The Past Few Days

The weekend was pretty much uneventful.  We stayed out late and woke up in the afternoon!  It was GREAT.  They had a jazz festival here this week.  There were about 4 areas that had different music.  We went to the show near St. Catherine (right down the street from our hotel) and the one in the Grand Place.  While we were at Grand Place, it started raining, but it was so awesome!  The band was really good and we all stayed and got soaking wet...but it was worth it!  Sunday was spent working on some homework and projects we have to do for classes so it was a pretty lazy day.  Monday started school again.  We had IS for 3 hours, had an hour to eat lunch and get over to the other college for our psych class!  Luckily, we didn't have to sit in psych for 3 hours...that would be a lot of school! Everyone was really tired so they all went to take naps.  Erin and I decided to skip the nap and walk around Brussels to find a pastry shop.  Can you believe that in Brussels we can't find one good pastry shop?!  All of the shops closed around 6 so Erin and I decided to stop by Pizza Hut (yes, I am longing for american food!), got a pepperoni pizza to go and came back to the hotel to watch Friends!  It was a really nice, relaxing time.  Today we had psychology in the morning and a field trip to a brewery this afternoon.  It was beautiful and sunny outside this morning and raining by this afternoon...I guess that is Brussels weather for you:)  In psychology today we watched to documentaries.  One on Islamic extremists and one on "Jesus Camps", basically christian extremists.  The first one was disgusting.  It showed people being beheaded and killed and burned/ drug through the street.  The second one was just plain frightening because all of the children were basically being brainwashed.  I mean, I went to church camp when I was little, but this was nothing like that.  These kids were speaking in tongues, and the "preachers" told them that they were all hypocrites.  The children were all crying and it was just a really gross documentary.  We had to answer questions on the videos, but I think everyone was just ready to get out of there!  The brewery was cool.  They didn't have the place set up very well and all we did was stand in one place and listen to a man talk for about half an hour.  We were up high on a walkway that led to a little landing.  Well Janet and I, plus our friends, were all stuck in the back of the landing so we couldn't see or hear anything.  It was ok though because we had a little photo shoot session going on.  So I really don't know how beer is made, but I'm ok with that because we all had a good time taking pictures! :)  After the talking, we all sat down and tables and they brought us 3 different type of beers.  A "blonde" beer, a darker beer, and then the darkest type of beer.  We were supposed to drink the "blonde" beer first and descend in that order, but I could only drink 2 of my cups so I didn't get to the last one.  I tasted it though, and I didn't like it very much!  I did, however, get plenty of pictures!  Tomorrow we just have IS and then some free time, and Thursday we have psych and IS.  It's a pretty full week, but come Friday I will be on my way to Paris!  I am definitely excited about that!  We are going to try to see the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, and Versailles Palace.  I don't know if we will be able to see everything, but we are going to try!  I really can't wait!  I posted pictures of this weekend, the brewery today, and also of my room.  Mom wanted to see what it looked like, and since the maids cleaned today I took pictures!  The maids just shoved my shoes under my bed, but I usually have the laid out next to my bed.  Also, our sink / dishwasher SMELL.  It is so disgusting!  Sometimes we have to open our windows because the smell gets so bad!  But really that's our only qualm about the room.  We are in a separate building from the main building and down in a little cove surrounded by trees!  So it's pretty private!  I am about to go find the group now and see what they are up to!  I love you all!

Brewery!

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Brugge!

Yesterday was our class field trip to Brugge.  It is possibly one of the most beautiful places in the world!  We all met in the lobby of the hotel at 8:30 am and headed for the train station.  Our train ride lasted about an hour and when we got there we split into 2 groups.  We took a walking tour around Brugge, which isn't very big.  All of the buildings look very old, except most of them were built in the 19th century.  One particular building, the old hospital, was very pretty and set on the bank of one of the canals!  We also saw the parliament buildings, which look similar to the ones in Brussels and some of the  churches they have.  There were also lots of swans!  They all looked so pretty!  I wanted to see some of them kissing, but I guess they weren't in the mood!  After our walking tour, we took a boat tour!  We basically saw everything we saw on the walking tour, but by boat.  And there was a huge difference!  The houses and buildings look beautiful from the water!  And getting to go underneath the bridges was pretty cool, too.  Our boat tour was only about 30 minutes and then it was time for lunch.  A group of us found this one restaurant to eat at.  I got spaghetti bolognaise and Janet got lasagna bolognaise.  The spaghetti wasn't really that good.  The meat sauce was almost like spaghetti with vegetable soup on top.  I ate the pasta though.  I tried Janet's lasagna and it was DELICIOUS!! I can't wait to try some lasagna here and see how it tastes!  After lunch we got to walk around on our own and we wanted to try some of the chocolate.  There were plenty of stores to choose from, but we liked this one store that was basically all white inside except for the chocolate!  They were having a spring deal and you could get a box of 12 pralines for 3.50 euros!  (Pralines are chocolate candies with different fillings inside them!)  I bought the special and got to pick out different pralines to try.  I'm still working on eating them, but they all taste delicious so far!  We walked around a little bit more and just took pictures, but there wasn't really anything else to do so we went and sat on a bench and rested for a little while.  It was a pretty peaceful rest too!  It was beautiful and the trees gave off a really nice shade.  We got on the train around 4:30 and took a nap because we were so exhausted!  I can't believe that 2 weeks have already flown by!  I put more pictures on of Brugge so hopefully you enjoy them!

Brugge!

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Chocolate Factory!

Today was a pretty fun day!  We had psych class this morning and we did literature reviews for 3 hours.  That wasn't really all that fun, but we got to leave a little early because the wireless internet wasn't working!  I came back to the hotel room and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, except that the stuff I thought was peanut butter isn't really!  It turns out I got some kind of "paste" and it tastes exactly like nutter butters!  It is SO delicious!  We headed for the chocolate factory at 1:15 pm.  The whole time we were walking all I could think of was the "I Love Lucy" episode where her and Ethel got jobs at the chocolate factory!  They had to work on the conveyer belt and ended up stuffing chocolate in their mouths and shirts because the belt was moving so fast!  When we got there we watched a movie on how cocoa beans were harvested and how chocolate was made.  Chocolate isn't actually called chocolate until you add sugar, milk, and other ingredients.  Until then it is just called cocoa.  After the movie, one of the workers came to talk to us about the history of chocolate.  Chocolate bars weren't really created until the 20th century!  Before the 20th century, chocolate was created as a drink for the rich!  After our talk, we put on our aprons, hats, and booties for our shoes.  We all looked like a stellar bunch! :)  Then we entered the chocolate room and it was SO cold!  Our instructor demonstrated for us what we were supposed to do and then just let us all take a turn!  We all took turns making molds and filling the molds with some kind of whip they had already made.  It was so much fun!  We had so much chocolate to eat that I was actually kind of sick of chocolate when we left!  But that didn't last long...I had some chocolate for dessert after dinner tonight:)  We got to bring some of our chocolate back with us, but that will be gone before the end of the week...no worries though because I am going to bring some Belgian chocolate back when I come home!  You will all get to taste how delicious it is!  One really cool thing our instructor went over is how healthy chocolate is for your body (within limits of course!).  He told us if you wake up with a headache, eat a piece of chocolate!  If you feel sad, eat a piece of chocolate!  But then, he said, the most important is that chocolate is like viagra for men...but only if you eat 2 kilos of it! :)  We all thought that was pretty funny, because that's a LOT of chocolate!  I have added a couple of pictures from the chocolate factory.  There aren't many because my hands were covered in chocolate, but hopefully you get the gist of it!

Chocolate Factory!

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Amsterdam!

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Amsterdam

I am back from Amsterdam now, writing from the lobby of the hotel.  Unfortunately my ethernet is messed up and no one knows how to fix it, but at least the wireless is working!  I am pretty exhausted from Amsterdam!  We took a train (which was a very slow train, the cars on the highways were going faster than us at some points!) and arrived in Amsterdam around 4 pm.  We made our way over to our hostel ,which is a story in itself, and left our bags in our room.  We had a room with 3 sets of bunk beds and there were 5 of us so we all fit...barely!  The room was so tiny!  We were all starving so we found a sports bar and went to have a bite to eat.  You will never guess what was playing on one of the tvs...The Atlanta Braves!  (They were losing 5-0 though...) but I was so excited!  I took a picture:)  People in Amsterdam speak much better English than in Brussels so it was really easy to understand everyone.  It was FREEZING this weekend so we got some coffee and headed towards the Red District.  That is quite an attraction down there.  We stayed long enough to tour the street and say we had been there and then we left.  We headed back to the hostel to get some sleep for our busy following day and found a new person sleeping in our extra bed...what a surprise that was!  It was definitely part of the "hostel" experience I won't forget.  Sleeping with a stranger next to you was very nerve-racking, but he was up and gone at 7:30.  

Janet and I started our day around 9:30.  We got up and realized it was pouring down rain and neither of us had brought anything heavier than a sweater!  We put on as many layers as we could and set out for some breakfast.  We found this really cute bakery called Sanday's and I got a koffie croissant and a chocolate muffin.  They were DELICIOUS!  (We got breakfast there on Sunday as well!)  The guys eventually got up and we headed to the Anne Frank house.  This was my favorite part of the whole weekend.  I don't have any pictures because we weren't allowed to take any but I brought the brochure home and my souvenir from Amsterdam was a book about Anne Frank's last days in the concentration camp.  The house was amazing.  There was no furniture in it because when the nazis raided the house they took all the furniture with them and Otto Frank wanted to keep the house like it had been after they left.  We saw the actual bookcase that hid the Annex and were able to walk around up there!  They had lots of artifacts that Miep (Mr. Frank's sectretary) managed to save after the raid.  There were some of the study books the kids used and a recipe book.  I think my favorite part of the house were the letters on display that Otto Frank wrote to Miep after he had learned about the loss of his entire family.  They were so heartfelt and really touched you.  The only bad part was that Anne's real diary wasn't on display because of weather-related reasons.  It was still such an amazing house and I'm so glad I was able to actually visit a place I had read about since I was a little girl!

Our next stop was the Van Gogh Museum.  The museum only held 200 of the 900 known paintings by Van Gogh, but that was more than enough paintings to look at.  I liked reading about his life from the brochures and some of the excerpts on the plaques by the paintings had interesting stories, but I personally thought they all looked really similar.  At times during his life his style of painting would change and you could easily see a difference, but they all ultimately looked the same.  Interesting nonetheless:)  After we left the Van Gogh museum we found a cute little restaurant and got pancakes...mine, of course, was covered in chocolate:)  The pancakes were REALLY filling and we decided to skip dinner and go to a comedy show!  The comedy show was called, "Is It Rape If the Tree Doesn't Want to Be Hugged?"  It was a comedy show about how to help the environment by going green so i thoroughly enjoyed it:)  It was funny and I'm glad that people in other countries are trying to do something to help the environment.  (They even made some cracks on Americans, George Bush, and Al Gore...all of which were completely true!! It was so funny!)  It was late by the time we got out and just decided to head back to the hostel.  We ended up waking our roomie up and he was really very nice.  He was german and he said, "you are americans aren't you?"  and we said, "yes"  and he said, "I thought so, I can't tell what part you are from, but I studied English linguistics!"  We thought that was really funny...and we were partly glad that he couldn't tell we were from the South!  

We all woke up around 6 am to some guy in the room next to us snoring like there's no tomorrow and eventually all got up at 9:30 because we couldn't get any sleep:)  We packed, got breakfast, and headed for the train station.  We got back in Brussels around 2, showered, and I have since been trying to get my ethernet to work since then, but to no avail.  Unless I can get it fixed tomorrow, it looks like I'll be writing from the lobby for the rest of my trip:)  I'm about to add pictures so I hope you enjoy them!  By the way, the buildings in Amsterdam were absolutely beautiful, even in the rain:)

European Commission

Well my first week is almost finished.  We have psychology classes tomorrow from 9-12 and again from 1-4.  They pretty much take the whole time so that is where I will be tomorrow!  The classes are pretty interesting though.  Our international studies class has been covering the history of Belgium.  We have gone through many of the things we study in history in the US (such as the 100 years war and the Battle of Waterloo), but the Belgians side of it.  The lady who teaches it reminds me of Princess Diana, or maybe what she would have looked like when she was older.  Some of the stuff we went over today involved artists like Rubens and Van Eyck who I learned about in my art history class, so I already knew about them!  We also went over the past Kings of Belgium, including the current one...who had an affair and has a daughter who lives in England!  This afternoon we had a field trip to the European Commission.  I had no idea how in depth the EU really was until this trip.  There are 27 countries that are a part of the Commission and about 500 million people!  One of the stipulations to join is that you have to have an established market economy so you can keep up with the big countries.  The EU started because countries just wanted to have peace  and solidarity.   This weekend almost everyone is traveling to Amsterdam.  I'm a little bit nervous about going there, but with a big group I think it will be ok!  I am really looking forward to going to the Anne Frank house.  I think that will be SO neat.  We also are going to go to the Van Gogh Museum so that, I'm sure, will be interesting as well!  I don't have any new pictures today, but mom wanted me to take some of my room, hotel, and show you where I'm staying!  So I will probably post those either tomorrow or when I get back from Amsterdam!  Love you all!

First Day!

Today was my first day of classes.  We all met in the lobby of the hotel at 8:45 am this morning with Marc, our tour guide!  He took us all around the city and we learned some interesting things...Tin Tin, the cartoon, was invented here as well as the smirfs!  Brussels used to be surrounded by a large, protective wall and we got to see remnants of that!  We ended up at the CUBC building and had lunch and had our very first IS class.  We sat in a classroom from 1-4 pm listening to a really nice lady tell us all about Brussels!  We had to go around the class and say who we were and if we knew any of a different language.  She also asked us what french would be helpful to know while we were here....she asked if anyone could count in french and I raised my hand and she made me count up to 20 and then count by tens!  I excelled and she was pretty excited!  We got done about 4pm and headed back to the hotel for a nap.  After our nap we headed out to find something to eat...unfortunately most restaurants were just serving drinks because of the holiday!  So we sat down to get a drink and our waiter took a liking to me.  Antonio told me many times that i was "bella" and that he loved me.  It was all quite funny, but I don't think I'll go back to that place any time soon haha!  We finally found a little pizza place so we got some pizza and got a Belgian Waffle afterwards!  I had a belgian waffle with whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate on it!  It was DELICIOUS!  Tomorrow we have psychology classes all day so I had better get to bed!  I added a couple of pictures too, so look at those! :)

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First Weekend!

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First Weekend!

Today was almost a sleep in day!  I woke up around 9:30 and showered and was ready just in time to go to my orientation meeting.  Basically all we learned there was that we shouldn't miss class!  They also gave us a huge packet full of useful information for cheap traveling around Europe and menu items (almost all menus here are in french!) in french translated into English.  One was "Americaine Sandwich"...which translates as a big hunk of raw meat....glad I didn't order that for dinner last night!  After the meeting my roommate, her boyfriend, his roommate, and I all went out to lunch at a little restaurant about 3 minutes from our hotel.  I had a roast beef sandwich and the sauce was unbelievable!  After lunch we went to the grocery store to get some breakfast foods to eat before class.  I paid with my debit card--and had to show them my passport!  It was interesting to have to do that haha!  There was supposed to be some music in the Parc de Bruxelles today so we traipsed off after lunch and errands in lieu of the music.  We passed by St. Michele Cathedral so we stopped to go in.  It is SUCH a big cathedral!  It is beautiful inside and out and has lots of gothic architecture.  We continued our hunt for the park and found a crowd of people and a barrels of hay lined up down the street- they were having a home-made race car derby down the road!  (Tomorrow is a holiday in Brussels and NO ONE is allowed to drive any automobiles at all today!)  The cars were all different shapes.  One was a dragon and one was an iron!  We finally found the park about 4 pm and started walking around.  We found the music but it doesn't start until later tonight.  We made our way back to the hotel (stopping to get a Belgian Waffle!...with chocolate and whipped cream!) and rested up for a couple of hours.  For dinner we went to a place called Amadeo and their specialty is ribs!  I have never had ribs before and I can officially say my first time eating ribs was in Brussels, Belgium!  SUCH a full day!  I'm off now to get ready for tomorrow because classes begin; this should be interesting!

*There should be a photo album right above this post of my first weekend here!

 

FINALLY Here....

Well...as you all know, it took me forever and a day to actually get to Brussels.  They had some bad weather in Newark and my flight out of Charlotte was delayed 4 hours!  (Luckily that gave me some extra time to spend with David!)  I reached Newark, Concourse C JUST in time to make it on my flight to Manchester....everyone else had already been seated!  But make the flight I did, and I arrived safely in Manchester at 7:45 AM.  As luck would have it, my flight from Manchester to Brussels was about an hour late leaving:)  Sooo....I arrived in Brussels at 1:45 and had to hail my own taxi (the driver, of course, didn't speak a word of english!) and get myself to my hotel.  Despite the incredibly devilish arrival here, I made it in one piece...BY MYSELF:)  I'm pretty proud of that!  And when I got to my hotel, my roommate was already here!  I took a shower and my roommate, her boyfriend, and myself decided to walk around Brussels for the afternoon.  It is absolutely beautiful!  We went into the St. Catherine Cathedral and walked around and then found our way down to the Grand Palace- the main square.  We walked most of the afternoon and headed off to eat dinner.  We found this nice, quiet place and spaghetti for dinner.  As we were walking back to the hotel we found a little shop that sells gelato- so of course I had to get some:)  Now that I am back, I am updating my blog, unpacking my bags and probably going to bed since I have been up for over 24 hours now!  Love you all:)