A perfect weekend

We had a wonderful weekend. Our friend Lynn had organized a wonderful beer tour for her husband's birthday, so I borrowed her idea and planned one for Kyle because his birthday was this past Saturday. We started the day at the Vapeur brewery, which is the last steam powered brewery in the world. Once a month they open the entire brewing process to the public to view. We ate a great lunch there and just felt very Belgian. Next it was off to the Ellezelloise brewery for a taste of their beer. Then we took a tour of the 3 Fonteinen brewery. The owner and brewmaster is incrediby passionate about his beer and keeping that exact Belgian style of beer alive. The tour took us two hours just because he kept talking so much!

Mark Richt ended up giving Kyle a better present than I ever could with Georgia's win over Florida. Our UGA friend Jason Mann came in from London (where he lives) to join us for the day, so he and Kyle really had fun cheering on the Bulldogs together.

Click here for the photos from Kyle's birthday.

Last Saturday Kelly and Donna hosted another great Halloween party. 50+ kids Trick or Treated their way up and down our street. Belgium has only caught on to the halloween idea in the last 5 years. Somehow they seemed to learn that you could only dress up as scary things, so there are lots of witches, monsters, and basically people just dressed in black. You can always spot the Americans because they are the only ones not dressed in black. Case in point:

Click here for the photos from the Halloween party.

MPM -- Masters of Photo Management

My sister and I were just discussing what a pain it is to manage all of one's digital photos. Luckily I am just kind of numb to the task and seem to sit down and do it without dragging my feet too much. I live in fear of the day that I really start to resent having to manage photos because it could be a very easy task to fall way behind on.

I don't think anyone knows how much time online photo sharing takes until they do an album themselves. It always makes me laugh when people come up to me and say, "Man, I just did my first Kodak Gallery album and it took forever!!!" To give you an idea, each album takes at least 30-45 minutes to complete and I have done 44 albums in 2007 alone, which equals about 33 hours of online photo editing this year.

This week I had lots of fun activities, which resulted in good memories and many, many photos. Since last Saturday I have been to a Halloween party, a friend's 39th birthday party, a tour of a chateau, Kelly's 40th birthday party and Kyle's 29th birthday party. From all of those events, I now have 175 photos to upload, rotate, crop, label and post. I've finished three albums, but still have the two big ones to do tomorrow.

Click here for photos from the Chimay chateau tour.

Click here for photos from Kelly's birthday party.

Click here for photos from Nada's birthday party.

Rear Window

Well, actually this was taken from our front window. Through our kitchen and living room windows we look directly out into the apartment across the street. About once to twice a day the man across the street leans his head out the window and just kind of looks around and watches the traffic. This usually lasts about a minute or two. Since I am home during the day I see him do this alot! He was actually dressed the day I took this photo, but often he is in his pajamas (no matter what the time of day) which makes me laugh even more. The man and I haven't made eye contact yet, but I think we both know the other is around. I wonder what will happen when we finally run into each other on the street. I used to make fun of him until I caught myself looking out the window too. Sometimes it is just fun to see what is going on out there!

Calm Waters

Kyle and I have just kind of been plugging along this past month. Nothing too exciting, but nothing too bad has happened which has been nice. Sometimes when life gets a little rough I think, "Why didn't I enjoy it more when our life was just calm and nice???" So since it has been calm and nice, I have been trying to really enjoy it and not feel bad for not having anything too exciting or interesting to talk about.

A few weekends ago we went up to Amsterdam. All American women's clubs in the world are under an umbrella organization called FAWCO (Federation of American Women's Clubs Overseas). The AWCB needed a representative to attend the regional conference, so I went up there for it. I am always amazed when I meet business people who can talk for hours on end about EU regulation, legal procurement, antitrust, etc. Whenever Kyle has a lunch meeting with someone I always say, "You mean you talked for two hours about competition law and never once talked about anything personal?!?!" So it was fun for me to attend an eight-hour conference and talk about membership retention, increasing volunteerism, membership rates and requirements, and clubhouse facilities all day long. I finally realized that if you know a lot about a topic and you are involved with it on a day-to-day basis, it is pretty easy to talk knowledgably about it for a long time. I met many great women from all over our region (Stockholm, Amsterdam, The Hague, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Paris and Luxembourg). It was neat to hear their experiences with their women's clubs and with being an expat.

Amsterdam was beautiful and we enjoyed getting to tour around. For the first time in three years we forgot to bring our camera. Kyle pointed out that we have over 4,000 other pictures (yes, really 4,000) from all of our other trips so perhaps missing a few isn't too bad. Together we saw the Anne Frank house and the Dutch Resistance museum and on Saturday Kyle saw the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum (national history and art) on his own. Seeing the number of bikes there was incredible. To give you an idea, there are 700,000 people in the city and about 700,000 bikes too. Parking for cars is between 2.60-4.60 euros per hour throughout the entire city, so biking is a much more economical option over driving (and having to park). Kyle and I enjoyed sitting outside at cafes and just watching the cars, bikes, and pedestrians navigate. I am amazed there are not more accidents there.

Last weekend we went to our third Capitalist Ball. We know a fair amount of the attendees now, so we really had fun eating, drinking and dancing. We ended up getting home at 5am which is the latest we have stayed out in a long time.

If any of you recall last year's photos, many of the same people attended this year too. I have no clue where this woman shops, but she has a very distinctive style called "Almost flashing her nipple and a slit up to her hip."

http://www.cne.org/2005_capball/pages/800_20E27D~1.htm

http://www.cne.org/2006_capball/pages/0281.htm

http://www.cne.org/2007_capball/img-0087.htm

Ignorance is Bliss

I have wanted to write a blog like this for a long time, but the problem is that I want it to cover such a wide spectrum of topics that sometimes I get overwhelmed. I will at least touch on a few for now. One of the many things I love about living over here is that I have no idea what is happening outside of my little world. We get a weekly English magazine that highlights what has happened in Brussels news-wise in the last week, but by then any of the problems or safety threats are passe and I never even had to worry about them. The only television news we get is world news, so I know what is happening in Iraq and India, but not on my street in Brussels.


To watch TV in English we use Slingbox, which shows us the cable channels from the States. I really think when I return to the States I might use Slingbox as my only form of TV. You watch Slingbox over your computer and our desk chair isn't so comfortable, which creates one downside to watching TV. The other is that there is a two-second pause between each channel as you surf, which really gets old after awhile. Because of these two things, it is just inconvient enough that you only watch the exact television program that you want and don't waste hours just flipping through the channels.


Along the lines of television, I recently did a three-night, overnight babysitting job. The people had Sky TV, which is basically all British channels (about 200, many of which televise American shows) on your TV. I was really looking forward to finally seeing some U.S. television -- that is, until I turned it on. I can honestly say that my stomach started to hurt from having that many visual stimuli after clicking through 50 channels in just a few minutes. My blood pressure also skyrocketed as I saw so many horrible things on the television.

First, I saw a live birth. I mean, come on. Do we really need to see a woman's water break and the baby's head crowning (along with all the other areas that are included in birth) at 8pm?!?! Then there was the Gaming channel where you just watched other people play video games for hours on end. Next was possibly the worst show on television -- "My Super Sweet 16" on MTV. I watched complete brats complain that their $200,000 birthday party wasn't enough. The worst is this clip where the girl starts crying because her mother didn't give her her brand-new Lexus during the actual party. She actually says that her mother has ruined her life because of this! Following along the lines of spending exorbitant amounts of money and not focusing on real life are the two, yes TWO 24-hour-a-day channels that focus on weddings. No, they don't focus on life after the wedding, just on the big day. No wonder there are so many expensive weddings and then divorces within a few years if people only focus on the wedding day and not the next 50 years.


This year we had a wonderful anniversary in London. However, on the actual day of our anniversary, I was locked out of our apartment. After I hauled two suitcases all over Brussels and back to get our extra key (because Kyle was still in London) I returned to do three loads of laundry and a sink full of dishes because Kyle was heading out of town the next day. I am not at all mad about this, I just think that between two 24-hour-a-day wedding TV channels, maybe they should focus on life after the wedding to give people a real idea of what marriage is about. Until then, I'll be watching my Slingbox once a week and living my simple, ignorant, happy life in Brussels.

Blah, blah, blah

I haven't posted anything recently because nothing exciting has really been going on. The Hints for Living in Belgium class has been taking up most of my time. It is two days a week for three weeks so I am ready for it to end.

I have started my French classes and am pleasantly surprised that I am enjoying them. I now have a wonderful teacher and it has really made me realize just what a bad teacher I had the first go around. There are about 19 people in the class from all over the world. Whenever I get frustrated I just look at the Japanese girl next to me and remember that she is not only learning a new language, but a whole new alphabet too. There are some real characters in the class, including the Brazilian woman who seems think she is saying something but is really just merging Portugese, French, and random grunts and sounds all together. We were recently working on numbers and she took off her bifocals and told us she was 42 with a 29 and 25 year old and that she had gotten married at 15. Obviously something got lost in the translation there...

Kyle and I are headed to Amsterdam for the weekend. The tables have turned and I am actually the one going there for a conference on Saturday while Kyle tours around all day. FAWCO is the umbrella organization for all Women's Clubs overseas. This will be the regional conference where club representatives from Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Luxembourg, Paris and Stockholm will be in attendance. I'm looking forward to meeting expats from other cities and hearing their stories.

And now for a good laugh:

SUMMARY OF MY LAST YEAR ON THE COMPUTER
--I must send my thanks to whoever sent me the one about poop in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet towel with every envelope that needs sealing.
--Also, now I have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.
--I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown) who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.
--I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.
--I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St. Theresa's novena has granted my every wish.
--I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.
--I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.
--Thanks to you, I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.
--Because of your concern I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.
--I no longer can buy gasoline without taking someone along to watch the car so a serial killer won't crawl in my back seat when I'm pumping gas.
--I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr. Pepper since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse to put "Under God" on their cans .
--I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.
--And thanks for letting me know I can't boil a cup of water in the microwave anymore because it will blow up in my face...disfiguring me for life.
--I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.
--I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.
--I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise.
--I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don't support our American troops or the Salvation Army.
--I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica , Uganda, Singapore , and Uzbekistan.
--I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe.
--Thanks to you, I can't use anyone's toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my butt.
--And thanks to your great advice, I can't ever pick up $5.00 I found in the parking lot because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg.
--I can no longer drive my car because I can't buy gas from certain gas companies!
--If you don't send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with intestinal problems will land on your head at 5:00 PM this afternoon and the fleas from 12 camels will infest your back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor's ex-mother-in-law's second husband's cousin's beautician...
Have a wonderful day....