A day in Antwerp!

Today I woke up and walked (by myself) to the train station! I didn't get lost :D and I arrived in Antwerp around 10:30. I met up with Gertjan who works with my mom. He's only a few years older than me and he is one of the guys who visited us in the states. Even though he's worked in Antwerp for two years, he's never bothered to actually see the city!! So I showed him around :) haha the first part of the day we went to museums! And wondered around the city some. The first museum we went to was Plantin-Moretus! It is a printing press museum and by far my favorite museum!! I am so amazed by how they used to print news papers and such! They also have an art portion that shows drawings with different types of writing stuff... Like charcoal and pastels and stuff! They also have super old books like a Gutenberg bible! :) it's so neat!

These are the old printing presses!!! They would make the pages first and then put ink on the little letter molds and put the paper on top and press it down to make the words :)

These are the letter molds!! They had to be able to spell backwards! They had to place every letter for every page!!! How amazing is that?! They would also print one page and have someone read over it and correct it and the go ahead with the printing! Can you imagine how long it would have taken to print 1 book that way...

America!!!!

The building has a little garden and it was so beautiful.

All the furniture was gorgeous!! And the walls were leather!! The leather had some beautiful designs... I didn't even know that was a thing! Haha

Look big! A paddle! Hahaha Erm... I mean a plaque with a handle! Haha this made me miss my beautiful big, Megan! :) I don't think I'd be where I am today without her. I've learned so much from her and I couldn't be more proud of everything she has accomplished in life. She is just wonderful! :) (miss you biggie!)

Ok, this was cool... It was to check the money! They would weigh it when people paid for books to ensure it was legit gold! So cool.

Notice anything weird about this bed??

It's for midgets!!! Haha (also, this is Gertjan!) but seriously. The bed is freaking tiny!!!

This made me laugh. It looks like a bridge but it's just a little place to walk up and look at the Scheldt river. Hahaha it is this beautiful huge bridge... That just ends!

The Scheldt is in the left picture! Top right is a museum that looks like a castle! And bottom right is just a cool ship! :)

This is the other museum we went to! It's called the Mas! It was filled with really weird stuff which we had fun looking at... Some of it we just made fun of though haha but the building was my favorite part!! It was the coolest building I have ever been in, the escalators are in like a spiral... I can't explain it but it was amazing. Idk what is the significance of the hands all over the building...

From the inside looking out.

As we were walking around - we saw this and both pulled out our cameras! Hahaha it is a narwhal horn. So odd! But the best part was a lady walked through and said "no flash" in Dutch and immediately following I took a photo with flash... I think Gertjan almost had a heart attack... He quickly said no flash! Haha I was like whoops! Sorry! I'm American! Hahaha that's my excuse for everything!

Some of the modern art... I would explain them, but I didn't get it hahaha

We liked how the museum had so many projectors!!! It had over 100 easy.. They were the coolest part haha they did some cool stuff with projectors :)

Antwerp! Recognize this picture mom?

-_- the zero dollar bill... Thanks Belgium! Hahaha

Such a great view!!! I love taking pictures from so high up.

Ahh I thought this was so cool!!! From below you couldn't tell this was anything! You could only see it clearly from the very top!!! And you couldn't even see it unless you reached your camera out and took a picture. So awesome. I felt like I found a hidden piece lol

If its not for smoking, what is the hole for? Lol I really dunno, but I think it's to take pictures out of because they looked a lot better when it wasn't covered by glass :)

Me in every direction of Antwerp :)

Part two coming soon!

 

 

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Thursday!

Today was so much fun!! I woke up and went with Mitha to do crafts!! For all my sorority sisters - you know how crafty I am... Not. Well Mitha has definitaly picked up on my lack of craftiness and so she made fun of me the whole time which was funny cause I felt like home hahaha :) so we went to this ladies house who does craft workshops and she basically shows you some options and you get to choose what you want to do! :) I chose making a felt painting cause I figured I could take that with me :) Mitha made some cool lights that looked like Halloween!

Here I am making my drawing thing! You had a special needle and you would poke the felt through the white stuff to make the picture. I spread out the felt a lot and as I was poking it in, it shrunk :( so I kinda had to start again haha the upper left picture is the sweet artistic lady! She was really fun.

This is Mitha being her crafty self! (She would make an awesome sorority girl!!) I was going to do the same as her but as soon as she told me I had to sew, I opted out!

The one on the right is my finished project! The bottom left was the first time I finished and the other two are ones that the lady did! Haha A.K.A. How it's supposed to look! ;) mine is a picture of me and my future husband in New Zealand with our pet sheep!! :D hahaha they made fun of me cause he's naked...

This is just a few of the cool things that the lady has made!! It's amazing how good she is!! :)

After we got home we relaxed some before it was time for me to head to Tom's house for dinner!! Mitha dropped me off at the train station and gave me a piece of paper with directions so I wouldn't buy the wrong ticket! :) haha then I asked the guy what platform I should go to and he said three! :) so I went to platform three and awaited my train to Antwerp Central at 5:18! (I had to get off at Bouvard or something like that) so the train came early and I asked someone if it was the train at 5:18 to Antwerp Central and showed him my ticket - he said yeah, so on I went! Just like in Paris, I knew I was on the wrong train the SECOND the doors closed! Haha so I texted Tom and told him I got on the wrong train... He had to get off in Antwerp and I just missed the right train by 30 seconds!! But we only ended up being about 30 minutes later than planned! So it all worked out ok! :)

These are his kids :) Jens and Fin! Fin is the younger on in the blue and he is SUCH a ham (so of course we got along) and Jens is a bit more shy but so so sweet and I quickly got him to warm up to me! They were both excited to see me which was so sweet! And we played hide and go seek in the house while Tom cooked dinner. (Which was extremely delicious! Tom's a great cook!)

See? Jens really warmed up to me! :) he's also kind of a ham once he comes out of his shell! Hahaha he is just hilarious. It was such a lovely evening! I got Pictures with Tom and Cindy, but we took them with Tom's Camera, so I'll have to get them later! They are the sweetest couple!! They remind me of my parents and you can just tell how much they love each other! It was so precious to see their family! They are wonderful parents and the kids are just adorable!! Overall it was a great evening and so good to meet Cindy finally!! My parents went to their wedding which was like 5/6 years ago and they told me how great she is, so I loved getting to know her! We are similar in a lot of ways! :) I can't wait to see them again!

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Girl day!

Today we had a super fun day because the girls went shopping :) we got waffles!!! And then we did ZUMBA! Which I love! Haha it was a blast :) the kids had a half day at school today, so I also hung out with them in the morning (well my morning haha) I played FIFA with the boys and I beat the 14 year old! Booya! BARCELONA! ;) haha his dad beat me though... But if I was good at shooting I totally woulda won ;) haha I also played racing games with them - it was fun and they were impressed ;) hahaha oh and they play Warcraft 3 and Grepolis and some other games that I've played before. It was so fun.

This was rediculous! There was a line to get into holister!!!!!!

Mitha and silke! Waffles!

Me and silke! Yum!

The adorable dog at Zumba!

He was so cute and friendly! And during Zumba he just kind of wondered around - it was adorable lol

The cat didn't like me! Hahaha

And I fell getting out of the shower -_- I always hurt myself!! Hahaha I just have bruises all over, I don't know how I got most of them. I guess I did get the clumsy from my mom ;)

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Forts!

I'm not sure when Mitha tried to teach me to crochet, but whenever it was, it didn't go over so great! hahaha

She kept laughing at me cause I messed up so much!

"Why doesn't mine look the same?!"

Wait, what do I do again? ;) haha it was fun to try though :)

Alright, these boys had never built a fort before!! I told them they hadn't lived until they had built a fort, they thought I was crazy... Lol I made them watch a movie in the fort :) Daan liked it, but Stijn wasn't too excited... So I made him sit on the floor ;) haha

It was really fun to be in a fort - at least I thought so!

This was my seat, it was more of a lounging spot lol

The fort!

This is their awesome fish tank :)

When Mitha got home we went and got a movie :) it was really nice to just sit on the couch drinking tea and watching a movie! Especially since I was still tired from the bike ride ;)

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Technopolies and dinner :)

Today I went to a science museum with Tom, his 2 kids - Jens and Finn, and Daan! We had so much fun!! By far the coolest science museum in the world! Seriously!!! We spent almost 5 hours there and I still didn't want to leave! After the museum I went to eat with 6 guys that my mom works with! :) it was so nice - 2 of them where friends from when I lived in Belgium and 3 came to visit us in America! (Kristof fits in both categories) it was so much fun to see them all again! They are so much fun. :)

We lifted a car up! Haha seriously though, there is a car on the other end of this :)

This showed the waves that the strings of a guitar make!!!

This was a really cool game that gave you a form of recycling - paper, plastic, cardboard and such - then you went though 4 different stations playing games until the end where it showed you how much you recycled! Made me want to go green ;)

This was the thing that showed how much you recycled!

There were a bunch of little things to build that kind of showed how bridges work :) everything was so hands on! So my little buddy, Daan, helped me build them all :)

A scary bike in the air!

Not another bike!! ;) You feel like you're about to fall all the time.

Explaining how it works to Daan... I'm turning into my dad...

Tom's adorable kids :D

Hahaha we had way too much fun with this!

Hahaha funny.

Tom on the bed of nails!!! It was really cool :)

This place was huge!

So many bubbles :)

Here you had to guess how much water was in the different foods. The green button would add water and the red would take it away and after you didn't move it for a second, it would turn red or green!

Here you stood on a scale and it showed you how much water is in you!

Hahaha illusions.

This was so funny!

The cathedral in Antwerp!! (we went to dinner near here)

Me, back where I used to live!!! Oh how I missed it!

All the guys from dinner :) Kristof, David, Phillip, Gertjan, Tom, me, and Stephan! :) we had a great time! The 4 on the left are all on a team and they came to America for work and came to our house for a night (we taught them beer pong and flip cup) and the two beside me are great friends from when we lived in Antwerp! It has been around 10 years since I saw the two beside me!! Hopefully we won't go that long again!

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