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!