Hey, Strangers!

So onto the next leg of my adventures: London!

London was really great- I really felt like I needed at least a week in order to do everything I wanted, but seeing as we're complete pros we managed to see a ton of things in the short time while we were there.
The first thing we really did, after sleeping a night in our pretty disgusting hostel while sharing our room with an Australian hairdresser who had been living in that room for six months, was take a free tour of the city. The girl leading the tour was a little overenthusiastic, but it was still a good way to get to know the city! We also saw something we really had never seen in Brussels: the sun.
You know you're living in a weather-beaten city when you go to LONDON for the good weather!
After that, we went to the National Gallery, which takes forever to get through- we were there for more than two hours and I only got through five or six rooms! The audio guide is very thorough.
After that we went to get dinner and walked around Trafalgar Square, which has some beautiful lights of the Picasso exhibit shining on the National Gallery. We were very tired from that long walking tour, and so we went to bed.
The next morning we went to the Portabello Market, which was beautiful even though I couldn't afford anything. Then we went to the British Museum, where I lost track of the time and made us late for getting into Westminster Abbey for the choral services- we ran all the way there, Trent nearly knocking over a baby carriage, but we managed to make it! They didn't let us walk around, though, so we couldn't see the graves, but it was still very beautiful.
The next day, we did the "Milennium Mile" walk that my guidebook told us to do- we saw Towere Bridge, The Tate Modern (which was for the most part pretty cool), the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament- we got some pretty awesome night pictures as well.
After that, it was time to drop our things off at King's Cross and wait there- for 8 hours. Kings' Cross doesn't like to close their doors, and it was freezing- we spent almost all of our time in this coffeeshop buying tea and coffee with the little amount of money we had left, waiting for the terminal to open. But hey, we did go to Platform 9 and 3/4!
The train finally came, and then all we had to do was go to the Committee of the Regions dressed properly to hear a guest lecturer and then sit through an entire day of classes with max 3 hours' sleep under our belt!!

Besos- next I will explain the most wonderful spring break ever!

Family Visit Part one: Mom and Dad!

Okay so on to the week of visiting from my lovely parents!! This is gonna be a short post because a) it was so long ago the details won't be as clear, and b) mom and dad, you were there! so you guys know what happened.
After Luxembourg and Germany, my parents came to visit me!! (after a romantic weekend in Paris!)- we met up on Monday and I stayed with them for two nights at this gorgeous hotel called Hotel Bloom- on Tuesday I had a half day at work so we took a walking tour of the Grand Place, the Palais Royale, and the Palais de Justice- Mom and Dad really got the Belgian tour because it rained the entire time! Mom did buy this awesome Euro umbrella, though. So after that we went to dinner for some moules and frites at a fancy restaurant, which was pretty delicious, but also nothiing special for the prices they were charging.
The next day I had to go SLAVING AWAY at work while Mom and Dad spent their time lounging about Amsterdam! From what I heard, they loved it. We met up on Friday in Bruges, where we spent a night there and did some more copious amounts of walking (Bruges is small, and also gorgeous, so it was fine). We ate at this delicious restaurant where I had escargot for the first time (so good!) and Dad had some delicious mussels he swore was from Galicia. We stayed in a small but pretty hotel room on the outskirts of Bruges (aka a ten minute walk from the center of the city).
The next day we stayed in Bruges for a couple of hours and then did some more Brussels touring- we had waffles (which weren't as good as the waffles from the stand, very sad) and then ate at Stokkel! After that, I had to say goodbye to Mom and Dad since they were going back to the hotel and were leaving super early in the morning. It was sad to say goodbye, but we had tons of fun and it was so super awesome to see them!
The next day, a few of us from the program went to Binche for the carnival- we didn't stay too long, but we got to see some ridiculous costumes, bought some crazy hats for ourselves (mine's a hat with a ram on it!) and threw tons of confetti. Fun times for all!
That's about it for Mom and Dad visit- up next, London!!

replendent lights

Oh God I haven't updated this in forever!

So, it's been a while. I blame this on being so incredibly busy at every second of the day, but I'm having tons of fun so it's all okay!
I guess I should talk about Luxembourg, Trier, and the Battle of the Bulge- bear with me, this happened like weeks ago so I may not remember everything.
So directly after work on Wednesday we all boarded this bus and made our way to Luxembourg- since our day was super hectic and we got to the hotel relatively late, we didn't do anything when we got back and just went to sleep (after me and Catherine, my roommate, watched this insane movie with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman being in the New World in French).
The next day we went to the Court of Justice, which was very interesting- we saw a court case, which really wasn't that interesting. The problem with the case was that the lawyers were very technical and kept on referring to articles and decisions that made no sense to us, so I spent my time flipping through the different interpretations and analyzing languages. After the Court of Justice we went to I beleive the European Investment Bank, and then Jerry took us on a tour of Luxembourg, which was so beautiful. After that we all had dinner and then started a loong preparation time for going on. Once we finally got out the door though, Rinske fell and twisted her ankle! oh no! and so Liz and I took her back to her room and then, tired, I decided to just go to bed.
The next day we left Luxembourg in order to go to Trier, a German town that still has many remnants from the Roman days. Rinske was a trooper and although she was in a wheelchair, followed us on a walking tour of Trier, up into towers and down into bathhouses. Trier was very beautiful and after the tour we went back in order to have some dinner- me and a few other people went to this German restuarant where Sara acted as the translator and made sure that we all had delicious food. After dinner, we went out (strangely, the best place to go out was in the old Jewish ghetto) and then collapsed into bed.
The next day we followed the tracks of the Battle of the Bulge in our bus- we spent a good amount of time on the bus, but the best part was going out and seeing the physical battlefield. It was beautiful and also haunting, since we knew that so many people had died there and Jerry kept warning us not to stray from the path because we might fall into a foxhole. After that we went back to the hotel and a few of us went out to a hookah bar, but it was an early night as we were so tired.
The next day we saw a graveyard where American soldiers who died in World War 2 were buried and got a tour- we also saw the site of a massacre of American POWs by German soldiers, and a site where four black US soldiers were tortured and killed- no monument had been made to them until 2002. After this, we went to a World War 2 museum which was run entirely by this man whose town had been liberated from German occupation by American soldiers and his wife. They've dedicated their lives to keeping the memory of World War 2 alive, and it was really great to see all of their things, which were mainly very personal things about soldiers that they had kept over the years.
After this, we got back on the bus and made our way to Brussels.
Peace out! Next time, my parents come to visit!!!

Pictures: Luxembourg and the Battle of the Bulge