Dearest Dedicated Followers (all 2 of you!),
Get ready for my summer adventures in Germany and Eastern Europe!
xo, cj

spelling related apologies in advance-spellcheck is running in French

okay, so, Not Cookie's name probably isn't Isabella, because Not Cookie is a male...oops. My landlady gave me some stawberries that she had picked herslef in Wepion, the strawberry capitol of Belgium...they were quite yummy. She seemed dissappointed when I told her that I was going to Antwerp; she said, "But they are Flemish." Oh, Belgium is such a silly country.

Went to Antwerp this weekend and shopped in Belgium's fashion and antiques capitol. I bought the bikelock I've been eyeing for over a year, some acessories, and something else that I bought as a gift, but i really like, so I might just keep it for myself (this happens rather frequently and is a habit I would like to try to break). I also witnessed the end of what appeared to be a mustashe parade. I don't really know what it was all about, but there was a large flag with a mustashe and marching men (some mustashed, others not) in funny hats.

oops

got locked in the park after ultimate. was halfway over the fence, when someone started yelling at me in dutch. i knew that the park closed at nine thirty, but it was very clearly 9:27 when I got to the gate.

Weekend

Friday there was a campfire by the lake where we met up with some other international students. I had to get up at 6 to cqtch a train, so didn't stay very late. I was scared about mixing up the train connections on Saturday, so I only got about an hour of sleep.



We had Monday off of Pentecost, so this weekend I met up with Timo and Antione to go to Antione's grandparent's beach house at Merlimont on the English Channel. The town has 3000 people in the winter and around 20000 in the summer (and most of these vacationers dress like sailors in blue and white striped shirts). In order to not have to pay for a fast Thayles train to take me to Paris and then back north, I had to change trains a lot (5 different trains). I mean it saved 50 Euros (each way) and I was not in a hurry. I learned that France is really agricultural, at least near the railroad tracks. I left Louvain La Neuve at 630 and met up with the guys around 3. Once the guys picked me up in Compégne, we drove to paris so Antione could look at some jetskis, then headded to the beach.
It stays light pretty late so after dinner we walked around some massive dunes. Then we went to Le Touquet-Paris-Plage with Antione's friend Oliver. I thought we were just going to pub, but it ended up being like a pretty hip/posh clubbing town. If felt kind of awkard because i wasn't really dressed properly (almost everyone there had a collar to pop). By this point, I was about to fall asleep standing up, but still managed to get my dance on (a little).

Sunday we made Brie and tomatoe omlettes, watched some of the french open, then loaded up the kayak and skimboards and hit the beach. The water was really cold and i was wearing a wet suit, but it was still fun to be out in the water. We went back to the dunes armed with a sled and a homemade sandboard (plastic sled with the sides cut away and with bolted on foot straps). It wasn't as fast as I had anticipated, which is probably good, and was really fun. After a yummy dinner of salmon, sauteed red peper, and a mystery fish that looked pretty, tim made crepes that went wonderfully with strawberry ice cream and the belgian chocolates I brought.

Monday morning we ate, cleaned, and raced to Amiens, where I caught my train with 5 minutes to spare!

UPDATE: Cookie is gone...

Okay, so it has been a little quieter around the house and I ad been wondering why. Apparently we were just dog-sitting Cookie, which explain some of the agitation. Not Cookie has a name. It is "Isabella Bischon" Really, it's a two part name, so I wasn't that far off. It's also, like if my name was "Caroline Human" or "Caroline Looks-like she's-from-northwestern-Europe"

I kind of miss Cookie, she was very social. Isabella Bischon is pretty old and doesn't do much.

Spel een Matchke

For the past two weeks, I have been taking the train to Leuven where the original catholic university of Leuven is {I'm working at the shiny new (built in the 1970s) French version} in the Flemish part, to play ultimate on Tuesdays. It is an hour train ride each way, but seemed to be the closest ultimate organization with a website. I've been practicing with the Propellers, the B team for JetSet, who are/were apparently like the #2 team in the nation (I don't really know what that means because Belgium is pretty small). I was told that I can go to their practices if I want to, but they get out kind of late & I’d be risking missing the last train back to LLN. Everyone is supernice and they even conducted practice in English, just for me (I was planning on just standing at the back of the drill lines and following). It’s kinda fun to see how much of their Dutch I can understand. Practice is held on a soccer field in the middle of a rollerblading track, no one has gotten hit (yet), but it is only a matter of time. At the end of the scrimmage, instead of doing the traditional highfive-”goodgame” lines, they definitely did the euro-cheek-kiss, it took awhile and I had to suppress giggles. They were also really impressed that we practice 3 times a week.

Brussels/Brugge

So far the group has taken day trips to Brussels and Brugge. We went to Brugge on the Day of Ascension. We toured De halve Maan (the Half Moon) brewery where we learned tat the number of breweries around Brugge had dropped from 700 to 30 in 30ish years. We tried one of their newer (award winning) brews: Brugge Zot (the crazy person from Brugge), which was pretty tastey. After eating waffles and looking at old buildings/canals (I can't seem to escape hydrology anywhere), we staked out a place to watch the parade. We had heard that people dressed in medieval garb and followed a vial of Christ's blood (a relic from the crusades) around. We didn't know that we were towards the end of the parade route or that it as going to reenact basically the whole Bible. During the hour and a half we spent waiting for it to start, we sat on the curb and played travel scrabble. Once the parade started, we were trapped on our corner for the 3 hours that it lasted, which is pretty long for a parade, but there were like 7 different Jesuses (Jesi?) and several miricles so that kept things interesting…almost.

In Brussels, we pretty much walked around, looking for old tall structures. We found our way though Africatown, which was really cool. If I spoke French, I would have ordered some African food (most of it looked similar to what we had in Ghana) because I miss me some fufuo.