An adventure...

This afternoon, Matt and I decided to take a long walk to try and find the famous site in Belgium called the Atomium. The Atomium is a giant, 335 foot tall, model of an iron crystal, created by Andre Waterkeyn for the world fair in Brussels in 1958. We could see it looming in the background from nearby our house, so we decided to try and see if we could walk to it. We set off down the road but after a few minutes lost sight of the Atomium. But, we decided not to give up and after about an hour or so of walking we finally reached the Atomium. Below is a picture that I took of the Atomium:

The Atomium

The Atomium is located in a place of Brussels called the BruPark, which reminded me much of an amusement park without the rides and only the restaurants. Me and Matt were exhausted so we sat down in this small bar called the Toon Land. We had some delicious Belgian beers to warm us up:




We didn't feel like walking all the way back to our house so we decided to try our luck at the Tram system. We did pretty well and within fifteen minutes we were back to our house. A thing that I find to be better here and Belgium than back home in Boston is the public transportation. Though similar in cost, each time you enter a Subway, Bus, or Tram, you scan your pass, and are allowed one hour of use of the public transportation. So for instance, say you wanted to take the metro to go buy a loaf of bread, assuming you are under one hour of time, you only have to pay once. In Boston, you would have to pay for each trip. The one hour covers all modes of public transportation too, so you can use a combo of the metro, bus, and tram during that hour. I like it!

A funny sight...

So I was riding the metro today and looked down underneath the seat in front of me and there was a waffle on the ground. Now if there was a waffle on the ground in the states it would be kind of weird, but since im in Belgium I didn't think twice.

Belgium is awesome, and I already feel as though I have gotten fairly aquainted to the city. Wish I could say that about the school, which has provided us with useless tours and basically no information. I am sure I will understand more about the school once class starts next week, but right now it is simply one large disorganized mess.

A thing I have come to love about Belgium is the colors of the homes. Rather than in Boston, where each block is uniform in color and style (ie. brownstones etc.), Belgium has no zoning laws so each house is a unique shape, color, size, and style. It really makes me feel that I am in a foreign country when I look at the homes, they are quite beautiful.

This is a picture of my neighborhood:

Where to begin?

First I would like to apologize if this entry is not in the best writing that I can offer. Tonight was "Bar Hopping Night" and I am writing this after a tour of some of Brussels best bars. Bear with me.

Today was filled with stuff. This morning we woke up pretty early and had a breakfast of bread and tea, not exactly filling but it was sufficient for me. After breakfast, we had to travel to get to our school. It took in all about 40 minutes (ten minutes of walking and thirty minutes of metro). The trip was not all too bad, it went by fairly quick. When we got off the the metro we took a wrong turn and ended up walking about half of a mile in the wrong direction. After speaking in the best french I could to ask for help, we ended up turning around and walking about a mile and a half in the other direction, finally reaching the school.

At first I was in awe, that my school was in the middle of Brussels. I did not know what to expect. We went to a place called the KultuureKafe for check-in. I imagined this place being organized, but boy I was wrong. After being shuffled around for a few minutes, we finally were assigned a tour group and sat down for a brief introduction to the university. The dean was a very nice man, kind of looked like the european version of Conan O'Brien. He explained to us the expectations of the faculty of Vesalius college, and introduced the various personnel that are to help us with our stay.

Our next speaker was the head of the Vesalius Student Government, a man by the name of Tony who is from Nigeria (and has a striking resembelance to Big Papi David Ortiz), who explained to us the various things that Vesalius students do while not studying. He explained to us the various parties that are thrown by the VSG, and the different organizations we can become involved with. It was pretty interesting to learn about the different programs, and I am planning on joining the soccer club team that plays throughout the area.

After these introductions, we were broken up into groups for a tour of Vesalius College and the VUB campus. Vesalius college is home to about 300 hundred students, 85 being study abroad students and the rest being full time students. The VUB is a large school which we are apart of with thousands of students. Our tour guide was from Southern France, and lets just say that the tour was pointless. He pointed out many buildings, but stated that he "did no know" what went on in them. After our highly un-informative tour, we had a complimentary lunch in the VUB cafeteria. I had some version of chicken pot pie, a waffle and pudding for dessert, and a sprite for a drink. I also tried some of the potato soup which turned out to be pretty good. After lunch we had another meeting to explain to us the various criteria, processes, and options presented to us by Vesalius College. This segment was much more informative than the rest of orientation, thank god!

We finished up with todays orientation at around 3:00pm. I came back to Jette, helped Ryan get his cell phone set up, then took a nap until dinner. For dinner tonight we had roast hen with a mushroom sauce over some sort of baked pastry. For dessert we had a fruit salad. It again was pretty tasty.

After dinner, me, matt, and ryan headed back to the KultuurKafe to meet with the rest of the study abroad students for a night of bar hopping. We were shown many different bars and had a very good time.

Tommorow I have more of the orientation, I will write about that then.

Goodnight!

The city

This afternoon we spent a few hours walking around the main city of Brussels. The weather was crappy, about 40 degrees, raining hard, and windy as hell, but the sights we saw were still captivating enough to make us pay more attention to them and less attention to the rain. We saw the Grand Place, which has some crazy historic guild-houses, dating back hundreds of years. We also saw many of the old cobblestone streets and a few old churches.

Iria took us to an Irish pub in the center of Brussels for a drink, and it was one of the coziest places I have ever been, and is apparently a popular hangout for Americans to watch football on. Looks like I will be spending the Superbowl here. The center of Brussels is very close to where we live, only three metrostops, a total of about 10 minutes of travel time. One ridiculous thing about Brussels is that they have the most restaurants per capita in the world, so everywhere you turn there is a different place to eat.

As far as the food goes, in the center of Brussels there are tons and tons of hamburger places, waffle stands, friterie stands, and pita stands. The pita stands, though supposedly serve delicious food, look absolutely revolting. There is a grill type thing at the window, and hanging above it is a cone shaped mass of meat that they shave off pieces to fall to the grill to be cooked. Picture like fifty pounds of raw roast beef dripping onto a grill, and that is a Belgian pita stand. I sampled my first Belgian waffle today, which lived up to my expectations. Unlike waffles back home, Belgian waffles have almost a sticky sugary coating to them, and the inside is very doughy. I was in a rush so I did not get any toppings, but common toppings are fruits and creams.

After our nice little tour, me and one of my new roomates, Ryan from Chicago, sat down to attempt to watch a movie. I fell asleep pretty early on in the movie, and woke up to the whole family of dogs resting on my lap.

We then ate dinner, which consisted of some sort of meatballs, green beans, salad, and mashed potatoes with cheese. Once again, it was delicious.

This evening we bar hopped with a few of our friends from Bentley and a couple other kids from different schools. It was a good time.

Orientation starts tommorow so I should probably get to bed.

All in all my experiences in Belgium have been amazing!

A trip to the market...

Me and Matt went to the super market today, called Colyrut, in what we planned on being a simple and quick trip. We were wrong. First, we couldn't figure out if we were actually at the right place, as it looked more like a strange version of home depot than a grocery store, but once we made our way up the concrete ramps, we entered into a Costco-esque type place.

The funny thing about the Belgian grocery stores, we came to find out after we had returned home with our groceries, is that just because things are wrapped together in plastic rap, dosen't mean that you can't seperate them and purchase only one of the product. So for instance, we bought a package of pasta, that came with four bags wrapped together. The price label underneath the pasta read:
4 x 1.5e = 6e

So we figured, that this cost 6e because it was four packages in one. However, if you were to seperate it, you could purchase just one back for the 1.5e price. Weird. You can also seperate 6 packs of beer and buy a single beer if you wish.

Another big difference that I noticed was that the store dosen't display its frozen items like we do in the states, rather they have them in closed freezers with pictures of the items above the freezers, I thought this was kind of strange.

After we managed to get out of the store with the items we wanted, we hit up a neighborhood bakery for an eclair, it was delicious.

Today we head out to the center of Brussels to learn more about the transportation etc.

Once it stops raining here I will be taking some photos, but the forecast is for rain the next whole week.