So I haven't posted in a while because, well, me being me I forgot to pick up a plug adapter before I left the States which then meant that my laptop ran out of power. Anyway, so I'm in Brussels, well actually I'm in Lubbeek which is about 20km outisde of Brussels, right now. I'm staying with my boss and his family until I find an apartment but I'm getting way ahead of myself and I'm starting in the middle instead of the beginning where things aught to start.
Surprisingly, I wasn't nervous at all about this trip in the few days leading up to it. I'd prepared myself well enough, had everything printed out, had scoped out places I wanted to go, written an itinerary, and all that good stuff. I waited until the day I was leaving to pack so I could lay everything all out and figure out what I wanted to leave behind and what I was missing (I also took pictures of everything I brought so that in the unlikely case that my luggage was lost I had evidence of what was in it). The minute I picked up my luggage from the carrousel in Paris I realized I'd packed way too much. I should have bought a suitcase half the size of the one I got and only brought what I could fit in that and my backpack (oh yeah, I got a full on backpacking backpack so I have it for when me and some friends walk across Spain later this year!).
Anyway, the flight was decent. Before I left I read up on how to avoid jetlag. The most important thing, it seems, is to stay hydrated. And after that, it is to adjust to the new time zone as quickly as possible. Since I was arriving in the morning most places recommended to either get a full sleep on the plane or stay up all the next day and go to sleep at 10pm at the earliest. It had been my intention to do the former but I couldn't fall asleep on the plane so I watched the movies instead; it was sooo cool because they had a screen for every seat and you could choose what movie you wanted to watch. I watched Easy A which I'd been wanting to watch forever and something else that I don't remember now, meh.
I got to the Paris airport, picked up my luggage and attempted to find the RER (kind of like the metro but it goes further outside of Paris) that would take me to Gare du Nord. I seriously walked in a circle for about 20 minutes because the elevator that led you there was only marked on one side and I kept missing it. I left my huge suitcase in a luggage locker in the Gare du Nord and then attempted to find my hostel. I had looked at a map before I left to familiarize myself with the route I'd need to take to get there. On the map, what looked like 1 block actually corresponded to about 10 or 12 so what looked like it would take about 20 minutes took quite a bit longer. I got a little bit lost in the process. There were maps of the city around and I knew where I was supposed to end up generally so I tried to follow those until I got there. The street my hostel was on wasn't actually on the map though oh and on that note: it took me about 30 minutes of walking around to figure out how the streets were labeled. They don't have street sign poles on the corner; instead there is a plaque mounted on the building at the corner. I would walk to an intersection, not be able to find the sign and then turn a random direction hoping it was mostly right. And about half the times I did that I was right at the correct intersection and if I'd taken the other street I would have gotten there. I ended up going to a Starbucks across the street from the Moulin Rouge and using their internet on my iPod to pull up a map and I followed that to get to my hostel. I think I got to the train station about 9am or so and I didn't get to the hostel until 12:30.
Anyway, I'll continue the update later as I have a lot to write about still and I don't particularly feel like typing anymore, lawl.
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