Hello my faithful readers:
To say that I've had a rough couple of weeks would be the understatement of the year, yet I still realize that my problems are nothing when compared with your average person's issues. I have a lot to be thankful for, like the fact that I have a roof over my head, food to eat (most of the time) and the clothes on my back. That's enough to give me the foundation of Maslow's Hierarchy, although yesterday the "safety" I felt in my (temporary) home was threatened.
Yesterday, I had a break-in to my studio apartment here in Leuven. Thankfully I was not here at the time (I was at school all day doing group work) and they really only made out with my cameras and lenses. I'm really pissed off, a little afraid and even more upset about having my space invaded and having someone to go through my things. I realize that in the scheme of things this is something that won't kill me, but make me smarter, tougher and hopefully more careful in the future.
When I came home yesterday, the first problem I noticed in my apartment, was that one of my shirts was in the trash can and that I hadn't put it there. The first thought I had was that my landlord had come in for some emergency and done some work because a few of my storage boxes had been moved and a lot of the bags, clothes, papers were all over the place. Someone went through all of my papers, they rifled through my passport and my travel wallet. I know because they tossed all of this stuff on my floor.
I called my landlord to make sure he didn't have anyone doing any work in here first. He told me that someone else in our building upstairs had their lock broken in a break in attempt - this didn't happen to me, because my lock did not look like it had been tampered at all. Hearing this last night, only made me more angry because I felt like this is information that should have been shared with all of the tenants in the building.
After speaking to him on the phone, he was no help because he was in Brussels at the time, I went to the police station near my building. It was closed, so I marched back home and called one of my friends here who kindly talked me down and helped me to find the number of the police. I called them and they sent officers over about a half hour later.
The two officers came in and looked around, asked me a few questions and had me to fill in a report. I was hoping that they would do some fingerprinting or something, but they didn't and they said that it would be impossible to get good prints off my leather camera bag. This is my second experience with the Belgian police in the last two weeks. I have to say that although they have all been nice, I believe I'd be a be a much more thorough police officer than they seem to be.
Leuven is supposed to be one of the safest cities in the world. Before yesterday I felt like it was and some of my classmates have left their doors unlocked here in Leuven. Now for me, it's a place where I will be looking over my shoulders and giving everyone the side eye wondering if they broke into my apartment and rifled through my things and stole my camera. This whole experience makes me even more homesick and I realize now, more than ever, just how charmed my life has been up until now. I'm just hoping that the rest of this year will be smooth sailing from here on out.
I have to say here how thankful I am for all of the calls, texts, facebook messages of love and support I've received from everyone. You have no idea how much it means to me and it will take me a little time to get back to normal, but you are helping me to speed the process up!
Mwuah,
Georgia Peach
