In Brussels!

I've been in Brussels since Monday, and this is certainly an odd little country. They have no government whatsoever, it collapsed at the end of December, but the EU is situated here, so laws are being created for the entirety of Europe, but not for Belgium itself. A lot of the intersections have no street signs whatsoever, so the cars all just kind of go for it, and I have no idea how there are not more wrecks. There are a bunch of different languages spoken here. About 70% of the people can speak French, 60% Dutch, 35% English, and I know I've heard Spanish around too.

I'm starting to get settled and used to how things work. I'm getting pretty good at navigating the metro and I can speak fractured French enough to kind of order food and stuff. My internship starts on Monday, so I'll be quite busy with that I'm sure. I've got a really good internet connection in my room (thankfully!) so I can finally post some pictures and stuff. Sorry about the lack of updates, everything has just been crazy!

I'll start with Paris and work to Belgium I guess because that's the order in which these pictures were taken.


This is the bakery that was directly outside of our hostel in Paris. I bought the best quiche there that I've ever eaten.


This was a neat square with artists and crepes.


We decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower from right about here. It took us a couple hours, but we made it before the sun went down!


This is my Eiffel Tower pic... it's really quite large!


This is what I saw when exiting the train station when I arrived in Edinburgh. There were thousands of people marching the streets with flaming torch swords (including kids who were just carelessly swinging them around) and then everybody marched up a hill and set a lion statue on fire.


Here's a view of Edinburgh from on top of a pretty tall hill.


View of the castle at night.


View of the castle from the street.


This is a typical street in Brussels.


St. Michel's Cathedral in Brussels. We went inside and it's really pretty. The cathedrals in Europe are all really cool and decorated with stained glass and statues and such.


This was a cathedral in Mechelin, Belgium, a city north of Brussels that we went to for a day.

Overall, I'm definitely still getting settled, but getting used to being so far away from anything and anyone familiar. I'm trying to take advantage of the fact that I'm in Europe because I really don't know when I'm going to be back. Also, I got an unexpected scholarship last minute which I had completely forgotten that I even applied for, so that's really nice! I think we might go to Spain/Morocco for spring break at the end of February, Ireland around St. Patrick's Day, Amsterdam and England when Nick is here in March, and hopefully Germany sometime on a weekend! The really awesome thing about Brussels is that I'm incredibly close to a bunch of other large European cities, which makes it really easy to travel.