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!