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!
