I'm really not in Paris now.

I have (really good) free WiFi access at this first hostel, so why not capitalize on it and write a blog post?

Yesterday was the last day in France - tres triste! It was sad saying goodbye to everyone, particularly when Abena whipped out her ukelele and sang beautiful music to us during our farewell dinner. A bunch of us went out to one of our favorite bars, Flannigan's - an Irish pub, one last time and consequently got roughly three hours of sleep since a whole pack of us left the hotel at 7am this morning to get to the train station. Farewell, Lyon, you treated us well! Except for that whole hill thing.

Luckily I got to adventure on - and am currently in Brussels, Belgium! Upside of Brussels: waffles and french fries (they were invented here). Downside of Brussels: its weather hates us. Today was extremely dreary and rainy and chilly. I apparently did not have my brain on hand when I packed before I came to Europe; we are currently the farthest south we will be on our eight day trip - and I only have two pairs of pants. In my defense, I really could not have fit too much more in my suitcase, so I'm either going to be chilly in my skirts, or my pants are going to be real grimy by the time I get home.

Today we wandered around Brussels and saw their 15th century town hall, Manneken Pis (the fountain of the little boy who's peeing) who you would have guessed is three feet tall or so but is actually all of one foot, and other old stuff. Then we took the metro a ways to go to see a giant statue of an atom that was built for the World Fair in 1958. NERDS. Mark chose it, not me. It's an enormous structure that you can go inside of and can probably see much of Belgium from; we just saw a lot of Belgian fog and clouds. But there are also exhibits inside and a sweet gift shop where people's geeky boyfriends can buy shirts with pictures of the atom that say "Atomium" on them. Tonight we considered Harry Potter cause of the crappy weather, but the only showing was at 10, which is well past your bedtime when you've been up since 6.

Tomorrow is more Brussels, then off to Bruges. I hope I see some canals.