Hello!
What a weekend! The 9/11 memorial put on by the Embassy was unlike anything I had ever experienced. For those of you who may not know, the U.S. Embassy in Belgium held "An Interfaith Celebration for Peace" in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula on Sunday. This event was NOT open to the public. It was not, in fact, open to most American students studying here.
Well then Mindy, how did you get there? Is it that big of a deal?
My professor, Dr. Sheridan (Jerry) is on a first-name basis with the ambassador, who got us the tickets. As for it being a big deal, first of all of course it was! 9/11 memorials took place all over the world, and I was fortunate enough to see this exclusive one, in the presence of royalty no less! Prince Filip was there with his wife, as well as several other largely important people. The security staff was enormous, and they all had lists at the blocked off entrances. If you weren't on the list, you didn't get in. The whole experience was quite moving. I can't even describe it. For not being in America on the important day, this definitely made up for it!
Secondly, as I write, pictures are on their way up. I have a Flickr photo stream, but I am going to have to change soon to another site because Flickr can only hold 200 photos! A new site will be up soon, and I will edit THIS POST and put the link right where this paragraph is now. NOTE: the new site is up! It is still undergoing construction, and with the slow internet it will just have to wait. The rare good weather calls! Here is the new site! Leave comments there too, you'll notice there is an RSS feed to this blog on the front page!
Finally, I've had a couple questions about jet lag, overcoming it, was it hard, etc. So, let me give you my strategy that worked for both me and Jared as far as I know. The trick is to know the time at your destination when you take off. I took off from Atlanta at 5:35 PM local time. That was 11:35 here, and I knew I should have gotten to bed soon. After dinner was served, I did my best to fall asleep. As I'm certain many of you could have guessed, this was nearly impossible. That's okay, the second part of the plan was when I landed. I got anywhere between 2 and 4 hours of sleep on the plane. When I got to the hotel and eventually checked in, I did NOT take a nap. I only know of two people who didn't, and we both seemed totally fine the very next day! So, that's my tip for the jet lag problem. Deprive yourself of sleep so you can sleep when the normal people around you are.
As always, please feel free to comment or email me with your questions or comments at idontdoquiet22@gmail.com and have a beautiful day!
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Bruges/ Brugge - The Mackinac Island of Belgium... Sort Of
Hey There!
Yesterday we spent the whole day in Bruges/ Brugge. After hearing how amazing the town was, I was quite excited to go. This is what I found:
Brugge is quite a touristy place.
Now, I don't say this in a bad way, but I was a little surprised. The place Brugge reminded me of the most was Mackinac Island back in Michigan. You know, the little island between the peninsulas with no cars, 12 fudge shops and no dentist? That one. Brugge was much, much older than that, though. History is a fascinating thing. Brugge was once the third most influential city in northern Europe! There was a lot of Catholic history too. For us, though, it was a day of eating lots of good food, a brewery tour complete with free beer, and taking some amazing pictures! Speaking of pictures, I'm going to start a Flikr album soon and will post a link here. For now, though, I'd love to hear your comments!
Yesterday we spent the whole day in Bruges/ Brugge. After hearing how amazing the town was, I was quite excited to go. This is what I found:
Brugge is quite a touristy place.
Now, I don't say this in a bad way, but I was a little surprised. The place Brugge reminded me of the most was Mackinac Island back in Michigan. You know, the little island between the peninsulas with no cars, 12 fudge shops and no dentist? That one. Brugge was much, much older than that, though. History is a fascinating thing. Brugge was once the third most influential city in northern Europe! There was a lot of Catholic history too. For us, though, it was a day of eating lots of good food, a brewery tour complete with free beer, and taking some amazing pictures! Speaking of pictures, I'm going to start a Flikr album soon and will post a link here. For now, though, I'd love to hear your comments!
This City
Interviews have been going well so far, and we are starting to get into the swing of things. Today, I have a message for the world of people potentially studying abroad. NEVER, EVER, EVER plug a power strip into a convertor. That was a disastrous experience I hope to never repeat in my life. Trust me, you won't need to plug things in that often anyway.
The second thing I want to write about here is how groovy this city is. I mean, all the trams, metro, trains, and buses come on time, there is music playing in the metro all the time, and sometimes the homeless people trying to heckle you are cool. We went to the USA/ Belgium soccer game the other night, and after a 45 minute excursion trying to find the metro afterward, I have decided to always have a detailed map of the area I'm going to. That was a bit insane. As far as cool homeless people on the metro, I was riding to an internship interview today and this man with a guitar came onto the metro and started playing "Sway". You know, this one:
I was going to ignore him, but I couldn't help it. I started singing along. The man DROPPED THE VOCALS HIMSELF and just played while I sang! The whole metro, who was going to ignore him, sat up and paid attention. It was the most satisfying thing I did that day. I hope that man earned his way that day, and I've been looking forward to the chance to do it again.
The second thing I want to write about here is how groovy this city is. I mean, all the trams, metro, trains, and buses come on time, there is music playing in the metro all the time, and sometimes the homeless people trying to heckle you are cool. We went to the USA/ Belgium soccer game the other night, and after a 45 minute excursion trying to find the metro afterward, I have decided to always have a detailed map of the area I'm going to. That was a bit insane. As far as cool homeless people on the metro, I was riding to an internship interview today and this man with a guitar came onto the metro and started playing "Sway". You know, this one:
I was going to ignore him, but I couldn't help it. I started singing along. The man DROPPED THE VOCALS HIMSELF and just played while I sang! The whole metro, who was going to ignore him, sat up and paid attention. It was the most satisfying thing I did that day. I hope that man earned his way that day, and I've been looking forward to the chance to do it again.
Internship Info!
We got our list of internship possibilities today! I, of course, knew one of them already, as Catherine had told me over the summer about it. I am one of only two people who got SIX interviews!
EIAS Org is the European Institute for Asian Studies. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, I'm here to study Europe, but this could be interesting?
Wilfred Aspinall sounds AMAZING. This one would allow me to sit in on the European Parliament!!
Friends of the Earth, as my friend Jared says, sounds hippie-ish. I love it.
the European Environmental Bureau seems like the more strict version of FOE.
The Bertelsmann Foundation seems like a lot of economics. I don't know, their website wasn't terribly clear.
CEJI or the Jewish Contribution for an Inclusive Europe sounds like a wonderful place. It would be fantastic to work there!
These interviews span the next couple days. It will be interesting trying to find them all!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: as I am writing this, I do know which internship I got. I will be working with Wilfred Aspinall.
EIAS Org is the European Institute for Asian Studies. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, I'm here to study Europe, but this could be interesting?
Wilfred Aspinall sounds AMAZING. This one would allow me to sit in on the European Parliament!!
Friends of the Earth, as my friend Jared says, sounds hippie-ish. I love it.
the European Environmental Bureau seems like the more strict version of FOE.
The Bertelsmann Foundation seems like a lot of economics. I don't know, their website wasn't terribly clear.
CEJI or the Jewish Contribution for an Inclusive Europe sounds like a wonderful place. It would be fantastic to work there!
These interviews span the next couple days. It will be interesting trying to find them all!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: as I am writing this, I do know which internship I got. I will be working with Wilfred Aspinall.
Hello Home Stay!
We got our home stay families assigned today. Mine is a nice older couple named Franz and Marie-Claude Dupont. I'm living with one other American student, Valerie Mnayarji. She seems really sweet. Our house is beautiful, I don't even know what to say about it. The Duponts have the cutest grandchildren. There are three of them staying here tonight, down the hall from me. Even as I write this, they are trying to escape from bed to play some more. Earlier, they were watching the Disney movie Tangled, in French. The kids asked Franz if he would turn the English subtitles on so we could understand what the movie was saying and watch with them! They are 5, 7, and 9 years old. Tomorrow, we visit the king's palace with Marie-Claude! That will be AMAZING!
Belgium at last!
Hi!
What a beautiful country, Belgium. It' so unreal to believe I'm finally here! After my horrendously long flight next to someone I was unable to talk to (as he spoke only French), I finally found a taxi and hauled all my stuff to the hotel. The driver was very nice, and he probably spoke about 5 languages. He started talking to me in French, then switched to English when he realized I couldn't understand. He took a phone call in Flemish, and when he found out I had taken some Spanish we resumed talking in Spanish! Once we found the hotel, he just parked his taxi in the middle of the road and turned his flashers on while he hauled all my stuff into the hotel! "Gracias señor." "Gracias señorita." and I went to the front desk.
Another surprise: the man behind the desk said our rooms weren't ready yet, so I had to wait. Being the first one there for the morning, I decided to just try to call my mom. TIP NUMBER ONE: on the phone, to get the + sign instead of the zero, you have to hold the zero down. I didn't know that. So I got an error message in, you guessed it, three languages. French, Flemish, and English. I had to pay 5 euro to get on the internet for an hour to assure my mother I was okay. Then came the waiting. I sat in the lobby, since I had my huge backpack I didn't want to put in the luggage room just yet, and waited for people to show up. This turned out to be a very popular activity, as many people started crowding around in there and introducing themselves. A group of us went to get coffee and by the time we came back our rooms were ready. Tonight we had orientation and a lovely dinner. It's about time I head to bed though, we have a long weekend ahead!
What a beautiful country, Belgium. It' so unreal to believe I'm finally here! After my horrendously long flight next to someone I was unable to talk to (as he spoke only French), I finally found a taxi and hauled all my stuff to the hotel. The driver was very nice, and he probably spoke about 5 languages. He started talking to me in French, then switched to English when he realized I couldn't understand. He took a phone call in Flemish, and when he found out I had taken some Spanish we resumed talking in Spanish! Once we found the hotel, he just parked his taxi in the middle of the road and turned his flashers on while he hauled all my stuff into the hotel! "Gracias señor." "Gracias señorita." and I went to the front desk.
Another surprise: the man behind the desk said our rooms weren't ready yet, so I had to wait. Being the first one there for the morning, I decided to just try to call my mom. TIP NUMBER ONE: on the phone, to get the + sign instead of the zero, you have to hold the zero down. I didn't know that. So I got an error message in, you guessed it, three languages. French, Flemish, and English. I had to pay 5 euro to get on the internet for an hour to assure my mother I was okay. Then came the waiting. I sat in the lobby, since I had my huge backpack I didn't want to put in the luggage room just yet, and waited for people to show up. This turned out to be a very popular activity, as many people started crowding around in there and introducing themselves. A group of us went to get coffee and by the time we came back our rooms were ready. Tonight we had orientation and a lovely dinner. It's about time I head to bed though, we have a long weekend ahead!
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