So I know that I have been derelict in my posting!

Here I am back again....I have lots of stories to tell though, so I will have to start at the previous weekend, even though I am DYING to write about Paris!!!

So the weekend of the 10th-12th was pretty eventful.

It all started on the 11th, when I went on an adventure with people from Church.

We went to this place called Zoet Water, that is in the middle of these woods, and it has a natural spring that has cold fresh water.

So, we were going to bike there, which would be "fun"

It was lots of fun...

.....for everyone else who got to see me try to bike for an hour uphill!!!

Seriously!

I don't know what I was thinking when I thought that I could ride a bike for more than 20 minutes. and the part where I forgot the leuven is full of hills. haha.

so i ride my bike (actually a borrowed bike from someone at the program) and the bike was very "tight" as in the pedalling was difficult, so one of the people i was going with swapped bikes with me, and that was better, and then i swapped with someone else. everyone was super accomodating and nice and consisderate of the fact that i was an idiot biker. i really felt very loved.

So after 30 minutes of the biking, we finally reach the forest, which we have to BIKE THROUGH. it's all gravely and weird and uphilly. sigh. when we got off our bikes in the woods to take a picture before we carried on, my legs were all wobbly and i couldnt stand! it was so bad it was ridiculously funny. but i think i was making everyone have a good time, because i was complaining in a funny "i was delusional to think i could do this" way.

And the woods were very blair-witchy woods, so i kept making "this is a horror movie"jokes.

once we got to the final place where the spring was though, i had so much fun! we picnic-ed, we sang songs, we talked, we wandered. We also went to visit where one of the priests lives, and had mass there. It was so nice to have fellowship with the people from the church, who are from all over the world! It was great. the people are so nice!

the journey back from Zoet Water was so much easier...mostly because it was a lot more downhill! and i was super numb!! :P












That evening had dinner with one of the people I went to the picnic with...Mary! It was a lot of fun, and after my break we probably will go to Bruges together. yay!

That evening as we were walking out of the restaurant, these guys celebrating a bachelor party were trying to get us to pay them money, and then eat whipped cream of a art of the body of the groom...any part of the body we wanted, and we cluld put as much whipped cream as we wanted to him before we ate it off...so technically might not have been gross :P but still....

then kelsey/julie/natasha walked by and saw us, and we dragged them into the conversation with the bachelor party people, and in the end we paid the groom to breakdance for us...even though they wanted him to give one of us a lapdance :P



On Sunday we went to Luxembourg. That's Julie Kelsey and I. We left at around 10am and got there around 1-130, walked around a lot. Luzembourg is really cool, except it's full of the remnants of these fortresses, and you have to CLIMB everywhere....and ofcourse i ached all over from the great bike escapades. So climbing was an issue. but it was a really pretty place to be! :) We roamed and roamed and roamed. And we ate for dinner....something that kelsey and i had been craving forever! Chinese food. I had hot and sour soup! yumyum! :) and then we shared chicken dish and fried rice dish.





Something cool i found out that weekend, because on friday we went looking for Chinese food, was that Dutch, presumably because of the colonial history, absorbed a lot of malay words when it comes to food...so the menu will say things like nasi goreng ; migoreng. isn't that weird!??! it made me weirdly homesick...i want my salted fish friend rice and my mee goreng!!! AND BLACK PEPPER BEEF!!!! ooooh....black pepper crabs.....am going to stop now...























Yummy chinese food!!! :)







It said Casa Lopez! :)















I climbed up all around THOSE!

I love the weekends here in Leuven.
Last weekend was very nice.
First of all...the internet was down (of course!) But we helped Keith fix it, MacGyver style. Agnes and I hung out, tried to study, got a pizza...veggie pizza = yumyum
then i went to choir practice! Which was pretty scary, I mean, the people are really nice and I feel very welcome, but liking to sing and then actually singing in the choir are so different. I feel a lot more self concious that I will go as they say in portugese "dizafinada"
There are only 2 other altos with me, and so when we start singing in parts, i am terrified/kinda bad. but they are all super nice about it! :P
Saturday was our day trip out. We went to Heizel, which is off Brussels, where they have the BRUPARCK which houses the Atomium a very cool building built in 1958 for the world's fair. It's actually constructed in the shape of a molecule. Check out the pictures!
After the Atomium we grabbed some lunch, (burgers! :P) and then in a wave of nostalgia, we sat in a merry-go-round! and Agnes and I sat in a teacup, which goes round it's own axis while the carousel is turning (like the earth!) But while we were riding, this weirdo man comes to check our tickets and so abruptly stops our spinning teacups making me feel ill :(
Right next to the Atomium is MiniEurope, which allows you to walk through all of the EU 27 and see some sights from their cities! While we were here our camera batteries started to fail, but luckily mine died just as i was leaving! :) Yay for my fabulous camera! :D

Sunday was another wonderful day! Started out early, as my days usually do, with me going to church and singing in the choir! :) Was lovely. Also it was the official welcome mass, so we all had a reception after, where I made some new friends!

So far Leuven is lovely!