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!