Oh Saturday. How sweet are your mornings. The market was this morning but I am thankful for ear plugs and eye masks that allow me to sleep peacefully even through noise and sunlight. I kind of wanted to go to the market just to look around, but I have been lacking sleep this week so I chose sleeping in and it was a great decision. We were meeting at 11 to leave for the train station so I had a few hours to get ready. I put on a light sweater and curled my hair, and I was ready to take on the day. I made my ham and cheese sandwich and got my dinner stipend money for the day. I was done early, so I made some tea. It was a peaceful morning, and I was ready for some adventure. We walked to the train station and had to wait a little while for the train so I took some pictures of some pretty gals since the lighting was like perfect. Our train ride was about an hour long so I watched some "Netty-flix" in the words of Claire and Hannah. (typing that made me cringe) We arrived in Brussels and went to this catholic cathedral. The gothic architecture was gorgeous as always. The curves and details and decorative edges. We went inside and it was so bright and beautiful. The ceilings are vaulted wayyyyy up high and there are so many windows that the light just floods in. It had stain glass window after stain glass window. I have no idea how they make their stained glass pictures look so realistic. It is pretty crazy how much emphasis they put on man made ceremonies and positions there though. There was hardly anything that centered on God or Jesus. Just a lot of stained glass pictures of men being honored. Pretty messed up. They also had some impressive statues that are up high on the columns and line the whole cathedral. It is an impressive building for sure. From there, we walked to a big open area in the middle of town that had all of the beautiful buildings surrounding it. There was a Korean music festival happening right in the middle of it all so it was bit crazy. We walked from there down an alley to their famous peeing boy. It is a small statue of a little boy who pees and it also a fountain. Its real name is Manneken Pis. I am not sure what all the hype is about but everyone really loves it for some reason. There was always a large crowd surrounding him and all of the tourist shops had little trinkets of him. He was actually clothed today in a little blue and red outfit, but usually he wears his birthday suit. The group split up and we went searching for some lace for my momma and waffles. We went into a few textile stores and lace stores and just looked around. We went into some tourist shops that are all the same and walked past a bunch of waffle stores. This one street has like three kinds of shops: waffles, chocolate, and tourist. We went back to the main square where the music festival was and there was this horrible sound filling the streets. I am not sure how they can label whatever that sound was as music, but it was awful. We tried to find some wifi to look up things to do but we ended up just wandering the streets as always. We went into a couple expensive shops to just look. We saw a lot of food options for later and some gross outside/open air urinals. That was gross. I do not like those one bit, especially since the smell just permeates the surrounding area. We walked to another area with outside booths and saw some more people from our group. We talked with them a bit and then set out to find some food. On the way, we came upon this parade. There were these men in funny costumes and some had on the super huge feathery hats. By huge, I mean like 3 feet by 2 feet huge. They were just playing music and dancing and they had these baskets of oranges that they were throwing out to the crowd. It was so random and we were so confused. We were just laughing and I started recording the spontaneous parade. Well......next thing I know....the worst thing ever happened. I am just minding my own business and recording the parade when one of the men from the parade looks me in the eye and beckons me. He had an orange in his hand and so I was just like, okay, he wants to give me the orange for some reason. Out of all the people in this crowd he is choosing me. How strange. I was still just ignoring him, hoping he wasn't going to pursue it and come to me. Well, I was wrong. He points to me and walks right up to me. He hands me the orange and I thank him. I figured he'd walk away. Oh no. No no no. It can never just be that easy. He starts leaning in towards me and I was like UHHHH NO. Honestly this was all a blur here. I don't know how I knew this, but I knew he was trying to kiss me. FIRST OF ALL, this man was so gross. Most Belgians are for some reason. This one, especially so. Well I pull the good ol' duck and turn and I was saying no no no and backing away. Unfortunately, we were in a crowd so I couldn't really back up. I was totally trapped as this weird gross costumed parade dude is coming towards my face. Seriously guys. This is a nightmare. I am still having cringeworthy flashbacks. Annah and Hannah were no help as they were just laughing hysterically and running away to dodge the weird dude. I was flopping like a fish trying to avoid what was about to come. I turned my head one last time and he plants one right on my cheek. UGH. NO. GROSS. WHY ME. He walks over to Claire to hand her an orange too, but I was gone. Bye. Adios. See ya never. I was wiping my face like none other. EWWWWW. I keep telling myself it was just a French thing in order to handle this better. I also checked my money and phone to make sure it wasn't a pickpocketing scheme. It wasn't. I think I was kind of hoping it was just so I could understand what just happened. I was also recording on my camera so I have most of the incident on record. You see him look at me, beckon me, walk towards me with that orange, and then boom my camera is going all over the place as I am trying to escape and dodge this situation. I did not succeed. I will never forget this tragic moment in my life. Seriously people, I am scarred. I was in shock for a good 20 minutes after that as we kept trying to find food. Finally, we settled on Fritland. It was pretty much fast food, but we don't have much allowance to spend on meals so we have to find cheap things. I got chicken fries and a coke and then Annah and Hannah were nice enough to share some fries with me. After that was another gross Brussel man event. Courtney, Annah, and Abby went to the bathrooms in Fritland and they are open bathrooms again. There are stalls but also urinals in the same room. Bathrooms for all. Let's just say, there were things seen that can't be unseen. Seriously Belgium, why do you people have to be so public with private matters. After dinner, we searched for those perfect waffles. I ordered a waffle with whip cream and chocolate sauce on it. It was perfection. We walked back to the area with the music festival to find a place to sit and eat. We didn't quite find somewhere to sit so we were just gathered in a group eating our waffles. Claire wanted a picture with me with our kiss cursed oranges. As we were taking the photo, I noticed this small man taking our picture too. I thought maybe he was taking a selfie or something so I ignored it. Well, we go back to our group and I see him taking more pictures. Then he was looking at his phone and smiling. Creepy. Then Courtney and Claire took a picture and he did it again! When Courtney moved, his camera followed. SOOOOO weird. We were standing in our group and this man walks up to us and didn't really say anything at first. He finally said, "picture?" I knew for sure he wanted a picture of us or with us and I was like OH NO. I have had one creepy dude encounter today, I do not need this in my life. We all just stood there awkwardly because we weren't about to agree to that and finally Claire asked if he wanted a picture of himself. He did, but then he gets really close to Annah to pose for a picture with her. She was like dying laughing as Claire took their picture and then we booked it out of there. We were so done. WHY? Why Brussels? Why do you have so many WEIRDOS?????? We walked back to the train station and found some benches and waited a little while for the train. We went inside and met up with most of the whole group. On the train ride back, it was a full train. Luckily three of us found some seats. The rest had to stand. When we got to one stop, we found out we were in reserved seats of this group of school girls. We got up and then had to stand for the rest of the time. Well these school girls were obnoxious. Most of their seats had people sitting in them since it was a full train, but we got up no problem because they were their seats. Well for some reason they wanted to make a big deal about it. The leader of the group, an adult I assume, took the reserved stickers and started putting them all over her. She put them on her legs and arms and then one on her booty and then shook it at the whole train! She was crazy! and rude. Like lady, we don't care that you kicked us out. we gladly give you your seats. She just would not let it go. At one point, she climbed onto the arms of the seats on either side of the isle and stood on them. Probably to shove her reserved stickers in people's faces again. At last, we arrive in Verviers and we book it back to the facility. I was so done with humans at this point. I tried to FaceTime my sister and mom but the wifi was dumb again. I recorded a French video, drank some tea, and watched the disgusting event of cleansing the sink drains from hair. what a day. what a night. Peace out.

Fun Facts: Belgium is probably my least favorite country so far. My eye contact mysteriously disappeared from its case between last night and this morning. The mystery is still unsolved. We have four showers in our bathroom. Shower number 1 is the best. Actually 2 and 3 might be cool too. I don't know. I do know that number 4 is the worst. I was able to order my waffle in French because it was labeled as number 3, and we know numbers. I was all set. I also heard numbers in French and understood them! yay!

SHOUTOUT: Mary Beth and Annah for being plumbers and performing the dirty task of cleaning the hair from the drains. The real MVPs.