No mas bar crawls before class field trips

A N T W E R P, Belgium

(in pictures)

hannah preparing for her fabulous presentation at antwerp harbor

okay, so you may have figured this out by now... when my posts are almost all pictures i usually had too much fun over the weekend to pump some good words out of my brain ( <---- exhibit A)

scratch that- after choosing which pictures to upload i decided they just deserved explanation.

antwerp bar crawl 2011- taken at "the irish times pub," best live music i've heard in a long time

first REALISTIC hostel experience- sophia showing her excitement at the first sight of our hostel. A: the name of the hostel ("boomerang") was painted on the side of the door with what appeared to be yellow nail polish. B: there were naked mannequins hanging from the walls C: the head of the hostel sat at a small bean bag desk chain-smoking cigs while staring at her laptop the entire time we sat in the "waiting room." i kid you not for the 24 hours that we were in and out of there i did not see her one time sans a shmoke. hahha D: we checked in with a middle eastern family with about 6 small children next to us. hahah i would like to know who in their right mind would bring their family to such an establishment. E: apparently sheets cost extra and we were not smart enough to request them (who would've thunk it??).  we all slept with our coats spread across our mattresses and one sheet equivalent to a piece of tissue paper as a blanket. F: we wake up on our toilet paper beds this morning with 6 strangers sleeping in our room who slipped into our room sometime between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m. G: (i swear i'm almost done, it's just that so many hilarious things happened at this place) My friend Keegan swears that when he opened his eyes this morning one of the strangers who joined our room in the middle of the night was staring at him. HAHAHAH

pre-field-trip fun at cafe locale, the coolest club i've ever been to in my life. awesome d.j., fake palm trees, and men carrying around trays full of unlimited popsicles and candy. i think i met the devil's version of heaven this weekend. don't worry dad, the popsicles were individually wrapped.

excuse me for eating 3 popsicles. jesus.

To explain these "field trips," as part of our european art and culture class, we take these class trips to different cities in europe with our group of 20 mizzou students and it basically goes like this... we pull ourselves together by 8 a.m. (usually going out the night before because the field trips are usually on sunday) and our french professor hustles us around waving her umbrella in the air and counting us every 20 minutes. i'm truly surprised she hasn't given us numbers for a roll-off system yet considering at least once every trip a group of us "accidentally gets lost" and then later returns smelling like belgian beer and chocolate.

anyways, Madame (what we call our teacher) is the sweetest, funniest, little elderly french woman i've ever seen. and she calls us out when she knows we're bluffing- like when my friend keegan said he would just have to meet her at the next place on the itinerary because he was already just too lost. riggghhht.

this is just about how our tours go.

and this is madame. :) love this lady.

so picture this- a group of 20 (rather loud) young americanos following a windy red-headed lady with a striped umbrella like her little ducklings throughout various european cities. and then the mama and baby ducklings stop about every 5 minutes to stand in the freezing cold/misting rain to listen to madame talk about some european history while all of us stand there in freezing agony. it's quite entertaining. and you would think we would get excited when we get to spend our time touring inside rather than outside, but when your "inside" is an ancient cathedral that has no heat and is silent antarctica, you're just not that excited. these field trips have brought many laughs, many tears (haha not really), and very, very much frostbite. oh, and i forgot to mention, madame also bribes her ducklings with (say this out loud to yourself in a high-pitched french accent) "COOOKIES." we are such kindergartners.

some precious little place to sit outside a cafe

taken during "lunch break" of the field trip. stop for pictures and get lost. this has happened to me before.

okay don't judge me for being a creep. but little european children dressed in their sassy clothes are the cutest thing i've ever seen.

lesson learned: popsicles and cookies are great motivators.

Real world Disney Land, a trip to Bruges, Belgium

B R U G E S , BELGIUM

For anyone looking for a real world fairly tale, i've found the perfect place for you to visit. Bruges is a historic town full of horse drawn carriages, beautiful canals, quaint restaurants with cheese croquettes and traditional belgian chocolate shops. thought i would share some pretty pics.

i've never appreciated childhood more.

this is an old pic. from last summer, but i thought it was appropriate because i would like you all to know that i have made it a long way since this point. ;)

so... i guess to fully appreciate your glamorous childlike-college-lifestyle you have to move halfway across the world and work a 9 to 5 job (which apparently in translation means 8-6 with commute). today on my way to the metro to begin my hour-long commute at 7:30 a.m., i whipped out my monthly transit pass with my lovely (ghastly) passport photo stamped on the top all ready to start my big girl day... when i realized the entrance to the metro was taped off completely with one measly little piece of paper that said "greve." good thing my 7 years of french did not teach me the word for "strike" when everyone in this world who speaks french strikes like its nobody's business. these people love to strike, they live to strike i tell you. and what is a girl with 3-inch high-heeled boots to do when the bus, the metro and the train decide to all gang up on poor little car-less people who have to be at their next stop to catch their next bus that only runs twice a day by absolutely no later than 8:20 a.m.??? well i'll tell you, after sprinting in your heels to the next closest metro only to find out they're all closed, you find the nearest local grocery store to top-up your go-phone which is dry as a bone as far as minutes. and then you call your boss. and then you get coffee. and then you come to the realization that you are probably not going to work today considering every cab in the city is now booked and even if they weren't it probably would not be worth the 120 odd euros it would cost to get you there and back.

but don't you worry- i've already accomplished so much on this day that was VERY necessary. all of the tasks i most desperately need to do i usually cannot do because i am at work during the only time these places are open! did i mention we have been without hot water since last friday? so- we cannot shower (the water is ice), do the wash, or run the dish-washer. it's been fabulous, really. our neighbors have been kind enough to allow us to shower there (don't worry, they're other mizzou students), although we still have to dart up the stairs as fast as we can in our towels and not to mention, regularly inconvenience these people. and (side note) after i was basically sexually harassed by a 50-60-ish year old man on the bus yesterday (did i also mention this was on valentines day), i have decided that i do not need to be running from the 1st floor to the 3rd floor of my building in a towel. as far as i'm concerned, i may start carrying a night stick. but back to the original story... now i have this perfect day to go speak to my only-french-speaking landlords and raise some french hell (haha kidding, my language skills are too limited to raise hell)- after getting no response from them the first couple times. i explained to my best ability the many problems going on in our flat. our flat is actually very nice, well-located, and huge, but- we also have no hot water, a few ants, and a falling off cabinet door or two. so i explained this all with phrases like (the little door under the water in the kitchen is broken) and sure enough, we got a maintenance man up here and tonight i will enjoy my hot-water shower like i never have before.

so i've come to the conclusion that i'm not sure how people can work 40 hours + a week and raise children, take care of pets, keep a home clean, cook meals and solve maintenance problems!!! haha. props to you mom and dad, being an adult is tough stuff.

down with the vegetarians!

it's a thursday evening. i went against every procrastinating bone in my bod and studied in advance for my test on the EU tomorrow. i ate a full dinner. i got money out of the atm this morning.

anyone in college or anyone who knows me at all would know that i clearly did all of these things because tonight is a going-out night. a great night to celebrate 2 friends' 21st birthdays. a great night until i finish eating my dinner look down at my foot and it's the size of my head.

(well, not that huge, but it is completely swollen!) whose foot and calf randomly swells up like a balloon with no pain at all??? lucky for me my roomie's dad is a dr. and she happened to be in the middle of a skype sesh with her whole family. so we told him (and the rest of her family that could hear) all of my issues and came to the conclusion that if i start having shortness of breath i need to call an ambulance immediately because i would have a bad blood clot. great. i have such weirdo things happen to me. 

let's hope that doesn't happen because the first thing i would have to do is figure out the 911 of belgium, which my dad will probably tell me when he calls my emergency cell phone in a 10 minutes to tell me he thinks i should "go to the hospital because blood clots are a serious matter." i'm only making that assumption because last time that i was sick i got myself so dehydrated that i couldn't function and received a similar phone call. the following emergency phone call would proceed like this- "kate, your mom and i have decided that you need to start eating meat." 

i would have to say the odds of me having a blood clot are slim. and my current plans for the evening are to see how fast my leg will un-swell by having it propped up and maybe if i'm lucky enough everyone won't leave for the bars until after my body has decided to stop being a freak show and i can tag along.

since i have no new photos, i'll put up this old picture of what i was supposed to be doing right now. enjoying a belgian beer and a mixed drink in a can from "phoenix video," (we're still not sure why it's called this) the quick shop by my flat owned by my a little middle eastern man who calls my friend Keegan his "best customer." instead i'll be watching the latest episode of the bachelor and reviewing the names of the the presidents of the european parliament, european counsel, european commission and other such things that i do not wish to be doing.

moral of the story- not eating meat is the sole possible explanation for randomly swollen-up balloon-foot and gastrointestinal infections.

p.s. guess where i'll be heading for spring break!

dis blonde girl will be heading to......

 M Y K O N O S , G R E E C E ! ! ! 

i'm so excited! hopefully it will be warm and soaked with sun :D

and the rest of the agenda includes: Barcelona, Spain; Dublin, Ireland; Antwerp, Belgium; Paris, France; Bruges, Belgium; London, England; Venice, Italy; Berlin, Germany & Santorini, Greece.

yes i promise i'm still alive!

T R I E R , G E R M A N Y

a beautiful little hilltop town we passed on the way there. if only i had my paint brush handy.

so the posts have been moving a little slow lately :( but i will load lots of beautiful pictures from the German town of Trier to make up for it! we visited this city dating back to the Roman empire this past weekend and while i'm (not) sad to report i didn't try any wiener-schnitzel, i happily left the country with my belly stuffed full of homemade lasagna, potato casserole and desert wine from a quaint German winery outside of town.  and our tour guide happened to be (not kidding) completely blacked-out by around 5 p.m., making for quite the interesting tour.

hangin' out at the winery. 

the first place we visited was the American cemetery for the soldiers fallen in the Battle of the Ardennes during World War II. it was a sad place to be, seeing row after row of tombstones, some marked as unknown. 

that same day (we cram hours of activities into minutes rushing through the city with Madame and her colleague trying to pack all of this information into our exhausted brains) we visited karl marx's house, the Roman baths, the Dom (a Romanesque Cathedral), the Bishop's Museum, the Roman Amphitheater and my personal and absolute favorite, the Von Nell wine cellar (for obvious reasons) where we participated in much wine tasting and eating, 2 of my favorite activities.

the bridge into Trier

Trier's town square (for anyone who was concerned, they do have a mcd's, even in a little place like this, and they even serve veggie burgs.  time to catch up ameri-cuh)

those damn Romans showing everybody up again with their structures that outlast 1500 years

you've gotta do somethin' to spice up a 12-hour walking tour

i don't hate it.

hog heaven for everyone (minus moi) after a long day of touring. the hogs would have found my vegetarian lasagny a little more heavenly. 

p.s. if i were to bring home the perfect souvenir for my brothers it would be this monster barbeque grill, but considering that i am already toting around more pounds of luggage than my body weight, i don't think i would be allowed to board the plane.

kat and i hangin' in the porta negra.

until my next trip (Bruges). peace. love & happiness. stop judging the song's stuck in my head-

hello thar

well I've been a busy bee lately, we spent the weekend in Germany and I'm working on planning for some visitors this spring.  But, until I get my next post up, I just have to show off where I get to go this April with my mom and pop when they come this spring!  we are going back to Amsterdam and will be visiting the Keukenhoff gardens (the biggest tulip garden in the Netherlands).  it is only open a few months of the year and i am lucky enough to be here while it's open.  so here's a sneak peak of what the gardens will look like, i'm soooooo excited!!