First Weekend in Antwerpen

Of course my computer had to get a virus the second day I am in Belgium. No luck this week. On Friday, our second day in Antwerp, we had another Flemish class in the morning. This language is so complicated and our accents are not very good. Whenever we try to use phrases that we learn in town, no one seems to understand us. We’re just going to stick to English. Everyone here speaks English very well so it’s not a problem. Some even speak French. After our class, we had a scavenger hunt around Antwerp. We were split up into our five groups, and we had to go to different places in Antwerp and have someone take a picture of our group in front of the place. My group decided to use the metro to go to all these places to save time. We thought we won but ended up being second to last… But we did have a fun time and explored our new city by ourselves.

                                                      Scavenger hunt at the Statue in Grote Market
At night we went to the same bar from Friday night called “De Prof”. It is a bar right next to the University, where all the students seem to be. They play good music and the drinks our cheap (though I’m still on my coke diet until Thursday). Contrary to what we heard, people are actually really friendly here. We’ve met a lot of students from the University of Antwerp and other people just passing through the city.

                                                             First night at De Prof

                                                  Winning!
Sunday, we took a day trip to Ghent and Bruge. It was about an hour bus ride. In Ghent we visited a 15th century castle, Catholics churches, and the rest of the old town. In Bruge, we walked around the town, plazas, and two other churches. Everything was so beautiful and had so much history. It was so cold though! We all bought scarves and hats but still were freezing. We had some free time after and did a little shopping, went to a café, and had some Belgian fries!

                                                   Castle in Ghent

                                                         View of Ghent from Castle

                                                      Bruge (In the back is the Cathedral)
Tomorrow is our first day of class. After seven weeks of break, this is going to be rough! We have class at 9am then at 2pm and the last one at 5pm. We’ll see how it goes!

First days in Belgium!

I left from Dulles Airport Wednesday and at the gate found all the other JMU students waiting to board the plane. Coincidentally, my roommate Caitie, was sitting right next to me! I was glad I sat next to her because I am afraid of flying, and she is not at all! We got to know each other during the flight which was great. I was planning on sleeping the whole time by taking Valium because of my fear of flying. I do not know what happened but I took three of them (10 mg during the day 20mg on the flight) and nothing happened! I was wide awake and wired, but not very anxious so the flight went pretty well. I ended up watching three movies and reading cosmo.
We arrived in Brussels, Belgium at 7am then took a bus to Antwerp. Our living arrangements are really nice. There is a gate and then a courtyard, and all the apartments are there (only JMU students). Caitie and I live together, but we each have our own room. We share the bathroom and kitchen. Everything is very modern. We found out yesterday that the warm water only stays on for about five minutes, but we have managed to work it out. There is a common room downstairs that has internet, luckily, in our room we are able to have it sometimes as well.
We did not have time to nap yesterday because we had a little orientation where we learned about Antwerp and got our cell phones. Almost everyone fell asleep during it! Then we walked around Antwerp for a little and had dinner at this really good pizza place. We came home at 7pm, some people decided to go out but I fell asleep right away and slept until 8:00 this morning (13 hours of sleep that I desperately needed!).
Today we had breakfast at the university, which is only a 2 minute walk! We had another little orientation. Right now we have a free lunch time, but later we are going grocery shopping. At 5:00pm we also have a Flemish class to learn a few phrases! Unfortunately, I got sick when I got here and had to go to the doctor who gave me antibiotics that I have to take for seven days. He told me to not drink ANY alcohol while I am on them. This is sucks for the first week of being in Belgium, but it is ok! And I will still go out tonight just to see what the night life is like here!
So much in the first two days! I'll keep updating as much as I can!

                                                            My Room

                                                                 Our Bathroom

                                                                                  Our Kitchen

                                                      Breakfast at the University
Laetitia