Last Days in Brussels!

This has been a busy last week!  Monday we had IS in the morning.  She finished up her material and then we headed to mini-Europe.  I wasn't all that impressed with it actually.  The places they had there were cool, the buildings really look similar, but it just wasn't very much fun.  But I got some cool pictures with some of the places I have been before like Big Ben and the leaning tower of Pisa so that was neat!  I haven't put the pictures on my computer yet, but when I do I will put them on here as well!  Tuesday we had our last psychology class and we heard a lecture on emotions.  It was pretty interesting, but now that I think about it, I don't remember much about it.  Yesterday afternoon we had a surprise field trip to Leuven, which is a small college town outside of Brussels.  It was really pretty!  We went into a couple of the churches, which were really beautiful inside.  You had to walk a little ways to get to the really cool architecture, but we got there and it was amazing!  They have statues everywhere!  We spent most of the afternoon there and then came back to finish working on our final presentations for our classes.

 

This morning was our psychology final.  I said previously that we had to make up a pretend experiment.  Apparently I did pretty well on mine!  After everyone had taken their turn, the 4 teachers went into the hall to talk about what grade we should have.  When they came back in they said, "you all have a's, but there are some special recognitions.  Casey for paying attention the most in class and Erin for having the best presentation.  Her methodology session was very well done!"  I was really excited, and I'm glad I did so well!  After class, our entire psych group, including the teachers, went out for lunch.  We sat at the table and talked for about 2 hours! It was really cool getting to hang out with everyone.  Afterwards, Emily and I went to the Grand Place to do a little shopping.  I ended up getting some chocolates to nibble on this week (don't worry, I'm bringing some chocolate home for you all to taste!), a t-shirt for myself, and a pretty lace thing to put on a table.  I am really excited about the lace!  It is so pretty!  

Tomorrow is my IS final and that is just the group presentation of pictures.  I have already sent in my paper and my own personal pictures.  I suppose I will have to pack tomorrow as well!  I can't wait to see you all on Sunday!  Only 4 days away:)

Weekend In Brussels!

I think I should start by updating you where I left off!  I went to Antwerp on Wednesday and had a lot of fun.  Wednesday night a bunch of us girls went to see the movie Sex and the City.  I had never really watched that show, but a bunch of the other girls had and got me up to date on what was going on.  You would not believe the movie theater!!  The theaters are HUGE!  They are bigger than the biggest ones at Regal!  The seats are so well cushioned and big that it would be really hard not to get comfortable!  You also have so much leg room between your row and the next that it's unbelievable!  Whoever created this theater really should come fix our theaters up a little bit:)  The movie turned out to be really good.  I really enjoyed it!  By the time we got back to the hotel, however, I felt really bad.  I thought maybe I had eaten something and it wasn't agreeing with me, but everything I ate on Wednesday someone else had eaten too.  I ended up catching a stomach bug that my roommate Janet had a few days before.  Needless to say, I was up most of the night Wednesday and I felt pretty terrible.  But I'm a trooper, and we had a field trip the next day so I got up at 8 and we went to the stock exchange.  I had only had about 2 hours of sleep the night before so it was really hard to stay awake- especially since I didn't feel good and because they made us sit in a room and listen to a lady talk for an hour!  But the talk was kind of cool.  She went over exactly how the stock exchange works in Europe and even had slides to show exactly what she was saying.  It was a really neat process, but I think it would have helped if any of us had known how it worked in America haha:)  The field trip only lasted an hour and was actually within walking distance of our hotel, so when it was over I came back and went to sleep.  I slept most of the day, woke up for a bit, and went back to sleep that night.  Friday rolled around and I felt all better- except that it was pouring down rain!  No one really ended up doing anything Friday.  I took that time to work on some of the projects we have due this upcoming week.  We have to write a paper for our IS class so I wrote my paper!  We had to compare things we found different between here and the US and I chose to write about the topic of "going green" because there are lots of differences I've seen!  We also have a picture project for IS but I haven't started on that one.  We have to present 8-10 pictures of interesting things we have seen since we have been in Brussels, but they can't be statues or churches or anything like that.  Then we have to write why we chose those pictures.  I have a couple of pictures, but not enough yet and I haven't written anything for them.  But when I do, I'll try and put that project into a post so you guys can see the weird and interesting things here!  We also have a psychology project due.  We had to create an experiment, come up with all the data, and run the tests and stuff.  Most of us don't have the right equipment to run the data so we had to make up the tests.  I did get out of the hotel on Friday and walk to the express supermarket to pick up some croissants and to get some fresh air.  I had just dried my hair before I left....walked 2 minutes down the road, got my croissants, and walked 2 minutes back and had to dry my hair again when I got back!  That's how much it was raining on Friday!  But it was nice to get some fresh air.

Yesterday was a lot of fun.  A bunch of the girl went out shopping.  We didn't see anything specific, but we had a blast.  We went to a couple of chocolate stores, you can see where that would be fun:)  There is a market that sells all kinds of neat, homemade things that we went to.  I didn't buy anything, but I did happen to catch a random parade in the streets!  They had about 4 or 5 men playing instruments, a lot of older men, who I think may have been veterans although they weren't dressed up in medals or anything, and these huge clown-like puppets on sticks.  It was a really short parade, but it was fun to run across!  Sarah and I went to a lace shop to try and find something for her mom.  We happened to go into the right lace shop because the lady told us all about the lace!  This particular lace shop had been open since the 1880's and had been in her family since then.  She also said that each person who works on lace there has their own specific pattern they follow for everything.  The intricate details are how you know who made what.  She also said that they still make the lace in Brussels because the flax seed it is made from is still grown there.  The soft colored cream lace is the actual color of the flax seed and the white lace is what becomes of the cream lace after is has been bleached.  I didn't get anything for myself there, but I think I may go back and get a little something to put on my table for the future.  That way when I am 80 years old, I can say, "I still remember when I went to Brussels in college and got this!"  After shopping, we all went out to dinner on the greek strip.  (The greek strip is just an alleyway full of greek restaurants.)  We went to a little pita shop and had pitas and cokes.  We stopped at a chocolate shop on the way back to the hotel:)  You can never have enough chocolate here!  It was pretty late when we got back so I finished working on my psychology project.  I'm going to check it one more time before I turn it in, but I think it's pretty much done.

Today is probably going to be used for picture-taking and finishing up projects.  I need to go to the express grocery store and pick up some more croissants because they are really good for breakfast.  Although, I'm going to have to wait because it's Sunday and most of the croissants are gone in the morning!  Hopefully I'll get there in time for the afternoon batch!  Tomorrow we have IS class and a field trip to "mini-europe" which should be interesting.  Tuesday is both Psych and IS.  Wednesday and Thursday are finals (just presenting our presentations!) and Thursday night is the ending dinner.  I can't believe I only have one week left!  This time next week I will be on an airplane on my way back home!  I can't wait!  I hope you all have a fantastic week!  I will update a couple more times I'm sure:)  Love you!

Antwerp!

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Update!

I thought I had better give a little update.  Monday we started back to school.  We had IS in the morning and the afternoon off.  I really can't even remember what the class was about- is that bad?  I think it was something about different types of communication?  Tuesday I had Psychology all day long.  Dr. Fred (our professor that works in Brussels) took us to Louve a Na Nouve which is a large University north of us.  It took us about 45 minutes on a train to get there.  We sat in a classroom and listened to a Swiss professor talk about a Heroine Addiction study they were working on.  They think it would be a good idea to legalize heroine.  (Legalize as in you have to have a prescription to obtain it from a doctor, not just walk into a gas station and pick some up like with cigarettes).  Now most people thought this wasn't a good idea, but the findings they found were pretty interesting.  All the people they studied were heroine addicts.  Although they were still heroine addicts at the end of the study, they had noticed that crime rates had dropped, homocide and suicide numbers had dropped as well.  He also said something about people wouldn't buy it off the street anymore because if it was legalized, anyone could get it.  (There are lots of technical things we can talk about later if you want to discuss this...I just don't want to give a huge explanation on what we learned because I may leave out something!).  We broke for lunch and ate in the university cafeteria.  That is one similar thing between Brussels and America- the cafeteria food in both countries is really bad:)  After lunch we met again and heard a lecture on Fundamentalism.  Well...we tried to listen.  It was warm in the room and we had just eaten, and let's face it, fundamentalism isn't the most interesting topic in the world.  Many people were dozing and some of us just pretended to listen.  After class was over Prof. Fred took us to one of his favorite Irish pubs.  We hung out for a while, which was nice, and then some of us left to come home.  We didn't get back to Brussels until about 6:30!  It was a long day but it was cool to go to a different school.

Today we had a field trip to Antwerp- where all the diamonds come from!  Except, wouldn't you know, that the day they decided to take us to Antwerp is the day of the week that the diamond museum is closed?!  The first thing we saw when we got out of the train station is a REALLY nice car stopped down what looks like a ramp that leads to a garage tunnel and a bunch of policemen.  We quickly figure out it is not a ramp, but a set of stares that leads to the train station!  All of us americans pulled out our cameras and took pictures:)  The day ended up being pretty unproductive.  The tour wasn't planned very well I don't think.  Our tour was 3 hours long and most of it was spent walking to our destination- except we only saw 3.  We saw the tallest high-rise building in Europe (well it was the tallest in 1928), a cathedral that didn't have a name, and Rubens (the painter!) house.  The house was really cool.  It had a lot of his paintings in it and a booklet that told about each painting!  I enjoyed this the best because I had studied him in art history!  It was neat knowing that he once walked in the same room I was walking in!  Afterwards, a bunch of us left to come back to the hotel.  It is a dreary day and started raining just as we got to the metro station.  I suppose this is what the weather is usually like here, but we've been pretty lucky and had fairly good weather most of the time.  Tonight a bunch of the girls are going to see the Sex and the City movie because it just came out today!  

It turns out that I won't be traveling anywhere this weekend.  The group I was going to go with split up at the last minute.  One guy is going to Switzerland by himself, The people who are dating are going to Italy by themselves, and another group is going to Germany but have already booked their rooms.  I know I have enough traveling knowledge that I'm sure I could go somewhere and be okay, but I'd rather not be alone!  I was a little bummed at first, but I'm okay now because a LOT of people are staying this weekend.  We are going to go all over Brussels seeing all of the things we haven't seen yet.   A lot of museums, the Atomium, things of that nature.  I'm really excited because I would hate to have been in Brussels for 5 weeks and seen nothing that makes it famous!  It will also give me time to get my projects done because next week is the last week and they will be due!  I've taken a few pictures, but not very many.  I added them anyway!  Love you!

Paris Photos!

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Ah Paris...

First of all, I can't believe I only have one more weekend of travel before I am home again!  I can't believe how fast this trip is flying by.  Paris was a long, wonderful weekend.  I hope you have some time, because it is a long story!  Our train left Midi Station at 11:30 on Friday morning.  It took about an hour and a half to get to Paris and everyone ended up booking different hotels around Paris so we split up to go check in.  Erin and I found our hotel and boy was it a piece of work.  The man at the counter was very nice, but barely spoke english.  He told us that a study abroad group had come the day before and we no longer had a room with 2 twin beds, but a double bed.  He very much stressed the point that we got the double bed room for the same price!  We told him that wasn't going to work and he told us to go upstairs and look at the room.  So Erin and I hiked up 6 flights of stairs to the very top floor to our room.  Did you know that heat rises?  Well it certainly did in this hotel!  The room was BLAZING and the bed looked like it was probably from the early 80's.  Erin marched downstairs and told the man we were not staying there and asked if he could find us another place to stay.  Mr. Man got on the phone and called a bunch of different places and they apparently told him they were all booked.  Meanwhile we had gotten in touch with our friends who were staying somewhere else and their hotel told them they had twin bed openings!  We asked Mr. Man if there was internet in the hotel and he said, "yes, come on back!"...the internet for the whole entire hotel was his computer behind the desk!  So we went behind the desk and made reservations at a different hotel, it was a completely awkward scene, haha!  We made reservations at what we thought was the same hotel as our friends.  Turns out, there are more than one Median Hotel in Paris!  But this hotel was MUCH nicer than our other one and we really enjoyed it there.  My name even showed up on the tv!

Friday evening, the Louvre was free for people under 26 so Erin and I headed to meet our friends there.  As luck would have it, our phones we received all ran out of money and we weren't able to get in touch with each other.  We eventually ran into random people from our group walking around the Louvre!  If you have ever read The Da Vinci Code, you know all about the glass pyramid, and I actually got to see it!  It is really cool, and I even saw the inverted pyramid inside!  The Louvre was pretty cool.  It was way too huge to get around in one evening so we saw some of the major things like the Mona Lisa, The Raft of Medusa, and The Virgin of the Rocks.  I thought these were really cool because I studied these specific paintings in my art history class!  It was really neat getting to see the real things.  After we left, Erin and I went with some of the guys to eat dinner since we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast!  One major difference between Brussels and Paris is the price of food!  Fries cost 4.50 euros in Paris...and a coke costs 5.50 euros!  We were all really surprised.  After dinner we headed over to the Eiffel Tower.  Every weekend the Eiffel Tower puts on a light show and people go out on the lawn and sit to watch it.  On our way there we met a group of students studying abroad from BYU and talked to them for about 2 hours.  It is always really nice when you meet people who are in the same boat as you.  You get to share experiences and stories...and they all end up pretty much being the same!  The light show was cool, but we were all so tired by this point that after it was over, we went back to the hotel and went to bed!

Erin and I woke up at 9 on Saturday and were waiting for 2 of our friends to meet us at our hotel to go to the Palace of Versailles.  While we were waiting we walked into a town 2 minutes away and found a really nice restaurant that was serving breakfast.  We went and sat down and the waiter was really nice.  He brought us 3 pastries for breakfast.  One was just a plain croissant, another was a raisin/lemon pastry, and the third was a chocolate filled pastry.  He also brought some DELICIOUS coffee and fresh-squeeze orange juice.  The coffee was SO good and so was the orange juice!  Erin and I just sat there and watched people until our friends showed up!  Getting to Versailles only took us about 20 minutes...and then we had to stand in line for about an hour to get tickets to get in!  This was probably my favorite part about Paris.  Versailles is incredible!  When you walk in the gates, it's just this huge open area surrounded by a really huge mansion!  The open area is full of cobblestones...but not just any old cobblestones- they are actual rocks of all different shapes and it is so hard to walk on!  You literally have to watch where you are walking so you don't trip on the stones!  We went through the gardens first.  I don't think I can full explain how it feels to be standing next to this huge mansion, but looking out over the large mass of land that belongs to the Palace.  It seems to go on and on forever, and every single bit of it is beautiful.  When we got there, it was kind of gloomy and the gray sky made the green grass and trees stand out so much more.  We walked down for at least a mile and ended up taking a trolly back to the Palace.  Inside was just as amazing as the outside.  No description or pictures can do it justice!  The paintings on the walls make you think that someone had to be in that house every single day for years to pain everything that was there.   My favorite was the hall of mirrors, probably because I have heard a lot about it in art history and other classes in high school.  It was so cool to actually be standing there.  The mirrors are really hazy from age, but you really get a feel for just how rich Louis XIV was!  Again, it was not possible to see all of this house in one visit, so we saw what we wanted to see and headed back to Paris.  By the time we got back it was already 5pm so we went to Notre Dame Cathedral.  Simply put, Notre Dame is beautiful.  We didn't get a glimpse of the Hunchback, but maybe he was getting ready for mass:)  Unfortunately we didn't get to climb to the bell tower because they closed the line before we got there!  I guess I will just have to go back at some point:)  We decided to trek over to the Sacre Couer Basilica which sits on top of a hill and overlooks all of Paris.  When we went inside, what a surprise!  They were having mass and the nuns (dressed in full nun wardrobe!) were singing!  It was really cool getting to see that.  When we were leaving we ran into some other people from Clemson and went and ate dinner with them.  Afterwards we went back towards the Basilica and found a really cool spot to watch the Eiffel Tower light show!  A bunch of the guys bought a couple bottles of wine and when the light show was over, we, along with hundreds of other tourists, sat on the steps leading up to the Basilica, drank wine and watched the lights come on in Paris at night.  It really was an awesome night and such a pretty sight.  Around 12 we all dispersed and went to our separate hotels.  On the way back, Erin, David, Shawn, and I happened to enter the metro station just as some guy was caught pickpocketing some people!  It was a fiasco.  These people had this guy pinned to the wall and were going through all of his pockets pulling out the things he had just stolen from them!  I was so freaked out I walked towards the wrong metro line!:)  Erin told me we had to go the other way- right past the pickpocket dude!  We were waiting until he left, and as soon as the people let him go, he whipped out his knife from his pocket and started screaming in french.  He was really drunk though and eventually just left the metro station.  It was crazy getting to experience that and definitely made me keep a closer eye on all of my things!  It was interesting way to end the evening!  Back at the hotel we turned on the tv and found CNN!  Hallelujah for American television!  We watched CNN for about an hour, catching up on the news and sporting events.  It was great!:) 

Sunday morning, Erin and I woke up and found that our breakfast place wasn't open, but saw a line leading out of a Patisserie shop and decided to go  there.  What a culture shock!  I knew that many families woke up early on Sunday's and went to the bakeries to get bread together, but here I was seeing it with my own eyes!  Of course the owners of the store didn't know english, so I got to try out my french!  I got what I asked for which was really cool because it means I asked correctly!  It was really cool getting to order in french!  We took our croissants back to the hotel and ate, then packed and checked out.  We headed over to Champs de Elysees and the Arc de Triumphe.  We walked out of the metro and there it was right in front of you!  It was huge!  We took our picture in front of it and went shopping.  I found this cute jewelry store run by this old man who actually made the necklaces I bought!  They are "real stones" he kept saying and he was so nice:)  I'm glad I found something unique to Paris because I feel like it is such a big city that you can get anything there pretty much anywhere in the U.S.    The next part of this story is for Granddad.  The place where the jewelry store was also had a Starbucks.  Of course I couldn't pass that up!  It was seriously calling to me:)  So I went and ordered a cafe mocha- in french!  I think it is so cool that I ordered a Starbucks drink in french!  After Starbucks we headed to the train station and met up with everyone and headed back to Brussels.  It was a really great weekend and I am so glad that I got to experience Paris!  I will definitely have to go back though, because there are still things I want to do and see...there is no way to see and do it all in 2 days!

This week should be pretty eventful.  Tomorrow we have one class in the morning- IS.  Tuesday is a full day of psychology, but we are taking a 30 minute train ride to a really big university on the outskirts of Brussels and our professor is taking us to a pub for lunch so that should be pretty cool.  Wednesday is a field trip to Antwerp and Thursday is a field trip to the Stock Exchange.  It is really going to be a busy and fun week!  We aren't really sure where we are going next weekend but I'm sure, being the last weekend, that it will be something fun!  I hope you enjoy all of the pictures from this weekend!  I love you!

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:)