The children are back in school . . . and we are too. We've attended the first week of our third Flemish class. Coincidentally we have the same teacher as we had for our first class so our progress (or lack thereof) is obvious to her. It's not our fault. Blame on these proficient English-speaking Belgians!
Our class consists of 14 members. I could hardly believe it. I figured we'd be two of five, maybe. The majority of our classmates usually come from Turkey, but this time the majority comes from Poland and Poles rarely speak English, so that's good.
From what I read, immigration out of Poland has declined in the past few years despite our class being full of them. Poland joined the EU in 2004, but was a communist country until 1989. It currently has an unemployment rate of about 12%, but they have one of the fastest growing economies in the EU mainly from the industrial sector. By comparison, Belgium's unemployment is around 8% and the U.S. is at 9%.
Poland is the bright green country just east of Germany. As you can see it's pretty big by EU standards - about the size of New Mexico. I'm still not certain what jobs they do here in Belgium, but if I had to guess it would be picking fruit.
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Besides Poles, there's one from Cameroon (west coast of Africa), one from Kenya (east coast of Africa) and one from Moldova (Moldavia in English). I had no idea where that was so I looked it up.
It looks to be about the same size as Belgium - small. And like Belgium, has had a multitude of rulers over the centuries. Even now, part of it belongs to Romania and part to the Ukraine. They speak Romanian, grow sugar beets and tobacco and make wine.
So perhaps along with a few more rules of Flemish, we may learn a little more about the world.
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