First time taking a Belgian cultural fusion class

Go around and introduce yourself

At the beginning, the teacher asked everyone to introduce themselves in English, not in French or Dutch. Tell us about your age, country, place of residence, interests and future plans. Then he opened a website with a carousel, each with the student's name written on it, and whoever went to was introduced. Very nervous and exciting, kept missing me, I was the fifth to last introduced.

class member

There were only 20 students in this class, from all over the Flemish district and Brussels. But most of them are from my city, Leuven, and most of them are international students. Most of the others are foreign spouses, and unexpectedly, because of the relationship with Belgian wives, more of them come back to the country. The students come from countries such as India, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Mexico, which are very diverse.

Course Introduction

The first class, inevitably, introduced the structure of the course and how to conduct it at the beginning, and when to find a teacher and what to find a counselor (all students who take the cultural integration class have a corresponding local counselor)

The course content is mainly divided into the following areas:

1. Belgium's history, political structure and culture
2. Transportation
3. Work
4. housing accommodation
5. Health insurance
6. public service and social welfare
7. educate
8. residency
9. entertainment
10. family
11. financial consumption

How to Calculate Grades and Assignments

You can only miss one class, the proportion of attendance is 80%, and you can't pass the class if you get less than 70%. In addition, each class has homework, which must be paid in the early morning of the day before the next class.

In addition to the assignments for each class, submit an action plan detailing specific steps on how you can stay here or adapt. After submitting the draft first, schedule a meeting with the teacher before submitting the final version. It feels pragmatic.

some useful websites

Belgian Health Agency

https://www.info-coronavirus.be/en/

Epidemic Information (Various Languages)

https://www.integratie-inburgering.be/nl/corona-meertalige-info

VRT News

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/

The bulletin (News)

https://www.thebulletin.be/

The Brussels Times

https://www.brusselstimes.com/

I feel that the ones who can stay here are either external partners or engineering departments (mainly IT, it should be relatively short of people). It seems that if I want to stay here in the future, I have to work harder~

I'm exhausted after three hours of class...