Belgiumized

The weeks here go by just as the weeks do in America. I go to class (only Tuesdays and Thursdays though!), eat, sleep, do homework, Facebook, check my e-mail, work, watch TV sometimes, consider going for runs, don’t go for runs, read, hang out with friends sometimes, check Facebook, check my e-mail, eat, etc. But it’s different. Why? Because I’m in Belgium, and not in America. I go to a Belgian school, and eat Belgian food and sleep during the Belgian time zone and consider going on runs in Belgium and use the Belgian Internet and yeah, you get it. I’m still quite amazed that I’m in actually Europe for an entire semester! It’s pretty neat. You should try it.

Today was the THIRD day of sunny blue skies! I didn’t know Belgium was capable of this kind of weather! But it is! I’ve forgotten how lovely a blue sky is. It was warmer today than it has been and there was a nice breeze, too. I’m looking forward to spring in full force! I’m anxious to see everything in bloom (especially the weird trees they have here). I have high expectations as it rains so much here. I think it’d be nearly impossible for it to not be green to the extreme!

I had planned to go to an outdoor flea market today with my friends Alison and Kelly. Unfortunately, the trams decided to go on strike today! So my usual way into the city was unaccessible. So I instead had to take an out-of-the-way bus to the metro to another metro, but I eventually got there! We finally arrived at the market, which was located in a big, open square area. There were tarps and tables set up, covering it entirely. People were selling anything and everything you can think of- jewelry, clothes, furniture, violins, dishes and silverware, shoes, odd household decoration trinkets, paintings, rugs, African masks and other random things. It was pretty cool! It reminded me of a giant garage sale. I bought a purse for 7 euro (I bargained down from 10!) and a ring for 3 euro (bargained from 4).  The guy whom I bought my purse from first started speaking to us in French, then Dutch and then Spanish! Luckily a girl I was with spoke Spanish and so was able to communicate that way. He also apparently knew German, Arabic and some English. I was pretty impressed by his extensive repertoire of languages and pretty embarrassed by my puny repertoire. I hope to attend many more markets while I'm here. It makes me feel like a native.

We hung out there wandering in and out of the aisles for a couple hours and then made our way to a shopping area. The street we were on has shops along it for blocks and blocks. There are conveniently no cars allowed on this street. It is here, on this street that I indulged in my very first Belgian waffle! It was warm and had melted chocolate on top of it. So good! I’d be down for having a couple more of those before I head back to the U.S. A waffle and a flea market in the same day!? I'm becoming so Belgiumized. Although I did finally have a waffle, I sadly did not find a pair of boots. Still hunting…

The internship has still been going well. I’ve been working on getting photos of the artists and their paintings along with a bio of each artist. I enjoy looking at photos of the artwork and seeing the variety of painting styles each artist presents.

I went with Mechthild the other day to visit her son, Edward in his apartment. She is such a mother. The first thing she does when we get in the door is check the plants to see if they’ve been watered recently. Then she notices there are towels hanging out to dry and offers that he bring them over so she can dry them so that they will smell good and be soft. She’s very concerned not only for him, but also for us, which shows how caring she is. 

Recently, I was perusing through her DVD collection and noticed she had season one of the TV series, 24. I asked her if she had ever seen it and she said no, so I demanded that we must start it at once! Ever since then she’s become addicted. She’s looking into buying the second season already so that we’ll have it when we finish the first. I haven’t seen this season in a long time and so I’ve enjoyed watching it again with her and still find myself being surprised by the twists and turns in the longest day of Jack Bauer’s life. Time to start another episode now! 

Some friends and I hanging out a the Salsa bar

I just like how the buildings here look. They're all squished together but each one has it's own architectural uniqueness

The flea market!

One of the examples of the massive piles of clothes

Kelly and Alison and the flea market

View of Belgium

The Palace of Justice was massive

We eat wonderful waffles

My Bed

I love my bed here. It’s a twin. It has a firm (not bouncy or springy at all), but comfy mattress. My comforter is my favorite part. My room is so cold as it’s all the way on the third floor and I’m usually freezing when I jump into bed. However, in just a couple minutes the comforter has somehow trapped my body heat and provided a very warm, cozy spot for me to sleep.

I find my mind comes alive when I lie down to go to sleep, which can get rather frustrating. But once I’m asleep, rarely do I awake until I hear the loud, fast paced beeping of my annoying, but necessary, alarm clock. Too many adjectives? Perhaps.

I stained a piece of furniture for Mechthild the other day. I have no previous experience in this but she let me do it anyways! I just wiped some stuff on and let it dry and wah-la! It turned out good, I think. The TV is now occupying the freshly furnished stand. They look wonderful together! It’s like they were made for each other. Speaking of furniture, Mechthild has a giant piece of furniture that’s over 500 years old! Ridiculous.

Cute, right?

Cologne - Köln

Some background music for you to enjoy as you read the blog:

I miss three things about America so far:

1.     Smoke-free bars and restaurants

2.     Drinking fountains and free water at restaurants

3.     Being allowed to pee for free

Okay moving on now. So I started my internship! I went for an hour on Friday where we basically just went over what we’ll be doing this semester and met everyone. Everyone consists of the boss lady, Stephanie, the French PR guy, Louis and the other intern, Dylan. Monday I went in for four hours and started working! I made some changes on contracts for the artists and e-mailed some of them about getting photos of their artwork, etc.

She works from home (from the kitchen table to be more specific) and so jeans are allowed and it’s a very relaxed setting. We drink tea. This Wednesday I get to work from home! The tram ride there is about 40 minutes so it’s nice that I can work from home and skip out on that commute. Growing up in a smallish town I never realized how nice it is to not have to deal with commutes and crazy traffic in the mornings and after everyone gets off work at night. It makes the day much longer.  On my commute I usually listen to my I-pod or read or both if I’m feelin’ crazy!

I went to Cologne, Germany this weekend! No big. Our first sight out of the train station was this massive, amazing Cathedral. I took pictures of it but I could never quite capture its amazingness (kind of like when I try to take a picture of my boyfriend, Phil). It was so detailed; not one wall was flat (kind of like Phil's abs). We went inside and walked around with our mouths open for a couple minutes and then headed to our hostel. It was my first time staying in a hostel and it went fine! It was fairly clean, nothing was stolen and I don’t have lice! I call that a success. Our roommates (there were three others in the room with us) were asleep when we got back Saturday night and gone when we awoke on Sunday so we didn’t meet them. But from our detective work we deduced they were from Korea.

We headed out to explore and eat. We followed our noses to a bakery type place where we got sandwiches (mine was covered in nuts) and I couldn’t resist a baked good, too. We then went to the Roman-German Museum. Cologne, or Köln, was a Roman city first and so there were a lot of cool old items from Roman times that people had found and put into a museum. We touched a couple things we weren’t supposed to touch and took a few pictures of things we weren’t supposed to take pictures of. We’re basically rebels.

We then went to the Ludwig Museum, which is an art museum. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a pure art museum. It was actually pretty sweet. We didn’t realized how many rooms and pieces of art there were when we first began and so we started of slow so we weren’t in and out of there in 20 minutes. Little did we know we’d spend a couple of hours wandering up and down stairs and in and out of various rooms looking at art. There were paintings, sketches, sculptures, art that had sounds or video with it and more. They came in all sizes and styles. Some art work I liked a lot and some I wondered what the artist was thinking or if the artist was a 4 year old. We attempted to interpret the art (Ryan was actually pretty good at this) and we even became the art a couple of times because we were tired and so we’d sit down and people would walk by and look at and try to interpret us, too. Actually, I don’t know German so they may have been discussing the white wall behind us. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the experience.

We were all pretty tired from the night before. Friday night we went out with Vesalius students to a fancy no-jeans-allowed pub/club and stayed out pretty late. It was fun and I got to wear a dress! I just wish it were warmer out. Drinks at this place were about 10 euro, which I think is just unnecessary but whatever. Vesalius provided some free drinks to get us started, but that’s all I ended up having the whole night. I'm cheap.

Back to Cologne. After the museums we decided to grab some food. We walked around for a while trying to find a good, authentic restaurant to eat some German food at and ended up dining at this very fine restaurant called McDonalds. That’s pretty much German food, right? The menu is slightly different from the American McDonalds, actually. We had more luck with German food on Sunday for lunch. I had a German sausage with potato salad. T’was delicious.

Saturday night we walked to this bridge where there are hundreds and hundreds of locks chained to it. This bridge is where couples “lock up their love.” I like to say they keep their love locked down. Kanye likes to put it this way, too. We then grabbed a couple drinks here and there and headed to bed fairly early.

The next day we showered packed up and headed to the chocolate museum. It was okay. Honestly, I was a little let down because I was expecting a lot more free chocolate than what they gave me. We read the history of chocolate and watched the chocolate making process. They aren’t too big on guided tours at the museums in Europe, which is understandable as there are so many different languages floating around at any given time, but still. I appreciate a guided tour because you don’t have to read a whole bunch of stuff the entire time but you’re just told about it. You can listen to the stuff you want to listen to, block out the rest and you can also look at the things around you at the same time. I’m all about the multi-tasking!

We walked around more of Cologne- to the less touristy more real-life parts, and then to a park and back to the centre where we enjoyed some coffee drinks and one euro gelato. We hung out their for a few hours wasting time until our train’s departure. We picked up some German flowers for our German host mom, Mechthild as it was her birthday on Friday. 


For a little bit on the train ride home I sat by a woman from Egypt. I was surprised. I never really thought that I’d meet someone from Egypt while I was in Germany. She told me about what’s happening there from her perspective and it was very interesting. Her two kids were eager to practice their English on me, too. Our conversation was cut short as her stop came before I was done asking questions. I feel out of touch with the world as I don’t really watch or read the news ever. Is there anything else that I should know about?

Ryan has a few favorite words that he uses very often to describe events or pictures he takes. His most recent favorite word is “classic.” You’d be surprised how often you can incorporate this word into your daily conversation. Other words he enjoys include serene (he’s picky about this one; the scenery has to be perfect for it to be considered serene), picturesque, drizzy and majestic.

This week my to do list consists of catching up on readings from class and doing some sort of exercise. So far today I'm 0 for 2. We’ll see how this goes…

Part of the massive Cathedral that I could never quite capture.

Check out the detail!

Even the floor was detailed.

My first hostel.

Nutty sandwich. 

Yummy pastry.

Notice: the sky is blue!

Which head doesn't belong?

Just hangin' out with his buds.

I took a picture at the art museum. Don't tell!

We became art in this room for a while.

Aren't they just too cute gazing into each others eyes and such?

We paid with exact change.

A night time shot of the Cathedral.

There's a lot of love locked up on this bridge.

It's sausage! Ryan's meal (I forgot to take a picture of mine before I started eating).

The bridge with the locks.

Sam likes to catch blimps.

The driver matches his car.

Tickets!