So let's start with the flights. The flight out of Norfolk was fine. I'd been up most of the night so I was pretty tired. My parents stayed with me in the terminal for awhile before I went through security and waited at my gate, pretty standard. The plane to JFK was tiny. One seat, aisle, two seats--I probably couldn't have stretched all the way across it. But, I had a solo seat, it was uncomfortable so I didn't have a drive to nap, and it gave me time to finish my journal assignment.. Which I did, and eventually paid for an internet connection at JFK to email all my assignments to Dr. B. And after waiting in JFK for a couple hours I hopped aboard the Boeing 757 that would eventually take me to my new home.
However, I would have to struggle through the flight before finally making it home.. Because, lucky me, I get stuck in the middle of a row of 3 seats, with a sleepy guy on one side and a large lady on the other, and both of them quite liked their arm rests. Sleeping was rough going, the movies were no good, the food was actually not bad, but it all just took too long. But the sun came up sometime over England, and then we met the runway sometime within the next couple hours.
And here I was. In Brussels. At about 7:30 in the morning and by myself. Things weren't quite getting fun yet. I made my way to the Gare Centrale by way of metro, but nobody else was there when I arrived. So I throw my things in a corner and sit down and read to kill the time. Henry, my roommate, was the first to arrive, and slowly the others begin to trickle in. We get kicked out of two different areas of the station by the maintenance staff, so we decide to camp out in front of Starbucks. I felt bad for [eventually] 11 of us taking over the shopfront, and I was pretty close to exhaustion, so I bought a cup of coffee. Most of us were at the point of sleep deprivation that everything becomes funny. Luckily Dr. B showed up before too long, and we all made our way to Cook and Book for lunch. We ate a nice lunch, browsed the bookstore, and everyone took a nice nap outside in the most comfortable outdoor lounge chairs ever created, all before we met out host parents for the first time. Which leads me to my new home...
Bill and Brenda Quinn, [Henry and] my new parents, are the nicest people on the planet! After they pick us up (in a Dodge Caravan, quite a sight to see in this area) they take us back to their house. It's a three-story house out in a nice suburban-type community. On the one hand, all the houses out here are different and look amazing, on the other hand we're almost as far out of the way as possible, while still inside Brussels. Henry and I have to walk or take a bus to the metro station, take a train to distant stops, and sometimes even take a tram from there to our final destination. But it could be worse, and we're still has happy as can be out here.
Back to the point... nicest people on the planet! Bill works at NATO, and was in the Air Force for 30 years. Brenda teaches math and science at the local DoD school. As previously mentioned, they have three children, all of whom have now graduated from college, so they we very well attuned to the young adult's mindset, and are very good at recommending and pointing out places we're likely to be interested in. Even better, Bill has quite an extensive knowledge of, among other things, beers. And he has the perfect mindset in regards to alcohol: the more you know about it, the better.
Our deal with him is this: we may drink as much of his beer (or other alcoholic beverages), on the conditions that we write down and save
- The name of the beer
- Where it is produced
- The alcohol content of the beer
- And what we think about / taste in it
Pretty good deal in my opinion.
The weather so far has been extraordinary! Not the bleak,
dreary, wet place I'd been hearing about. So in that light, we started our
weekend with the Quinns with a trip to Waterloo. The site of the battle is now
a large expanse of farmlands, but it is a gorgeous sight nonetheless. We walked
by the statue of Napoleon and the path by the fields. We came back and searched
the gift shop. And, as I thought we were leaving, Bill sits down at a table
outside the connected restaurant. "You guys want to try a beer?"
..Well if you insist. And so I sat down and ordered my first Belgian beer of
the summer: the Waterloo Double 8 Dark. Délicieux!
After that, we came back to the house. Henry and I settled
in a bit more, while Bill grilled up some good ol' American pork chops for
dinner. Brenda wanted to keep us up until at least 9pm to help fight the jet
lag, which wasn't hard considering the sun doesn't set until 10pm. You just
don't notice the time going by. But around 9:15 we were both ready to crash,
and we did, hard.
So that was my first day in Brussels. This week will feature
less adventure, for the most part, than the previous weekend had, so tomorrow I
will update on Day 2, Sunday in Antwerp. Pictures will be added soon as well.
So stay tuned!
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