Dang it's been a while since I've posted an update. Oops. I'm still here in Europe, but only for 8 more days - I'll be home by next Wednesday! As sad as I am for this semester to come to an end, I'm so excited to get home and see my family and friends and work and enjoy some good weather (typical Belgium weather is very rainy and gray and cold, even in May and June).
The first few weeks of May was the time for visitors! My favorite!! And also during this time, I had exams for my classes, and officially finished up my junior year. So, like, I'm now a senior in college. WHAT!!!? It feels like yesterday I was just a senior in high school! Still haven't received any grades on my exams/classes, but I'm thinking (hoping) they are good.
The first day of May was spent celebrating my friend, Theresa's birthday AND 150 years of trams. The city spent 4 or 5 days with different events celebrating 150 years of trams. The first day was May 1, where there was a parade showcasing all the different trams of Brussels over the years in the city center. And we threw a little surprise get-together for Theresa. The weather was beautiful and we got pizza that night for dinner and just hung out.
My friend from Sweden, Johanna, came to spend a weekend with me. I showed her all the sights of Brussels, went to see some tram bowling to continue celebrating trams, went to a bar, and enjoyed a fun movie night together. And I got to hear all about her travels in Asia a few weeks before. It had been almost a year since I had last seen her (at her own graduation), so it was fun catching up with her!!
Cassidy, a friend from HPU, came to visit me for a whole week. She met up with me in Budapest, then flew back to Brussels with me. It was seriously so needed to see her - we did lots of sightseeing together in Budapest (including going really out of our way to see a statue park haha) and then were tourists again in Brussels. I showed her all the main attractions in Brussels and my favorite places to eat at, went into all the cute and cool shops we saw, went to an art museum, hung out at the Parc du Cinquantenaire, and had some fun nights with my friends. She got lucky in having the weather be nice for 2 out of the 3 days we were in Brussels too, which was awesome!!
And right after seeing Cassidy, I flew out to Greece to meet up with another friend from HPU (although she's an alum now what the heck), Landon. She was cruising around the country for like 3 weeks, and invited me to meet up with her at some point. Totally worth seeing her and spending all day together and to finally get to wear shorts (first time in 2019 doing so!!). We wandered around Chania, going over to the lighthouse and checking out all the shops and tried the fish eating our dead skin "massage" (it was super ticklish) and ate good food. It was a short trip, but so so so much fun seeing her.
I took my last trip of the semester, which was to Italy! My roommate, Mackenzie, had been invited to work for a week in Forte dei Marmi and was told to invite a friend (me). I'll go more into the details of that whole experience in the blog post (coming....eventually), but let's just say it was the craziest week ever. So fun though, as we were staying right on the beach and the town was beautiful to check out in the evening after work!
I came back to Brussels on June 1, and will be here until I go back to America. The weather was AMAZING at sunny and 87 degrees (31 degrees Celsius) this past weekend. It might have honestly been the last really nice days during my time here - the rest of the week is looking quite cloudy and rainy at the moment. My friends and I spent the day outside just enjoying the beautiful weather, had a bar crawl around Saint-Gilles and Ixelles one night, and went to see the Atomium and a techno breakfast that was held nearby it.
I'm planning on spending the next week soaking up my time in Brussels and being with my friends here as much as possible!!
Comments