Why am I paying for condiments?

On Sunday after a day and a half being kept on the ship in port right in the middle of Antwerp we were finally allowed off the ship (not sure if I've explained these "ipad" days. it's cheaper to sit in port than sit in the ocean and we have a requirement of classroom hours and apparently it's a liability to let us on and off. The ship admin tried to get us off for the nights or something but the ISE board shot it down.

I started Belgium on a bit of a negative note because we were informed of our new field lab schedule for the ones that we're cancelled in Africa. I have one day two of Italy which sucks because our port is about an hour and a half from the ship and we have to be at the ship by midnight the night before so I'm essentially losing two out of four entire days of Rome. I know kids who have them three days in a row because of their classes so they basically don't get to see it at all. I know it was a tough position the admin was in but it really sucks to miss out on so much.

The first day of Belgium I had a field lab for a different class, my evolutionary theory class. We went to the Antwerp zoo and looked at the primates then we drove to a botanical garden in Brussels which was about an hour away. Overall, it wasn't particularly exciting. It wasn't bad and I got a lot but I definitely thought it'd be more enjoyable, we didn't get to spend much time at the zoo at all.

I ate dinner on the ship the first night since I was meeting my friends back on the ship to go out. That night we went to a few bars. As usual, the place we were at was mostly SAS kids, this wasn't too surprising though since there wasn't much nightlife to choose from.

The next day most of our friends had field labs or had already left Antwerp. Sydney and I went around the town for the day, there really isn't much to Antwerp so we started out with a nice breakfast of fries. Yes, you have to pay for all condiments, it was a dollar for a really poor amount of mayonnaise, eff you Belgium. After that we did some shopping. At night we went out to a nice dinner, I'm trying to splurge on a nice dinner in each city. After that I was so full but when in Belgium you have to eat waffles so of course I did. Although I easily could have thrown up because of the massive volume of food in my stomach I was so happy with my decision.
After dinner we had planned to go back to the ship and pack but we ran into a couple of our friends that we're going to hang at a bar so of course we tagged along. The plan was to maybe get a couple drinks then get back to pack for Amsterdam and Paris since we had a 7 am train in the morning. Instead, we decided to do an impromptu pub crawl.

Needless to say I packed very poorly for the next two places. Oh well, when in Belgium, right? No regrets over here