First day in Europe!!! The plane ride itself went without any issues. There weren’t any delays at O’Hare, so we took off right at 4:35 Sunday afternoon. We arrived in Brussels at about 7:10 am on Monday, and went to grab our bags from baggage claim. Everyone’s bags arrived with no problems, and we went to find our ride.
Unfortunately Dario, our 8am shuttle guy, didn’t arrive until about 9:15. We were all getting a little worried just loitering around the airport, but we killed time playing Euchre and starting to get to know one another. The long awaited bus ride from Brussels to Maastricht took about an hour and a half. So it was about 11 by the time we reached The Guesthouse (our dorm in Maastricht).
The Guesthouse is a part of a hospital that has been converted into a dorm for the university’s international students to use. It’s really kind of funny to walk to our room because we pass different doctors’ offices and patients on the way. At one point one of the patients, an older lady, chased me down speaking rapid Dutch. I had no idea she was following me until she finally yelled out, “Halo!” and I turned. When she started talking again in Dutch, I just apologized in English and kept walking.
Once I got my room situation squared away (they originally had me in a single room even though my roommate was due to arrive later that evening) I unpacked and took a short nap that really helped get me going again. I woke up at 4 to go on the shopping trip to learn how to shop here. Some Dutch students took us to the shopping mall called Brusselse Porte that is about a 7 minute walk away from The Guesthouse. They showed us different grocery stores and shops that we can use and then set us loose to go at it.
The grocery shopping was SO HARD. Everything was in Dutch and so we had no idea what we were picking up. We just had to guess from the pictures on the wrappers. That got to be sort of stressful. The produce was another thing that was hard to figure out. We had to pick up what we wanted, weigh it on these fancy scales then figure out the right buttons to press for the correct produce selection, and then the right button to press to tell it to print the ticket. Then a little sticker comes out and you stick it on your fruit or veggies. It sounds simple, I guess, but it was hard to figure out what they were doing because the regular customers did it so fast. While we were in the grocery store trying to figure out the jelly situation for PB&Js, this really, really, really nice Dutch man realized we were having trouble. He came over and asked us how we were managing with reading the Dutch, and we told him that we weren’t doing too well. He then explained all the different types of jellies, Dutch spreads and stuff, and told us a fifteen minute story about his travels in the US down to what he wore to church on Sunday. It was pretty funny. He was incredibly sweet and desperately wanted to help us. He really made me feel welcome and like people were excited that we were there. It was really neat.
Later that night, I went out to dinner with four other girls here on the program. We wandered around looking for a place that we could go where we could have some nice food and so
me wine and just sit an relax. A lot of places were closed though because it was Monday, so we had to just keep walking and walking. Finally we went into this pub where the owners (whose new puppy was wandering around all cute on the floor—adorable) told us about a Greek restaurant that would be open a few blocks away. We found the place they meant and had a really great time talking and drinking wine and eating the food. I wasn’t adventurous at all and just ate a pizza, because I hadn’t eaten since the plane food almost twenty-four hours previously and my stomach was still kind of upset from it. Plus, the menu was all in Dutch and the waiter didn’t speak very good English so he couldn’t help us much. It was a really fun night, though.When I got back to The Guesthouse, Betsy had finally arrived after all her travel issues and we talked a bit and got settled in for the night. It’s so much better now that she’s here. I was really getting lonely in this big room by myself. There aren’t even any other students in this hallway yet because most of the international students don’t arrive 2 weeks before classes start like we have. Monique (our program coordinator) said that it will fill up as soon as we get closer to the start of classes. That’s sort of neat that we’re down here with non-American students too. Okay, well, today was a looooong day and I’m looking forward to my first real sleep since Saturday night.
No comments:
Post a Comment