Leuven. Leuven, Leuven, Leuven. If it's possible, each day I fall more and more in love with this quaint city, full of hidden gems. The Thailand kids come home today, and that's got my group talking a lot about the fact that we only have a few more weeks here. As excited as I am about coming home for Christmas, I can't wait to come back to Belgium. I've really connected with this city, and I consider it home. It's absolutely perfect. It's not big enough to be overwhelming, and it's not small enough to be boring. I'm always discovering new things, and, as cliche as this sounds, every day is an adventure. Even things as simple as spending a Saturday in the huis is different from Loyola and home and America. Yesterday I woke up at 2pm and went grocery shopping. This might sound like a normal activity, but the Belgians have to make it complicated.
Similar to my France complaint, stores here only stay open until about 7. I don't know why, maybe the winkliers have strict bedtimes or attention-demanding children, or secret second jobs or something. All I know is that it's something that I still haven't gotten used to, and I've found myself living off a loaf of bread for a few days. Oh yeah, and did I mention that everything is in Dutch? Occasionally I'll get lucky and English will be one of the four languages on the label, but more often than not, I'm stuck guessing. There was one embarrassing moment when I had to ask random customers whether or not this was butter. They nodded, and gave me a pitying look. I was mortified, but I knew if I didn't ask, I would be putting vegetable spread on my bread. Oh Leuven.
After grocery shopping (where yes, I bought more bread and brie, don't judge me) we went across the street to STUK, a student center-type establishment with wi-fi. There's no wi-fi in the huis, and we have a limited percentage of downloads, so we use STUK's wi-fi to download shows and movies. That's right, the huis is old school and we have an internet cord that we plug into our computers. A cord. Leuven, get with it. It's 2011. Luckily, our wonderful director Dr. Hughes has reassured us that we are indeed getting wi-fi, hopefully by Christmas-ish. It's a slight hassle, but we're getting used to the inconceivable, and, to be honest, it's probably helped me in the long run. Without having endless download capabilities, I'm forced to socialize more with my huismates, American and International. Speaking of, quick update on Virginia, my Spanish roommate. New favorite person. Her family was here this weekend, and they were the nicest people! Virginia has gotten used to my terrible Spanish, and I've learned to talk slower around her, but her parents were completely overwhelmed. Virginia had to be our translator. They were really sweet people though. My friend Megan and I are hoping to go to Spain in the Spring after Rome, and possibly stay with Virginia's family. PS Mom, Virginia's coming home with me for the summer. Thanks!
What else haven't I mentioned? There are so many things that I do on a day-to-day basis that I tend to forget about, because they seem so normal now. It took me awhile to get adapted to Europe, but now it's second nature. One of the reasons I love Leuven so much is because it's just different enough to be interesting, but similar enough to America to be familiar. The majority of the people here speak English, and although Dutch can be frustrating, people are more than willing to switch to English or help me translate. Besides missing some major necessities (kraft mac and cheese, Hershey's chocolate,) the food is the same as home. I still eat a ton of pasta, but I've tried branching out a bit and adding some fruit to my diet.
This post was part procrastination, part homework, my way of filling you in on my daily life. We haven't gone on any major trips recently, so I wasn't sure what to blog about, but then I realized that I don't need a big event to write a post. My life is interesting enough on a daily basis that I can just write about whatever I want. I have a lot of work to do for this week, so expect another procrastination-post in the near future.
Tot ziens for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment