Monday night was an emotional rollercoaster that ended with me lying in bed, anxiously cracking my knuckles every five minutes until they were sore (but I still couldn’t/wouldn’t stop). I put in my headphones and began quietly listening to a playlist I usually fall asleep to, but nothing seemed to be lulling me to sleep that night. Not even Frank Sinatra’s angelic vocals chords could transport me into a dream where the whole world was made out of Belgian chocolates. Monday night was the night before my first day on the job as an intern at the European Union Parliament. By the time I woke up, I was extremely nauseous from my lack of sleep as well as apprehensive not knowing what to expect in the coming 24 hours. I woke up groggily at 6:30am, got dressed in my best work clothes, and headed down to breakfast. I was feeling too sick to eat, so I wrapped two chocolate croissants in napkins and stuffed them in my bag along with my lunch for that afternoon. We left for the train around 7:40am because we have to make it to the 8:06 train at the station, which is about a 25 minute walk from the Institute.
My first day was nothing like I expected. My boss, who is so nice, had literally nothing for me to do. I basically sat and stared at a wall for 7 hours, and had an hour to research the EU Parliament and look up facts on our committee (TRANS). However, my second day was unbelievable. This week is committee week, so it’s one of the slower weeks at the Parliament where the Members of Parliament (MEP’s) are in meetings all day, meaning less work for the assistants. Because I felt too useless sitting in the office, I decided to run around the Parliament buildings looking for interesting discussions or meetings going on that I could drop in on. The first committee meeting was from 9am-12:30, which was with the Industry, Research, and Energy committee, or ITRE. In the meeting, they discussed a new bill in attempt to reduce energy costs, use renewable energy, and how to be more energy efficient in general. My boss had to leave about an hour into the meeting, so I stayed and took notes for her that I later went to the EU Parliament library to type up (on a Romanian keyboard) and send to her. Needless to say because of the foreign keyboard, it took me twice as long to get the notes to her had it been in English.
As I was leaving the committee meeting, I ran into some of my fellow classmates in our group. They said they were trying to find free food, which is always available at the parliament, and then going to another meeting. I hastily asked which meeting they were attending in hopes that I could go too- mainly because I try and spend the least amount of time possible in the office due to lack of space and English language used. They said there was a discussion on the recent CIA torture report that had come out. There’s nothing I love more than the CIA/FBI/Homeland Security and Intelligence, so I ran up to my office and asked if I could attend the meeting. My boss is so sweet. She tells me that my main purpose here in to learn and that if there are any meetings I am interested in attending that I shouldn’t even ask her because she will just say yes. During the meeting, they had a few speakers sharing the gory details of the report, how communication is extremely vital to get to the core of national security, and one of the speakers highlighted the progress that has been made since the report has come to the worlds attention. Needless to say my second day at work was much, much more interesting than the first.
On Thursday, we had five hours split into two sections of European law classes, and in the middle we had our Art History class (which is probably my favorite of the five classes we take. We were studying baroque architecture that class, so we walked five minutes from the Institute to St. Pieters Cathedral and studied the characteristics of Baroque art in the actual church we had been discussing during the first part of class. Thursday night we went out to the square (per usual) even though we had to get up early the next morning to go to Paris– Well, we were supposed to make the 6am bus out of Brussels. But when we all woke up at 11am and realized we had missed it hours ago, our trip to Paris became a whole new debacle. The next post will be about our trip to Paris!
Plenary session in the European Union Parliament. This session was focused on counterterrorism within the EU member states.
Meeting in the EU Parliament focused on the digital divide between rural and urban areas of Europe
Part of the Berlin Wall right outside the Parliament building in Brussels
Megan, Rachel and I before going out to the square
lint rolling Rachel
Belgian Chocolates 