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! :)

Photobucket Album

First Weekend!

Photobucket Album

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:)