Tielt, Belgium

What a great last week in Europe. I had such a wonderful time in Tielt - it was one of my favorite cities. We arrived Monday after our free time in Bruges and had our host pick up. I was going to have a roommate, but she was currently with the rest of the second semester students on their mini-trip to the south of Belgium, so I had host pick up alone! We had all sorts of crazy Flemmish words as our host codes, and I had no idea what my code meant until a Belgian Alumni told me it meant Wheelbarrow! I waited and waited and never saw a wheelbarrow, but then a woman came up to me and said she was my host mom! She didn't have her wheelbarrow because she brought it to the wrong location and then biked over to the Europahal. Whoops! An was very sweet and very nice. One problem - she only had her bike and I had a TON of luggage to lug back (since I had Bettina's luggage, too!) She left me to go get her car, and then we were off!

 An is ALSO a music teacher - in fact, she teaches teachers how to be healthy with their voices. Perfect for me? I think so! It was so great staying with her because she always had music playing and she understood my passion for teaching! She was such a sweet lady! We had a fantastic week, and An's house was in the perfect location! We were able to walk to everything - in fact, it wasn't until Sunday on Host Family day that I got in a car again! I absolutely loved walking through town every day and REALLY getting to know the city.

My amazing backyard for the week. It was unreal!

I had a great CI on Tuesday at the Sint Andreis Hospital working with some nursing home residents. We went for a stroll around Tielt so the residents could have a morning out in the wonderful weather! In the morning, I got to push Christiana around and I learned so much about her life! She was wonderful and reminded me a lot of my Grandma Stewart, so that made my heart happy! She was born and raised in Tielt, and we got to see the Catholic church that she was baptized and married in, as well as the cemetery that many family members are buried in.

 That evening, Kevin (who lived close by, yet again! haha) and I went for a lovely walk around town. I had a little fun on the train tracks...

 We also discovered that An had a HUGE world map in her garage with pinpoints of all the places she and/or her ex-husband traveled to. It just confirmed I want one of my own someday!

We had a good study abroad day on Wednesday and welcomed the 2nd semester students back.

The morning after Bettina showed up!

On Thursday we had a cool opportunity to go to Gent to see the Belgian National Special Olympics! Our sole purpose of the visit? To cheer on the athletes! We had a great day enjoying the sunshine, each others' company, and supporting the great athletes. 

photo credit: Ambrea Peterson

 That night, we had a wonderful dinner with An, Robrecht, An's daughter Analies, and her fiance (I forget his name...oops). After dinner AND dessert, An heard the ice cream truck drive by. She dropped everything, shouted, "WHO WANTS AN ICE CREAM?" and went running out the door saying, "YOOOHOOOO!" to flag down the ice cream man. Even though we were stuffed, we enjoyed our 2nd desserts of the night and had a lot of laughs over how cute An was! I hadn't had ice cream truck ice cream since I was little living in Naperville, IL! Yikes! =)

We had our shows on Friday and Saturday and a lot of us went out after our show on Friday night to a bar in town called La Terraza. It was fun spending a night out in town with our Uppies! =)

Me, Simone, Amilee, Dylan, and Kevin

They had a cool section in the back that was all a lounge area. They were like big beds!

We celebrated Tori's 19th birthday out!

We had a great host family day! I'll do a separate post for host family day because it was quite the adventurous day! We had to prepare to depart Europe and leave for Mexico.