I never imagined we'd end like this...

So apparently I need to finish the trip to Europe...

Looking back I still feel slightly nostalgic... Which is funny because I really missed Target and stores open later than 6 while I was there. Funny how that happens.

The second to last weekend we were there (right where I left off in the last post) a group of us went to Cologne and then to Frankfurt. We had a lot of fun, though I got food poisoning that showed up on the train between the two. I should ask Tanzia to write about Germany haha :) Mom asked me so many times what we saw and what we did but I couldn't remember much of it. I do remember a Mexican restaurant in Cologne and the Italian festival in Frankfurt though. And a lot of bridges!

As usual the week was school school school!!! I really should have kept up blogging... I'm having a hard time recalling everything! We took a field trip to the Delta Works project in the Netherlands - that was AMAZING. I encourage you to look it up and just realize how much thought and money went into that project to save lives and ecosystems. An awesome feat of engineering. A lot of things had to be designed and built specially for this project (the cranes and boats that moved the piers into place and lowered the gates....) Phenomenal.

That weekend I was hoping to get to convention in France but with finals the next week and getting packed up to go it just seemed a little overwhelming, so I changed my mind and most of us just stayed in Leuven that weekend. The next week would be a flurry of trying to study and relax and see and do everything one last time before leaving Leuven. I never did get back to Green Way (the vegetarian restaurant) that one last time... It was good food and the guy who worked there always gave us free stuff... :)

The way home was pretty uneventful except that my backpack got searched going through security in Brussels and all of my 4 bags got searched going through US Customs. WOO. Especially after I had stuffed everything just a little too full...

Well, that's it folks... And WOW this has made me sad.

Life, the Universe, and Everything.

‘Whatever you may be missing right now - a person, a place, a feeling, maybe you are injured and missing running - whatever it is, have peace and take heart - remember that any goodbye makes room for a hello.’

~Kristin Armstrong, Author and runner

SATURDAY-TUESDAY 7/16-19/2011

After going to Oostende on Friday, we decided to go to Ghent on Saturday. Brian and I were the only people that wound up going, and since it rained all day long, we just shopped most of the day… Yeah. Nothing wrong with that, but it would have been nice to do other things as well. Sunday I went to Lillois to go to meeting and ended up staying the whole day because there was a gospel meeting that afternoon. As I had brought all of my homework along, this wasn’t a problem. Though I still had to stay up quite late to finish my paper. Class was Monday and Tuesday, and was just as tiring as the week before. We did, however, have time to go look for food in the midst of our busy week and found a chocolate bar during a late night waffle hunt! SO GOOD. I totally wish I could bring it back with me.

WEDNESDAY 7/20/2011

Poop. Literally. All day Wednesday.

We toured manure treatment facilities last Wednesday, and because these were a ways away from each other and Leuven, I started to catch up on sleep and was able to get everyones homework graded before the trip was over. On the downside, however, we didn't get back to Leuven till after 6 and all of us smelled like poo. Woo. So I was hoping to get to convention before the first meeting but didn't get there until 9:30 that night. I'm not going to post pictures of this lovely excursion. The restaurant that we ate at in the middle of the day was BEAUTIFUL though! Tanzia and I had to special order when we got there - everyone else had the special. Good food too!


THURSDAY-SUNDAY 7/21-24/2011

Had a wonderful convention!!! However, because it was so wonderful, I opted out of doing that thing called STUDYING FOR MIDTERMS. Oh well, We got those back already and it's alright! I met a lot of wonderful Europeans from all over! Obviously many were from France and Belgium, but there were quite a few from the UK (they would tell you EXACTLY where in the UK, and it would matter to them - I'm just lumping them together as "those people from over the water" because I don't actually know the difference). The ladies up at the top are from Ireland - they slept across the aisle from me and were wonderful. The younger girls are Dutch, the one on the left being also able to speak English. We went on many walks together (SO CUTE). The other girls are Maria and Gabriela, who are originally from Ecuador who have since moved to Belgium. They took care of me the entire time! (Even though they are fluent in Spanish and French but not so much English. Though Maria speaks some haha.)


MONDAY-THURSDAY 7/25-28/2011

Monday was spent attempting to write the manure field trip report... wooo. It took me a ridiculously long time to write it for some reason. Tuesday and Wednesday were our midterms, but there was no break in homework. It's been a wonderful week. And by that I mean awful. Thursday, things started looking up, when we took a field trip to look at groundwater! Yes. Look at groundwater. And its effects. We saw a sinkhole after going through an adventure hike worthy of my dad's planning ( I didn't fall once in the mud!) and a cave, as well as going down to look at where the water comes in at. The water table regenerates so fast in Wallonia that if they stop pumping out of it for three hours the surrounding homes get flooded.

I'M WORKING ON A NEW POST

SO chill out! haha :)

I have it almost done, except for pictures... and posts are real lame if they don't have pictures (like this one) only the hardest part is looking up all the pictures and uploading and organizing them in a sensible manner. So take a chill pill.

We wrote a prelude to our own fairytale...

I’ll be out of my mind, and you’ll be out of ideas pretty soon, so lets spend the afternoon in a cold hot air balloon… (or on the beach...)
Anyways. Owl City always puts a silly grin on my face.


As I write this we are sitting on the train on the way to Oostende. There were no places left to stay in Amsterdam, so those of us who wanted to be back in Belgium by Saturday night decided to just go on day trips around Belgium. For such a small country you’d be surprised how much there is to see and do! Oostende is a city on the coast with a casino. Some people of this small group are going there, while the rest of us are going to the beach!


This last week has been quite busy! Tuesday, we found out that the two days we are in class will be brutal – 2 homework assignments due the next day, and a seminar report due if we had one. So Tuesday and Wednesday night were both pretty late with homework (also, if you’re a grader, like me, then you get to do that as well!), but Thursday we had our field trip. We went to Aquafin, the wastewater treatment plant that Flanders (the Flemish region of Belgium, where we are) uses. (Obviously there are multiple locations). And then we got waffles.
YES. I have now experienced true Belgian waffles. (We went after class on Wednesday for the first time.) They are fabulous - You have no idea. There’s a little shop that sells them off the street, but they’re only open from 10am to 7pm. ANYWAYS. After lunch (which did consist of more than waffles) we went to EcoWerf, the waste composting facility of Leuven. After that we got to tour the Stella Artois brewery which was a lot of fun (kind of like a really clean ethanol plant LOL). The only downside of the day was that it was cold and rainy and generally nasty, especially since these places are way on the edge of town and our only transportation is biking or walking. And then we went for waffles again. DON’T HATE. I live on the 3rd (4th) floor. And bike and walk everywhere. I’ll be ok. Right?

This morning I went to H&M, which is past the waffle shop, and it took all my willpower not to stop there on the way back. Siiiigh.

So I finally got fed up with the financial aid office and emailed them about my loan that was sitting as “estimated financial aid” asking when it would be posted to my account. Apparently they were just hoping I would forget about it, because I got an email back saying they had taken care of it. YAAY.


LATER (Train home from Oostende)

So today, I used my sarong/scarf that I got in Brugge. I used it as a shawl when in the shade, I used it as a changing tent to go from clothes to swimsuit, I used it as a towel to lay on the bench, I used it as a cover-up (halter-ish dress) to wear over my swimsuit when walking around, and finally as a scarf when the sun went down to stay warm. YES. I didn’t wear it as a skirt or as a strapless dress, though. Anyone got any other uses for it? Anyways, we got to Oostende about 4 but it was nice enough that we could wander around (and lay on the beach!!!) without getting cold. It was great tanning weather – sunny to partly cloudy with a cool sea breeze to keep you from getting too hot. :D In other words, today was a GREAT day. Apparently the casino wasn’t that great, but it was a really nice beach town. I also got two new scarves that are layered fabrics and really pretty.

So the smell of the sea and looking at pretty boats and getting to wear my new sarong/scarf a bazillion ways and walking on the beach and soaking up sun… siiiigh. I could just stay here :)



As a side note... My typical train experience: Italia sandwich from Panos (pesto, mozzarella, and tomatoes, mmmm!), my Go Pass (anywhere in Belgium for 5 euros/one way trip), my sarong - which I use as a blanket (make note of yet another use for this item of clothing), and my notebook that contains everything I will ever need to know about a particular trip in it (Thank you, Dianne!!) - It actually also houses the Go Pass so I don't lose it...


A couple random photos from Oostende - A beautiful gothic church standing amidst this century's architecture, and a boat, on the sea... I want a boat. There are two pictures near the top of flowers - one is of the weekend market in Leuven, and the other is of wildflowers that surround the wastewater treatment plant... I thought it was a nice touch.

Shopping here is like shopping at Ikea...

So Sunday I stayed in Leuven while nearly everyone went to Brussels. Turns out, they did more than just go to the bar they wanted to visit, so I would have enjoyed the museums and I could have come back earlier. Aw well. I did yoga, relaxed, cleaned my room, read my book outside in the sun... For those who know me, it was a day well spent. Today Tanzia and I went to the Hema (like Target but not as awesome) to get suplies-y things... I had to get a pillow because our pillows here are awful, a mug to drink my lovely tea, tape so I can send packages home, and an alarm clock.... (All of the prices are written in the Ikea script and you can't understand what exactly it is that you're looking at if you don't understand its use right away.) We then found the H&M (yaaay!!) and I got a purse and jean jacket. We plan to go back because I need nice tops and Tanzia and Anna want to go shopping for jeans. That whole street is full of shopping opportunities :D Speaking of Anna, you can find her blog here: Anna's Belgian Blog

BRUGGE

We spent today in Brugge, getting started a bit later than we had planned (a little miscommunication, a little 'trying to get 12 people out the door') but I feel like we had a pretty full day there. We went on a boat tour to see a good chunk of the city
and we ended up walking around a lot after that to find the chocolate museum (yum!), the chocolate shop "The Chocolate Line" and different shops to wander into. Lunch and dinner were also interesting to look for, as Brugge is a tourist town and most places in those areas can be EXPENSIVE...

We also found a house with a huge Texas state flag flying outside of it... So of course we knocked on the door wanting to meet this Texan. It turned out he wasn't home, but his wife was (and she was Belgian) but we did have a nice chat with her.

I'm still looking for a nice pair of heels, but we've passed a lot of shoe stores. It seems the most common heels here are about an inch and quite thick (which makes sense because the cobblestones are hard enough to walk on in normal shoes...), but I have seen a few daring ladies in stilettos. This gives me hope.

I really should learn Dutch.

I really really want to learn Dutch now. It seems like it's not really an easy language to learn, or that common (which makes me want to learn it all the more), but isn't anything like what I've experienced before - making it very difficult to learn on my own. Also - then I wouldn't feel like an idiot when people ask me questions/talk to me in Dutch.

So today was our first day of class and I got one of the homeworks done but not the other. So I've got homework due Tuesday. yaay. We were trying to get to London this weekend but that didn't work out (train tickets were 200 euros... !) so we're going to Brugge - shopping!!! I need heels to go with that dress.

We ate at a tasty vegetarian place tonight (after getting another round of groceries - greek yogurt and muesli yuuumm :) ) Where EVERYTHING is vegetarian. Tanzia and I both got veggie burgers - hers carrot and mine guacamole/avocado. YES.
This was after I ate more than half a bar of chocolate and started to feel a little ill haha..

Adventuring! (and by that I mean shopping...)

After coming back to the house to rest and eat lunch Tanzia and I went "adventuring" during which we got shower flip flops (psychedelic beaded ones you would never wear in public), and I got a dress and the needed supplies to make tea (tea leaves and a metal tea filter).

I would upload more pictures but from now on I need to be careful with my uploading (and possibly only uploading if I can find a cafe with free wifi?) because I've already used up over 35% of my available uploading on KU Leuven's internet. And it's the second day. I'll be sure to post albums to facebook at the end of this (seeing as I've been good about pulling pictures off of my camera on a regular basis, weeding through those I don't like, and organizing them).

And Here We Are!!!

So this is our second day in Belgium, and we've started to get oriented with the city of Leuven. We've found the hospital, the grocery store, the building we'll have class in tomorrow, and know most of the streets near the house we're living in. The house we're living in is the international student house for K.U Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), the oldest university in Europe, and Tanzia and I have the largest room. On the fourth floor (which they call the 3rd).


You may be wondering why we found the hospital? Weeeellll... I picked up some poison ivy before coming here, and after a plane ride and walking around in the same pair of jeans... It got pretty bad (not as bad as we've seen in the states, but quite uncomfortable for traveling). So I had to go to the emergency room (because it was after supper - yes, on the first night we were here in Belgium...) and sat there for a good long while until they gave me a steroid shot and some cream to put on it. So now I'm feeling a lot better and will check my blisters when I take off the bandaids tonight. They don't actually know what poison ivy is because they don't have plants that give reactions like this but they were able to google it to figure it out.

Bariloche and Onward!!!

The first day in Bariloche (Monday, June 28) we walked around the city, I bought a new pair of jeans and a scarf, and we had cheese and chocolate fondue for lunch. The shop owners in Bariloche are under the impression that they live in the Swiss Alps. The next day we tried to go skiing, but there wasn't enough snow. We went up to check out the hill anyways. We also looked into hiking and biking, but because the weather was so awful with rain and wind we ended up just taking a bus out to the end of the line, where the driver kicked us off and we walked down to his first stop on the way back into town. He didn't like us very much. We continued to walk around town later in the rain and stopped to buy a TOOONNN of chocolate.. :)

Leaving Bariloche was interesting, to say the least. We had flights to Iguazu that had a layover in Buenos AIres. When we finally got to B.A., we ended up getting stuck there over night because there were bus drivers on strike or somesuch. Because we were only supposed to spend a day in Iguazu, there was no point to getting a later flight there because our flight back would be a few hours later. The Iguazu part of the trip ended up being canceled, and we never got our money back. We were also given a voucher for "Breakfast at any restaurant in the airport, up to ____ pesos per person" (I don't remember the value we were told but it seemed reasonable - the cost of a decent breakfast) which turned out to be "breakfast at one place in the airport - and you can only have a couple media lunas and a cafe con leche per person" which is not much at all. ANYWAYS. I'M NOT BITTER. We were able to fly out of B.A. for Mendoza the next morning (which was just our later flight bumped forward a few days). We were able to sleep some that morning at the hostel because there wasn't much sleep to be had the night before in the airport.

Later that day we went on the half day winery tour because Mendoza has the perfect climate for vineyards. We decided that the hostel was a disaster and checked out on the 3rd (after the first night) and packed up and walked to a different one. We were then able to find a cafe where we could watch the Argentina v. Germany game of the World Cup. Not a good day to be mistaken for a German. :(

Jeremy left on the 4th (Sunday) to fly back to B.A. and then home. The rest of us took a bus to San Juan for special meetings. There were folks there who had driven an entire day from Chile to be able to be there. They actually gave us a ride back to Mendoza rather than letting us take the bus back. On Monday we spent the day taking a "High Mountain Tour" - it was a lot of driving but there was a lot of beautiful mountains. And we got to play in the snow finally! On Tuesday we went PARA GLIDING in the afternoon!!! It was tons of fun :D The guy who was in charge of steering me kept yelling at me to "RUN!!!" at the beginning, and I felt rather bad that his legs were too long for mine to actually help any.

We had decided after the Buenos Aires airport disaster that we were going to take the bus to B.A. from Mendoza, and that enabled us to sleep on the bus all night long and get in the next morning. That day we mostly chilled and Steven took a really long nap. Sometime in Mendoza he'd gotten sick and wasn't sleeping that well. After his nap we went to visit his host mom and pick up some things he had stored with her. On the way home we ate pizza (again) and I still have the fridge magnet that they hand out so you can order from home... I don't think I'll ever use it, but it looks cool :) The next day we took a bus to El Camino - A very colorful neighborhood full of dancers and restaurants and artists. We finally got to watch people tango! I finally got a mate gourd there, and Russ was able to pick up quite a bit of artwork.

That afternoon I ventured out for the first time by myself in Argentina - Steven was taking a nap and Russ was at the airline office still trying to get his money back. I attempted to call home but my pin number no longer worked. Grrr. When I was paying for my time on the way out, the guy at the till made a kissy face at me. Typical. When Russ got back we went to the grocery store to get tasty things to take back to the states (alfajores, dulce de leche, and the mate stuff), as well as water - since after Steve got sick we'd only been drinking bottled water... We left for the airport that night because my flight was so early in the morning - The guys stayed with me for a while drinking mate until my flight showed up on the departures board with all of the information I needed. WOOOO!!! Another night in an airport!!! 48 hours until I'd get home!!! I didn't really want to leave after we got out of the cold and wet south haha!

Well, I ended up getting through everything without much hassle - which is a good thing because I don't really speak Spanish... And I was able to sleep on the plane. The layover in Peru just required us to go through security again, the Costa Rica layover required nothing, just walking to the other gate and waiting for the plane. The El Salvador layover just had people checking our carryons for liquids and patting us down. Met a girl and her mother on their way home to California after the Costa Rica stop and was glad that the girl spoke English and Spanish - so we were able to sit near each other all the way back to LA. I got through US customs by 1 am, and spent another night in the airport. I HATE LAX. I got over to the terminal I needed to be at, and some nice security guy gave me a cart that he was going to put away (where I would have needed to pay for it) so I didn't need to carry my bags. I washed my hair in the sink and took a sponge bath after attempting to sleep on a marble bench, and starved until I could check in and get through security for my flight to San Jose, CA, where I had a couple hour layover until my flight to Minneapolis. (I actually got real breakfast there - steel cut oats made with soymilk!!!) And then of course I had my flight back to Fargo. UFF DA. Mom, Nanu, and Grandpa Dave were there to meet me and pick me up and we went back to their place that night... We left for home on Sunday, stopping in Fargo, Grand Forks, and then Park River...

I can't wait to do this again!!... Though I could wait forever before the next overnighter in an airport...

I have pictures somewhere but can't find them right now...

Planning a new trip!!

So I feel terrible that after El Calafate I gave up blogging about Argentina... we went to Bariloche, Mendoza and then back to Buenos Aires. I actually took pretty good notes about this trip so if you want to read about this I can type it up... It's actually pretty enjoyable to go back through and remember everything that happened. :) Please give feedback so I know if I should finish that part of the blog!

Anyways - the reason for this new post! I'm planning a new trip (as the title says)! I'm on my way to Belgium for study abroad. We will be in Leuven and have mostly four day weekends to travel. I have a few ideas of where I want to go but nothing set in stone yet. I will have my own computer (yaaay!!) and plan on continuing this blog. I leave July 5th and will be back August 12th. So be watching!