Bon Appetit!

Only in Belgium...can you burn the breadcrumbs but freeze the salad when making dinner. I was trying to make my own breadcrumbs tonight and ended up burning them. Since our refrigerator is so small the salad ended up touching the back of the fridge and freezing while I was dealing with the breadcrumbs. So we had frozen veggie burgers for dinner instead.

The Good Life

When my sister came to visit she kept commenting that she couldn't get over how calm and slow-paced our lives here were. I am glad she pointed it out -- to us it was just everyday living but because she reminded me of the normal pace of life in the States, I have since been really appreciating just how slow everything is here.

Kyle hates that we throw money away renting and is anxious to buy a house when we return to the States. Although I know logically we are wasting money by renting, I still love renting. I love being able to call the landlord with any problem. Yes, our bathroom has seen better days, but since it is not ours, we don't feel the pressure to re-model it. I keep trying to remind Kyle that as soon as we buy a place our weekends will be spent on never ending home projects. Because of all of this, I wanted to document our weekend because I have a feeling once we have kids and own a home, I will look back on this and think, "We actually had this calm of a lifestyle?!?"

Saturday we got up early to take Meredith to the airport. We got home and I read for a bit while Kyle was on the computer. Since I had nothing else to do and it was pouring rain outside, I took a three hour nap while Kyle read and did a crossword puzzle. After I got up, we had lunch together and talked for a while and then got ready to head outside (where it was finally sunny). We walked to a local bar that specializes in Belgian beers and sat outside for two hours eating cheese, drinking beer and playing Cribbage. By 7pm it started to get cool so we walked to dinner and ran into a few friends along the way. After dinner we walked home and watched the movie Troy on TV.

We slept for 11 hours and this morning we have gotten up, read, watched the news and I am now piddling around the house cleaning up a bit while Kyle is reading. Even if we wanted to do a household project, all the stores are closed because it is Sunday so we are subtly encouraged to just stay at home and relax. This afternoon we are meeting up with our church friends at a park to hang out and let their kids play. Afterwards we are going to a meet a friend for dinner and then probably just read and hang out a bit more before bed. Even though I have been missing the States recently, I sure don't miss going to Wal-Mart, Target, Publix, the mall and Home Depot this weekend.

This little piggy

I have figured out one way to cure homesickness -- eat a lot of American food. Since I have been missing the States I decided that eating some typically American food might make me feel better. In a twisted way, eating the food made me feel better about not being home because it made me feel so sick to my stomach.

Yesterday I ordered pancakes for breakfast. I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of the first pancake. But by the second and third ones my stomach started to hurt after consuming so much sweetness, especially so early in the morning. (I have been to IHOP (International House of Pancakes) and think every item on the menu must equal three times the recommended daily amount of anything you should consume. Their portions are just ridiculous.) Of course I finished all of them just because I don't get pancakes very often, but by the end I kept thinking, "How do Americans consume this much sweetness in one sitting???"

And because we had been talking about it for awhile, Kyle and I went to Hector Chicken for dinner tonight. By no means is it Chic-Fil-A, but it is as close as you can get to it while still being an ocean away. It is now two and a half hours after we ate and my stomach still hurts! How did I used to eat a Chic-Fil-A number 1 value meal in one sitting? When I asked Kyle this, he pointed out that everyone usually feels a bit overly full and sick after eating most American things and yet we still go back again and again. (I don't think it is possible to leave a Mexican restaurant just pleasantly full and not stuffed to the gills and moaning just a little).

I didn't realize how my stomach has shrunk over here, but it must have gotten used to smaller/healthier portions without me realizing it. I haven't felt this full or sick after eating a meal in a very long time. Now I just hope I can remember that it is not normal to feel like this after eating -- and also remember what type of food it is that made me feel this way.

A good day

Meredith has packed her bags and is heading home soon (she is flying standby so she has to wait and see about flight availability). Whenever someone visits us and then heads back to the States I always get a bit homesick. I keep thinking things like, "In 24 hours they can eat as much mexican food as they want with all the free ice water they can drink in a place that has good customer service. I can have all of that when we go home to visit in . . . three more months." It is especially hard when I walk a guest into the airport and see the Delta line for the daily flight to Atlanta. It makes home feel so close, but yet so far away.

For some reason the homesickness has hit me a little more this time. Of course I still love living in Europe, but because my life has slowed down with the women's club having summer hours and so many of my friends being on vacation I just have more time to miss things about America. I try to remind myself of all the things I don't miss (the heat, the traffic, being overwhelmed by so many choices and the pressure of keeping up with the Joneses etc). But then I think of all the family and friends we haven't seen, all the foods I miss and most especially being able to function in English all the time!

We have been here long enough that nothing is very "new" to me so I have more trouble remembering to appreciate the bread, the markets, and the slower pace of life and instead just see them as part of every day ho-hum life. But God must have known about my homesickness because I had the nicest European afternoon. I took the tram to meet my friend Amy for lunch at what is now my new favorite lunch place. The owner is actually a violin maker and prefers to spend his time building and repairing violins but has opened the cafe to supplement his violin shop. Because of this, right in the middle of the dining room is his workshop complete with violins, tools, and strings everywhere. The weather was perfect, we were sitting outside in the shade on a cobble-stoned street and we even had a few musicians serenade us throughout the meal. I had a great panini followed by cheesecake and then we were joined by an acquaintance who happened to also be eating there. It always makes me feel good to run into people I know when I am out and about. I walked home through the Petite Sablon and then sat in a beautiful park for awhile just enjoying the weather. It was a great reminder of why I shouldn't be homesick and just how lucky I am to live over here.

Apartment Inventory

I was recently going through old Excel documents and came across the inventory I did for our apartment before our move over here. We had to list and put a price on every single thing in our apartment and then list where it should go (to our parents house, to Brussels, or to a storage unit in Atlanta). We were very lucky to be able to move many of our belongings over here -- many people just have to live in furnished housing for three years. But we still had to leave about a quarter of our things in storage. For the first year, I could list almost everything in storage just off the top of my head since I had been the one orchestrating all the details of the move. But after being here over three years, I can only name a few things that I think are in the storage unit. As I look over the list now, I can picture what most things look like but there are a few that I have no clue about (vases, pitchers and bookends that I don't even remember owning).


Of course, this begs the question, "Do we really even need these things if we have been able to live without them for almost four years and now can't even remember what they are?" Some things have sentimental value which of course I would never want to get rid of -- I still have the shirt I wore on our first date and the shirt I wore the day Kyle proposed, even though both no longer fit :( But I do wonder if I really need all the rest of that stuff in storage. We have no idea where we would move next, but NYC is a possibility. As I look around our apartment now I know that in NYC we would definitely be in a smaller place, so I try to think of even more things we could live without. Living in a small place (and assuming you will eventually move to somewhere even smaller) really helps to keep me disciplined with my shopping. When there is absolutely no more space to put things it makes it much easier to not be tempted to buy new things.

My mother-in-law Sherrie was recently commenting that if they ever built a new house they would not build as many closets into it since when you have closets, all you end up doing is filling them with stuff. I think many people's problems with over-spending, credit card debt, and consumerism could be helped if they just lived in a smaller space with less storage. A blogger I read (Crazy Aunt Purl) has made a resolution to not buy anything non-essential for the next six months. She has done this once before and during that three month period she kept a list of anything she wanted to buy (but didn't). At the end of the resolution period there was only one thing on her whole list of 'wants' that she actually still wanted. Although I love her plan and think it could help many people, I think even walking away from a purchase and just waiting a week to reflect on it can often cure you of the "Oh, I must have this now (even though I never even knew it existed before I walked into this store)."

The Harney Cousins Take Europe!

My cousin Meredith has been staying with us for the past two weeks and she will be here another two weeks before heading back to Atlanta to start her senior year of high school. She is pretty fluent in French (at least it seems to my untrained ear) and she has been doing a great job of practicing it over here as well as experiencing a bit of the European lifestyle.

This weekend we went to the small country of Luxembourg (it is about the size of Rhode Island) to see the town of Luxembourg and and the town of Vianden. On the way home we stopped by Bouillon, Belgium. Our good friend Beth Schepens joined us and we had a great time visiting castles and just wandering through the towns. I'm working on uploading the photos, but in the meantime, here are a few...

A typical image of the Belgian countryside. I absolutely love how beautiful it is to drive through Belgium.

A view from the top of the Bouillon castle. This kind of summarized the Ardennes -- hills, trees, water and old buildings.

Surviving Serve the City

I did it! Cooking for Serve the City is finally done! I am very proud to say that I oversaw the menu, grocery shopping and cooking for 1200 meals over six days. We only spent 1600 euros, which I have to say I am pretty impressed with -- that equals only 1.33 per meal.

Kyle was absolutely my right hand man during all the cooking. He was so wonderful about being willing to do anything, from hauling stuff to washing some really dirty dishes to chopping 36 onions. I was also really fortunate to have a wonderful couple, Jackie and Richard Griffin, help me out with almost every meal. Jackie was just the mother figure I needed around when the recipe wasn't going quite right and I needed some experienced cooking advice.

I have learned something about myself throughout the whole process:

--I am very bad about asking for help.

--When I am in a tough situation I just put my head down and keep going. Although I definitely got frustrated at points (and Kyle was my sounding board), for the most part when people asked how I was doing I don't think I could even honestly answer. I just felt like I was in a zone -- I knew what needed to get done and I just kept going through my lists and checking things off.

--I have no desire to ever cook for numbers that large again!

What a team!

What it looks like to mix Asian coleslaw for 500.

We had some great volunteers helping out. However, it was much more stressful than I had ever realized to keep ten people constantly busy with a task in the kitchen.

Chicken Pasta Salad for 200.

Men at work. Graham is chopping 168 scallions and Kyle and Richard are hard at work peeling and mincing 56 cloves of garlic.

What baked beans for 250 people look like. This pan filled up a whole industrial size oven -- and this was only half the recipe!

A few weekends ago we went to Grand Place to see the annual Jazz Festival. The Grand Place never ceases to make me stop in my tracks and think, "Wow, I live in Europe." As Kyle and I were sitting there waiting for the next band to start, we talked about how many memories we have made on the Grand Place. It was really sad to think of how many friends we have hung out with there who are now someplace else.


Our first memory of the Grand Place was walking down there on our first day after arriving in Brussels. Just a few months later we met Hal and Anna for the first time in front of the Godiva store and afterward we all became good friends. Soon after that I went to the Ommegang parade with Kelly and tried to sneak a peak through the bleachers to see the performance. Who knew that a few years later I would be eating dinner in the Maison du Cygne watching the same performance from the best seat in the house.


We have been to three Brussels Beer Festivals there, which always hold a lot of memories. There was the time we met U.S. Air Marshals and ended up eating dinner with them, along with Amy, Nate and Jason. That was the same year I starting talking to a girl in the port-a-potty line just because she spoke English and we then became friends. Another Beer Festival followed but this time it was with Tim and Lynn. In between all of that we saw the Flower Carpet with Kelly (an event that only happens once every other year), the light show on the Hotel de Ville at Christmas and a few Belgian weddings too.


We always seem to friends leaving, but for some reason, this month has brought a larger exodus than normal. I think it is because we have been here three and a half year now so anyone we have met along the way is finishing up their 2-3 year contract. I know we have been so lucky to have had so many friends during our time here, but it just gets so old to say goodbye again and again and again.

Volunteer

About a year ago I was speaking with some friends here about what type of job I would do when I returned to the States. I mentioned that I didn't really want to return to the field I was in before so I wasn't quite sure what type of occupation I would look for. One of my friends teased me that maybe I would stay retired forever. I'll never forget how an older and wiser friend responded, "Oh, you'll be dying to get a job when you go back because if you don't, then you will be stuck as the person everyone asks to volunteer for things 'since you don't work.' "


Well I am still not working here and I do love my retired life, but sometimes I do wish I could say, "Sorry I can't do that. I work full time." People always ask me what I do with my time since I don't work. I never do the same thing two days in a row, but my days are always busy and I think at least four times a week I am doing some type of volunteer work. In the past three years I have gotten much better about saying no to things, but somehow the requests never seem to slow down.


The past six weeks have been filled with AWCB membership stuff, AWCB marketing meetings, the e-mails that go with all of those types of things, church leadership meetings, and cooking and babysitting for friends in need. But the biggest thing on my plate right now is our church's mission week taking place June 27 through July 7.

I am in charge of organizing, buying and cooking a total of 1800 meals over the two weekends. Lukily I am an organized person, but just thinking in quantities of 36 chopped onions and 70 pounds of chicken thighs for one meal gets my mind whirling. To make it worse, some of the recipes are from the States so I am constantly converting pounds to kilos to grams to cups to ounces to liters. I feel like I am back in high school math class again doing word problems, "If I need 160 ounces of diced tomatoes but I have three 2400 gram cans, how many cans should I open?"

It definitely feels good to volunteer and I have loved all the people I have met through my activities. However, I think a person might feel more rewarded and fulfilled if you are able to intersperse volunteering with a paid job. There is just something about a paycheck that validates all your hard work a bit more. At least when you are getting paid and someone is being lazy you can think "Well, maybe they earn less than me or maybe they will get fired one day." But when you are volunteering and you find yourself working harder than others (at least for me) it just creates a resentment and the thought, "Why am I am working so hard when you are just sitting there twiddling your thumbs???" A friend's saintly mother once said, "Some people just have smaller plates" in reference to the saying, "My plate is full." I try to keep that thought in the back of my mind, but I don't do a very good job of it.


As I am re-reading this I am thinking, "Whoa Emily, step away from the volunteering. You are obviously getting burnt out." But the problem with not working (and not having children) is that if you don't spend your time volunteering you just look like a selfish person who isn't willing to give to others. There are forty working hours in a week and to just spend them on yourself and not give back is unacceptable and selfish to me. But on the otherhand, I was recently asked why I volunteer and the only answers I could come up with were 1. to meet new people 2. to give back to the community and 3. because I am supposed to. I think my feelings of obligation towards volunteering have overridden my original well intentioned desires to volunteer. I am hoping that having some time off from volunteering in July and August will give me time to re-evaluate my priorities and reasons for doing what I do.


In the meantime, I am off to make coleslaw for 500!