NAMUR, Belgium – Last summer, I worked as a handyman at the Belfast Municipal Airport. I passed a very agreeable two months mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, repainting the fuel truck, and cleaning the airplanes. I came to know the flight school's two pint-size Cessna planes intimately after a summer of washing their windshields, waxing their wings, sudsing their metallic flanks, and scrubbing their greasy bellies with a kerosene-soaked toothbrush.

Towards the end of the summer, Buzz, a neighbor and commercially-licensed pilot, took me along for cruise in the little red plane that would be so familiar to all Belfast residents. The cabin was so small that we were essentially sitting in each other’s laps.

Buzz lifted the airplane gently into the clear summer air, bringing us in a wide curve over our little town of Belfast. We floated over my favorite childhood park, my house, and my school. To our left, the landscape flowed to the horizon in an endless swath of green. To our right, the rolling verdurous carpet of Midcoast Maine trailed its ragged fingers in the ultramarine waters of Penobscot Bay.

More than eight months after my aerial tour of Midcoast Maine, I climbed once more into the cozy cabin of a small propeller airplane. This time, however, the pilot spoke French.

Pierre, the husband of my Rotary youth counsellor, had invited me to participate in a Rotary-sponsored "Day in the Air" for children that had been removed from their families by judicial order. By the end of the morning a lively group had assembled outside the Aérodrome de Namur, including about twenty-five children, most between eight and fourteen years of age.

The two pilots worked in tandem, ferrying two children and one chaperone on thirty-minute flights. I spent most of the morning among the children awaiting their "aerial baptism," relaxing on the lawn or leaning against the chain link fence to watch the airplanes coming and going.

Explaining the principles of foreign exchange to young children during my time in Europe has been an interesting experience. For many, the concept of a year abroad is difficult to process. Common questions include: How can you have more than one family? What language do you really speak? And, simply, What are you doing here? In addition to their open and inquisitive spirits, young children are often free from the polarizing lenses of cultural stereotypes. These children approached me not as an American or even as an exchange student, but rather as just another person.

Ari Snider is a Belfast Area High School junior studying in Belgium through Rotary International. He currently lives with a host family in Waterloo. His discoveries and adventures abroad have been the subject of his blog Belfast/Belgique

The grass-field aerodrome stirred to life over the course of the morning. One after another, two helicopters levitated gently over the runway before dipping forward and roaring off into the sky. A red sport biplane whipped and rolled through the hazy air, while its lumbering workhorse cousin rained a constant stream of parachuters on the surrounding fields. Later, a feisty silver airplane bearing the red Communist star ruffled our hair in a series of howling low passes. Amid all of this, our two Cessnas labored on.

My turn in sky came in the early afternoon, after a picnic lunch under a tentatively blue sky. I lifted myself carefully into the small craft and folded myself into the cozy rear seat. While Cedric performed an exterior preflight checkup, I could not help but notice that the windscreen was in sore need of a good scrubbing.

Cedric climbed into the pilot's seat, addressed a reassuring word to the visibly nervous little girl next to him, then gently opened the throttle. The engine burst into life, lurching the plane slightly forward before settling into a steady growl. Cedric took a last appraising look at the dizzying array of gauges and switches before taxiing towards the runway.

Once aligned on the grass landing strip, our fearless pilot opened the throttle. The engine whirred frantically, sending us bouncing down the runway. Cedric pulled the yoke — at once steering wheel and altitude adjuster — towards him, gently lifting the front wheel off the ground. The rear wheels followed. The repeating patchwork of asymmetrical fields and snug villages slipped steadily away below us.

The little craft bobbed like driftwood on a frothy sea, sending my stomach in a series of somersaults. Cedric leveled out at a cruising altitude of 1,800 feet, hooking us left as he did so to the follow the curling tail of the Meuse River. Within minutes we reached Namur, capital city of Wallonia, Belgium’s French-speaking southern region. Below us, the loose metropolis shouldered up to the banks of the hooking Meuse in a confused mass of brick and stone. The famed citadel wrapped its stony arms around the hilltop overlooking the city and the countryside beyond.

Cedric brought us in a 180-degree turn over the city until we were pointing back towards the airfield. Our sister airplane dropped in beside us for a minute of synchronized flight. We descended in a series of gut-flippng maneuvers, dropping low over the small houses and tidy lawns. The little plane floated over the landing strip for several interminable seconds as Cedric probed cautiously for solid ground. The rear wheels touched down smoothly in a fleeting cloud of dust. The front wheel followed an instant later.

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