Good Times...

Halo! Basically the whole time I have been here each day has been jam packed. Whether it be school all day or day trips or just cleaning and grocery shopping--I feel like I never stop moving. Well, it has all caught up to me. I am sick as a dog. Speaking of dogs, there are dogs EVERYWHERE! I of course being the huge dog lover that I am love seeing pups parading around everywhere but even I can't believe how much people love their dogs here. There is one thing I hate about all the dogs here: the homeless people all own dogs which makes me really angry because I know they only really do it to play on all the tourists' emotions. So I have decided one day I am going to go buy dog food cans and give all the dogs food and nothing to the people. Well, maybe I'll give the homeless people food too. I don't know, this whole thing makes me angry.

This is a homeless guy with a dog. I got this picture from Alison because I refuse to take pics of this practice. :(

Here is a man standing with a shih tzu. In a really upscale mall in Antwerpen.  

Dogs meeting other dogs--in the same ritzy mall. 

So anyways, I felt this sickness coming on a few days ago but of course I ignored it because hey, I'm in another country, I can't get sick. WRONG. So instead of going to the huge Carnaval celebration tonight I have to stay home and try to get better. I'm not really sure what Carnaval is but I think it has something to do with celebrating before the 40 days before  Easter. After being here just a month I have learned that Belgians don't really need much reason to throw a party i.e.having a party in Gent's city center for when they broke the world record for not having a government.

Danny Burns (my bestest friend in the whole wide world!) recently asked me what my favorite thing about being here was. I thought hard about this because I love a lot of stuff here. Granted there are some things I do miss from back home (Mrs.Yoder's/my mom's cooking/reality TV) but being here outweighs my longing to eat my favorite foods and watch trashy TV. So the only thing I can say right now about my favorite thing here is that just being here is my favorite thing. When I ride my bike to school in the mornings, I look around at the people, the architecture, the river and it always put a smile on my face. Whenever I leave my apartment to go grocery shop or just to take a walk, I always stop and think about how I live here and how amazing that is. Everyone here is really laid back and "chill" for a lack of a better word. Sometimes this "chill" attitude can be perceived as rude by fast paced Americans but once you get used to it, you learn to love it. One of my favorite days so far was when I woke up one morning and it was sunny and it smelled like spring. So I decided to go on a bike ride through the city since I had nothing going on all day. I am a huge fan of antique shopping so I decided to ride around and find a few stores.

The first store I walked into was my absolute favorite! It was very tiny but was bursting with character. I talked to the owner for a little bit and she told me that she had owned the store for 5 years and loved every minute. Everything in the store was so fascinating and different than antique stores in America. I went on to find four more antique stores all with their own personalities. I'll stop blabbing and put up pictures.

This is the entrance to the first shop I went into!

I wanted that red dog tin :)

PERFECTION!

This is the second shop I went to. It was FILLED with vintage boots and clothes.

Vintage skirts--TRES CHIC!

Retro Kids clothes store. Super cute! 

I stopped and devoured a Belgian waffle and read the paper. haha I didn't read the paper-- because I can't even understand anything. There was however a scandalous article of Kate Middleton. The only reason I knew it was scandalous was because there were three pictures next to the article of her and let's just say they were not so flattering. :)

I just happened to stumble upon this "Antiek Depot"--I spent an hour in here!

It's hard to see but this is a bar inside of the antique store! 

I wanted to purchase everything here. 

Lady Liberty loves looking for antique treasures. 

After all the stores I decided to stop and sit by the river for a bit. It was a gorgeous day to just people watch...

...and soak up some much needed Vitamin D. 

Yesterday, we decided to go to Antwerpen for the day. Antwerp is a really ritzy area that is known for it's shopping--It is actually known as the diamond capital of the world. It is about 60 km NE of Gent. We spent the whole day going into stores and just goofing off. Even something as ordinary as shopping in another country is so exciting. Although, the Euro/dollar exchange rate is awful! I need to stop converting in my head when I go to buy anything because it always deters me from buying stuff. I guess that's a good thing? We went to Antwerp with two of our lovely Lithuanian friends. It was a fun day trip because it was packed with shopping, drinking coffee at cafes, and eating. I even got over the whole conversion thing and bought a pair of shoes and a shirt! woo!  

Here are some pics from the trip:

The shopping street!

Deep Fried mussels and calamari with a side of cilantro mayo. YUM!

So delicious but caused really stinky breath. 

I took this picture with this metal "pig" because I was talking to a Belgian about how I don't eat pork and he looked at me and said "You picked the wrong country to study in. We have a saying here 'there are more pigs than people in Belgium'". GREAT! 

We felt bad that we hadn't taken any pictures of architecture so we found this building tucked away in an alley and took a picture of it! :)

This is the Antwerp train station from a far. It was absolutely beautiful from the outside! 

Well, hopefully that was a good update on what has been going on in my life so far! This week my four hour long, twice a week Dutch class is cancelled! Hopefully that will give me a chance to recover from this illness. Until then, I am going to be chugging water/soup and taking dayquil/nyquil like it's candy. See you soon! 

First 15 days...

Hi! So I have been contemplating starting a blog for weeks now. I wasn't really into the whole thing just because I feel like I would sound like a total loser writing about my experiences and telling everyone how magical everything is. But alas, I decided I don't really care because this may not turn out to be the best blog in the world but at least it will give me a place to write down all my experiences and look back on them one day. Hopefully I'll keep up with it and I apologize in advance if I don't.

I have been in Gent, Belgium for almost 16 days. I can't even believe it. I had to count twice to make sure. It feels like yesterday I was boarding the plane with Alison to go on this amazing life journey. (sorry for the corny-ness). I look back on the plane ride now and I remember being absolutely terrified. I had no idea, when we were going to land in Belgium, how I was getting to Gent, how I was purchasing my next meal or when and where I was sleeping that night. I can't even believe how I managed to keep so calm. However, we made it to our apartment safe and sound even though when we got to Gent we had a nasty cab driver who of course overcharged us and told us we were stupid Americans. The whole experience of getting to my apartment surprised me on how independent I can be and kind of amazing that by myself I can navigate to where I need to be in a foreign land. Ok I should totally stop with this weird cheesy-ness. 

We have had two weeks of classes and my schedule is perfect! I only have Tuesday, Wednesday,Thursday classes. Which will give me plenty of opportunity to travel on weekends. Classes here are unexpectedly easy. All my teachers seem intimidated by the fact that Alison and I are native English speakers and have already asked us to help them when it comes to their English. All my classes are in English except for the intensive Dutch course. If you have never heard Dutch before, please go look up a youtube video or something. It is the weirdest language you can ever imagine. It is a mixture of German and English and makes my head spin bc it sounds so much like English. I'm surprised how much I have picked up just listening to it on the bus and seeing signs and such. I hope I can speak it fluently by the time I leave! 

oh, I looked up a video of people conversing in Dutch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vZMMH1GEaU

Weird right?

Anyway, all our classes have exams only at the end--So no midterms :)-- but they are all going to be DUN DUN DUN....ORAL EXAMS. Yes, that means we will each individually have to converse with the teacher about what we have learned the whole semester. Apparently after talking to some student from the Netherlands, this form of examination is supposed to be easier because the teacher helps you out and just gives you a grade based on how well you know the topic. Since I didn't grow up taking tests this way, I have no idea what or how I am even going to prepare for something like this. I should probably not freak out about it now because I'm sure I'll be fine but it is still a scaryyyy thought. We also have a two week Easter break in April that I am excited to travel during. I'm not sure of all the places I want to go but traveling anywhere in Europe will be an amazing adventure. 

I have made quite a lot of friends here from all over Europe. In Europe they have a program where students within Europe can travel to different colleges in Europe for a semester or an academic year. The program is called "Erasmus" and you can be in any field to take part. Alison and I are taking all of our classes with the Erasmus students and it's so interesting to talk to them. We have met students from Lithuania, Italy, Greece, and Netherlands. It's nice to be with these students in classes because we are all on the same page even though we are all from different countries. I am a tad bit jealous of these Erasmus students because they are much closer to home than I am. In fact, my friend who is from Milan, Italy just flew home last week for a couple of days because she had to work and got to see her family and boyfriend. A lot of them will also be going home for the 2 weeks we have off in April. I won't be able to go home until August! 

Everyone always asks me about the weather here and it's actually a bit warmer than (50 degrees Fahrenheit) Chicago but it rains here ALL the time. I've stopped checking the weather because I know it is just going to say 60% chance of rain everyday. Out of the 16 days I have been here it has been sunny one day and that was the day that I was a little sick and had Dutch homework. So I didn't even enjoy it. Hopefully it starts to get warmer and sunnier.

That's all I really have to say for now, I'm sure I'll update like crazy in the next few days. Check back!! DOEI (that's bye in Dutch-pronounced do-we!)

This is me standing by the river we ride along to get to school. Gorgeous! :)