Yuba City Exchange Student Watches Brussels Attack From Afar
YUBA CITY (CBS13) — She always felt her home country was the safest in Europe, but a Belgian foreign exchange student says Tuesday's terrorist attacks changed her mind.
Olivia Poncin is completing her final year as a foreign exchange student at Yuba City High School, but she's ready to return to Belgium to support her people.
"Everybody's always like, 'Oh Belgium, it's a really tiny country' some people don't even know it exists," she said. "It's hard being here and you don't even know what's going on in your country."
She was in class while her family and friends witnessed the deadliest terror attacks in Belgium's history. They're all safe, but living in a new reality.
"It's fear, for sure, that it could happen again," she said.
Authorities say they have no evidence of another planned attack.
Last week, Belgians felt relieved after the capture of Saleh Abdeslam, the accused mastermind of the Paris attacks.
"I was like really happy nothing's going to happen anymore, nobody's nervous anymore, so I was really shocked," Poncin said.
Counterterrorism experts say Belgium is home to its own network of radical Islamists, with extremism growing in neighborhoods where Poncin grew up. But she's strongly opposed to the harsh criticism of the refugees among them.
"It's not about those people," she said. "They're not the problem. There are just some people that have different minds."
At 19 years old, Poncin says she has a lot more world to see, even as it changes around her.
"If you have to think about it, then you would not go anywhere," she said.
Poncin graduates this summer and plans to head straight home.