Day 16: Traveling to Brussels

Today we traveled to Brussels, and let me say it has been a crazy adventure!  We had to be out of our flat at 9:00 am but we were meeting at 11:30, so Lauren and I decided to go out and get breakfast.  We went to Starbucks and it took forever to make our ham and cheese sandwich, and they kept burning it.  So we waited around for awhile and then we finally got our sandwich AND a coupon for a free cup of whatever :) Then we bought lots of chocolate to stock up on it for home ;) We had about an hour left till we had to meet so we watched the top 20 music videos in the UK.  So that is how we spent our last hours in London :)

When we met up with our group we went to the train station in groups of 5 so we could fit all our luggage.  When we got there we had 15 minutes to get food and go to the bathroom.  I of course decided to go ask and see if they had Joules.  They did and guess what....they had my dress that I have been searching all over London for! It was the last one and it was my size! I about died! :) I hurried and bought it so I wouldn't miss the train! I can't tell you how happy I was!  Like my mom said..."If I'm meant to have the dress I will find it" :) I can now say I have left London happy :)

We went through security and got our passports stamped and then waited to board the train.  Lauren and I sat on the ground and found a vent that was our little fridge to keep our Diet Cokes cold :)  At the last minute we decided to go get food and when we came back everyone had left except our director.  We grabbed our bags and ran to get on the train.  We luckily made it just in time!

The train ride was 2 hours long so I spent most of it reading the Book of Mormon and then I watched the movie Twilight, except it wasn't the normal version of Twilight.  It was someone making commentaries about Twilight, so pretty much they were making fun of it the whole time haha it was really funny!

When we got to Brussels and got off the train the first thing that came to my mind was the movie Taken.  It was completely different from London.  Everyone was speaking French and nothing made sense.  We waited for our train and when it finally came we had 10 seconds to get all 25 of us AND our luggage on the train before the doors shut and it left.  That was one crazy adventure.  The train was kinda scary and I felt like everyone looked at us like targets from the US with all our bags.  We got to our stop and had 10 seconds to get off.  We were throwing our bags off the train so no one got left on.  

We finally made it to our hotel :) We are staying in the Meininger and it just opened the first of May so it's brand new.  It is way nice! The only thing that sucks is the WiFi is horrible :( We can't use it in our room so we have to be down in the lobby area.  We had a little meeting about the hotel and rules and then had 15 minutes to get ready to go out to dinner. We are lucky and didn't get the bunk beds in the room ;) Here is where we will be staying for the next couple of days!

We all met back up and started walking down the streets and I did not like it.  I don't feel safe here...it's completely different from London.  Lauren and I can't just walk around by ourselves anymore.  We walked down into the city and it got a little better but it still was scary.  All I am going to say is I have so much respect for those missionaries who go to crazy places because I don't know how you do it.  I haven't even been here a night and I was ready to be done.  

We walked around to find food and the only thing that seemed normal was McDonald's.  So our first meal in Brussels was good old McDonald's ;)  They even had macaroons, crazy huh?! They were so good though! 

After dinner we walked back to our hotel and worked on our homework.  We were all in the lobby trying to get WiFi but it wasn't working :(  Our pictures are due tomorrow but we couldn't submit them because the files were too big...so I was up till midnight in the lobby trying to figure it all out. I finally got a code for their computer in the lobby and submitted them at 12:30 pm and then went up to my room to go to bed.  We have six girls in our room with limited space so we didn't really get to sleep till 1 am because we were all talking...Lets just say my first day in Brussels has definitely been an interesting one.  More adventures coming tomorrow!