there have only ever been two places i have ever heard the macgyver theme song. on the tv. and in my car. i find it a good song to listen to as i wait in peak-hour traffic driving to and from university. and so there i was. just sitting in a bar. not a very uncommon thing to do over this way. and the macgyver theme music came on. i now feel a loyalty and a connection with libertad and it might just be becoming one of my favourite places to be in...

okay, all of you - look to the right of the screen. notice anything new???

this message is dedicated to two exceptionally good friends - frank and paal (sorry but i don't know how to put the little ° above the a?).

today, after class, with no effort at all, i convinced frank and paal to get on a bus with me and mission out to the 'rent a computer' shop. once there, i typically rented a computer. and none of this little laptop business - this is a real computer, a computer complete with a big monitor and a big hard drive, and all the other bits and pieces that a computer comes with.

of course i had hoped, and fully anticipated, despite the fact that the bus didn't drop us off anywhere near the shop on the way there, that the bus taking us home, would appear as we walked out with my purchase. unfortunately this was not the case. try to picture the following. short me holding one end of the box with the hard drive, tall frank holding one end of the box with the monitor, and medium-sized paal in the middle, breaking the height difference, and holding the bulk of the load. just like the three bears.

i love you boys. thanks very much for helping me out!!

i have had an ingenious plan. probably it was an ingenious plan that i actually thought up months ago but somehow forgot about. better yet, i'm sure it was someone else's ingenious plan that i have attached my name to. anyway, the thing is, i've had enough of the computer lab saga and am renting myself a computer. this is the new plan.

and once i have it, i can, instead of writing entire novels about my last couple of weeks, write random anecdotes that don't necessarily have to say anything of extreme consequence.

i haven't forgotten the photos. mike is back from greece today so i just need to get on his computer...

okay so that last entry, about the photos... i obviously slightly exaggerated the timing of when they would appear on the web. i had every intention of having them up and running before leaving for rome. but then, a combination of a variety of events slightly altered my initially well meaning plans. apologies. and now, the guy who has all the photos on his computer has headed to greece for a week or so, so you will all just have to bear with me for a little bit longer.

okay so last week i went to italy. because i can. because i am no longer in the middle of the pacific and it no longer takes 37 hours to get to europe. because there is no such thing as jetlag when you take a plane ride to another country. because the airfares are so cheap that to not go would be ridiculous. yes, living in europe has some very good incentives.

and i had a wonderful time. for a start, the weather behaved in the appropriate manner and the sky stayed bright blue and the sun stayed in the sky (until it was night time of course) and the temperatures allowed me to wander the streets in a singlet and feel the need to squint - not just because of the marble ruins surrounding me, but because of the bright sunlight beaming down on me, as it should have done. i was able to escape the cooler climatic forces dominating beligum, and have a mini summer retreat, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

the trip itself began when i stepped on the train to head towards the airport. due to my brilliant planning, i wanted to be in rome bright and early on monday morning, so opted for the 6:50am flight out of belgium. the hiccup in this plan was that the earliest train to get me to the airport would arrive too late, so i had to take the last train the night before, and spend the night trying to get sleep on the uncomfortable chairs that airports generally have to offer when you need to spend the night. i should have learnt my lesson after my 12 hour stopover in bangkok last year. alas, i thought this airport might hold more luxurious seating arrangements and that bangkok was just a once off mistake. it seems however, that the airports i decide to spend the night in have one thing in common. seats that were not made for sleeping on, much less sitting on. please remind me, next time i have a valiant plan of heading overseas, not to organise my flights so that i sleep in an airport.

arriving in rome was a crazy experience because the central station seems very hostile towards tourists - odd, seeing as rome is a large tourist destination, and the central station is exactly that - central - and they did not have anything helpful to tell me, except that the best way to get to the vatican was by taxi. ha. i was on a strict budget, that allowed for no taxi rides, and i couldn't figure out why the metro would not head in the direction of the vatican. so i walk down into the metro anyway, refusing to believe the taxi lady, to find myself in the middle of what seems to be some huge riot, with police running everywhere, and exits being closed off with huge caged gates, and red tape making the place look like a crime scene. i retreat towards the entrance i had walked down, to find that caged off and have to leave by another route, just in time as the police are locking the gates there also. later i discover that the metro went on strike. okay, so there was no mass murder, there was no criminal on the loose, and no one has fallen onto the tracks and been run over. just a strike. had the lady in the central station told me this, all would have become very clear.

and that marks the start of my 15km a day walking mission. of course the metro were only on strike for a few hours, but i was no longer interested in seeing the tunnels beneath the ground, and wanted to see rome itself. plus the sun was shining and it seemed pointless to go from one place to another by an underground system packed with commuters and tourists. and i like reading maps and getting lost and refinding my way through the streets.

i met my friend russ outside the vatican and we spent two days exploring the city of rome. what an amazingly beautiful city. i took far too many photos and will spend a fortune getting them developed but it will all be worth it. from the pantheon to the circus maximus, the tiber river and the capitaline hill. all the places i had read about and thought about for the 4 years that i did roman history in new zealand. and finally i was there, and able to imagine claudius up on the rostra in the roman forum, and julius caesar issuing statues to be put up in his honour. fantastic.

naples was quite a different experience. the city was chaos. it seemed like it was in the midst of being reconstructed or torn down. it was dirty and dusty, huge holes opened up in the ground on every street, construction work was paramount. the streets were too narrow for the traffic, and no rules of the road code were obeyed. i thought that buenos aires in argentina was bad in terms of traffic. i was wrong. i ened up adopting the 'follow a local' whenever i crossed the road. there were dodgy stalls everywhere, that immediately closed whenever a police car approached. there seemed to be a lot of police, and yet you never got a feeling of being safe in naples. not a place to be wandering about late at night.

however i didn't go to naples for naples. i went so that i could go to the museum and see all the mosaics found in pompeii, and i went to see pompeii. wow, now that is one amazing place. a whole city. i still can't explain or comprehend how big it was. usually you go to places, like rome, or athens, and you see ruins of a temple, or of the marketplace. but here, streets and streets and streets - with houses, and schools and shops. with temples and theatres. it was a real city. and everything was so well preserved. i could eat my banana inside someone's house. i could sit on the edge of the road and know people had walked there. it was a very surreal feeling. i felt like i had been shrunk down and was walking through a child's toy city, that had been abandoned because it was lunchtime and they had left in a hurry. nothing was out of place. to see people, frozen in time and space - see them covered in plaster - their last movements before they died - right infront of me. to see dogs, curled up, their heads down towards the ground. you could see the anguish on their faces. you could almost feel everything taking place. and then to turn and see mount vesuvius, the only active vlocano in europe, looming behind - a menacing reminder that all of this could happen again. it wasn't just a once off occurence in 79 AD, but it sits there, a ticking bomb, long overdue to erupt again.

after two nights in naples, i returned to rome and finished off all the things i had wanted to do, including getting a tour through the largest catacomb in rome, with over 20km of tunnels and over 500,000 christian graves. i stood in the colosseum and imagined the gladiator fights and the lions. i walked up the palatine hill where the she-wolf was meant to have suckled romulus and remus before rome was founded. i had the luxury i walking numerous times through the roman forum and being able to recapture life in the 1st century AD. everywhere i walked i could remember stories dr stevenson had told me in class. and it was a wonderful experience.

travelling alone has advantages and disadvantages. i met a lot of people, including about 5 kiwis which was exciting because i am yet to meet a kiwi in belgium, though i have heard rumors that one does exist somewhere... i was shocked at how clearly i could distinguish the accent. i went out with some boys from liverpool, got to share breakfast with australians, and heard a variety of stories about stolen wallets and passports and people being ripped off in shops. all of which i managed to escape. i think though, that next time i make a journey, i'll make it with friends. for one, i'll then be able to be in some of the photos i take. but mainly, i'll be able to share memories and experiences with people who live near me, as opposed to people i met in hostels who will all be in different parts of the world now.

this has been a long entry. and there is so much more i could say. but i will leave it there for now. hope you are all well.

photos are coming very soon. very soon. i guarantee it. they are on the computer, they are all ready to go, i just need to put them in order and the right way up and put some headings under them so that you know what is going on... then they will be ready for viewing. keep an eye to the right of the screen and very soon, a little new orange link will appear with words that speak about photos... then you can click on that link and finally visit me in belgium!!

i have been busy. busy and yet not busy. if there is such a thing? i don't know. all the same, too busy to come on here and write about my life. and despite still being busy, or at least believing that i am busy, it is high time i enlightened you all, once again, about things going on, over on this side of the world.

my last entry may become redundant soon. i'm not sure. i have been in a bit of a panic for this last week because everywhere i look, all i find is french and german literature. there is nothing in english. nothing. that almost deserved capitals letters. which is a big deal for someone who never uses capital letters. and this is a big concern for someone who knows no german whatsoever and who has very basic conversational french skills (which have somewhat improved since arriving here which is a good thing). but definitely not french 'academic article' skills. not good. i think this is because the topic i have chosen is very much history-based. so i have written to my supervisor and hopefully will meet with him tomorrow to discuss my options. it is just concerning that, if in the first week of very basic research, i have found nothing in english; then 2 months down the track i could well be starting to stress. writing a thesis is one thing, but writing a thesis using only french and german literature is quite a different story!! i am unsure where this is going to lead - but quite possibly i will lean more toward a geographical approach, as, thankfully, geography seems to have a lot more english!! no doubt i'll let you all know at a later date.

food. food is good. when i think of food at the moment, i think of two things. i think of my fridge, and i think of saturday night.

my fridge. one of the big things i miss from home is the fact that i could walk into the kitchen and open the fridge door and be greeted by all sorts of food. food that i could consume and not think about where it came from or how it would be replenished. as far as i was concerned, i had the luxury of eating anything i liked, and to any quantity that i desired at the point of time that i opened my fridge door and looked inside. unfortunately i do not have that luxury anymore. i share a fridge with 5 other people, so for a start, when i open the door, i am limited to only looking at my own little section of the fridge for things to eat. and because i am on a very tight student budget, the food in my little section of the fridge has no resemblance to the food i would have found at home. gone are the days of fizzy drinks and fruit juice and cheddar cheese.

saturday night. one of the girls from my course, eleni, is from athens and she cooked for 4 of us on saturday night. real greek food. real greek food. oh wait, did i just repeat myself? some of you may not be aware my relationship with greek food. some of you may not realise how much i love greek food. some of you may not understand my feelings toward greek food. but i do. and on saturday i was surrounded by greeks salads and pita bread and tzatiki and kebabs... mmmm. a lot of garlic, a lot of olive oil, a lot of generally delicious food. i am still recovering from the experience. i had forgotten how good tzatiki is. i had forgotten forgotten how good greek food is...

on other news, it rained in leuven the other day. now really, this should not be an unsual situation, because leuven, and belgium, are renowned for having rain for half of the year. however, it seems europe has been confused this year, with exceptionally hot summers, snow in october and no rain... i, of course, have not been complaining, because the sunshine is great and the snow, of course, was quite the event for me. but i think it might start to rain more now. it's different rain from auckland rain. lighter i think. and it comes down vertically because it doesn't seem to get very windy here. so it is actually possible to stay dry, even when it rains. good eh? i think so. so the rain is not as bad as people may have tried to lead me to believe. then again, i have'nt really experienced much of it; so my mind may change in a few months...

so i hear we are doing well in the rugby. good. i have not been able to watch the games as i often have a class when they have been played. however i will endeavour to be watching the next few matches, which are the ones that really start to count from now on. and i will attempt to get together a crowd who will support new zealand alongside me. might be difficult in a place where i am yet to find another kiwi - though i'm sure if there is one or two lurking around, i'll find them at the match!!

take care everyone.