Saturday mornings they have a street market right outside our window. They started setting up for it in the wee hours of the morning but luckily it didn't bother me. At about 8:30 we went to explore their treasures. It loops around a whole block of the town's streets. They have clothes, shoes, jewelry, fruit, meat, flowers, vegetables, animals, and trinkets galore. We mainly were just looking at everything. Honestly the clothes weren't that cheap and they didn't have many stylish pieces haha. I'm a bargain hunter and don't like to spend more than $10 on nice clothes and no more than $5 on my good deals. Most of their "cheap" stuff was 5 euros and that's just too much to me. Anything I considered buying was at least 10 or 15 euros and I just wasn't ready to drop that kind of money yet lol (laughing because it't not thaat much, I'm just cheap.) Maybe later. I did see some ADORABLE shoes. We will see. After the market we packed our lunches and headed for Maastricht. We got on a train to Liege and then switched trains to Maastricht. We just walked the streets as one big group and saw lots of buildings and adorable shops and crossed a river. We saw a lot of ponds and some statues too. Some of the tree leaves were orange and were on the ground. It was almost like it was fall except it was like 80 degrees. So hot. But it was a nice reminder that cooler weather is coming. We took lots of breaks because it's hard traveling with 28 people. Everyone wants to take pictures at every place so it's a bit hard to keep moving ha. Maastricht is so cute and clean and there are lots of bikes. You really have to watch out or you will be ran over. We saw an old bear cage which is now like an art exhibit and has statues of animals and this creepy lady petting a dead giraffe. It was weird, but the university there designs the dresses for the lady every 6 months so that's interesting. We walked past some markets and festivals too. We also visited the Basilica of Our Lady and it has a statue of Mary in it. After that the group was free to split up and make their way back to Verviers on their own. We first went into this bookstore that was in a really old cathedral which was so neat! The ceilings had paintings on them and they were worn and faint but still beautiful. We then visited some clothing stores. Europeans are really into their clothes. They are like super fashionable and keep up with style even more than dare I say, Americans. Not everywhere though. That's the thing. Some places are super sketch and others are super modern and sophisticated. We left one store and the beeper went off which was weird because we didn't buy anything. So in America we just keep walking usually because it just means that their sensors are messed up. Well in Europe, they have little guards at some of the stores and they definitely stopped us. He asked me to go back through it alone and it wasn't me but didn't let me leave. Then he asked Annah to walk through and it went off! Yikes. So he wanted to search her bag and obvi she didn't take anything but he didn't trust us so he put the backpack past the sensor and it didn't go off. Then she went through and it didn't go off. So it was just wacky sensors here too but they definitely checked us out ha. So that was crazy! Then we walked down random streets and just looked in stores. We think we saw a famous person because there was this guy taking pictures with people and he had a security guard and the line went past like 15 stores. But we had no clue who it was. After that we went to a souvenir shop and a couple people bought some miniature clogs which were the cutest little guys. Then we got friets (fries) with andalouse sauce which we as a group decided it kind of tasted like zax sauce. The fries were like the best fries ever and the sauce was yum. Then we walked around looking at little stores again. Sadly everything closes at like 5 or 6 which is so upsetting because then there's nothing to do! We wanted to go back to these bakeries and stores we saw when we first entered the city but they were all closed. We did go into an art store and a store that had cute cards. Which are both my fave so I was glad I could do that. We also stopped to get these things called doners. I didn't get one but they had meat and cheese and sauce in a pita kind of? It was the size of my face and I tasted the meat and it was so good! Then we went to get ice cream/gelato. We weren't really sure which one it was this time which means I think it was ice cream. I got citroen flavor (lemon) which was a party in my mouth and so refreshing. After that, we just walked around again and took some pictures. Then we headed back to the train station and came back to the facility. Maastricht is easily the best place we've been to now and I can't wait to go back.

Sidenote: the wifi here does not work well at all so I've been trying to do homework for the past two days, and well, I can't. Warning to my parents: if I fail this semester it is not my fault, I have no access to my homework, yay:) actually for those who know me, this upsets me because I truly want to do homework because I like it.