On Monday, we left London and made our way to Brussels. Since our  last post, we have done a lot of learning and a lot of exploring!

Following our last post about our arrival in London, we had a class  to recap our time at the English FA. The following day, we had another class in which we discussed both hooliganism. We also discussed the history of Judaism in football as it pertained to Tottenham Football Club. After a morning exploring on our own, many of us checked out Buckingham Palace. We were disappointed by the scaffolding covering Big Ben, but then we headed to our  first professional match of the trip.

We went to Wembley Stadium to watch Tottenham play Everton in a  premier league match. Tottenham won 4-0, and all, except maybe the  Everton fans, enjoyed the experience.

The following day was ours to explore all that London has to offer. Many of the guys on our trips continued their educational experience about football by touring the Chelsea and Arsenal stadiums. Other activities included Kensington Palace, and just walking around the city.

We reconvened Monday morning to make our way to Brussels. After our train ride, we had a group dinner at Le Bistro and then headed to bed.  The next day, we had class to continue our discussion about religion in football, focusing on Islam. We then went to an exhibition on Muslims in  Europe.

Yesterday, we got to tour the Belgian FA, where we also had the unique opportunity to watch the national women’s team train. When we got back to our hotel, we were free for the afternoon. Several people  decided to go out and browse the hundreds of chocolate stores that Brussels has graciously provided to the world.

Today, we started the day with a class in which we each presented an  incident of racism, sexism or religious inequality seen in football. One thing that stood out was that only two events were repeated, which speaks to the prevalence of these issues in a game that has the power to unite people from all over the world.We are signing off to head to the European House of History, and maybe eat a few waffles.