Beginning days of Vulcanus

I've stayed in Brussels, Belgium for 3 days. Here, I will describe these days from March 29th, when I left Japan.

3/29

I arrived at Narita Airport at 17:00. Since I seemed to have time till the departure time 21:55, I paid 500 yen for 24 hours connection to the internet. This lead to a tragedy: the loss of my diary booklet... I jotted down the password on my diary so that afterwards I refer to it to log in to the internet. Just before the departure, I connected to the internet and left the seat in a hurry. That is where I lost the diary, I believe.

As for the flight, it was not that hard this time. It must be mainly because I had friends to talk with. Thank you two! Having said that, it was still not pleasant flight, for I couldn't sleep well and I had stiff shoulders.

3/30

We arrived at Char De Gaulle Airport at 4:00 am. The train from there to Brussels, our destination, was 7:47, so we took a plenty of seats and waited for it. After boarding, the train turned to be 1st class car! It was really comfortable, and I enjoyed the trip.

At around this time, I felt that I was a bit passive because the trip was like a group travel and that I must be more proactive.

When we got to the hotel I stay now, it was just after 9, then we deposited our luggages and left for sightseeing. Nonetheless I was not so eager to go sightseeing for exhaustion from the flight, I ended up walking for almost 5 hours till the check-in time. After checking in, I bought a new diary booklet for the lost one.

3/31

It was the first day of the three-day EU seminar. First, we got to know each other by talking about hobby, favorite color, and so on. Then we listened to a lecture on up-t-date EU information, and visited EU parliament.

The self introduction part taught me that my English proficiency was not much high in the group. This is in a way comfortable for me, because it has not seemed to me beneficial to think my English proficiency as one of my identities.

4/1

The second day of the EU seminar. What seemed important are:

1. I need to seek the moderate extent of assertiveness. i.e. Be aggressive, but not too much.

2. Only when you understand and agree to an explanation, you can nod. Otherwise, the speaker will misunderstand that you agree.

3. Confirm by e-mail what you discussed with your boss

4. Examine complains about the circumstance whether they could be improved by our effort or not. If not, don't try to change the circumstance and just adapt to it.

What was most impressive for me through these days is that every member who joins thisprogram has relatively higher independence. It's admirable for sure, but sometimes it leads to a breakup of the group, or results in too many leaders in the group. This interest me much..