Within the first eight days of landing in Brussels, you must report to your local government administrative building to declare your residency in Belgium; it's your first step to integrating into Belgian society and is the way you eventually receive your I.D. card in the mail. You wait for hours in line just to complete some paperwork, which is just the first step of a much longer process to obtain this I.D. card. This was my introduction - a rite of passage - to "the wonderful Belgian bureaucracy" that everyone had warned me about.
Integrating into Brussels has shown me how much this community is like an onion with lots of layers to peel back and discover before I can fully understand its complexities. I remember hesitating to speak English during my first couple of weeks. We had learned in an orientation that Belgium is split into four regions - Dutch-speaking Flanders (north), French-speaking Brussels (central/middle of Flanders) and Wallonia (south), and the German-speaking region (south-east). Bearing this in mind, I wanted to try to learn the language through immersion; in my experience, it's been the fastest way to connect to others. However, that was more difficult than anticipated.
