5 Things I Love About Beligum and 5 Things I Hate

In no particular order.....

Love:

1. Radiators, or more specifically the way they make a room feel warm and cozy without being smelly, messy, dangerous, sucking all the moisture out of the room or requiring any attention other than to occassionally adjust the knob

2. Italian coffees (with Amaretto), available pretty much anywhere, perfectly acceptable after any meal and almost always obscenely strong

3. Roundabouts, or 'rondpunts', no more sitting at lights and less U-turns!

4. n-ch-n-ch-n-ch-n-ch....it is a 24x7 party here on the radio and there are a million stations ranging from pop to electronic to terrible French music. They will play and/or re-mix anything. I have heard Welcome to the Jungle back to back with Lionel Richie and then straight into Katy Perry or the latest Kings of Leon. And starting on Friday night they take it up a few notches to full-blown rave all the way through Sunday morning when they count down the top 50 of the week. And besides the radio, there are at least 8 non-stop music video channels. Which leads me to ask: Are they Belgians, or are they dancers? (If you were listening to Belgian radio on a daily basis you would totally get that reference.)

5. Bottle refunds, specifically beer bottles. You can buy a case (24) of either Jupiler or Stella Artois for around 9 Euros and when you bring the bottles back they give you 4.50 Euros back! Granted they are 25cl bottles (8.4 oz) but you can also get them in 33cl (11.15 oz) for a couple Euros more.

Hate:

1. City Hall, or at least the people who work there and specifically the girl I talked to yesterday. She was a snotty bitch and I walked out knowing little more than I did when I came in and having no idea what I am waiting for or for how long, just that I have to wait.

2. Cheese Croquettes, or 'kaaskroten'. Or any other kind of kroketen for that matter. This sounds like something that I would put on the other list, but somehow they have managed to make the joy of deep-fried snacks into a mushy, flavorless mess.

3. Parking lots, all of which have clearly been designed for mini-coopers and the like. I am forever making 3 point turns to get in and out and am always squeezing through the door.

4. The Metric System. I don't care if the entire world uses it, I am over it. Don't ask me how long, how fast or how heavy something is because I am tired of doing so much math in my head.

5. Emmental (Swiss cheese). Apparently this is the only choice for 'melting cheese' in the entirety of Belgium (and maybe France). Yes, there are tons of great soft cheeses, fresh mozarella, gouda and on and on and I'm certainly not complaining about those, but they know nothing of Cheddar, or any other cheese that would go on nachos or into macaroni. It's Emmental, or nothing. Have you ever had beef tacos with Swiss cheese? I don't recommend it. It's depressing.

We are going to London in the morning for the weekend with some friends. I'm excited except for the part where we are underwater on the train for an hour. Being someone who holds their breath for the two minutes that the L train goes under the river to Brooklyn, I am just trying not to think about it. Kookai will be with us so I'm hoping she might keep me occupied.

Sint Niklaas and Zwarte Piet

I know.

I have alot of catching up to do.

I think of things I want to put on the blog all the time but somehow posting on the blog is the one thing that never gets crossed off of my to-do list.

I'll start where I left off:

December 6th is Sint Niklaas Day and some of Andy's friends arranged a gathering in the pub across the street for their kids, and friends' kids. Andy agreed to play Zwarte Piet (one of them, there are usually six to eight, but there were only two travelling with Sint Niklaas to Kortrijk this year).

Once I got over the initial shock of people (my boyfriend) actually wearing blackface in public, it was pretty fun. (OK, I didn't really get over it but everyone seemed baffled and/or bored by my friendly but strenuous explanations of why it was not OK to wear blackface, so I finally just shutup and went along.)

There were 15 or 20 kids and they had basically the same reaction that kids do to any costumed person - some were thrilled, some were terrified. Lots of candy was handed out and lots of photos were taken with SinterKlaas (which is Sint Niklaas' other name - the man that comes at Christmas here looks exactly like our Santa Claus but he is called the Kerstman - translated = Christmas Man - and he doesn't bring anything for the kids).

The transformation:

Don't forget the red lipstick!

And the aftermath. After lots of scrubbing. Nice eyeliner:

Oh Yeah...

I found sweet potatoes in the Colruyt the other day!!! Andy has never had them - can you believe that?! So we had roasted sweet potatoes with garlic tonight (they got a thumbs up). Next on the list: black beans. They are not new for Andy - he discovered them in Guatemala - but they are seriously hard to find. I think I'm gonna have to check with the owner of the Mexican restaurant.

And I'm gonna attempt to make a pumpkin pie for Christmas dinner. They make lots of pumpkin soup and fresh pumpkin is easy to find, but the idea of making it sweet and/or into a pie is totally foreign.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about Sint Niklaas and Zwarte Piet. Here's a preview:

I Have a Job!!

I signed a contract today - I am officially an IT Consultant! The company is called Unipartners. I'll be meeting with them in the next couple of weeks to choose a project so I don't have any idea about location/duration yet, but it will be some form of Java programming project.

Also, I was finally able to submit my visa application a few days before we left on vacation. We won't have an answer until the end of April, but in the meantime they will give me a registration number that allows me to stay here legally until then and also to get a work permit. Right now I'm waiting for the police to come by and verify that I actually live at this address (this will be their second visit). Once they've filed their document with the City Hall then I will get my number. Thanks again to those of you who ran around getting documents for me - you made this step forward possible!

La Republica Dominicana

We're back!

We had a nice time but 8 days at a resort was a little too much for us. It's kind of like being on a cruise ship, but bigger and with a beach. It's all you can eat and/or drink (alcohol included) all day long, and nothing to do but the beach or the pool. Just the thought of having to eat the breakfast buffet again makes me a little queasy.

Luckily we were able to leave a few times for day trips.

Once I have Andy's photos from his camera I'll make a slideshow. Here are a few that I like:

Self-Cleaning Toilet

I still can't post videos here so I'm gonna have to use YouTube. As promised, here is the self-cleaning toilet. Apparently these are all over Germany (search 'self-cleaning toilet' on YouTube) but this is the only one I've seen here.

We are off to the Dominican Republic early in the morning for some much needed (by me) sunshine and warmth. It's just a coincidence that we are going on Thanksgiving week. I've had to explain Thanksgiving a few times over the last week. And pumpkin pie. They make lots of pumpkin soup, but the idea of pumpkin being sweet is totally foreign to them. I think I might attempt a pumpkin pie for Christmas dinner.

Oh, and I finally tried horsemeat the other night. One of the cafes across the street makes all of their burgers from horsemeat. I'm not brave enough to order one but I had a bite of Andy's. It tasted good but....yeah.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We'll be back on the 4th.

XOXOXO

Soup in the Snow

Casse-Croute (Bjorn and Ellen's soup/sandwich shop) had another outdoor event today. There is a business park under development (still just a muddy construction site) that is going to be totally wind-powered and they were hosting an Open Werf today to educate the public. The project is called Evolis.

We did some shopping in the morning and then stopped by to have lunch and help out a bit. It was ridiculously cold!!! And after we'd been there about a half-hour yesterday's wintry mix turned into a full-blown snow storm. But they had some nice fire things and if you stood right next to one and drank hot soup at the same time it was almost bearable.

Afterwards we went home and thawed out with some hot chocolate and a movie. It was still snowing like crazy and it finally got cold enough for the snow to stick. So when the movie was over we looked out and saw this:

So we decided to bundle up and go for a walk in the park. Our 'front door' is a garage door:

Looking back at the house from the front of the church, you can just see the living room windows:

The Day of the Yummy

Today was the Dag van de Smaak which loosely translates as the Day of the Yummy. There were food booths in the Grote Markt and a plan to break a record for the longest sandwich in the world - 1302 meters (1302 is an important number here because Kortrijk won it's independence from France in 1302, and the pub sponsoring the sandwich is named 1302).

Unfortunately the weather is not yummy. Starting last night it has been alternately sleeting, slushing, snowing and/or hailing with pretty strong wind. It's not quite cold enough for anything to stick. Only a little on the rooftops and the cars. You can see on the bottom right that it was 1C when I left this morning:



The tables for the sandwich have appeared but the sandwich (for obvious reasons) has not:

Andy's brother and sister-in-law have a soup/sandwich shop next to the Grote Markt where all the booths were set up, so they had a booth. I helped a little with the setup and then hung out at the booth for a couple of hours. They had to take down some of the tents because of the wind and it was raining, snowing or hailing mixed in with a little bit of sunshine here and there. But we managed to have a nice time. We ate some hot soup with gesmelten kaas and bread and wine, and actually had a few customers. And then I came home because I couldn't feel my toes anymore. You can see the sleet all over the table:

The Belgian Elvis:

Also, I have a video of a self-cleaning toilet that I encountered earlier in the day. I'm going to try to post it but I have had lots of problems posting videos in the past...

This, That and the Other

Hi everybody!

I've decided to try to use this blog as more of a blog rather than just a photo stream. And to post about more mundane things rather than waiting for an event or news to write about. I've never kept a journal or a diary and I've always had a pretty strong aversion to putting personal things in writing. I tried a few times years ago but going back even a day or two later and reading what I wrote always made me cringe. So I have practiced avoidance for the last 20 years. But I'm finding it hard to keep up with everyone individually in email. And I'm feeling like a broken record saying the same things over and over in different emails. And some people are definitely getting left out because I run out of time. So here goes....

I finally found some good peanut butter! The supermarkets always have a whole section of chocolate spreads, Nutella (chocolate, white chocolate, chocolate and white chocolate swirl, bla bla bla), Speculoos spread (Speculoos is a kind of cookie), hazelnut butter, almond butter, etc., etc. But peanut butter is virtually non-existent. Mostly, if you do find it it's Jif. Yuck. But after lots of looking I found some at our neighborhood supermarket. Down at the bottom. In the corner. And they actually have two brands, one of which is just peanuts and salt! The consistency is still a little creamy for me but I'll take it!!

I am on day 9 of Ibuprofen and rest for my foot pain. I am supposed to be taking 600mg, 4 times a day. I don't know how that compares to a normal dosage I have a feeling it's a little extreme. But don't worry about my liver, I am terrible at remembering to take pills so most days I have only remembered to take it twice. I have only taken 4 in one day maybe two or three times. And as for rest....well. I've tried. We never borrowed the crutches from Andy's Dad. It just seems unnecessary. I have made do with walking on the heel and inside of my foot so that there's no pressure on the painful part (it feels like it's in the bone connected to my fourth toe). I don't have any pain during the day anymore (sometimes I forget and put weight on my whole foot) but I do notice it still when I first get up in the morning or of I get up in the middle of the night. That is a big improvement though. The doctor said that if it wasn't cleared up after 10 days they would do a bone scan (the x-ray of my foot didn't show anything but he said there could be a hairline fracture that is too small to see). I am thinking that is not necessary. I'd rather give it a couple more weeks.

After some shopping over the last week or two, we ordered a dining table and chairs last night. We had some ideas about chairs: the Phillippe Starck Mademoiselle chair or the Maarten van Severen 03 but were having trouble finding a table. And then we discovered Pastoe and we fell in love with the Trave table (ordered in matte black with an oak top) and the Box chair (ordered in matte black with smooth black leather). To see them on the website, choose english -> collection -> tables (or chairs) -> Trave (or Box). There is an images link in the bottom right corner with more photos so you can get a better idea of what the ones we ordered will look like. We couldn't find an example of the chair anywhere to see it in person but one of the design shops here has an example on the way. (We had to go ahead and order them because there was a sale that ended yesterday.) We did get to see the table. Here it is with the oak top but with a silver frame (and the very popular Ghost chair):



And here are some baby Ghosts...they are so cute and so very scratchable within minutes of letting a three-year-old anywhere near them:



There are two jobs that I am hoping to get an offer for this week. One of them is with ING in Brussels. It is an application support/development position. I've had two interviews with them and both have gone well. They've said that they will be making a deicision soon but I don't know how long it might take. The other is with a consulting firm based in Antwerp. I've had two interviews with them as well and they've said they would make a decision this Monday and let me know either Tuesday morning or tomorrow. I didn't hear anything yesterday so I'm still waiting on that one, too. If neither of those work out, it is back to the drawing board for now. But I am not panicking just yet.

We are getting ready to go to the Dominican Republic for a week on the 27th. We're looking forward to some sunshine and sea. It's a trip that Andy earned through the company where he buys his paints. So we'll be traveling with other clients of that company. Most of the time we'll be on our own but at least one of the days they have a surprise excursion planned for everyone and there is a beach party on the last night.

We've ordered the curtains and blinds for the bedroom but it's going to take a while before they are ready. And the bedside lights haven't arrived. So we are at a standstill on that project for the moment. There is one more coat to go on the special wall but that will probably happen over the weekend. And then we can hang the door again.

OK, that's a good start. I've got some ironing to do now. :)

Het Schilderen - The 'Ice' Wall

Over the last few days Andy put layers two and three on the 'special' wall. The first three layers were paint, the first one white and the next two in color. I think all of them had a little sand in them. Here is layer two (the first one in color):

And we picked out the curtin fabric. It's going to be floor to ceiling and wall to wall with some sort of blind underneath that we haven't totally decided on yet because the same blind will need to be used throughout the house:

The last two layers are applied like plaster. It's thick and gritty and shiny. Andy is doing the first layer now and will do the second one tomorrow and then that's it:

Het Schilderen - More Finishing Touches

Early afternoon yesterday the bed went back in and the radiator went back up.



After that we took a break and went to a small holiday open house at a couple of shops that specialize in flat screen TVs. Andy eventually wants a bigger one for the bedroom. We had a little champagne and cheese, got some info and saw some very nice home theater systems. And then went to a cafe in the Grote Markt and had a coffee and a pannekoek (pancake).

When we got home we hung a painting in the new room (a gift from one of Andy's clients that is normally in the living room but we decided that we like it better in here now):

And he put the final coat on the baseboards and the windowsill:

So that's where we are now. We put the paper back over the windows (for sleeping - there are bright lights in the parking lot) and will be looking at fabric samples for curtains tonight or tomorrow night. The bedside lamps are on order and should be in by the end of the week. The remaining 4 layers on the special wall will get done over the next weeks as time permits and then the TV will go back up. At some point we'll also be buying new pillows and linens. And Andy has found a carpenter who will be designing and building bedside tables, a low shelf with storage space that will wrap around the two walls and also closet shelving/rods. So as those things happen I'll post about them, but that's it for now.