Really? Deep-frying a cheeseburger?

Ok so back on to my first full week in Brussels! Part 2!

Thursday morning I went to my first round of classes- they seem like they will be very interesting, but I'm not sure how I feel about 2 hour long lectures. We got one from Jerry our program coordinator at 10am, then went to lunch (some crazy omelette sandwich from an Asian place on campus) and then had a guest lecture come talk about the History of Belgium. He was completely insane, but very funny and extremely knowledgeable. After class, I went out to dinner at this amazing cafe that was cheap but also delicious, then we went to Celtica again- me and a couple people went back pretty early, though, because we had another round of classes today.
Today, we had basically the same format of classes as yesterday (except for a chicken pita for lunch), and then Shiza, Christina, Katie, Trent, Ben, and I spent about two hours in the computer lab figuring out where we wanted to go next weekend when we have a free Friday. Since this Friday kind of crept up on us, it was hard because although traveling is still extremely cheap, it gets more expensive closer to the date. After quite a long time, we chose.... BARCELONA!
Yes, Barcelona! The lovely, sunny region of Spain that I know I visited when I was young but can't remember any of it so this'll be like visiting for the first time! It'll also be nice to go to a country where I know the language, and the tickets didn't get cheaper later on, so we decided to go there now. It'll be great because the weather forecast for next weekend is high fifties and SUNNY!! Here in Brussels I don't think we've had even one completely sunny day, so we're all pretty excited about that. We got the tickets and plan to spend two nights in Barcelona and one in Girona (that's where the airport is, and as we're leaving early morning Sunday we figured it'd be best to spend Saturday night there).
After choosing that, we all went home and chilled for a bit, and then I went to dinner.
So with the homestay arrangement we get three dinners at the home, (they give us a 400 euro stipend for the rest) and as I have already taken mine earlier in the week I decided to explore the lovely area of Stokkel to see if there was soemplace I could eat by myself without looking weird. Every place was either expensive or closed, and the only place I could get food at was this fries place near the bus stop I take. I ordered fries and a cheeseburger because everything else looked extremely strange (like gigantic sausages and what I assumed was a form of fried cheese that did not look nearly as appetizing as mozarella sticks)- but then when the guy cooked the not-beef-but-i-guess-some-sort-of-meat patty, he deep fried it! ugh! It was so gross, but as I had already paid for it I took it. Then I saw Trent at the beginning of the line- I guess he had the same trouble looking for a spot- and so we went back to his homestay to eat the burger. Needless to say, it was pretty gross. I still feel so enormous and pumped with cholesterol! But it was a learning experience, and now I know to stay away from that weird fries stand!

Now I am back and am going to get some much needed rest before I am off to Bruges tomorrow! I love it!!!

Picture uploader not working! sorry!