Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head...

The weather here has been absolutely brutal! The temperatures are certainly warmer then Rochester, but the cold wind and relentless rain chills you in a way that, after a half hour spent outside, you are freezing for the rest of the day. Today the wind was especially bad, and I thought for sure I was going to get blown away!

This has been an incredibly busy week for me. I began the week with a Monday morning class, and then started work on Tuesday. I am interning for a Member of the European Parliament and IT IS AMAZING. I went into the internship with many warnings: "Don't expect to meet your MEP or have much contact with her," "You probably won't get that much work at first," "You'll probably be in a small office where the staff is just you and an assistant," "Just so you know, Europeans are not as initially friendly, so be patient and don't expect to make friends right away"

So far each of those warning has proven false. I called on Monday to set up an interview, and my supervisor immediately asked me to come in the following day because they were incredibly busy. Tuesday morning I left myself plenty of time to get to the EU, which was lucky because I came out of a different metro exit then I was expecting to, and I spent about a significant amount of time wandering around before my very basic French ("Excuse-Moi, Parlez-vous anglais ?) was met with success, and I was given good directions to Parliament.

I still arrived on time, and met up with my supervisor. She's incredibly friendly, and has been really wonderful about answering all of my questions. She gave me a quick basic tour of the enormous complex, and introduced me to the rest of the staff, and then I was thrown straight into my work.

The work is amazing. I have the pleasure of monitoring the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, and the Committee on Fisheries (maybe it sounds lame, but policy surrounding fisheries is a fascinating mixture of agricultural policy, environmental policy, and labour policy, so it actually is really, really cool). The meetings are so cool! The EU has 23 official languages, and most of the time the meetings are translated for me through my headphones. The policy stuff is absolutely fascinating. I love it!

Work has also been a lot of fun. Contrary to what I had heard, the staff is actually fairly large for an MEP. On my first day I was introduced to Olivia, Tristan, and Ruth, the other office interns. They were kind enough to invite me to lunch with them, and have been really patient in explaining how things work around the EU. I am so glad that I get to work with such fine people.

I also met my MEP on my first day there. She is an amazing super-woman who is constantly running around to do everything that needs to be done, but she is also kind and caring, and spend a great deal of time looking after her constituents, and sticking up for their interests.

Overall, work has kept me very busy (whoever says that study abroad was a blow-off clearly didn't work in my office!) but working at the EU has been the highlight of my trip so far.

Today was also interesting. I had class bright and early this meeting (theory and practice of diplomatic negotiations) and it sounds very interesting. Then I went to my history class and my prof gave a lecture on the nature of war and conflict, and weaved in much of the International Security Theory that I had learned in Dolan's class last semester, so that was sweet.

After class, I ran over to the Parliament for a talk that Olivia had set up for the interns about the Ind/Dem political group. It was great and also a nice opportunity to meet other interns. Then Olivia, Tristan, and I headed over to an event at a local church to make sandwiches for the homeless. The sandwiches were already made by the time we got there, so we ducked into a metro station and Tristan and I picked up some delicious, warm waffles, while Olivia cringed at the amount of sugar that we were ingesting.

I feel the need to pause here, and discuss the belgian waffle in depth. I'm not sure that I've had anything in my life that is as delicious as that waffle was! The Belgians put such a fantastic amount of sugar into their waffles that the waffle irons that they use have syrup (from the melted sugar) running down the edges. They come out warm, and sweet, with a coat of sugar on them. It was incredible! I gushed about how delicious the waffle was, and Tristan reminded me that, in many waffle places, its common to drizzle chocolate over them, or to put powdered sugar or fruit on them. I can't imagine how a waffle could get anymore delicious, but I plan to test this out in the near future and let you know.

Pardon my digression. Anyway, we said goodbye to Tristan, and the Olivia and I went back to my house to kill time before, eventually meeting up with a group of parishioners from German-speaking church, to go to serve food to the homeless.

We headed to one of the metro stations, and started setting up and serving the food. I was shy about serving the food, since I am unable to really communicate with non-English speakers, but I went around picking up garbage, and was amazed at how much can be communicated non-verbally.

I also had a great time talking to all the other people that were volunteering. I met people from all over the world, and it was great to just have the opportunity to meet and talk with new people. I am continuously amazed at the way that Brussels seems to attact people from all over the world. I am sure the EU has some hand in that, but its been so amazing to meet people from all over, and most have been very friendly too!!!

I know this was a long post, and not about anything in particular, but the main point is that I had a great week and I really like it here!

Love,

Em