Intro There wasn’t much going on this weekend so Daniel, Christina, Laura, and I decided to take a trip to Luxembourg. We had a social event on Friday night so we opted to meet at Gent St. Pieter’s on Saturday morning at 8:30 AM. The meeting time was a bit early, but we all made it. We caught the train out of Gent just before 9:00 and were looking forward to a nice, peaceful ride across Belgium. Initially we got what we wanted, at least for the first half hour. Scouts Everywhere Apparently this weekend was “the” weekend for the Scouts [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday we visited the town of Dinant on our way back to Gent. It was another beautiful day, and the view that greeted us when we got off the bus was of the fortified citadel looming overhead. Many of us climbed to the top. The Citadel provided a great view of the city and the bridge below. We took a guided tour of the citadel. It was informative, but a little slow because everything had to be repeated in three languages: French, Dutch, and English. Probably one of the most interesting parts of the tour was when we walked through [View Full Entry]

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I had such a good time with ESN on the "Gent by Night" tour, why not follow up with an ESN weekend in the Ardennes? We left Gent at about 5:30 on Friday afternoon and took a chartered bus to the little town of Hastiere. On the way we stopped at the Belgian equivalent of a truck stop. Not a rest area, but one of the big inter-country convenience stores. It was like any other convenience store in Arkansas, except for the resaurant spanning the highway. I'd never seen anything like it before. It was built like an overpass, but had [View Full Entry]

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Maybe I didn't realize what I was getting myself into, or maybe I knew exactly what I was doing. You be the judge. ESN, or Erasmus Student Network, is a group of local volunteers who help organize activities and social events for foreign students here in Gent. I'm on their e-mail list, and here's the e-mail that caught my attention: GHENT BY NIGHT Wednesday 15 march there will be the ‘Ghent by night’ city tour. We leave at 20.00 at de brug. Your tour guides will be Petrus and David. What to expect - The most beautiful places in Ghent by [View Full Entry]

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Today I took a trip to the Fort of Breendonk, not far from Gent. Breendonk was originally built in the early 1900's as part of the outer defense network for Antwerp. During WWII the Nazi's took posession of the fort and used it as a concentration camp. The fort now stands as a memorial to those who suffered during WWII. The visit to Breendonk was not exactly pleasant. I'm not going to post a lot of photos here, just a few to give you an idea of the place. [View Full Entry]

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So, you may be wondering...what have I been doing with my free time since I've been here? By free time (of which I have very, very little) I mean the times when I'm not working, going to class, commuting back and forth to Brussels, studying, trying to learn Dutch (and usually failing miserably), or traveling. Well, believe it or not, I've actually made a few friends over here. I mainly hang around my American friends, and a bunch of other foreign students...birds of a feather and all. I've included some photos to show you who I like to spend my time [View Full Entry]

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Day 5 begins. Today was my museum day. Some people don't like museums, I do. The Louvre was a must see for me. The Louvre As I said in an earlier blog, this time of the year Paris is not too crowded. It only took us about thirty minutes to go through the security checkpoint in the pyramid of the Louvre, and purchase our tickets on the main floor. A little tip: there are automated ticket machines that have much shorter lines than the regular ticket booths, but they only take 5's, 10's, and 20's. I had a 50 so I [View Full Entry]

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Cimetiere de l'Est du Pere Lachaise Day 3 begins. Our first stop this morning was the famous cemetary Pere Lachaise. It was rather close to our hostel, so a short walk took us to the cemetary. We didn't go in at the main entrance, but in one of the side entrances. We actually tried to enter in one place that just turned out to be a small park, but we eventually made it inside. The entrance we used was rather strange. After turning down a normal street, we were confronted with a wall at the end of the street. Set in [View Full Entry]

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First Impressions OK, so day 2 in Paris begins. You should know that so far I really hadn't seen much of Paris. It's hard to get an impression of a place from a train, or Metro, or the 300 meters you walk from the Metro to the hostel. So when I woke up on Saturday morning, I was ready to go see some sights. I figured that the best way to start would be to get on the Metro, and get off in the middle of Paris. So, I picked the "Invalides" stop as our jumping off point, since it was [View Full Entry]

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Introduction We had a short holiday at Gent University, so some friends and I decided to spend a long weekend in Paris. It was a much needed mini-vacation. The weather in Belgium was getting tiresome, and Paris was a much needed breath of fresh air. I took over three hundred photographs over the course of the trip, but I've only posted some of my favorites on the next few blogs. I have broken the trip up chronologically, and spread the photographs out over four journal entries. I hope you enjoy reading about this guy's first visit to "The City of Light". [View Full Entry]

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