I have now come upon the second meeting of my study abroad class in Brussels which occurred on Thursday. That day, I was able to get to know my other classmates and start forming relationships with the students whom I will be spending ten fun filled days with in Belgium.
The class started off very well with Dr. Morris handing out Belgian chocolate to all of the students in class followed by a group oriented 20 question quiz regarding Brussels/Belgian trivia. To entice us a little more, she offered unique prizes to the first few groups who completed their quizzes with 100% accuracy. Lucky for me and my wonderful group of three others (their names escape me at the moment, except Jeff…Jeff was in my group) we finished before a couple of other groups and I managed to get my hands on a genuine Costa Rican bracelet straight from…well Costa Rica.
Following our absurdly competitive group quiz, we watched a video from the Travel Channel which displayed the sites and food of Brussels. This video was actually extremely eye opening and just enhanced my itchiness and enthusiasm to hop over the pond and experience it all for myself…all in good time of course. To round out the class, Dr. Morris gave us a nice informative lecture on the history of Brussels itself and we headed home.
Going in, I knew that this class wasn’t going to be a normal collegiate class and Thursday night’s class proved that thought better than I could’ve possibly imagined. You see, this all started when we watched that video. Our host was exclaiming about all those famous monuments that make cities special. Paris has the Eiffel Tower, London has Big Ben, NYC has the Statue of Liberty and then she showed us Brussels’ famous monument: Mannekin Pis (Pronounced “Mannequin Piss”).
There’s no need to check your eyes because what you are seeing is correct. That is a two foot tall little boy, peeing from the top of a monument to a pool of water about four feet below him. One of the legends about him is that there was once a fire in the city and a little boy came up to the fire and started peeing on it in order to extinguish it. Another theory is that in the 12th century, the son of a duke was caught peeing on a tree in the middle of a battle and was commemorated in a bronze statue. Whichever theory is true, there’s no doubt arguing the hilariousness and famousness of this statue. It’s so famous that apparently people come from around the world to see this little guy take a leak. Above, he is shown in his Santa outfit but I am told that he has over 800 different outfits and that they change them on a regular basis. Dr. Morris informed us that there is a souvenir shop next to the monument where you can buy exact replicas to playing cards to a corkscrew replica where the corkscrew is where this little guy’s….umm…cough…“little guy” is. Suffice to say, the conversation regarding this statue was the highlight of the night and everybody was just cracking up so hard. While this class is SO much fun, I find it difficult that any other class meeting could ever top our discussion of Mannekin Pis.
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