Troc 'n' Roll

This past Wednesday, my friends Maggie, Yvette and I had a great day antiquing. Throughout Belgium there are Salvation Army-type stores that sell both clothes and old (antique if you are lucky) furniture. Within the French-speaking area of Belgium (Brussels included) they are called Troc and within the Flemish-speaking area they are called De Kringwinkel or Kringloop. Thanks to Amy Chan, we discovered the joys and treasures at Kringloops all around Belgium. She and her friends used to go once a week to check out the new goods. It is amazing the beautiful things you can get for such a deal! I will definitely be shopping there a lot more when I have an exact date that we will be moving back.

The next day I went to an exhibit about how Herbert Hoover coordinated the effort for Americans and Brits to send food to Belgium after WWI. It is just amazing how small the world is. After receiving so much food, some of the children wrote thank you notes back to the States. The exhibit coordinators found some of these old letters and contacted the homes of the return addresses on the envelopes. It turns out that the (now adult) child of one of the children that received food still lives at the house his mother grew up in, and to top it all off, he married the (now adult) child of one of the other children in the picture. Click below to see the pictures and it will all make a lot more sense!

Thursday night Maggie made some great vegetarian Mexican food for our friend Elizabeth's 35th birthday. Between our Northern friends, our Southern friends and our Australian friends, we had a lot of interesting conversations trying to explain our crazy customs. I was in the kitchen, out of earshot, when the Australians were making fun of how Americans will dress up in costume for anything. I came back in on the tail end of the conversation just in time to add, "Oh yeah, I used to have a bag full of costumes in my trunk all through college because you never knew when you might be going to a '70s party, or a flapper party, or a country hoe down!" Apparently I didn't help to dispel their theory.

Click here for a few photos.

Do re mi

I have not mentioned this on the blog yet, but any of my good friends could probably attest to what a bad singer I am. I am serious -- I CAN NOT sing a note. In fact, when I am mad at Kyle and want to annoy him, I start singing just because it is like form of torture to him. My singing is so bad that sometimes when I am in the car alone singing along to a song I will hear myself and have to stop because it hurts my ears so much.

I didn't think there was another person in the world that had as bad of a voice as I do until I just clicked on this link. The amazing part is that Jordan thinks she has an OK singing voice! At least I know how horrible mine is...

Beauty at the click of a mouse

If you have read my blogs in the past, you know how I feel about how computer graphics have warped our image of beauty beyond a normal idea. Below is an interesting video of how makeup and computers can alter a persons appearance and why we should never compare ourselves to ads.

Coupe Normal

Kyle: Yeah, the guy at the hairdressers spoke English.

Emily: He did? How did you figure that out?

Kyle: Well, when he asked in French what I wanted to drink and I responded "normal haircut" I guess he kind of figured out I didn't speak French, so he flipped into English then.

Pet Peeves

I am about to vent about three topics that I know a few friends and family members have, so I am hesitant to write, but oh well...

First, couples that don't have the same last names drive me crazy. I don't care whether the husband takes the wife's last name or vice versa, but I just like it to be the same. Not sharing the same last name causes many problems and much confusion and I encounter all of those problems in membership at the women's club. I waste so much time looking into membership payments that were made by the husband, so the bank transfer lists his name, but the membership is under the wife's name. After several phone calls and e-mails we figure out the problem and I want to say, "If you just had the same name this would all be solved!"

Along with the last name thing, I also don't like the hyphenated last names. It is always a mouthful to say them. For example, just a few double last names from people I know here in Brussels; Morgenthaler-Vandlik or Nijkerk-Bogen or Semmelhaack-Duchene .

One of the worst times for people to have different or double last names is when you are trying to address something to them. Is it:
David and Ann Vankoughnett-Snediker or
David Vankoughnett and Ann Snediker or
David Snediker and Ann Vankoughnett-Snediker

If you have a different or double last name, I think you don't have any right to ever get annoyed if someone can't get your name right in correspondence. How am I supposed to remember that your husband kept his name, but you combined yours OR you both took each others names, but switched the order so your last name is first and his last name is second. I am still waiting to meet a married couple that both were born with double last names and insit on keeping them; Mr. and Mrs Heik-Jokinen-Unterhauser-Schonenberg.

The other thing that bothers me is when people have 'family' e-mail addresses versus having their own. It is highly unlikely that I am going to write something bad to a girlfriend about her husband or child, but I still would at least like to know that her husband and child aren't reading about my visit to the OB-GYN. E-mail addresses are free -- get one for yourself! On that same note, I hate when people use their local internet providers for their e-mail rather than a worldwide company. I say this because I have so many people new to Brussels that set up an e-mail account with Brutele, Telenet, or Skynet. Then when they move and their internet is shut down, we have no way to get in touch with them if they have not left forwarding information. Just set up an account with Yahoo or Gmail and you will never have to change your e-mail address again!

What a ways to start a Monday! Now that I have gotten all that off my chest, I sure do feel better though!

Bella Italia

Wow, what a great trip. Although we flew in on Friday and flew out on Sunday, I had a great time in Sestri Levante, Italy. Our hotel was beautiful and the city was even better. It is a tiny town located on a peninsula, so there is water all around it. The town was small enough that I could easily wander it in a day and not have to take public transportation! Friday night kicked off the conference and there was a speaker (the former owner of PayPal). Afterwards we had a five course dinner -- lots of pasta and wine! Saturday I meandered through the city while Kyle attended such riveting lectures as "Privatization in Economic Theory" and "Is Codification of Informal Property Institutions Necessary for Economic Development?" Saturday night we went to dinner with some of his conference friends and ate a great pasta place.

I have decided that I just love Italy. Every bit of food I had was amazing, the language is beautiful and the people were so nice. Click here to see the pictures.

Think Like Rowena

My whole life, I grew up hearing, "Now, what would Rowena do?" or "Think like Rowena." In case you were wondering, Rowena Jenkins is a wonderful friend of our family. Rowena and David met my mom and dad when they were all just married and living at West Point. For the last 30 years (at least) our two families have gone to the beach every year for a week.

Rowena is a saint on earth. She is incredibly sweet, kind, and most of all helpful. Even though she and my mom would go for a year without seeing each other, they would work like a well oiled machine when they were at the beach together. My mom credited this to Rowena always thinking, "What needs to be done next?" Although I resented every time my mom use to say "Think like Rowena" while growing up, I have found that after hearing it thousands of times and now living on my own, I really do think more like Rowena. I (usually) notice what needs to be done and I do it. I am so lucky to have married Kyle who is also good at seeing what needs to be done and doing it.

Rowena is on my mind because I just finished helping out with an event tonight. It was run by several women, but one woman's husband was there also. As we were cleaning up, there were several heavy tables that needed to be moved. The husband helped out with one table and then stood to the side watching us clean up after that. I was most shocked when he watched his wife and I move one table, walk right back past him, and move the next table, all as he stood back and watched us the whole time with a beer in his hand. I know Kyle is my husband and I am biased and also that I am from the South where we are used to a bit of chivalry, but I can not imagine Kyle ever standing by and watching a woman lift a heavy table and not offer to help.

So next time you are at an event, don't just stand around. Say, "What can I do next?" and think like Rowena!

What a Holiday!

Kyle and I are headed to the airport for a quick weekend trip to Italy. I can't believe my luck, but he was planning on going there for a conference, and the coordinators of the conference called him and said, "Would your wife want to come also? We will pay for her flight." Since the organizers are planning everything for us, all I basically know is that we are flying out at 11am today, and arriving in Genoa around 2pm. I think the town we are staying in is Sestri-Levante, but other than that I have no information. I have no clue how we will get from the airport to our hotel, mainly because I don't even know what hotel we are staying at. Although this might be unnerving to some, I am so happy to not know one detail of the trip. We have done lots of travelling and although it is so much fun, it can also be very stressful. Often times I get off the plane in a new place and immediately feel on edge. We have to find our luggage, find a cab, find our hotel, find food etc.

For this trip, I can't worry, or think too much, or get my hopes up for something amazing because I basically have no clue about anything! I am just going to show up and be told what to do, and where to go -- I love it!

Wandering Woman

One of my favorite sayings is, "Not all who wander are lost." I do a lot of wandering around and I think it is great. As my grandmother Moa would say, I "piddled" around all day Sunday and had a wonderful time. Kyle was in the States this past weekend, so I had the house to myself. Of course I missed him, but I must also say that I also thoroughly enjoyed just doing exactly what I wanted when I wanted and not telling anyone about it.

Sunday I woke up and went to the brocante down in Waterloo (about 30 min. outside of Brussels). A brocante is like a flea market and this one is set up outside with over 100 vendors selling nick-nacks. I had a nice time browsing at a leisurly pace, but only came away with a two euro scarf, so now I can practice all of the scarf tying techniques I learned recently. Afterwards I went to a precious breakfast place/farm where all of their eggs are fresh and they bake their own bread. It was so quaintly European that I could hardly stand it. (However, it was also so European that the quiche I ordered had some weird hairy looking little fish on it.) I had a nice breakfast while reading my book and taking in the atmosphere. Next I headed to a glass show just a few kilometers away. In case you don't know, I absolutely love glass, especially blown glass. I had a nice time wandering around and seeing so many beautiful things, but I didn't buy anything.

On my way home, I decided that it was just too nice outside to not go on a walk, so I pulled over and took a walk through the forest. Brussels has an incredible amount of forest and there are great walking/biking paths throughout. One of the best things about the day was really observing so many typically Belgian/French things. As I got out of my car to go on the walk I saw a big group of people all in horse riding clothes opening a few bottles of champagne near a picnic table. It turns out they had been on a ride and were taking a break. Talk about a great way to spend a Sunday -- riding through the beautiful forest only to stop and have a glass of champagne with your friends in the middle of it all!
After my walk it was still too nice to go inside, so I went to a restaurant, had a glass of wine and read my book some more. I was amazed to really see just how laid back and family oriented Belgians are on a Sunday. There is an area next to the restaurant patio where kids can roller skate. It was fun to see how the kids would go off to skate while the parents (and their dogs) would sit and have a drink, then their meal, then dessert, then coffee, all while the children would check in periodically and then continue to skate. It really looked like it could be an all day affair.

After reading a bit, I came home, checked a few e-mails and then was off to church. We go to a pretty unique church. It was started here by four American couples, but many of them have lived in Europe and even farther abroad before. Their goal is to appeal to people who have a negative idea about church, which is part of the reason that our services take place in a brasserie (basically like an upscale bar that serves food). It is a very laid back, but close knit group. Never before in all my years of going to church have I actually known the names, faces and stories of so many of my fellow parishoners. I have definitely never known my minister and his family as well as I do here. I took a photo of our friend Richard and his daughter. Richard is on of the best dad's I have ever seen and every time I see he and his daughters together it makes me miss my dad. It is really cute because his girls are about 9 and 11 and are both really tall for their age, so seeing them run around and try to curl up in his lap, they look like big puppies.

After church I went to a dinner paty my new friend Meredith was hosting. It is amazing how many people I have met here just through friends at home that put us in touch with each other. Meredith was a college roomate of our friend Katie Wells. Thanks to Katie passing along our information, now Meredith and I are friends too! Meredith works at the Embassy, so she knows a variety of people I would not normally get the chance to meet. I love meeting people that are here for the US Embassy or NATO. Because the majority of them were working at an assignment in a much rougher place before this (ex. Baghdad, Haiti, Mali) they all think Brussels is the most wonderful and easy place to live. It is refreshing to hear their positive attitudes after hearing a few negative ones from women at the AWCB (who I don't think have it too rough :) ).

I am trying out a new photo service, but so far I haven't been too pleased. Has anyone else had good luck or problems with PhotoShow? I know a few of my photos have typos in them, but I can't get the program to make my changes. Ugh. Anyways, turn on your speakers enjoy the photos (they may take awhile to load).

Market Day!

One of the things I like most in Brussels are the open air markets. We have one a block from our house every Wednesday from 2-8pm. I absolutely love wandering through there, buying bread, quiche and most importantly, my fresh flowers. Every week I treat myself to 5 euros worth of roses or tulips or gerber daisies. They will usually last about a week and they make me smile every time I see them. It is a wonderful simple pleasure. Below is a picture of the flowers I just bought for two friends. The florists here always wrap the flowers up in colorful paper that make such a beautiful presentation. Each of these bouquets were only 7 euros!

Do you speak English?

At church tonight I sat next to a man from Colombia (South America) that is married to a British woman. He has been living in Brussels for the past six years and is about to move to Washington, D.C. for his wife's job. He was just there recently to pick out an apartment and attempt to get things settled and is back in Brussels for a few weeks to over see the move. I was asking him about his thoughts on D.C. and how his visit was there when he brought up an interesting point. He basically said that he had thought he would be fine moving to the States because he speaks English. However, on this past visit, he was shocked by what horrible and unintelligible English so many people speak. Now we know he speaks Spanish, so I don't think he was referring to anyone that only speaks a little English or that has learned it as a second language and speaks with a heavy accent. He said that he had to ask a woman on the phone to repeat herself three times and then he finally handed the phone to his wife to see if she could understand what was being said. They finally figured out that the woman on the other end was just saying, "How can I help you?"

I can fully attest that in each of the times I have been back to visit the States since being here, I am always shocked at how poorly and mumbled some people speak. Over here I am used to listening to people speak when English is not their first language and they might have a heavy accent. However, the "English" that I hear in the States is nothing like that. It is mumbled and slurred and sentences are not said in the proper form. I can't imagine what it must be like for someone to have spent years learning English, just to go to the States and not be able to understand what Americans are saying.

Click here for an example.

PS--I found this video clip when I was surfing the web. When I just watched it again, I noticed that the phone number is for an Atlanta church. A perfect example of what I hear when I go home to Atlanta. Even funnier is that the pastor's name is Tony Smith -- my dad's name!