Anterwerpen - Week 2

Hey everybody!! I had a good week. We had an appointment with Quincy on Tuesday. She is this really cute Belgian lady who is incredibly prepared and getting baptized in a few weeks. She is amazing. But on the way home from her appointment, the ocean decided to dump on our heads. It was raining SO HARD. SO HARD. And we had no jackets at all. We had to sprint through it to our tram, and then from our tram home. 

 

Here is some of the end results. 

Of course I wore my long skirt that day. 

Here's a random picture of the bread vending machines. They are amazing. It's fresh made bread that you can always get from the vending machines and use all of your annoying coins. 

We also had exchanges this week. But this was an interesting day. It first began with the normal studies, where Zuster Smith and I were doing comp study. And my Dutch grammer book fell through the crack between my desk and the bookshelf that it's next to. So I decided to move my desk a little closer to the bookshelf. And as I do that, I suddenly hear something above me begin to fall... and before I know it something very large has hit my head and shattered all over me. I'm totally taken aback and I just stand there completely still, before looking down and seeing that I'm covered in millions of pieces of shattered glass. 

The thing that fell on me was this giant picture frame, one of those really big and kind of heavy ones.

Zuster Smith and I both laugh at first, because it's just like so weird that I was hit on the head by this giant thing and now I'm covered in giant shards of glass and I'm not bleeding at all. I just have a couple of scratches on my arms and legs and the worst is just that a couple of pieces got stuck in my fingers and my pinky is bleeding a bit. But that's it. 

Like there is giant shards of glass everywhere. 

And I was hit on the head by a heavy frame. 

But I'm totally fine. 

Blessings!!! 

It took us only forever to clean up all of that glass, but it was all clean and safe before the sisters came over for exchanges. They had a sleepover here in Antwerpen and that was pretty fun. 

My bike was (at the time) finally fixed, and so for the first time ever I went biking in Antwerpen with Zuster Pond on our exchange. 

And I swear everytime I move I say "oh wow, biking here is so much  different and harder than the last place I've been in! I have to pay more attention!". But that's about to happen again. 

Biking in Antwerpen is a million times more insane than even biking Amsterdam. 

Imagine the same amount of traffic, people running around, trams, cars, traffic lights, buses, mopeds, motorcycles, everything. Now remove the bike paths that Amsterdam has, add cobblestones, add more trams and imagine yourself biking next to the tram rails and the cars and the buses, directly on the same road. 

Belgians wear helmets, unlike the Dutch, and there's a reason. Lets be said that I won't be biking in the centrum of Antwerpen ever again and that was a one time experience. 

But we survived, and here's a picture of Zuster Pond and I in China town! Although it was actually really scary and we watched a drug deal happen two feet from us and I don't think I will be willingly returning there if I can help it. 

Then we looked up more people, and kept biking around when all of a sudden, I'm going downhill and my bike chain falls off, and I nearly ride straight into oncoming traffic. Luckily I leaped off in time and had to hard break with my feet before anything bad happened. But now we're stuck in the middle of Antwerpen with a messed up chain. Luckily this really sweet African guy stopped by and fixed my bike!! Yay! 

Unfortunately the chain fell off again two days later on the way the church. We put it back on, but then on the way home the same thing happened. I'm going to need to get it repaired somewhere. 

But yeah it was a good week!! This city is crazy! Kind of ghetto and pretty insane. But it's good!! I hope you enjoyed the weird stories! Sadly no quotes for this week :/ 

I love you guys!!!