In order to get my visa, I had to get a checkup to make sure I wasn’t choc-full of diseases. When I told my doctor where I was going, he had only one thing to say to me: visit Bruges! And doctors can’t be wrong can they?!

The first canal we came to. It was so beautiful. So was the rest of the town. This post will be mostly pictures because there’s only so much I can say. Basically, Bruges is the most beautiful city in the entire world. It is full of cobblestones, old houses, intricate churches, canals, nice cars, and, of course, a lot of friends to share it with!

For Dad: Bruges wasn’t full of bikes like Amsterdam is (that might be because it was freezing), but there were bike lanes everywhere, including lots of contraflow lanes like this one .

The Markt, i.e. the big square downtown.

In my opinion, the absolute coolest thing in the city. Bruges is known for its crocheted lace, and this was a ten foot tall map of the city made out of crocheted lace! It is so detailed it even includes street names. I was blown away by it.

If you have good eyes you can see that behind the map is a canal, and across the canal a row of brick houses.

We stopped for fries and beers at a nice restaurant near a thrift store that we spent a good amount of time perusing.

Trying on hats and looking at pretty birds in the thrift shop. I bough a Mickey/Minnie Mouse pillow, Kaan got a scarf because he was so cold.

Terrible picture, but these little birds had such colorful chests, I especially loved the teal chested one on the left.

We saw this house and decided we wanted to live here one day:

Welcome Home!!

In our future neighborhood people park their bikes on the street and leave them there all day.

Like I did in Davis, CA, modelling the width of a street using my body

Rapunzel?

We needed two more people to achieve victory!

Giving a rousing speech from 50 feet up

This house was just like the house from Death of a Salesman and I loved it.

Freshly made in front of us. I got chocolate all over my beard and somehow a bit ended up up by my ear.

Kaan enjoyed his too

Italian sized coffee

Some people were fed up with my camera by the end of the day

Rapunzel’s twin brother, Bropunzel?

I regret not trying one of these chocolate covered oranges.

Completely by chance, after taking about four wrong turns, Canada and I stumbled upon this beauty.

I came home 40 euros poorer, but with quite the haul.

Postcards, shoes, incense (don’t ask, Canada’s fault), a pillow, two things for my key chain, and a pint of delicious cider.

I got home just in time for the perfect end to the perfect day: the first Spring Training game, on mlb.tv thanks to Salim and Katrina!

Jonny Gomes, probably our new platoon left fielder, ceding most time to Daniel Nava. Rays radio commentators during the game today, however, seem to think he should start and that he will do some damage. His career 109 OPS+ tempers those expectations a bit.

I didn’t even care that I had to watch “vintage” Lackey load the bases before he recorded an out, or that we lost: Red Sox baseball is Red Sox baseball. Also Iggy absolutely hammered a high fastball over the Faux Monster, so I’m gonna go ahead and fall head first for that red herring. When he’s hitting .248 in June at Pawtucket you can say, “I told you so!”

Food

One of the best things about being in Europe is getting a chance to eat some new, delicious foods. Every day I encounter something different and I almost always love it.

First, I live with Marco, who is from a small town near Rome. And boy can he cook. He always says that cooking calms him down, puts his mind at ease, and he has an apron in every house: one here, one at his parents house, one at his grandmother’s house. Marco cooks every day and almost always invites everyone he can to join him.

I also eat out a little bit. My favorite thing to buy is a mitraillette (literally, a machine gun), which is a baguette sliced open, lathered in sauce, lined with lettuce, onions, carrots, etc, filled with meat, and then covered in french fries (some places will put some more sauce on top of the fries). Maison Antoine in Etterbeek is the best known “fritkot” (french fry place), but you can find good fries and good mitraillettes anywhere in the city, including a nice store 1 block from my house.

I also get a ton of other good food all the time. Don’t be too jealous:

 Rachele (Italian) made a delicious omelette with potatoes at Simone’s birthday celebration

Eeva and Minttu enjoy some delicious coffee after failing to do so in McDonalds.

The Carrefours Express by my house has fresh orange juice, where you can see the oranges being squeezed right in front of you. Delicious.

If you’ve ever been to the science museum tell me this doesn’t make you think of that huge ball thing that everyone would stand and stare at for hours on end.

I don’t even know what kind of cheese this is, but it looked good at Carrefours so I bought it. That was two days ago. Now it’s gone.

On a lazy Monday I grabbed a snack at Carrefours and watched Disney movies all day.

I was convinced to go to a club last Saturday because it promised free food. Needless to say, the presentation was impeccable, if the servings were a little small.

T-Day is awesome. First there’s food, then there’s football, then there’s still two more days before I have to do any homework. Thanksgiving is like a mini-Christmas, and Christmas is hands down the best holiday (just look at the music it inspires! Unmatched!). Thanksgiving is the rare time when everything is looking up: the semester is gonna end soon, your family isn’t sick of you yet, and you have yet to gain 10 pounds.

Today I tried to decide which food I like better: stuffing or pumpkin pie. It’s impossible to choose! Stuffing is so delicious, just the right amount of moisture, some salt and some mystery seasonings, I could eat piles and piles of it. But pumpkin pie, oh pumpkin pie is just so smooth, sweet without being sugary, I could eat an entire pie with a spoon in about 4 minutes.  The only thing I’m sure of is that they both taste best when Mom makes them!

We are about to go to our friends’ house. They have a large family. They have three sets of twins, at least one child in his 30′s and at least five kiddos under the age of 10. Let’s see if I can name them, in order: Ian, Erika, Alyssa, Matthew, Megan, Kate and Mariah, Nate, Ben, Suzanna, (here come the little ones I can never remember) Caleb and Joshua, and Grace and Joseph! Whew, got them all (with minimal cheating). We have had a few Thanksgivings with them in the past, and there’s always something fun to do or some child to play with. Here’s looking forward to an awesome day of eating, playing football, and sleeping. Go Patriots!

I love travelling, I love looking at maps, and I love planning my future. That said, this week was fun! [Note: I have 2 sisters, one lives in Washington, DC, and one lives in Gonaives, Haiti.]

First, my father and I finalized my travel plans for Thanksgiving/Winter Break; they are awesome! My sister and I will both be driving home to Boston for Thanksgiving, and my friend Robby will be coming with us. I haven’t been home since August, so I am looking forward to the chance to relax and show off my city to one of my friends.

As soon as my finals are over, I will fly to California to attend my cousin’s wedding in San Luis Obispo. Then I’ll go from there to my uncle’s house in Columbus, Ohio. From Columbus, Hilary and Kelsey, 2 of my coolest cousins, and I will be flying down to Haiti to visit my sister. We couldn’t be more apprehensive about the trip: its my fourth visit to Haiti, but for Hilary and Kelsey, its their first time to the third world country. I called my sister in Haiti today and she is already thinking about how to make our stay as fun and helpful as possible. For sure we will be playing plenty of soccer.

The other great thing that happened today was that I finally turned in all my paperwork for my semester abroad: Belgium, here I come!! It was a rush at the deadline (including a drive to Walgreens to get one more passport photo printed), but I got everything in. Now I just have to sit back and wait for the Belgian university to get back to me. Fingers crossed!

So, all in all, as a person that loves flying, seeing friends and family, and planning trips, this has been an awesome week.

My friends and I have a new awesome tradition: Ice skating every Friday! I grew up in New England, skating on frozen ponds and rivers every winter with my family. Skating outdoors is the best. I have fond memories of shoveling p ice rinks and playing pick up hockey with my dad and brother, or smashing thie ice and trying to ice-fish with my sister. One of the things I miss most when I’m at school is winter sports, but skating every Friday is helping fill that hole.

It all started when one of my friends, who is from Texas, said she wanted to go skating because she’s going to school in the “north.” Now, despite the fact that McDaniel is as far from the north as Hurricane Sandy was from being dry, I agreed that skating was an awesome idea. Another friend said that he played hockey when he was younger and he’d love to as well. All of a sudden, we were going to the Reisterstown Sports Complex and we were skating!

Skating has been awesome. So far, we’ve had 9 different people go, worn 2 Halloween costumes, met 1 hockey prodigy, taught 2 friends how to skate, and only taken 1 girl to the hospital! It has been great to get the extra exercise and to prepare myself for winter break (so as not to be embarrassed by my sisters).

I went today dressed as Where’s Waldo. When I stepped on the ice, every preteen at the rink (maybe 200) started screaming at once. They were so excited to see someone dressed up that they couldn’t contain themselves. At first the attention was nice, but eventually it did get pretty annoying eventually. In the end I let some kids borrow my hat and glasses, and we had a great time skating around and around and around.

On Saturday I went to a corn maze in Pennsylvania called Maize Quest. I went freshman year too, and it’s the only corn maze I’ve ever been to (we don’t have many corn fields in Boston). Simply put, Maize Quest is the single greatest day ever.

Three of my closest friends (Becky, Kyle, and Joel) and I were all on the same team. We raced through the maze looking for different clues hidden in dark corners of the field. We started off great: we ran into some other group and we were doing much better than them at collecting clues.  Then the sun went to down and so did our luck. Suddenly we kept going back to the same places, couldn’t find any new clues, and started getting annoyed. However, we kept our spirits up with plenty of jokes, and eventually gave up and went to get some Cracker Barrel.

The Maize Quest is one of the activities run by the Honors Program every semester. Becky is this year’s Honor’s Events Coordinator, and she organized the trip, which is open not only to Honors students but also to friends of Honors students (or really anyone that wants to come). This year at least 4 non-Honors kids came (out of 30 total students). Events like the corn maze are awesome because it lets kids who are normally studying and reading and discussing Aristotle let loose and act like idiots. And nothing brings friends closer than getting lost in the darkness over and over and over.

If I could give one piece of advice to give new students, it would be to sign up for events like this one! There will be countless Saturdays that you sleep in, lay around all day, watch a movie, and then go out. Going on a day trip, even if it turns out to suck, will be a great chance to bond. And I promise it will create lasting college memories.

I just finished my first long paper of the semester. It’s 12 pages on the history of the trading fairs that took place in the French province of Champagne in the 12th and 13th centuries. The class I wrote it for is European Economic History, taught by Dr. McIntyre, one of two writing classes I’m taking this semester. The other is Writing for Law and Policy with Dr. Dobson. Interestingly, even though the assignment for European Econ was much longer, the Law and Policy writing assignments have been much more challenging for me.

When we learn to write in elementary, middle, and high school, we are taught to write in a certain way, and to a certain audience. What is difficult about the law class is that we have to write in a completely different style. The audience for a lawyer’s brief is other lawyers, for a client letter, clients. Lawyers have to be able to write in diverse styles so that they can be understood by people who have PhD’s and by people who never graduated high school. Lawyers also need to be able to write in a sympathetic manner, in an angry tone, or in a deferential way.

I do NOT want to be a lawyer. I don’t think I’d be great at it and I don’t think I’d enjoy it very much. But that doesn’t mean the law class is a waste of time. Learning to write like a lawyer has helped me understand how to better frame my writing depending on the audience. This skill can help me when I’m asking my dad for money, when I’m writing a letter of intent to study abroad, or a thank you letter to my grandparents. I guess what I’m trying to say is, not every class in college will be directly related to your career, but you can put all of them to good use.