop for lunch. We ended up in front of everyone and were the first ones to get to the bank. We ate lunch at a campground with a nice little restaurant where we all ate our packed lunches and many of us bought fries, myself included. Since we were the first to arrive, we were the first to order fries, which meant that we got the freshest ones. Slowly, more and more people began to show up, and the weather got worse and worse. Unlike myself, everyone was soaked. I was luckily very dry (except my butt... But that's cause I ended up sitting in water from the beginning), but there were a bunch of people that showed up all wet. Some of them even capsized. Then it started to rain. Lovely right? So we had to take off for the second half in the rain. When it started off, it wasn't too bad; just a drizzle.

Oakley and I took off again, making good time and having a blast talking and enjoying the relaxing water. We passed a castle at one point, took some pictures, and marveled at our amazing skills at steering around obstacles and keeping such a great pace. At one point, it start to downpour, at which time I got very wet and was praising God for the waterproof coat that my host mom had provided for me. We took shelter under a tree for a few minutes until it let up a bit and continued on our merry way. We talked to other exchange students, went over some rapids and were having a great time, especially once the sun came back out.

And then, the waterfall.

I'm not exaggerating. We had to go down a waterfall. Up until this point, I was still almost completely dry. And I was happy! And then we went down the waterfall. And the splash at the end got me. A huge tsunami (ok that is an exaggeration) of water came at me and all of the sudden, my whole bottom half was soaked. We stopped for a minute on a bank right after the fall and I yelled. I was not happy. But we got back in the kayak and muscled on through. After a while, it wasn't so bad. But there was water in the kayak which was throwing off the balance and things started to get a little rough.

And then, the second waterfall.

This one was worse. So much worse. This time, I really did have a tsunami come at me. And anything on me that was dry before, was no longer dry. I was soaked through now. And it was awful. There was so much water in the kayak that we had to stop to dump it out. By this point, we were ready to be done. But we didn't know how much we had done, let alone how much was left. So we just kept going, still keeping a pretty good pace and staying at the front of the pack. After some more paddling and a little bit of whining, we finally ended up at the finish. We got out of the kayak, praised the ground, and then searched through all the bags on the truck for our changes of clothes. We then changed into dry clothes, grabbed the Rotary-provided snack (waffles of course), and headed into a café for some needed rest and warmth.

After about 2 hours of chilling, talking, meeting people and eating waffles, Talia, Gaby and I left with one of the Rotex guys who drove us to Huy to meet Talia's host mom, who then took us home. During the car ride, we listened to American pop music, talked about the Rotex guy's exchange, got lost a few times, and had quite a bit of fun! At one point, we stopped on the side of the road and from what we understood, it was because we were apparently meeting Talia's host mom there, and he was just going to leave us on the side of the highway... But it turns out that we had to drive a bit farther and then stop on the side of the road again to meet her. Which we did. We then went back home and I was dropped off first. Right away I went inside and took a nice long shower. I have never been so grateful for a hot shower in my life. I then ate dinner, which was wonderful and hot. Soup with vegetables and noodles and meatballs, lasagna, cucumber-tomato salad, and bread and cheese. Delicious. And now, I am beyond exhausted, but I am happy with my day. I got a great workout, had fun with my friends, and just had an all around good day.

So it is time for sleep. Goodnight!