Day 58 - Friends, Family, Food, and Fun

So, I’m sitting in the Charleroi (Brussels South) airport with a little more time on my hands than I originally expected. I am heading to Madrid to visit some family friends who are missionaries there (the DeWitts, for those who know) and my flight has been delayed for about an hour. So, although I woke up at 5:45 this morning, it will now be nearly 2pm when I arrive at their house. As much as I could complain, I have to say, I just really love travelling. Amidst my nodding off on the bus ride here, I was thinking – Am I doing everything I want to be doing? Am I getting everything out of this experience that I thought I would? And the answer is absolutely yes!!! I am getting to work in an awesome job that is creating opportunities for me beyond what I even know or understand right now with an office full of really nice and sociable people who come from all over the world and are constantly challenging my views on the world. I am getting to live in a great city that is located conveniently to the rest of Europe so that I get to do things like take a trip to Madrid for the weekend!! I have met some wonderful people, maybe not any lifelong friends, but a great support network. And, I am having fun!!!

Backing up a little – the past couple weeks have flown by!!! I feel like Wesley was just here yesterday, but it’s already been almost 2 weeks since he left!! It was so nice to get to spend some memorable and special time with him, and his visit could not have come at a more perfect time (well, besides the weather). Work has been busy!!!! I am constantly being given new projects and things to work on, and ever since I got back, we have been working to prepare for this big Transatlantic Conference that we had last…

(Wow, that was sudden --- I was just sitting at my gate, an hour before flight time, and suddenly there was a mad dash to line up for boarding – imagine Southwest, but with no A,B,C, and no call for boarding, just everyone suddenly gets in a line and it’s a long line! I heard from Annie that this happens, so I made sure to get my place quickly – which is now being rewarded by a window seat on the bulkhead!! As I’m typing, we’re passing over Bordeaux – oooh, and now the French coastline, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an ocean.)

…so back to last week – it was busy. I spent a lot of time doing more “intern” type duties and would say I am now very proficient at creating, copying, collating, sorting, binding, hole punching, and making labels for information packets. We had a number of meetings at the office throughout the week because of the people who were in town for the conference, including our Executive Council or ExCo, presidents and directors of other AmChams from around Europe, and many of our members. As part of a communications committee meeting, we had a really interesting presentation about the uses of social networking (not just limited to facebook and twitter) for marketing, etc. Beyond getting to listen in on most of these meetings (some more interesting than others), I’ve been the photographer for the week. I have mastered the art of taking mid-conversation action shots of people at cocktail receptions and coffee hours J

The Transatlantic Conference was held on the top level of the very nice Brussels Hilton. The sunny day and large windows provided one of the prettiest views I have seen of Brussels!! My next work tasks? Updating contact details for the Membership Directory, updating database entries for our Information Handbook, and starting my HOD Senior Project – a US focused marketing plan for our publications with an eye to introducing digital publications (just think, you could read something I edited on your Kindle or iPad).

It’s been too long since I’ve blogged because I havn’t told you all about Annie being here yet!!!! I can’t really describe how great it was to have such a sweet friend here to spend the weekend with. After missing her original flight out of Dublin, Annie ended up spending the day in Dublin and not arriving in Brussels until 11pm – where I met her a the airport with some flowers, Belgian chocolate, a coke, and a big hug. (A word on the flowers. I picked them up on my way home from work at this adorable and very reasonably priced florist that I love to stop in on my walk home from work. I currently have a narcissus plant that I am trying to keep alive from there, and I ended up getting to enjoy Annie’s flowers for the past week since she couldn’t take them back to Ireland). After getting to bed pretty late, we got up at a decent hour Saturday morning to do the Tour de Bruxelles – aka an Emily-guided walking tour of the Royal Palace, Grand Place, Mannequin-Pis, Palace de Justice, Avenue Louise, and Sablon. The Mannequin-Pis was in rare form when we saw him – dressed in a costume and peeing beer instead of water – this appeared to be put on by some local men’s group that were singing and chanting. With this experience and waffle #1 behind us, we decided that it was time to head to Waterloo.

The trip to Waterloo should have been very straightforward and easy, but we decided to make it a little more complicated by getting off the bus a little too early. It actually ended up working out well as we ran into the Waterloo visitor’s bureau and got to see the outside of the Wellington museum while waiting to get back on the same bus and ride down a few more stops. Waterloo – it’s actually a cute/much bigger than I expected town. The battle site though, it is basically a large plateau with a manmade, very steep, very symmetrical hill that has a statue of a lion on top. For those who are interested, the lion has his paw on a globe and stands for peace in Europe and he faces France. The somewhat annoying thing is that after you’ve totally lost your breath climbing the super steep stairs, you can’t even see the lion when you get up there because it is on this really tall pedestal. It was neat to see and feel the history that exists in that place, and if the hill was not enough, our ticket included a visit to a panoramic fresco of the battle, complete with sound effects and a wax museum that provided a little more history and displayed some of the uniforms of the men.

After we got back to Brussels, got some frites with Bicky Ketchup and Andalouse, and made some dinner, we went out with some people from the office. As our first time as both 21-year-olds, it was fun for Annie and I to go out together, and I was glad she got to meet some of the people from the office. Frites #2 were as we waited at the bus stop to take us home. We intended to go to church the next morning, but after some alarm troubles, we slept in instead and avoided the pelting rain and strong winds by making our way to a coffee shop to just enjoy spending some time together, but not before we got waffle #2 from a street vendor.