The story of why sandwiches not ought to contain salmon, mayonaisse, lettuce and salad dressing and be let to sit in one's backpack for 10 hours.

Oh, my stomach. LOL.

I suppose I was asking for it. However, in my defense, I didn't PLAN to leave them in there for so long. Also in my defense, when I tried the night before, it tasted good, if a little weird. (We are what we eat, I suppose.) However, being left in my backpack on a relatively warmish day leaves one with relatively warmish salmon. Not entirely pleasant...but not entirely unpleasant until one has a dessert composed entirely of several handfuls of candy to make up for the lack of sleep one has had for the day. Mmm, candy. I'm eating some more right now. =D I have santicmoniously decided that getting the taste out of my mouth/system is more important than whether or not I feel on the brink of naseous for the rest of the day.

Today was my trip to Bruge! What an AWESOME city! I'm SO GLAD I WENT. Especially when I was feeling like being stingy and not going would be a better option. I had so much fun. The whole day was a blast, and everyone I was with was really nice. I met some really cool people. On top of that, Bruge has SO much to see. They have an 82m tall brick tower. BRICK. Seriously, amazing, and also dizzyifying to look at. My eyes hurt when I did for too long. That and there is ivy that grows everywhere and all over stuff, that makes you feel like you really ARE in a really old place. I also saw lots of swans! And, CANADIAN GEESE! SO AWESOME! The best part about it has to be that I got to feed the ducks by the pond...they were so friendly! I fed them parts of my apple. By the time I had fed a particularly ambitious one about half of my apple core, the rest of the ducks showed up, and I eventually had enough to start my own baseball team. It's too bad/a good thing that I didn't feed them my sandwiches. Although they might have liked them, they might have caused spontaneous growths of a third eye in the fowl population, and I wouldn't want to be personally repsonsible for that. Well, not without being able to blame it on someone else: "It was Godfried! He KNEW the ducks liked warmish salmon! HE'S the evil mastermind behind this all, I swear! I'm only doing my master in philosophy, he's doing his in engineering! It's all an eloborate framing! I'm being framed!" I'm sure I could get off on a plea for insanity if I started discussing possibilities for my master's thesis.

What's really cool, is I met someone from the U.S. who's doing HIS MA in Philosophy. What's quite funny, is that his name is Rocky, short for Rockwell, and he has the most American-esque broadcaster voice you've ever heard. What's REALLY funny, is that he's from Fordham university, where I applied for my master's. What's absolutely HILARIOUS, is that he's a very fun person to know, and he seems to have a head on his shoulders which does not bobble when he talks about philosophy, and he can elaborate on concepts to make them intelligible. Amazing. I also razzed him a bit, because he's from the U.S., and he is VERY unfamiliar with the Analytic tradition in philosophy, even more so than I, so he was kind enough to let me have a laugh about that. He's a very cool guy. We trashed analytical philosophy for a while. It was fun. It was absolutely AMAZING to talk shop in terms of philosophy. I loved it. It was like a breath of what home smells like after a long journey away. I loved being with Air Cadets for the summer, but discussing metaphysics, meaning, and ethics in political sphere was like, wow. All I could think was, "I LOVE TALKING NERDY. GIMMIE MORE." I love it, I love it, I love it I do. It's just so, ahh, wow. Philosophy rules. I love it.

Bruge had some really cool stuff. Sadly, I never had a chance to grab any tourist-y stuff. So, no postcards from this trip. However, I certainly met a lot more friends, and went for the experience of meeting people, and I had a really great time with meeting people. That made me happy. Met some insta-friends, that's for sure. Especially German people. They seem to be very friendly and easy to get to know. I can see why the German are one of the bigger minorities that gets on with the Dutch; they both seem to be very friendly people, and both seem to have a history in their countries of being under oppression of other people, and of having an uncertain national picture. Although, of course, Germany has had a strong picture of its nation in the past, but I would say, maybe on a whim, that it has had many upheavals, and maybe this has caused some national fragmentation? I'm not sure. A guess, and a bad one, I'm betting.

One tidbit that is quite funny, is that "The Lake of Love" is a misnomer in Dutch that an old Count or someone used, and the common word actually stands for 'water devil.' So, if you ever visit Bruge, remember to visit the lovely "Lake fo the Water Devil." A little less romantic title, but an absolutely beautiful waterway that is present in Bruge. Ah, to have such history.

It seems Canadians fail to have such a history...maybe they have not been around long enough. And, is it just me, or is it that any piece of really good European art began with its beginnings in the Medieval Era? This one goes out to Prof. Still. The Middle Ages rule.

Well, I should probably get on to doing other things...like eventually sleeping. I have my international philosophy student meeting tomorrow. =D I'm pretty excited for that. I hope I will get to meet everyone in my program. Maybe we'll have a party? Yeah, that'd be cool.