Bonjour!

I am currently sitting on my bunk bed in Brussels right now. It is pretty late at night because we all kind of lost our way home to the hostel, but we were with a huge group of the students and we had Jay (an intern) with us too. We got to Brussels around 1pm after hitting the road early this morning at 6:30am. The plan was to leave at 5:45am but one of the students slept through all of his alarms and took awhile to even wake up to everyone banging on his door. (Yes, he was a VT student. Haha!) The bus ride wasn't too bad except for the no air conditioning part…but everyone opened their windows so it was the equivalent to a wind tunnel on the drillfield back at VT. The bus wasn't the most comfortable and Erin and I kept finding ourselves in the most hilarious sleeping arrangements in our seats. At one point, I woke up and realized I was sprawled out and sleeping on Erin's lap and she was leaning against the window and her head kept hitting the window every time the bus went over a little bump - but she still didn't wake up. Guess we must have been tired!

When we got to Brussels, we all immediately headed to the Parliamentarian. It was definitely one of the coolest tours we've done so far! It was a very colorful, high-tech museum. We each had our own hand piece with headphones so it was a self-guided tour. We learned about the different areas where the Parliament meets and even where in the building they meet. I thought it was cool that they even explained that at these different sites, the translators have their own buildings where they just translate books, speeches, everything! The translators translate every document into the 23 official languages. They translate over one million pages in the span of one year. They have a nonstop job! We also learned more about events through history across the world. Being Polish, I spent the most time at this one little area of the museum that talked about Poland and how the kids played on the rubble from the war. It made me think about how even after war, life goes on and people can be happy again even when their country is reduced to rubble. The kids in the picture were smiling and looking like they were having so much fun just playing on a pile of rubble from a war that changed the world - yet all those kids were concerned with was playing with their friends. It is almost astonishing that in our world, people can just go on with their lives unaffected by devastation. It made me happy that the kids in that picture could have that much fun with everything that was going on. Another part of the museum that caught my attention was a picture showing little kids, maybe 5 or 6 years old, learning how to put on a gas mask. This was a picture from students in the UK during World War II because the UK was afraid of air raids with nerve gas like was used in World War I. It was pretty surreal to see a room full of little kids holding gas masks and smiling for a picture. There were a ton of different parts of the museum with different pictures, stories, maps, documents, and even a room that glowed green and had a world map on the floor with these pods that you could move around over the different parts of the world to learn something about each area. It was really cool - I took a lot of pictures of that room that I will post! There was another room that was circular with a bunch of different chairs and couches. The walls had projections on them of places like the beach, countryside, and a side street in Italy with a person walking down it. It was obviously filmed over a period of time because everything moved - it wasn't just a projection of a still picture. It was really cool and I took a video of it that I need to post! Clearly it was a really awesome museum and I really liked it. It made learning about the parliamentarian and history much more interesting than I was anticipating. J

After our museum tour, we headed back to the hostel, got situated in our rooms, and then met up with everyone to go to dinner and go out. We got seafood and it was so delicious. I have never had such amazing mussels, salmon, and yellowtail in my life. It was amazing! After, of course, we all headed to a famous Belgian waffle place called "Grandma's Waffle". You know it's good when "grandma "is in the name. It had to be the best waffle I have ever tasted. We shared one with bananas and chocolate fudge on it - YUM!!! After eating our way through Brussels, we finally met up with the rest of the students at the famous Delirium bar. This bar was hands down the best bar I have ever been to. It was three levels and had such a chill, relaxed, yet fun vibe. Everyone had a great time and the bar was known for its homemade beer. There was over 2o beers to choose from. I had one that tasted literally like cherries and it was easily the best beer I have ever had. The bar had a mix of locals and non-locals and it made for a cool pub-like vibe. There were definitely some hilarious local people though because I guess they had never seen a redhead, or at least not often, because a bunch of people kept coming up to me telling me how cool my hair was. One guy even tried to pay my friend Sam, whom pretended to be my bf so nobody would bother me, so he could take me to dinner. It was quite the story. Of course, all of my guy friends made sure nobody else bothered me or Erin. It made for a pretty memorable story though. Anyway, to put it into perspective of how awesome and popular this bar was, it is in the Guinness Book of World Records! Basically if you ever get the chance to go to Brussels, go to Delirium bar! I had such a fun time and I think it may have been the most fun nightlife I have had this entire trip to Europe. On the way home from Delirium, we stopped at Club Mustache. It was 1920's, swing music and was so much fun to dance to oldie music in a hipster bar. I haven't got to swing dance and do the "mashed potato" in awhile so it made for a great time! I feel like we all made the most out of our one night in Brussels. J

Finally we all made it back to the hostel which is where I am now. The hostel is definitely not the Four Seasons but at least our room is only six beds with people we all know. We have to be ready tomorrow morning at 8:45am all packed and ready for the European Commission visit so I better try to get some sleep! After all, it is 4th of July tomorrow so I have to have energy to celebrate American-style in Europe for one of my favorite holidays! Hopefully I will randomly come across a little stand that sells sparklers. J

Happy Almost 4th of July!!!

Tori