It is Fall Break! I just got back from a trip to Belgium- Brussels and Brugge. It was pretty darn awesome and much chocolate was consumed. The first day our flight came in 55 minutes early... Nice try RyanAir. I am pretty sure they add time onto how long the flight it supposed to take so that they can say that 98% of their flights are on time (our flight today came in 30 minutes early). We then headed toward our hostel. The location was awesome. It was right in the center of town. We passed it once because the place looked condemned because there was a bunch of construction (it looked like there had been a fire).  However, the inside was great. Everything was new and comfortable. I can't complain  too much about it. After settling in we decided to walk around and check things out. Apparently there was a festival going on because in the square there was a stage set up and a Mexican band was playing and there were a bunch of tents set up all around. The others got some mexican food but I was not feeling it so I went and looked around for some cheap eats. I ended up getting a waffle which was pretty darn good, a little sweet though. We walked around and stumbled across the peeing boy. He is life sized which means that he is actually pretty small. Of course, we had to stop and get some chocolate to end our day so we stopped at the place that supplies the King and Queen. The woman there was so nice. She gave me free chocolate :). We headed back to our hostel to plan our day in Brugges. It was only 9:30 but the lights in our room were already off and people were sleeping so we went down to the kitchen to plan our lives for the next 24 hours.
The beds at the hostel were amazing! They were so comfortable and warm. It was great. We got up and  had breakfast at a cafe (chocolate croissant) and headed to the train station. We played a mean game of cribbage on the train and showed up in Brugge just as the game finished. The town is so beautiful. It is the classic old european town. We walked around during the morning, bought chocolate and other such goodies and had a health-filled lunch of french fries (they were super good- more potato than fried-ness). We then went up the Belfry which was pretty amazing. You could see all of the bells and the entire city. We spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around. I bought some loose leaf green tea which made me super happy. I also took money out from the ATM for the first time. I guess it was good timing since the semester is half over (wait really? CRAZY!). The trip back was nice and quick. We grabbed a nighttime chocolate and headed back to the room. The lights were on! It was great.
We decided to sleep in a little for our day in Brussels. Mainly because nothing opened until nine or ten, but that's beside the point. We made the pilgrimage of two blocks to the Chocolate museum. Best 4 euro spent ever! We learned about how chocolate is made and the history of chocolate. Oh, and there was free chocolate at the end. It is hard to beat free chocolate. From there we traveled on foot to some churches and the palace. It was pretty sweet. We stopped for lunch and got some fresh, good, healthy food and walked around the city some more. As we circled back we decided to visit the city museum. It was very interesting. They had the costumes that the peeing boy has worn through the years and they had the history of the city. Both were very interesting. It was fun to see all of the random things that the boy has worn. This statue has over 800 costumes. Everything from an Elvis costume to a Japanese warrior to an astronaut costume and just about everything in between. The history portion of the museum was cool too because we were able to see and learn about the areas where we had been earlier that day. After a quick nap and chat with some of the people in our room at the hostel we headed back out to see the Atomium. It is basically a big atom that they built for the world's fair. We were too late to walk up and in it but the light was nice so we took some pictures and found dinner (three bites of a nasty "gyro" and fries). There was a very nice park nearby so we ate there and headed back to the Atom because we heard that it lights up at night. it was pretty darn cool. I think the lights were supposed to be the electrons. The way they lit up was not correct according to what we know now but the thing was built in the 50s so they probably didn't know how, exactly, the electrons moved. We headed back to the hostel and talked with some of our roommates and headed to bed.
 When we went to bed there were only four of the eight people back so we left the light on. Two came back not too long after we went to sleep. I woke up at three and looked over and the boys were still not back. At five am there was some very persistent knocking on the door. I was just about to get up when the Australian girl that I had been talking to got up to get it. In walks the two boys. They were quiet and quickly changed and got into bed but then one of them began to snore. It was ridiculous how loud he was. I was wearing ear plugs and it still sounded like a loud snore sounds without earplugs. I am pretty sure one of the girls threw something at him and told him to turn over. I'm not really 100% sure what happened but he quieted down for a while. We got up about an hour later to catch our bus to the airport. I think we woke up snoring man with the light from the bathroom but I didn't really feel to bad. Other than that today has been pretty calm. our flight went well and when we got back, around 1:30, we grabbed some of the ripe peaches from the trees growing behind our apartment and didn't leave our room until we had to re-heat some left-overs. We were going to walk into town to get fresh food but it was raining so left-overs were very acceptable to us. Tomorrow we will probably go to the store and go through our many photos.