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!