Internship and Lille

As I crack open a delicious almond cookie and watch the rain fall outside my window from the comfort of my bed in this quiet, beautiful house, I reflect on the fact that it is so nice to relax . After a long day of classes and walking around, I've changed into my pajamas and I'm calling it a day. I finally have the time to realize, its been 10 days since I've posted! A lot of things have happened. Last week we had interviews all day tuesday and wednesday, which was exhausting. I found out last thursday that I got two offers for internships, one researching African Security with the Royal Military Academy and one with Wilfred Aspinal- my top choice!

side allegory: the funniest thing happened during my interview at the Royal Military Academy. The whole time I was feeling very nervous and uptight because, the RMA is kinda an uptight military place! The serious guy in uniform who was obviously of some high rank and influence said about half way through my individual interview ".. and I see here on your resume, the most important part... (long pause).. that you area hip hop dancer!" That was hilarious and definitely broke the ice.

It's kinda hard for me to explain my internship with Wilfred, but basically, he's a cute, old, British man who does consulting for the EU on environmental and energy topics because he also works with private construction companies and such that try to build more environmentally friendly buildings and such! Oh, and my friend Alissa and I will be working together! I think he chose us because we are both very outgoing, friendly girls and he said he needed people who could network. I'm interested to find out what we will be doing specifically, besides visiting hearings and conferences at parliament and such on relevant topics (which will be awesome!!) It's funny that Alissa and I will be working together because we had 4/5 of our interviews together! She's a great girl from Seattle who knows a whole song about the EU and also loves to sing and dance like me- needless to say, we get a long very well :)

This weekend we visited Lille, France. Today, I am limping because of the large and painful blister I have on the ball of my foot, in between my foot and my toes. This is gross, but I can't pop it because it's really deep.. ugh. I got this blister from all the walking and dancing I did in Lille in the same sneakers. Hopefully it will go away soon, or else I'm sure I will resort to stabbing it! Lille was fun, Ben and I made friends with the bar tender and his parents at a bar one night and we got un Beurre gratuit (a free beer) which was fun. The difficult part of the trip was doing things with 11 people. It was hard making decisions with such a big group, but it was fun to visit france -we saw so many people walking around with bagets the next morning! I also had a chocolate Crepe which was very good! I'm looking forward to visiting bigger cities though.

Today I explored "Carrefour," the belgian equivalent of Target, with Alissa. We were dismayed that they don't offer the kind of pocketed folders we were looking for. Instead they only had these kind of folders that are kind of like boxes.. its difficult to say, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for!

From the sound of it, people are returning in my house. I'm sorry this post was so random, its difficult to write after 10 days. Anyways, tomorrow I have my first day of my internship! So I will report back about how it goes!