July 26-Field trip to Bruges, Belgium

I really should have been keeping up with my blog the past few days..  I've done a lot!  Tuesday night I went to see the Dark Knight Rises.  It was opening day in Belgium.  The theater was really different from American theaters.  We sat in assigned seats, and instead of a concession stand, they had this large convenience store.  They sold (somewhat stale) popcorn, candy, and beer.  About 15 of us went and a few of them were diehard Batman fans.  I don't know the story too well, but I enjoyed the movie.  A lot of it was filmed at Wallaton Hall, the place Cooper and I visited in Nottingham.

Today was the first day of our overnight field trip to Bruge, Belgium.  The field trip is funded by a USDA grant, so everything is free for us, which is awesome.  We just got to our hotel in Brugge and have been traveling in a tour bus all day.  We first toured a facility that ferments manure and biomass to generate electricity.  They gave us coffee and cake when we got there, so that was a nice surprise.  We ate lunch at this really neat restaurant, although I had no idea what city it was in.  After lunch, we visited a manure processing facility in Antwerp.  It was one of the most disgusting, worst smelling places I had ever been.  Some people couldn't go on the tour because the smell of the ammonia was too strong.  I thought it was kind of interesting...  (Manure processing is actually a super important thing here in Belgium, and it's something America doesn't even have to worry about, but that's too much to get in to now..)

We took showers as soon as we got to Hotel Ibis in Brugges.  We all smelled like shit, literally.  We have the night to go out and explore Brugge.  The weather has been really hot and sunny, which I love.  Tomorrow we are going on a walking tour of Brugge and visiting a constructed wetland before heading back to Leuven.  We have our two midterms next week, so I am planning to study a lot this weekend.  We are just making a day trip to Ghent or Brussels, then spending the rest of the weekend working on stuff in Leuven.