One of the girls I met on the trip made the most on point comment tonight. She said she feels like she has a lot of “holy shit, is this my life?” moments lately. We were talking about how we were so excited to go to the NATO offices tomorrow (NATO?!?!?) and just couldn’t believe some of the things life handed us sometimes. Kathryn just came off the dialogue trip to Egypt, went to Paris, and now she’s in Brussels with us. I couldn’t agree more. I feel like I lead sort of a charmed life, and get so many crazy opportunities, that sometimes its hard to believe its really happening to me. We had a great, really 28-hours long first day of the trip, and I’m excited for more.
Kate was running a little late on Monday, and to be honest, so was I. We grabbed a cab to the airport for the goal time of 2:30 at ticketing. We met up with plenty of people in line, and began the challenging job of meeting and remembering everyone’s name. With 36 people on the trip, it was clearly going to take a while. We were all in the airport waiting area for a few hours together, and got to know some people a little. Everyone confessed to being nerved out about the trip, and it was a big relief to know I hadn’t been the only one stressed about packing or having an inexplicable nervousness about the whole adventure. We all seem to be self-confessed nerds, which I love.
When we boarded, I had a major case of the giggles on the runway with Kelsey, Sobaika, Brett, and we were so distracted by our laughing that we were really surprised when we just took off suddenly! I loved Air France—we got served dinner (with wine!!) and had little TVs in the back of the seats to watch movies on. I tried in vain to read some of the Passas readings I missed—after a plane and a train ride, I only have one left!
We arrived at Charles de Gaulle at 6:15 am, explored the airport a little, changed some money, and got a pain de chocolat and coffee before our train at 9:40. Changing money into foreign currency, whether back in the US or abroad, seems to be a little pricey with service charges, but you do what you have to do.
I LOVED the train—would rather use that for transportation than anything else! Fell fast asleep for the last half hour, after checking out the French countryside and laughing at Andrew trying to eat the “cake” they passed out. We congregated outside the train station, found some maps, and trekked the very short distance to Hotel Ibis, where we couldn’t check in until 3! We all split up, and wandered around the city for about 2 hours. Kate, Ximena, Dana and I walked in the direction of city center, taking lots of photos. We were really excited to find a little open air market that reminded me of Haymarket at home—fresh fruit, guys at the stalls catcalling in a pretty friendly manner. Besides food, the vendors were selling clothes, funny food, and random household items. Plus, there were cute kids and dogs everywhere! We bought blackberries the size of shooter marbles and some other fruit to munch on. Everyone’s stomachs were a little uneasy after our travels, and fruit was a good answer
We also found a fantastic playground with big rope and metal play structures like some of the ones in the South End in Boston. Dana climbed almost all the way to the top, only to be a bit perplexed as how to get down…. (Pictures) We made our way back (both ways having been through an Arabic area, with lots of Arabic signage. Very cool, but none of the four of us knew any Arabic. Dana’s French was helpful in a few places, though. We stopped for falafel (amaaaazing) and fries at a place near the hotel, and also bought umbrellas for the Brussels portion of the trip, which appears to probably be pretty rainy
We all met back in the lobby a little after 2, met Prof. Passas, who is a CJ professor from NU joining us on the trip, who seems really enthusiastic, and had a little chat about the events for the next few days –early start tomorrow!! Finally, keys were distributed, which caused some mayhem—the hotel staff simply handed key pairs out, without noting what pair got what keys, and with no final list of where everyone was. It took a while to get sorted out and with everyone in a room and hopefully on a list, but I think everything turned out ok. Everyone milled around for a little, then took shower, took naps, and crashed for a little while
I set my alarm clock for what I thought was 6 pm—I was right, only my clock was set on AM hours, and it never went off! I was really glad to learn this now, as opposed to tomorrow morning. Everyone ended up sleeping through the planned 6:30 dinner rendezvous, so we all headed out a little after 8.
I had a chat with Kate (my roommate in Brussels) about her previous month—she spent a month in Egypt on an NU service learning trip, and then a week in Paris before meeting up with us here in Brussels. It sounds like she had an amazing experience. They had a final project of research on the operations/success of a microlending organization similar to the Grameen Bank in Egypt, and interviewed 24 women who received loans about their experiences and goals. The project seems to have made an interesting impact on her. We also discussed what we want to research here on this trip. Prof Garcia has yet to really make the guidelines for our research paper clear, but we both have ideas about where we want it to go. Kate’s really into environmental stuff, and wants to write about the desertification. I want to continue some of the women’s issues stuff I started learning about at WAPPP, since I wrote my middler year paper on gender quotas in elected politics, and want to write my dissertation in London on women in politics. One of the researchers who contributed a chapter to one of our required readings, Vanessa Farr, talked about gendered effects of war—women as instigators/participants, women as victims of war, women affected by men who experienced war, etc. I’m hoping to maybe figure out a way to meet with her, since she doesn’t appear to be on the slate of people we meet.
Overall, today went well. The group of people on the trip seems really cool, and we’re all excited to get started on the meetings, etc. The lack of knowledge/organization of Prof Garcia and her assistant, Yasmin, has me a little perplexed—they don’t seem to be keeping great tabs on everyone, and their attention could’ve prevented the room issue. But hey, we’re big kids, so hopefully we can learn to handle ourselves.
Tomorrow’s meetings have us all gathering in the lobby at 7:30 am, and being in meetings til about 2 pm. We then have a dinner arranged for the birthdays of some of the people on the trip. Seems like internet will be spotty—we got free wireless in the Paris airport, and not again since then. I let my mom know I arrived safely, but that’s probably all anyone will get for a little while. They want 10 euro for 45 minutes of internet—that’s almost $15! No thanks.
We went out for dinner after our naps tonight, and ended up at a little Mediterranean place that could actually handle the 14 of us that ventured out together. We got beers, wine, coffee, pasta, couscous, soup, salad….delicious. And fantastic minty tea to finish. As we were all chatting, a woman at the table next to us leaned over and asked me if I was from Michigan. I was surprised and said no, why? Turns out her best friend is from Michigan, and my accent (didn’t know I had an accent?) reminded her of her friend. Half the table left to go to the Gran Place, in the center of town, but we stuck around to finish our tea and chat with her table. We had a confusing moment trying to ask our waitress about gratuities, and the woman next to us was really helpful with the right French. That’s one of the things I love most about traveling: meeting random people, having genuinely nice, welcoming conversations, and feeling a little off the beaten path. One of the men she was with was hitting on me a little, tried to kiss my hand, stared a my chest, etc, but hey, men are men no matter what country you’re in.
We stopped and peeked into lots of stores and restaurants, scoping out places we might want to come back to with our free time the next 3 afternoons. We also talked about Geneva plans at dinner—lots of museums on the horizon!
The early wake-up tomorrow means bedtime for me…its already midnight here, and I’ve slept for about 4 hours since Sunday night. More to come, with pictures soon!
