Railways, pizzas, and trains :)

For those of you that don't already know, Europe is known for their railways. You can easily transport to cities all around Europe for a relatively cheap price. Saturday, a group of my friends and I went to Brussels for the day. We saw a market with handmade items, ate at a pizza place (I'm convinced it's the best in the world), shopped around a little, walked for hours, almost missed our train, and made a new friend on the ride home. 

After merging with another group of exchange students, we ended up at a pizza place called Pizzeria Pronto. The pizza was impeccable, to say the least, and I'm convinced it came straight from Italy. Anywhere you find exchange students and food, you will find a camera ready to take a picture of the food. 

Everybody knows that when you're taking public transportation you're supposed to check the time and place multiple times, but no matter how many times you check there's always the possibility of the time or place of departure changing in an instant. As we were standing on platform 1 waiting for our train back to Liege, we see a train on platform 3 pull up with the name of our destination. I said, "are we runnin'?" And we took off. We ran up the stairs, through the train station, down he stairs, and jumped through one of the open doors right before they closed. All 4 of us collapsed on the floor in laughter and sighed with relief. :) as we were sitting there, speaking in English, I noticed a woman that was listening into our conversation. Everybody looks and stares when they hear a different language from a group of foreigners, but this was different. She understood the majority of what we were saying. After awhile of watching her and making eye contact, I complemented her bracelets - and the conversation started. We spoke in Franglish, because our French still isn't amazing and she wanted to speak in English. Being able to make a friend with the person sitting next to you reminded me so muh of Texas and how you could sit down for dinner at a place and be strangers at first, and friends after. She asked us questions about Rotary and what brought us to Belgium, we asked her questions about herself, and a few other people joined the conversation at some points too. Throughout the day, we had met people with kind hearts and a willing mind, and it was so incredible to see the fruit that comes from trying. I'm so thankful for little opportunities to meet people here, and to know that I might be able to make a slight impact on people exactly like our new friend. If one person can brighten my day like that, what will I experience after a whole year? To say I'm excited would be an understatement. :) 

Our new friend :)