I Want Boots!

I forgot to mention in my last post that Lauren Madsen is here (a girl I went to high school with for those that don't know). I haven't seen her in 2.5 years and she's here, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't remember me since I looked right at her and she looked at me and there was no recognition on her part, which is fine with me since we never talked in high school, we just had classes together. It would be one of those awkward reunions where nobody knows what to say and they just stand around and laugh awkwardly, eeeeewwwwwww.

On to new things...today was my first day of class. My first class was at 11:30 and I was very early, so don't worry. History of the Middle East, the only class that helps me graduate on time and it's going to be intense. I have a 12-15 page paper due and another 6-8 page paper, and I have to print out 2 copies of everything and it costs money, grr. I'm going to try my best not to start the night before though, I have other assignments involving making outlines and thesis statements and bibliographies for this paper though, so if I do start the night before it shouldn't be horrendous. We'll see...
After that I had Elementary Dutch I, or at least I was supposed to. No teacher ever showed up (it did say "to be announced" on the schedule) and nobody knew anything about the class, plus there were only four of us there...I might switch to French, I probably will, it would be more useful since the city is 95% French speaking. At least that gave me free time to eat, because I was hungry. All the sandwich fillings here are spreads, like they put some chicken or tuna and some sauce in a blender and substitute that for sandwich meat. It tastes fine though.
Next was Lobbying in the EU. We had some difficulties locating the classroom, the prof didn't even know where it was. Eventually we found the room, or at least a room, a tiny room with no windows (it's like Sibley all over again). No big deal, the class seems really interesting, 10% of our grade has to do with talking to the prof on facebook and there's no textbook, which I'm all for.

After class we watched the inauguration, when they say the whole world's watching they mean it, it was on all the major channels here. My host family was saying how American politics affect them in Belgium, but Belgian politics don't affect anybody outside of Belgium and from the sounds of it they're pretty messy. I never really thought that the "world" was watching these things, why should anybody else care? Apparently they do.

Every girl (of course not actually but it seems like) in this city has boots! It's really making me want a pair, and there are shoe stores every 10 feet downtown, I've never seen so many shoe stores in my life. I got a scarf, now I need boots, decently priced boots, and I'll have to find some way to stuff them into my suitcase.

I'm finding that I don't have anything to do at night. That will probably change once I start having homework to do, but for now it's pretty boring. Perhaps I'll catch up on some TV, thank goodness for surfthechannel!

-Lauren :)