Saying Goodbye

I definitely haven't been keeping up with this thing for the past month, mostly because all of our papers and finals came in the last 3 weeks, so I've been busy.  Quick update: Traveled to Paris, London, and Brussels with my parents over my 10 day break and had a blast with them.  I also traveled to Latvia with some friends, which was also a good time.

Today is my last full day in Leuven.  I have mixed feelings about returning home to Chicago tomorrow.  It's been snowing here in Belgium, so the weather isn't what's making me hesitate about returning.  I don't think I've ever had to say goodbye to so many people whom I've formed strong bonds with.  I had to say goodbye to all of my Finnish friends who I have been fortunate enough to call my co-workers for the past 3 months.  Although I only spent two days a week in the office, I came to enjoy going to Parliament just to spend time with the Finns!  They organized a going away party for me which I will remember for the rest of my life, only they can understand exactly what I mean.  They were such a strong support at Parliament, they were encouraging, fun, and took my sarcastic sense of humor very well.  It was really hard to have to say goodbye to them, and I really hope our paths cross again at some point in the near future.  If any of you guys are reading this, I love you guys! (uh oh, did I just use that word?)

You really connect with people when you live with them, eat with them, go to class with them, go out with them, go to work with them, travel with them, every day for three months.  Given how much time the Leuven kids have spent together, it's amazing how well we've gotten along this entire time.  We have been an incredibly cohesive group of people, and I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to spend my time abroad with.  We all came from different parts of the country, different walks of life, with different experiences under our belts.  Each one of us had different interests, a different history, but we all bonded.  The one positive thing I can think of right now is now I have a couch to sleep on in Washington D.C., Boston, or Philadelphia if I need it.  We have created so many inside jokes between us that when I return home to Chicago and one slips out, people are going to think I'm crazy.  Although I didn't get to spend Thanksgiving this year with my family, in a way, I never missed out on family.  The kids here have become my family and I will be forever grateful to all of the experiences that they have shared with me during our time here.

I remember back when I was packing all I could think about was, "My life is about to change in a major way."  It is a very scary thought to have knowing that everything you knew was going to be turned upside down.  In my very first post before I departed for Europe I wrote, "I am very happy with my decision [to study abroad], and I am wishing, hoping, and expecting it to be a life changing trip."  Life-changing trip is an understatement.  Over the past three months, I've had the opportunity to chat with people from all corners of the Earth, work in one of the most diverse workplaces I can imagine existing, struggle to understand foreign languages, put the American lifestyle into perspective, and experience first hand a real life history and culture textbook from cover to cover.


My life is about to change again.  When I return to Chicago, I don't know what to expect.  My friends are all there, and I can only hope our relationships will continue where they left off when I left.  I will be graduating college in 6 short months, and will have to figure out what direction to take my life.


When I departed from Chicago three months ago I opened up a new chapter in my life.  Now it is time for me to write that conclusion paragraph and close the chapter.  The new chapter starts tomorrow.

When in Rome...

I went to Rome this past weekend, and let me tell you, it was absolutely amazing!  At first when we got there on Friday, I really wasn't impressed and was like this is lame.  There are a lot of beggars and people trying to get your money and whatnot.  But then on Saturday when we did a tour of the city, it was just unbelievable.

On friday we got there at around five o'clock.  My buddy Chris, Chris' friend John(the guy that we stayed with), and I went out to dinner to some pizza place that's supposedly one of the best pizza places in all of Rome.  The pizza was amazing!  I mean it was thin crust so not like Chicago style deep dish, but the sauce was delicious.  You could definitely tell that everything on it was fresh, and it wasn't filled with preservatives and whatnot.  We also drank 2 bottles of red wine between the 3 of us, usually I'm not the biggest fan of red wine, but it was really good. So then after dinner we went and got gelato, which of course was really good.  I got Stracciotella(sp?) which is basically like vanilla chocolate chip, and then a scoop of caramel. Then we went to this place called Scholars, which was an Irish pub and drank some Guinness.  There was an Italian cover band playing there that we watched and they played a bunch of classic American songs, but they were pretty good.  We were there for a good while, and then we went to another bar, until it closed at 2am, then we walked back to the apartment in the rain, haha.

Saturday was our big sightseeing day.  We woke up around 10.  We went to Vatican city, went through the Sistine museum, which also has the Sistine Chapel in it.  It was super cool to see all of the paintings that I've grown up only seeing in history books, and the whole time I was thinking...uhh the ACTUAL painting is RIGHT in front of me!...Nuts.  Then we went into St. Peter's Cathedral which is the largest church in the world.  It was MASSIVE!  It would take you at least 5 minutes to walk from one side to the other.  Pretty crazy, and there were so many things in there.  Chris' friend John who was showing us around was a blast.  He has been to Rome 11 times, so he was a really good tour guide, he knew all the ins and outs of the city, and all these cool stories and whatnot.

After the Cathedral we went to the Spanish steps, and then out to lunch.  This lunch we had was basically legendary.  We ordered one of those appetizer plates that has a little bit of everything, so things like sundried tomatoes, cheese, spinache, cucumbers, zuchini, very good.  Then I got cheese filled tortelini which was amazing.  We all ate bread and drank two bottles of red wine.  Then after lunch at the same cafe we went out on the front porch, drank gin and tonics, and smoked cuban cigars.  Basically heaven.  John loves to play the guitar, and was trying to convince this old guy on the street right next to the cafe that was playing and singing italian songs to let John play a song, he kept saying no.  Finally John was like, I WILL PAY YOU TO USE YOUR GUITAR, so the guy gave it to him.  He played a Bob Dylan song and sang and everyone around was watching and clapping and stuff, which got the street performer mad, so after he was done playing the song, the guy left, hahaha.  Then we all had a small glass of this stuff called Grappa, which is an italian liquor that is basically straight grain alcohol, it's 120 proof.  They only give you about an ounce and a half, and you just sip on it.  So after we were done there, we had a good buzz goin and went and saw the Pantheon, which was cool, and then the Trevi fountain, which I got to make some wishes in.  Next, we went and saw the Coliseum, didn't get to go inside, but it was still pretty cool from the outside.  After that we went out to dinner, got some more pizza, drank some more wine, smoked another cuban cigar.  haha life is good.  We were back in our apartment by midnight because we had to wake up so early for our flight back.

I won't be traveling anywhere this weekend, however next weekend is when our 10 day break starts.  Both of my parents are coming, and I'm very excited to see them.  They're flying into Paris Thursday morning, and I will be meeting them in Paris Thursday evening.  We will be spending a few days in Paris, then going to London, then back to Brussels for a few days.  Not sure if everyone else has heard, but there's a lot of unrest in Paris at the moment as the government tries to pass legislation to raise the retirement age by two years.  People are in the streets protesting and rioting.  They're set to vote on the legislation today, so hopefully by next Thursday things calm down a bit.  Also, there have been a few terrorist warnings/threats against Paris and London, so hopefully things go smoothly and we don't run into any trouble!

Crepes in Paris, Beer in Berlin

I have a lot to talk about in this post seeing as I have yet to write about my trip to Paris last weekend, and my trip to Berlin which I just got back from yesterday.

I traveled to Paris with about 12 other classmates of mine here at the institute, so it was a fairly large group of us.  We took a high speed train from Brussels to Paris, and it took us about an hour and twenty minutes.  From what I understand the trains go around 250 km/h which is around 155 mph.  Definitely very fast!  We arrived at our hostel, which was decently nice.  Myself and three other guys got to share a four bedroom room, so we didn't have to sleep in the same room as someone we didn't know.  The first day we were there, we basically explored the city.  We went to Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, basically all over the city.  One thing that I wasn't ready for was the fact that Paris is HUGE.  If you look on the map, two things that seem to be relatively close to each other are really far apart.  We were definitely tired after our first day of traveling/exploring.  The next day we did some more exploring of the city, I saw the pantheon among a few other things.  I went to a cafe and had a nutella and banana crepe, which was heaven.  In the afternoon we all went to this festival called Paris Techno Parade.  Basically they shut down the streets of Paris for this parade of floats with DJ's and huge speakers on them.  They go along playing loud techno while 400,000 people dance and party around the floats on the streets.  I definitely saw some weird people doing some weird things.  That went from around 1 pm to 5 pm.  After that we re-convened at the hostel and a few of us decided to go out to a cafe.  There were six of us at the cafe, and we were going to order beer when we saw on the menu that they had the option of serving beer in 5L "giraffes."  We had no idea what this was, but ordered it anyway, because ordering 5L between the six of us was cheaper than ordering individual beers.  The server came out with this HUGE cylinder of beer with a tap on the bottom.  We were surprised, and it has been one of the more interesting ways I've ever been served beer.  We were pretty tired from the activities we had done during the day so we didn't stay out late.  The next day we went to Sacre-Couer, the Moulin Rouge, as well as the catacombs.  Sacre-Couer was really cool because it's up on a hill so you can see all of Paris, although there were a lot of scam artists around trying to get your money.  On the train ride there, we witnessed a woman getting pick pocketed by a few girls.  However, not only did the woman catch them, but everyone around them saw it too so they caused a HUGE scene and refused to let the girls get off the train until they gave the woman her wallet back.  The Moulin Rouge wasn't that impressive, I just didn't think it was too special.  The catacombs were really creepy, but it was really cool to go down underneath Paris and walk around a bunch of human bones I guess.  I definitely enjoyed my time in Paris, and I'm excited for my parents to see it when they come to visit in a few weeks.

This past weekend a friend of mine in the program, Chris, and I went to Berlin.  This was kind of a last minute trip, and we didn't really have much planned, except that we were going to play it by ear.  Normally, I need a plan for everything, but I told myself that I would take off my jetpack and just chill out while on this trip.  Needless to say I was excited to see what we would end up doing.  We flew into Berlin and got to our hostel which was....interesting to say the least.  It was pretty far out from the city center in Western Berlin.  We were sharing a room with a couple of engineering students from Lithuania, also interesting.  I had read up on a free walking tour that was taking place later in the afternoon, so in the meantime we went out for lunch.  I had homemade German spatzle, which was amazing.  It came with melted cheese all over it and spinach, definitely some good eating right there.  With it I had a German wheat beer, which was amazing.  I wish I would have wrote down the name because I don't remember what it was called, some long German name.  After that, we went on a 4.5 hour walking tour throughout the city of Berlin.  It was a very informative tour given by a 20-something from London named Leo.  It was funny because he had an outside perspective on Berlin and its history.  Some of the things I saw: Brandenburg Gate, Adlon Hotel(where Michael Jackson dangled his baby out the window), sight of Nazi book burnings, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Jewish Memorial, sight of Hitler's bunker, etc...Chris and I were incredibly tired after the tour and so we ended up passing out once we got back to our hostel.  The next day we took a tour, through the same tour company, of Sachsenhausen concentration camp.  It was an incredibly powerful, insightful, educational, historical experience.  Again our tour guide was a 20-something from Scotland named Colin, who was also very informative and knew a lot about Sachsenhausen.  On the tour we met some really cool people, three of which we ended up getting drinks with after since the tour was a pretty big downer.  Sandy, from Australia had traveled pretty much the entire world, so it was fun to pick her brain and get insights as far as places we should consider traveling to.  Laura and Daniel were architecture students from San Diego and they also came along.  We went to a restaurant that had over 100 German beers and had a few for ourselves.  Things I've learned: the Germans know a thing or two about beer.  I hate to do this to Belgium, but the beer that I drank in Germany this past weekend was better than any beer I've had here in Belgium.  Chris had one beer that was 14.5% alcohol.  I guess you can say that although it was really cold out, after a few German beers you're feeling nice and warm.  After that, we went to a festival they were holding in Berlin marking the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Germany.  We walked around the fest for a little while before heading back.  Chris and I were walking around the neighborhood by our hostel at night, looking for a pub, when we found this hole in the wall little pub.  We walked in, and all 5 people in the pub kind of stopped and stared at us while we sat at the bar.  It was a neighborhood pub and I'm assuming everyone in there has been going there for the past 20 years.  It wasn't a place a few random Americans wander into.  I'm guessing this by the fact that NOBODY spoke a lick of English.  We were able to communicate enough with the owner/bartender that we wanted beer, which again were absolutely delicious.  I'm pretty sure the owner liked the fact that we were American because after a while he poured us some free shots of genever/jenever, which I had never had, but it was grape flavored, and tasted pretty good.  A little bit later a guy came in the bar who spoke a little bit of English and he seemed to enjoy the fact that we were from the U.S. and that he could speak to us in English.  He sat by us and spoke with us for a good portion of the night.  At one point we saw the bartender pouring someone a mixture of half beer half coke, and we inquired as to what that was.  He made one for us, for free, so that we could try it.  The guy who spoke English explained that sometimes beers that are especially bitter are mixed with coke to sweeten them up, also so you can drink more of them before getting drunk.  It was a different type of taste, but not bad.  We ended up spending the rest of our night at this pub where pretty much nobody spoke English, and had a great time.  The only time we left was when we ran out of money, so we went to an ATM got more cash, and went back.  4 liters of German beer later and at 3am we went back to our hostel, woke up the next day at 9am for our flight back to Brussels.  I definitely enjoyed Berlin, although it was much different from the other cities I've visited.  Since it was pretty much destroyed in WWII, a lot of the city is fairly new.  I would say that out of any city I've been to here, it reminds me the most of an American city.

Anyways, this upcoming weekend I will be staying in Belgium, and then the weekend after that I'm going to Rome!  So stay posted!!  Sorry I didn't put more pictures in this post, for whatever reason it was taking a really long time to load.

The Red Light District is Super Awkward

A decent amount has happened since I've last updated this blog so I have quite a bit to write about.  I have two main things to talk about, my internship at the Parliament, and my trip to Amsterdam!

I ended up getting the position working with European Parliament Member Riikka Manner whom I originally interviewed with.  This past week was my first week, and I didn't really know what to expect.  Some of my other classmates had already started their internships the week before, but everyone had different experiences.  First and foremost, has anyone ever been in an elevator where six different conversations were happening in six different languages, none of which were English?  Well that's one of the first things I experienced, and it's quite the culture shock.  Although everyone speaks English, everyone also speaks 4 other languages as well.  It can get kind of annoying, because someone will assume you speak French, and begin talking to you in French, and every time you have to say "I'm sorry, I only speak English."  Oh well, maybe by the time I get back I will be fluent in 5 other languages.

The office is comprised of the MEP, her two assistants, and another intern from Finland. This week is called "Strasbourg Week," because all of the MEPs are in Strasbourg, France, so everything is really quiet.  My first two days went well, the project that I was given was that Riikka wanted to write an article for the EuropeanVoice Magazine about the Clinical Trials Directive (legislation that was passed in 2001 regarding the regulation of clinical testing of medicinal products), so they asked me to research the topic and draft an article.  So basically I'm writing an article that will be published in a magazine, maybe.  Other than that, the other assistant and the other intern are really nice.  Yesterday the assistant and I went out for a few drinks after work and got to know each other, which was nice.  It should be interesting to see what kind of things I will be exposed to in the coming months.

Last weekend three friends and myself visited Amsterdam for two days and a night.  Amsterdam is a really cool city, very beautiful.  I had no idea that there was such an elaborate canal system that goes throughout the city.  We basically used the canals, and a map to help us navigate.  The first day when we got there, we found our hostel, and then went on a tour of the Heineken Brewery.  However, unlike the Stella brewery, the Heineken tour never actually shows you them making the beer, it's more like a Heineken Museum more than anything else.  After that we wandered around the city a little bit, went out to dinner, watched a random street show of break dancers, and then headed to the Red Light District once it got late.  I will describe the red light district in one word: Awkward.  Basically it's these narrow streets that people walk down, on either side there are tall windows lined with red/pink neon lights, inside the windows are girls standing/sitting/posing in lingerie.  Meanwhile a bunch of scumbags walk by and give them a look up and down.  I was curious so I would look, but at the same time I would feel so awkward, like I shouldn't be there, so I would look straight ahead.  Overall it was just an awkward experience, but I suppose you gotta see the red light district if you're in Amsterdam, right?  Because we had left Leuven really early that day, we were all fairly tired from traveling, so we were in bed back at our hostel around 1am.  Surprisingly our hostel was very clean, and we all had a private 4 bed room, with two bunkbeds, so that was nice.  The next day we woke up around 10am and went to the Van Gogh Museum.  I remember when I was younger and my mom would drag me to the exhibits at the Art Institute in Chicago, and all I would do is whine and complain (Sorry Mom).  But I really enjoyed the Van Gogh Museum, we were there for about 2.5 hours.  After that we went to the Anne Frank House and took a tour of that.  That was a very powerful tour, let me tell you, but very cool as well.  Overall my time in Amsterdam was a lot of fun.  Although we were only there for two days, I think we really took advantage of our time and saw a lot of things we wanted to see.

I have a very busy month coming up.  Tomorrow morning I will be leaving for Paris for the weekend, the weekend after that I will be in Berlin, the weekend after that I'm planning on going to Stockholm, Sweden, and the weekend after that I'm going to Rome.  LOTS OF TRAVELING!  I'm very excited for it!  We do still have class and homework though, our midterms start next week so I figured I would study to and from Paris!  Stay posted for my next post about my time in Paris!

The Stereotype of Belgians Making Good Waffles is True.

It's been a few days since I've been able to update this blog because we have been very busy.  Classes are in full swing, and we've already been given homework and whatnot.  Since this program revolves around an internship with the European Parliament, all of the classes revolve around the EU and/or Europe in general.  I will be taking classes on European History, European Law, European Economics, and European Culture.  All of our classes are in classrooms on the first floor of the institute we are staying at, which is convenient.  However, the majority of the professors are from the major university in Leuven, KU Leuven.  The classes don't seem too difficult, but at the same time it will be a bit of a struggle going forward considering I am not used to political science type classes, but rather business classes.

For the internship, we have to interview for our positions with the MEP's (Member of European Parliament) of the different countries.  I had an interview with an MEP from Finland, it was a very quick interview (maybe 10 minutes), and I am competing for the position with another girl in my program.  The person who doesn't get it will have to interview with another country, probably later in the week, so here's fingers crossed that I will get it the first time!  Although, I am at a disadvantage that I'm a Finance major, and the rest of the students are politcal science/international studies majors.  However, this particular MEP is on the Budgets Committee, which I believe I'd be well suited for.

We've finally been able to do some exploring here in Belgium.  I've witnessed the greatness that is the Belgian waffle.  I assure you that if you're anywhere in America and the menu says "Belgian Waffle," that it is false.  The waffles that I have had here are unlike anything I've tasted in America.  They don't use batter to make the waffle, but it's more like dough.  There is some type of sugar in the dough that when they press it with the waffle maker it carmalizes(I don't know how to spell that), so that there's this thick syrup like texture, so good!  We also went to this Italian restaurant that supposedly has the best pizza in town.  It's no Chicago Style deep dish, but it was really really good, probably because the people who owned the establishment were real Italians.  I've gotten into a few arguments with the other kids I'm studying with about pizza, considering some are from Boston and others from Washington DC.  They are obviously misinformed on the best pizza since they've never had Chicago style deep dish.  I've also explored the Belgian beer scene.  A few of the beers that I've tried that I really like are Stella Artois(of course, although that's comparable to Bud Light here), Leffe, Duvel, and Delirium.

We've also been able to do some sightseeing outside of Leuven.  I'm not sure if I mentioned in any of my other posts yet, but we went and did a tour of the Stella Artois Brewery, which was very cool.  My favorite part was the 20 minute open bar at the end.  It's different to see bartenders here pour beer, to them it is an art.  For instance the bartender at Stella first takes a Stella glass, cleans it in one sink filled with soapy water, rinses it in another sink filled with hot clean water, pours the Stella into the glass, lets the beer form a head, then takes a knife and cuts off the head above the glass, dips the glass back into the clean sink of water to rinse off any beer that got on the sides, and then gives it to you.  You won't find that in America.  Five other friends and myself traveled to Ghent this past Sunday to visit Gravensteen Castle.  The castle was huge!  We did a walking tour and it took us about an hour to see everything.  It was definitely cool to see all of the artifacts and how historical everything was.  After seeing the castle we took a boat tour of Ghent, because there are small rivers that run throughout the city.  Above is a picture of the castle that I took while we were on our boat tour.  Below is a picture of a friend and myself in front of a church in Ghent.

I have plans to travel to Paris in two weekends.  Today I believe that I will be booking a trip to Dublin in 3 weekends, because a flight there will only cost 26 euro, CHEAP!!

Although I am having fun here in Belgium, I still miss my family and friends back home!!

My Apartment/Dorm

This post is going to be dedicated to where I'm staying, which is called the Irish Institute for Europe in Leuven.  The building is an old monastery that was built in the early 1600's that was recently completely renovated into this institute.  All of the rooms are multi-level 3-4 person rooms, except for mine.  They decided to take a 1 person room, throw another bed in it, and call it a double.

So Cesar(my roommate) and I are living in a pretty cramped room.  I'd say it's about the size of, if not slightly smaller, than my freshman year dorm room.  I guess it's not a terrible thing though since I don't expect to spend much time in there.  The good thing, is that it is all new!  The beds, the bathroom, the floors, everything.  They haven't put in ethernet ports for the internet in our rooms yet, which is supposed to come today, but in the meantime we have wi-fi in our lobby area.  The cool thing is that they kept sustainability in mind when renovating, everything is really efficient.  All of the lights in the entire building are motion sensored, so they won't turn on unless someone is walking down the hallway, which is cool, except for late at night when the hallways are pitch black and you have to wait for the lights to turn on while walking down them.  Then in our room, the lights won't turn on unless you take your room keycard and put it in this slot where the lightswitch is, and leave you keycard there.  Basically so you don't leave the lights on when you leave, because if you do, you will be locked out because that means your keycard is still in the wall in your room.  The toilets are all dual flush, meaning they have separate flush functions if you went #1 or #2, and the shower dials have different options for 25, 50, 75, and 100% flow of water so you don't waste unnecessary amounts of water if you don't mind taking a shower with half the water pressure.  We sleep here, take classes here, and also eat here.  Our rooms are all upstairs, and we have a few big classrooms on the first floor where we take our classes and then there is a cafeteria where there's a few full time chefs preparing every meal for us.  They're not here for just us, but this institute is open to all students, from undergrads to Phd's, that are traveling here to study for however long to stay, so it's a hotel of sorts.  There are groups who stay here for a few days, a week, and then our group who is here for a few months.  It's rather cool though because it is an Irish institute, so all of the staff are Irish.  A pretty cool place to stay and the building has a lot of character because it is so old.

My First Observations About Belgium/Europe

I finally made it to Belgium two days ago at around 7:30am (Belgian Time).  I didn't really sleep on the flight so I was awake for almost 40 hours straight.  I'll tell you what, you know when you're no longer in Kansas when all of the signs surrounding you are in Dutch.  It's rather frustrating coming from a city such as Chicago which I know my way around fairly well, to a city that I've never been to, have no idea where anything is, and can't read any of the signs.  I've noticed a few key differences between the states and Belgium so far, including:

• Think about a standard luxury car in the U.S.  Such as BMW, Audi, Mercedes.  Well all of those are used as Taxis.  Think about that, a car that costs about $60,000 in the U.S....a TAXI!
• When taxi's stop to pick you up, the driver get's out and loads your luggage for you (if you have any), and opens the door for you.  It will be a cold day in hell before a taxi driver in Chicago does both of those things.
• It's hard to walk on Leuven roads.  Many of the streets are cobblestone, and I cannot even guess how many times I've stumbled on an uneven stone already.
• Nobody wears gym shoes.  I have yet to see anyone in a pair of gym shoes other than myself.  Not only does this make me stand out as an obvious tourist, but also makes me wonder how uncomfortable Europe's feet must be?
• Some middle aged European men love to pop their collars.  Not only did I spot a few on my flight, but also walking the streets of Belgium.
• I love paying for a beer with a coin.  We went to a festival and a Stella Artois was only 1.80 euro, luckily I had a 2 euro coin in my pocket and tossed it to the jolly man behind the stand.

Other than that, it's going to take me a while to adjust to the new time zone, new surroundings, new people, and new lifestyle.  AMERICA.

The Story of an All American Kid Living in Belgium

*Exclaimer:  In naming this blog "Apple Pie in Belgium," I am in no way referencing "American Pie" the movie, or the associations it makes with apple pie.  I am simply referring to apple pie as being an "American" desert, a desert that I very much enjoy.  In doing so, I am making the connection between apple pie, it's "American" reputation, and myself.  That being said, continue reading below:

First and foremost, I think some thanks is in order for whomever you are, for taking the time to read my random thoughts, rants and quirks.  I'd like to apologize right away, for I am not a writer; never was, never will be.  Chances are you will find many sentences that have no structure, no organization, and also some grammar errors sprinkled in there as well.  I am new to this blog thing, but figured that since I will be hop scotching across Europe, I should try and document as much of it as I can.  Let this blog post act as the "before" in a series of events that will take me to numerous countries in the next 3 months and ultimately land me back here in Chicago.


As of right now, I leave in 2 days.  My thoughts and feelings are mixed.  I am very excited for the near future and many of the adventures that await, seeing as this will be the first time my feet will have landed in foreign soil.  Not only have I never been out of the country, but I also have very limited exposure to flying in airplanes.  If I remember correctly I have only needed to travel by plane 3 times in my life.  Therefore, not only am I excited, but nervous.  I have never strayed far from what I consider home for an extended period of time.  I have always kept my support network, such as friends and family, at close reach.  To most I may seem like a fairly independent person, however that sense of independence will be tested when I find myself 4,000 miles from my home, my friends, and my family.

When I first began tossing around the idea of studying abroad, those who knew me best told me, "That would be a great experience, but do you think you can handle being away from home?"  Or they would say, "That may not be the best idea."  Don't get me wrong, I did have support in my decision, it's just that I definitely went the opposite way that the "day-to-day Kevin" would have gone.  I tend to play it safe generally in my everyday life, so when I was thinking of stepping outside of my comfort zone by spending three months in a foreign country, many of those closest to me were initially surprised.

It still seems surreal to me that not too long ago I was debating whether or not this would be a good decision, and here I am, 2 days from departure.  At first, I did not know if I should graduate early and get a head start on my career, or if I should take that extra time I had and use it to study abroad, even though I'm getting credit for classes that I don't need.  I am very happy with my decision, and I am wishing, hoping, and expecting it to be a life changing trip.  I intend to share this experience with all of you via this blog and through the pictures I post.

I will post as often as I have enough things to blog about.  Whether it be every few days or once a week, I do not know.  It will depend on how interesting my day to day life is while I'm in Belgium and whether or not I feel it worth my time and yours to tell you about it.  Here goes nothin...