belgium, fete nationale, & thoughts

AAAH i'm lagging on updating now! >_< school started and i got busy. i'm going to try and update quickly!

Belgium!
Last weekend, me and 3 other girls travelled to Brussels for the weekend! We spent most of Friday and Sunday in Brussels and Saturday was spent mostly in Bruges, which is about an hour trainride away. Brussels is more urban (and janky), Bruges is more quaint-cutesy. I will list out my remarks since it's easier to read that way :) (and I'm dead tired like I always am when I post...maybe I should try not being that way sometimes haha.)

Brussels
-Our hotel was in the jankiest part of town you can possibly imagine. Boarded-up windows, grafitti everywhere, trash in the streets, stinky, etc. But the hotel itself was actually pretty nice.
-The icon of Brussels is a statue of a peeing boy called Manneken Pis. We saw that, along with the girl version (a happily squatting little girl) called Jeanneken Pis.
-The Grand Place--the giant town square with the old giant church, governmental buildings, tourist shops, etc.
-Many statues, old churches, cute gardens, etc.
-We took the metro everywhere. Not only was it super useful and fairly cheap but it is much less crowded than the Paris metros and they play music at night.
_On Sunday we visited the Atomium which is a GIANT replica of an iron (or some metal) atom. There are 8 balls connected by tubes, which we went in via escalators and staircases. There were exhibitions and panorama vista points in the cubes. It was all very futuristic.
_Also on Sunday: CRAZY GOOD FLEA MARKET at which I did not spend a dime (err...10 euro cent piece.) Crazy overpriced bar...since when do they make you pay for water.
-Overall: Brussels can be kind of jank and ghetto, but it has a lot to visit/offer and it is a very interesting mix of old and new, traditional and modern. It has everything one needs, but I didn't think it was physically terribly attractive.

Bruges
-SO CUTE! Beautifully painted, traditional rowhouses with brightly-color doors and roofs on cute cobblestone streets. A river runs through it with little boats.
- There was a small market, (of course) a huge old church which I thoroughly enjoyed, gardens, a park in which we napped, and rows and rows of streets to walk.
_We reached the big town square (apparently of movie fame). We tried to get in the bell tower but we were too late but it was okay. Lots of pictures of very very very old historical architecture, monuments, signs etc.
_Bruges is so cute and romantic, very much more Dutch-seeming than French-seeming (which makes sense considering its location), less touristy than Brussels, and quite charming, but is only good for about a day's trip since there's not too much there.

So we worked it out perfectly with 2 days in Brussels and one in Bruges :) And now I've been to Belgium, and know a lot more about it, something I never thought I would do or would happen to me! A lot of people probably go their whole lives without visiting Belgium, since it is so small and kind of like a weird mix of French & Dutch, but it ended up being really nice and I'm glad I did it. It was pretty cheap being so close to France and all.

The next two days it was raining, and I didn't really do anything after school. Monday I spent almost the whole day either planning my Italy trip (which is still greatly in the process...) or attending our mandatory ISA meeting (which ended up being 2 hours long -__-). Tuesday was the Bal Pompier! Which brings me to...

Fête Nationale

Basically, July 14th is like their July 4th. Everyone gets it off work/school and nothing is open (but things were open.) The night before, many of the city's fire stations (casernes) turn into party houses! Wooo! We decided to go to the one near school, at St. Sulpice. I met Jose and Mari there and we waited in like for at least 40-45 minutes, but it wasn't boring or frustrating or anything. I was just happy to be there. Once we got inside (which was really an outdoor courtyard with lights and French flags strung up) there was lots of music and dancing and drinks available for purchase (for a hefty price, and we therefore did not consume.) I'm sure if I would have gone with the other more party people I could have pre-partied and would have danced a lot more and had a more rockin' time, but as it was I was glad to be there at all, and glad to be there with Jose and Mari who are also fun but in a non-partying kind of way. We listened to the music, kind of danced, made our way through the EXTREMELY CROWDED crowd, and watch slutty girls pole dance with wolflike pompiers (firefighters.)B/c I took a picture of him, we met and talked with this random French guy who looked REALLY French....red and white striped shirt, hair slicked back, black glasses, awkward looking really. He was nice and gave me a beer, and obviously I didn't drink it because I don't want a roofie cocktail, but he ended up getting mad and weird about the fact that I didn't drink it and after that I just wanted to leave. We left at around 11:45 and it ended up being good that we got there and left so early, because as we were leaving the line was still HORRENDOUSLY long, longer than it had been when we were in it, and we saw people from our program in line who it ended up didn't actually get into the ball. That sucks to wait in line for nothing :( So even though I didn't go crazy all in all it was a good night.

In the morning, I got enough sleep to wake up for the parade, but I decided not to go because it was POURING rain, I didn't have anyone to go with, and I could watch it on TV anyway. So I did that. At 1:30 we finally made plans and met up at the Louvre. We were gonna go to the Louvre since it's free on Nat'l holidays but it was JAM PACKED with every single other person in Paris PLUS tourists looking to escape the rain. So we braved the rain with our umbrellas (my Toms got freaking SOAKED--I mean, wearing canvas shoes in the rain is always a good idea right.) We walked all the way to the Champs-Elysees, walking down it (my first time!) to the Arc de Triomphe (also my first time.) They have an underground tunnel so you don't have to brave the crazy multidirectional traffic circle that is around the Arc. We took pictures and stood in solemnity, since it was Bastille Day after all. After we took a picture of us on a ledge, I failed to see a step and my foot rolled over onto the side (you know?) and I fell on my ass on the wet pavement. Great. -__-; my foot hurt the rest of the day (still does a little) and my dress got wet. But it wasn't that bad and could have been WAY worse!

After that we went to the Monoprix (who knew bougie champs-elysees had a freakin' Monoprix!) to get baguette, wine, and other supplies for the nighttime festivities. In the interim time, I visited Analiese and Colleen's homestay which is AMAZING because it is so light and so well-decorated. Like mine, it's pretty far from school, and I feel bad because their homestay mom is more negligent than mine, but they do get a better house. Much bigger too than this built-for-dwarfs apartment. I tried to dry out my shoes and magically heel my foot while watching French MTV (about jetsetters and models in Miami...I guess that's what French people are interested in.)

At around 6:30 we met up to go picnic on the Champ de Mars for the Eiffel tower/fireworks extravaganza (which wasn't until 11PM.) All of the normal roads were blocked off, and some metro stations too, so we had to walk all the way around to Pont D'Alma (which isn't really that far) and by the time we got to the Champ it was almost 8:00, but luckily there was still more than enough space on the grass for us to picnic on. A few minutes after we all popped the wine bottles some French cops come over and told us (in broken English...really, I could have taken the French) that it was forbidden to drink and we would have to put th bottles away. So we sneakily drank the rest the whole time, pouring it into plastic cups from our bags. I only got like half a glass of the rosé champagne I bought :(but there were LOTS of other good things: baguette, chevre, camembert, Doo-Wop (this generic brand pain au chocolat), raspberry cookies, strawberry tartelettes, Toblerone (fuck yeah), and prosciutto (which I obvi didn't eat.) It was good. :) We honestly didn't have to wait too long before the fireworks started.

A. FREAKING. MAZING. They were all choreographed to music and BEAUTIFUL with the Eiffel Tower in the front of them, siloutted...can you even imagine? It felt so surreal, kind of detached, but so alive at the same time. How many people does this happen to? WE ARE WATCHING FIREWORKS SILOUETTING THE EIFFEL TOWER IN PARIS FRANCE ON BASTILLE DAY. I got a lot of good pictures. It was a good time. But waking up for class the next day was not. :)

So that was my July 14, 2010. :)


Other thoughts
I always think of stuff throughout the day to add here and then I forget...
_I'm pretty good at the subway and navigating the streets now. As long as I have my Paris Citybook (praise Moleskines), I never get lost.
_I take stuff for granted, and I don't think it's possible for me to really appreciate everything that is happening to me until I am back in CA. It's a weird feeling, but I can't fully realize my experience except in hindsight.
_In class we are learning passé simple which is the most useless tense in the whole world. I would like to learn how to speak better conversationally, but no, we're gonna learn passe simple.
_I regret not studying abroad for a year, especially because of my friend and SPOP sister Connie, who studied abroad in Spain this whole past academic year, and as a result got to go to like 10+ cities in Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium, England, Ireland, Scotland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Morocco, and other countries which I am forgetting right now. Can you EVEN imagine?! Travelling is so much easier when you're already in Europe. I'll have been to France, Belgium, and Italy...but all those other countries! What a crazy AMAZING experience! I made a list of all the countries I want to go to in the world (on all 7 continents) and I WILL fufill the list by the time I die. >:]
_Right now I'm feeling: a little loopy due to tiredness, a little emotional due to PMS and that I skyped with my mom tonight, more than a little stressed due to housing for next year, teaching credential app stuff for next year (which I have to do here), and my Italy trip, and very excited for the Loire Valley trip this weekend. :)