Goodbyes and Speculoos Rice Krispy Treats

Last Friday was my last day in Belgium. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how I enjoyed it. I certainly don't think it was a "life changing opportunity," but at the same time, I have zero regrets deciding to accept this internship. Sure, there were certainly facets that were not as great (paying for bathrooms, work being a little slow), but there were also lots of good things (biking, awesome PI, waffles). So, I guess my issue with being asked how I enjoyed Belgium and if I would go back is that I don't like thinking of good/bad as being summed together to net an over all +/-/0 experience, but rather as separate groups that cannot be combined. Perhaps this is simply the glamour of traveling abroad being wiped away. Because for all the cultural differences, on a day to day basis, life really isn't that different where you are. Maybe if I were older, with more responsibilities, staying for a longer period of time, I would have noticed myself adjusting more. However, I feel that I probably played the role of observer more during my time than actual lets pretend I'm Belgian.

As I mentioned previously before deviating into culture and my uncertainty about everything, my last day of work was last Friday. So to say goodbye, I decided to bring some present to my lab/office. Some interns who had previously worked there who left a few weeks earlier than me brought in pastries from a bakery. However, biking to work with a box of pastries sounds like quite a recipe for heart broken croissants and rock studded muffins.
So I had to think of something else that fit my critera:

• Something that wasn't quite so stereotypically "Belgian" (aka chocolate). 
• Something that had a slight American connotation.
• Something that was easily transportable via a backpack.
• If homemade, something that wouldn't require lots of ingredients.

For a while, I resigned myself to just buying chocolate since all I could think was "AGH, if only you could bake cupcakes or cookies! That would be so American!" Luckily while taking a break at work to peruse the internet, I was inspired to make rice-krispy treats. And then, since only in Belgium, I decided to make them speculoos flavored.

Not having tupperware, I had to wrap them in saran wrap. It felt very much soccer-mom (futbol-mom) esque to be giving people individually wrap krispies. They were a surprising hit among people, although many of my co-workers were very very confused what they were initially. I guess snap, crackle, pop aren't so big in Europe as they are in the US.
"Protocol" (as a post-doc in my lab calls it) from Rice Krispies website here. Just replace peanut butter with speculoos.