Hello Brugge!!

Friday Night, 7:30 pm:

            In our attempts to spend up as much time off of Feltwell Base as possible, we went and got pizza at Lakenheath. Nine girls, 2 large pizzas, and 4 orders of cheesy bread! Awesome! However we did have to wait about an hour for our pizza, but… none of us really complained!

Friday Night, 11 pm:

            Waiting. Our coach (aka bus) for Belgium left at 2:15 in the morning so we had time to kill on base waiting for it. I slept in 2 chairs pushed together….

Friday Night, 11:45 pm:

            I am rudely awakened by a man who told me I can’t sleep in the chairs. I was not very polite (who really is after be awoken so abruptly) but came around to him when he found us couches we could sleep on J

Saturday Morning, 1:50 am:

            We woke up (a little sluggishly) so that we could meet up with our coach to leave for Belgium. It was raining so I was a little mopey moving around.

Saturday Morning, 2:25 am:

            After waiting for what seemed like forever in the rain, we finally found our seats on the coach and I fell asleep immediately! Luckily, I had my sleeping mask from Mrs. Pendleton to help me sleep despite the crying baby!

Saturday Morning, 5 am:

            I woke up to find our coach driving onto a ferry! This was a huge boat! This ferry left from Dover, England and was going to port in Calais, France. We had to get off the coach and go find places to sit on the boat since you are not allowed to sit in your cars while the ferry is going. I honestly didn’t even see much of the boat because I was so focused on finding a place to lay down. I found a nice little spot to go to sleep and slept the whole way (I am so grateful that I have such a wonderful ability so sleep anytime, anywhere)!

Saturday Morning, 7 am (France is one hour ahead of England):

            Again, I had to drag myself from where I had been peacefully sleeping back down to the coach. I was getting tired of it! But after we hopped back on the coach, I fell asleep again quickly enough.

Saturday Morning, 10 am:

            I woke up (this time on purpose) to find us pulling into a chocolate factory in Belgium (still raining)! We went inside and found all of these different types of chocolates! Unfortunately, no one was making chocolate while we were there but it was still fun to see the chocolate molds and see the finished product.

Saturday 11 am:

            We arrived in Brugge! We step out into the rain (shocking) and make our way into the beautiful city. What I loved about Brugge is that it still feels and looks like it would have back 600 years ago. The town is exactly what I would have expected a Belgian town to look like. It was so gorgeous!

Saturday 11:20 am- 4:30 pm:

            Belgium is known for its lace and so we went in many lace shops, ate some waffles, shopped in the local stores, and went into the Church of our Lady where Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child was housed. This was one of his few works not in Italy. It was absolutely beautiful! There were horse drawn carriages and really big mugs of hot chocolate! What I loved about the hot chocolate is that they will bring you out hot milk and give you chocolate chips to stir into the milk. It was yummy! There aren’t many cute pictures from here because it was rainy and windy the entire time.

Saturday Evening 5:30 pm:

            We meandered back towards to coach but unfortunately this time, while I was tired, I could not get to sleep. The baby behind me made sure of that!

Saturday Evening 7:30- 9:00 pm (England time):

            We got back onto the ferry this time and I made sure to actually see what the ferry was like. It actually reminded me of a cruise ship lounge area. The rocking of the boat didn’t help my stomach but we made it across the English Channel just fine. However, when we go to immigration/ customs there was a problem. 5 of the 9 student teachers got through just fine by saying we were volunteers at RAF Feltwell and that we are not getting paid (In England, if you say you are a student teacher, they assume that you are getting paid to do this. If that were the case, we would all need VISAS which we don’t have. So we were advised to tell them that we are “volunteering” in a classroom as a part of our studies and that we were not getting paid). This worked just fine for us when we landed in Heathrow. However, when it was MY turn, she asks me what I was doing in Engalnd and I gave her the answer we were told we should give by the Air Force. She looked at me, and then started asking really intense questions about why I was here for so long and what type of students I was teaching. I was really frustrated that I was getting stopped because they had let 5 other girls with the same story as me go through! She told me and 3 other student teachers to wait for her to talk to her Chief Immagration Officer…. Great.

Long story short, we told her that we are students at OSU and are doing our internship with a DODDs school. We told her we were not getting paid and that we are leaving on April 30. She told us that the stamp we got in Heathrow said we were visiting and so our “volunteering” story made her question us. She said that we now should always say we are “short term students” in England. Luckily we made it through, but I really think they should teach people what they are really supposed to say when going through immigration.

Saturday 11:50 pm:

            We finally made it back to our beds. While this trip was so fun, it was exhausting. We were in 3 countries in less that 24 hours. It was a whirlwind! But…very worth it!