Wednesday, November 9, 2011

A Quick Trip to Lille!


But I thought you are in Brussels!? Well, yes technically I'm in Brussels until Friday, but I took a trip back to France on Tuesday to visit a friend from high school.

I have known Kelly since my freshman year of high school and we were friends until graduation. She goes to Juniata in central Pennsylvania and is practically fluent in french. This semester she is abroad in northern France in the city of Lille, which is about 35 minutes by high-speed train from Brussels. Once we got to college, we both got involved with organizations at school and went our separate ways. In September Kelly posted on my Facebook wall saying she was in France! I had no idea there were people from my high school studying abroad this semester so to hear that was so great! I'm actually very surprised there are so few of us abroad - to my knowledge it's just me, Kelly, and a boy from Duke who's in Paris named Ade. But anyway, she posted I should come visit her, and taking a day trip on this break worked perfectly!


We had lunch and caught up on everything we have done since high school, and we discussed internships, the next daunting task in our college careers. I'm crossing my fingers she gets one in DC so we can see each other again soon! After lunch we walked around the city to see as much as we could before my train back to Brussels. We went to the cathedral and saw the city center, as well as the zoo! Even in little Lille (which is not all that little) they have two rhinos at the zoo. They also had red pandas in  a tree without a cage... apparently red pandas don't like to escape in France!


After that I had to go back to the train station and go back to Brussels - it was definitely a short visit! But hopefully we will see each other again this summer! Lille was very friendly and quaint, a good place to study abroad. But you have to know french, very few people speak english in northern France. Kelly is pretty much fluent so she has no problem!


Today I was in Brussels with Christina, my friend that I'm staying with here, and explored the city. As for what I'm blogging about tomorrow: belgian waffles are SO good.

- Devon

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