Rivers & Roads

Well I have made it to my one week mark here in Gent! For some reason it feel like I have been here a lot longer than that, but in a good way! Living here is much different from my experience of living in Barcelona also. When you don't know how to speak or read the language everything just takes a little more time and effort than you think it will. For example, yesterday I went to the grocery store (which I thought would be pretty simple) but when you can't read any of the words on the packaging you feel like a kindergardener looking at all the pictures trying to put together the pieces of exactly what kind of meat you're looking at. Here are a few more things I have noticed:

- No one walks around with head phones in their ears! This is a weird thing to notice, but in the US it seems like most young people at least are always walking around with headphones on. But I have seen barley anyone doing that and it is kind of nice, it creates a friendlier more social atmosphere even if you are just walking down the street.

- There are far fewer traffic signs or lights on the streets here, they are all about the roundabouts. Also, bikes have the right of way here, so cars have to stop and let bikes cross the street before they can go.

- The street names are impossible to remember. Most of them are really long with what seems to be about 10 vowels right next to each other. So as much as I want to ride my bike around, walking has been easier so far because stopping on your bike to look at your phone to make sure you are on the right street going the correct direction gets kind of hard.

- The US is huge. I know this is a very obvious statement and granted Belgium is particularly small (it fits in Colorado over 8 times...) but seriously its huge. Most of the students here go to school in a city like Gent but on the weekends they take the train home which is only about 30 minutes away. They hang out with their friends from Gent during the week and then their friends from their hometown on the weekend. While in the US if you go to school out of state, you only go home a few times a year. Even if you stay instate often you only see your friends from home a few times a year. You end up with friends scattered around the country who you really don't see very often. I think there ups and downs to both, but it does seem nice to be able to just hop on a train to go see your parents or some old friends for the weekend.

-Also Gent has a laundromat that is also a bar. I am sitting in it right now and it is a pretty fabulous idea.  Every town should have one of these.