So today marks three days of classes in Belgium, and we have learned so much! The phrase used in the title of this post means “Hello, nice to meet you!” in Dutch, which is part of what we learned on the first day of class. We had an introduction to some basic Dutch vowel sounds and a crash course on simple communication, like how to order food and drinks (super important haha). Another part of class this week that was really interesting was learning about the fermentation science behind beer making, and then getting to try out different beers to see how the methods affected the taste of the beer. This was the perfect way to experience so many Belgian beers! We’ve also been learning about Belgian history, Belgian plants, and how they recycle their water.
In our lectures we learned that Belgium has several sustainability labels on their products, such as Animal Welfare, so shoppers here are very informed on what products they’re buying. On the raw materials side of things, we learned there’s an abundance of farm animals in the country. Therefore, Belgian farmers have used the waste produced by these animals to fertilize their fields, which has really improved the quality of the soil. Wastewater is also recycled using constructed wetlands, which is helpful because there’s currently a shortage of water due to a lack of rain this past winter and summer. This water goes towards plants like Brussels Endives, Brussels Sprouts, and Azalea Spp. Moving on to our tours, we’ve visited VIB (Flanders Institute of Biotechnology), De Oude Kaasmakerij, and Fromunion. VIB contained a lot of high tech methods for tracking plant water levels, weights, and growth so that humans didn’t have to do so much manual work. This freed up their time to work on transporting certain DNA traits, like resistance to the heat or cold, to their plants to start tracking and breeding into future generations. De Oude and Fromunion were both about cheese production, which has been transformed into a highly efficient process with the help of machines.
I’m pretty curious about how important the sustainability practices we learned in class are in the eyes of citizens and government officials in the country. From what I’ve observed, I’d say there’s a lot of money that goes into this, and it makes me wonder about how much of the country’s budget is put toward supporting the people researching or implementing them. I’m also curious about how many students choose to go into these kinds of fields compared to others. For example, do more of their students choose to study agricultural or business topics? We have a pretty good amount of students going into agriculture at Arkansas, so I’d like to find out what Belgians typically like to study.
Speaking of differences between Arkansas and Belgium, they are seen in the little things as well as the blatantly obvious things. Starting with the blatantly obvious, the architecture is the complete opposite of anything we have in Arkansas. This is because most of the buildings here are older than Arkansas itself (older than the United States actually haha). It’s like stepping back in time to the 1500s with all of these towering Cathedrals, the castle, and the cobblestone streets. Everywhere you look is full of history, and it’s like being inside a movie set. I expected this, but was still blown away by the details in the buildings that simply just aren’t seen anywhere in America. The second big difference is the multilingualism of almost everyone in Belgium, which was what we learned about prior to the trip. The country itself speaks French, Dutch, and German, and pretty much everyone can speak English. This is great for us as tourists, but makes me wish Americans had more opportunity to practice speaking other languages than English. We take Spanish or French in high school for two years in Arkansas, but then forget it all, which is a shame! Some smaller differences that I’ve experienced are the bathrooms, the food/restaurant side of things, and the transportation. To sum it up quickly, bathrooms here are the BOMB.COM (the walls go all the way from ceiling to floor with no holes between the doors, so get it together America), the stoverij, chocolate covered waffles, Belgian fries, and beer are A+, there’s no splitting the bill (bring cash and get Venmo), tipping is not a thing, and literally everyone rides their bike to get where they wanna go. There are others, but this blog post would be way longer than it already is. I guess you’ll just have to come here and experience it all yourself!
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My name is Brooke Larkin, and I’m an Industrial Engineering student at the University of Arkansas. For the next two weeks I’ll be posting about my experiences and thoughts on everything I do in Belgium. Thanks for checking in!
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Senior Industrial Engineering major Brooke Larkin is spending the May intersession 2019 in Belgium with our
U of A Faculty-Led: Sustainability in the Euro Food System with the help of our
Office of Study Abroad Scholarship and the
College of Engineering.
Read more from Brooke at
https://sites.uark.edu/brlarkin/Don't miss your opportunity to study or intern abroad! Start your search at
http://studyabroad.uark.edu/search/
