I received this forward recently and it has really stuck with me. Especially when I almost flipped a guy off just as we were driving home from church on Sunday. (To explain, the guy had been tailing us for awhile and then layed on his horn and passed us on a two lane street. After we honked back at him after he had passed us he slammed on his brakes so that we almost rear-ended him).

A man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration, as she missed her chance to get through the intersection, along with dropping her cell phone and makeup. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up.

He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He said, ' I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him.' I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker , the 'Choose Life' license plate holder , the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker , and the Christian fish emblem on the trunk; naturally... I assumed you had stolen the car '

Under Construction

I was trying to do some changes to this blog because I am tired of seeing the same layout and design for almost four years. However, after I did the first step to change it, now Blogger is broken for the second step and there doesn't seem to be anyone on their end really working on fixing the problem. All this say, keep reading, but know that this is not the finished product!

City Living

I absolutely love where we live. We are an area of the city that has both family homes and apartments, but the apartments only have about 4 flats in each of them. Even though I don't talk to my neighbors in the other buildings, I love the community feel of living close to other people. Just tonight a man came out on his terrace and started playing his trumpet. Neighbors came to their windows or terraces to see what was going on and people walking on the street stopped to hear him play. Even though we never speak, it is fun to see the young blonde woman, the older married couple, or the young African guys all looking out with me at the same time to see what is going on in our neighborhood.

Guilds

Pictures of the guild houses on the Grand Place.

I recently went on a great tour of the downtown area of Brussels, which focused on the guilds that used to be here. Guilds were basically unions from the 13th to 16th centuries. After trading became organized and moved into actual commerce, the sellers got together to coordinate their activities. Anyone who did a trade had to belong to a guild in order to sell things. The guilds regulated prices, weight, and set the standards for goods. Because guilds were such a big part of life for so many peoplethere are a large number of historical things about them throughout Brussels.

I feel bad because we have had 17 sets of visitors in our time here and only now after this tour do I know lots of fun facts about Brussels! In case any of you out there wanted to know some interesting tid bits about Brussels, here they are:

--Tapestries were the main export for Belgium. The general rule was that someone could weave the size of one hand in one day.

--The tapestries were woven horizontally to strengthen the fabric because they would be hung vertically from the wall.

--Four to five weavers would sit down the length of the tapestry and weave at the same time, each working on a different part of the tapestry.

--Tapestries were actually woven from the back side while the weaver looked into a mirror to make sure everything looked ok on the front.

--The drawing and painting of what the tapestry would eventually look like was called the cartoon.

--Mannekin Pis has 812 costumes and when they put a new costume on him he pees beer for awhile.

--The Grand Place is 2.5 acres in size.

--Back then people didn't have their own ovens so they all had to use a community one if they wanted to bake anything. The name of the street where Mannekin Pis is was the street where the community oven used to be.

--When you walk down Rue du Boucher (the pedestrian street with all the restaurants on it) you will see a few tiny alley ways on your left and right (one on the right has the word Toone on it). This was the butcher's street and the alley ways used to lead to small grassy fields where the animals were kept grazing. Because they did not have refrigerators back then, when you ordered your meat, the butcher would go out to the field and kill the animal right then and there so you had the freshest meat.

Sweet Home, Atlanta, Georgia

We are planning a trip back to the States in October. I did event planning in my previous job, and thank goodness I did because I am having to use every single one of my skills to organize flights, hotels, train tickets, doctors appointments, lunches and visits with family and friends. Of course we love every minute of it, but we always leave with the mixed feeling that no one got enough time and yet we are completely exhausted.

Throughout the year I really don't get homesick too much (although I know I did just have a little bit of it a few months ago). However, as we start to plan our schedule in the States and figure out who we can see when, I start to realize just how long we have been gone. At times it feels like the blink of the eye and at other times it feels like an eternity. It still shakes me up a little to tell people that we are just finishing our fourth year here in Brussels. As Kyle points out, we have lived in Brussels for as long as we were in college. Knowing what a formative time college was, I can't help but wonder about how many different ways I have changed in these last four years. Perhaps it will take the hindsight of time to realize all of the changes because the changes in me in these last four years have seemed much more subtle than the ones at UGA. It comforts me to go home and realize that not too much has changed (so I don't feel like I have missed out on too much) but I can't help but wonder what I have missed out on that I will never even realize.

Summer Days, Driftin' Away

I wrote this towards the end of August but just realized that I never published it...

When you are new to Belgium people tell you that summers here are very quiet. But I don't think anyone can prepare you for just how quiet they are, especially when you come from a place that has lots of stores open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our first summer here was a real shock to the system. Our dry cleaners shut down for a month (but luckily they warned us early and often about it so we got Kyle's suit out in time). We always had to have at least two to three restaurants in mind for dinner because there was no telling which one would be closed (it is very common for restaurants to close for a whole month at a time). Traffic is really light, parking is easy, but the trams also come much less frequently. (To clarify, not everything shuts down for the exact same amount of time, but many stores and restaurants will be closed for some large portion of July and/or August).

I recently spoke to a woman who was experiencing her first summer here. The funniest part is that as she was telling me about her shock and disbelief that an entire city could shut down for so long it reminded me that I too once thought like she did. But just like everything else, Belgium has worn me down and now I love how quiet the summers are! I have time to catch up on things I have been putting off and the city is so easy to get around. I have also widened my group of friends enough to make sure that I always have someone to hang out with, no matter how many people are on vacation. As school is starting and the Women's Club is getting going again I find myself wistful for the quite summer.

12 Angry Men

The movie 12 Angry Men came on TV yesterday and I had forgotten how much I loved it. The basic synopsis is that a jury of 12 men are trying to decide the fate of a Spanish-American juvenille accused of killing someone. The movie covers racism, stereotypes, discrimination, assumption and so many other interesting topics. It really reminded me that no matter where or how you pick a group, there is always a person in the group that has each of the following personality traits -- mean, meek, loud, talkative, know-it-all, rule oriented, bossy, lazy and probably a few others. That is probably why I always hated group projects!

Last semester there were two South American girls in my French class. They both only spoke Spanish and French, but their accents were so thick that I only understood about 10% of anything they ever said. And even though we rarely communicated, I could tell that I really liked one of them and that the other one got on my nerves to no end. Remember, we probably only spoke 10 words to each other, but just by smiles, frowns, pestering, laughs, cheating and body language I could tell which one I would have wanted to be my friend and which one I never wanted to see again.

I don't know what this proves except that even if you can't communicate with someone, you can still figure out whether you like them or not. And no matter what the association, or even the language, there are annoying people in every group.

Bob, would you call this color "grape" or "aubergine"?*

As I have mentioned earlier, Kyle has spent a fair amount of time these past three Saturdays watching football. One weekend he had our friends Tim and Stephen around to discuss the game, but on the other two weekends it has just been me. I enjoy football, but only in about five minute increments so usually I sit by Kyle and watch it with him, along with reading, knitting, and thinking non-football related thoughts. Sweet Kyle doesn't seem to mind too much, but I am sure he woud enjoy watching it more with some guy friends around.

I'll let you guess which of us said the following this past Saturday night:

--TACKLE HIM!!!!!

--I don't like that the announcer wore a black shirt and a black tie together.

--He was wide open, how could he have missed that!!!!

--Wow, it looks like it would be really hot to be watching the game in the stadium right now.

--I hate Gamecocks!!!!

--I don't like it when the players dreadlocks come out from under their helmet.

--INTERFERENCE!!!!

--I don't like that Tony guys personality on Sports Center. He annoys me he seems so pompous.

--INTERCEPTION!!!!

--Mark Richt is so cute, but he has a huge forehead.

*From Steel Magnolias when Clairee is doing color commentary in the football locker room and starts talking about the color of the new jerseys.

Beer Marches On

I mentioned awhile ago that it is bittersweet to go to the Grand Place for yet another event and be reminded of all the friends we have shared fun memories with there, and have then had to say goodbye to. This past weekend was our fourth Belgian Beer Festival. We got nostalgic remembering all the fun times we have had, so I thought I'd share a few photos from previous beer festivals.

Our first festival was with Amy & Nate Chan and Jason Mann (who came down from London). This was probably our rowdiest beer festival. I became friends with a girl in the portapotty line just because I heard her speaking English. I left our group alone and came back from the bathroom with a new couple as friends! As the day wore on I met three US Air Marshalls who ended up taking us all to dinner on the US tax payers dime (we figured we had been paying taxes over here for a year and never getting any benefit from it, so we took them up on it).

The next year Amy and Nate had moved, but Tim & Lynn and Hal & Anna joined us instead. And Jason was back for more of the best beer in the world. You can see why Tim makes us laugh. The Beer Festival weekend always coincides with the first UGA game of the season so basically this is the best weekend of the year for Kyle. You can see in the following pictures how he gets a bit more exicted to start watching the Dawgs (he was barking for them).

For the third beer festival, I was back in the States. I think it was a good thing that Kyle didn't think to bring the camera to that one...

And below is our picture from this year. Tim and Lynn have moved back to the US, but he was here for a wedding and was able to squeeze in one more Beer Festival. Katie and Stephen have been here for a year, but already know that they will probably only be here for one more year. And so next year we will be hugging new friends on the Grand Place as time marches on. At least there will always be Belgian beer...

Click here to see photos from the weekend.

The Real World

29 years old and still taking first day of school pictures!

Contrary to all the worrying I did, my French class went well. My teacher seems to be very kind and I sat next to a nice girl from Russia who happens to live just a few streets over from us. The teacher had us stand in a big circle and go around saying our names and where we were from. Because we did this a few times, I had a chance to let my mind wander and the thought it came to was, "Wow, there are very few white people in this class." I know I have very pale skin, but since most people I know are as white as I am, I don't really think about it that often. After standing in that class, I felt like a ghost.

Some quick statistics I came to during class:

--There were 27 students in the class.

--6 out of 27 had white skin, everyone else had some sort of darker pigment to their skin.

--3 out of 27 owned a car (or at least used one to get to class).

--I was the only person from North America.

--I was the only person who spoke English as their mother language (although I am sure many of the people in the class speak English as a second or third language).

Because America is so big, it is so easy to get wrapped up in things only going on in our country (I know I sure did). But standing in that class as everyone said where they were from really reminded me of just how big the world is. A sampling of the countries of my classmates -- Sweden, Bolivia, Japan, Russia, Macedonia, Phillipines, Bulgaria, Thailand, Spain, El Salvador, Turkey, and Brazil.

Without realizing it, I usually just stay in my little bubble of church, friends and Women's Club stuff. But just often enough I used public transportation or take a class like this and am reminded of just how many other people there are in the world, and how in reality, I am the minority.

If there was only 100 people in the world, here is how it would be broken down...

-57 would be Asian

-21 Europeans (including Russia)

-12 from North and South America

-8 from Africa

-2 from the middle-east

-52 would be female

-48 would be male

-70 would be non-white

-30 would be white

-70 would be non-Christian

-30 would be Christian

-89 would be heterosexual

-11 would be homosexual

-59% of the world's entire wealth would belong to 6 people. And all 6 people would be living in the United States.

-80 would be in substandard housing

-70 would be unable to read

-50 would be suffering from malnutrition.

-1 would have a college education

-1 would own a computer

According to the United Nations, there are now 6.5 billion humans on the planet. By 2050, that number is projected to be around 12 billion. More than half of the world's current population lives in just 6 countries. Nearly 45% live in either China or India. Women outnumber men in every country except in China.

Ecole

It's not back to school time for just the little ones out there. Tomorrow I start my French classes for this semester. I keep trying to remind myself that the entire semester is just 96 euros, I'm not getting a grade, and that it doesn't really matter how I do in the class. However, by the way I feel and how nervous I am, you would think I am about to present my PhD thesis. (Of course, I am blogging right now instead of cramming so I must not be that nervous).

I have recently been beating myself up about not taking enough French classes in my time here. However, as I am getting my calendar ready for the year, I am reminded why I haven't taken more classes -- they get in the way of my social calendar!!! This semster I am taking French Monday and Wednesday from 9-12:30pm. Yes, I could skip some classes, but missing three and a half hours of class time really does make you feel behind. Do you know how many events I have already realized my class will conflict with? Although I get frustrated with not knowing more French, I have to remind myself of all the other things I have been doing in the past four years with my time instead of studying. I have met great friends, visited chateaus, taken cooking classes, traveled all over and had a great time. It kills me when I meet someone who will only be here one or two years and is taking intensive French classes for most of that time. I just think of how many opportunities they are missing to actually get out in the country and really see and experience things, rather than just learning the words for them. I guess there is no perfect way to approach the language here, I just wish I had been born bi-lingual!

Franglish

I have a wonderful but also horrible trait of always being able to think of someone who is in a worse situation than I am. This is great because I rarely feel sorry for myself, but it can also be annoying because somedays you just want to have a bit of a pity party. Recently I was getting frustrated with my lack of French and then I met a woman from Japan. This poor woman speaks a little English but no French. She moved to Brussels with her family in July and her teenage daughter has just started at one of the international schools here. However, her daughter speaks no English. Imagine being 15 and having to go to school all day in a language you don't speak. Her mother was trying to make some changes to her class schedule but was having trouble explaing the problem to the school. I can't even imagine what it has been like for them trying to set up cable, electricity, heat etc. So the next time I feel down about my French I will just be appreciative that I can at least get by in English.

And if you wonder what I probably sound like when my French is translated, go to http://www.engrish.com/

The Other Side

In my previous jobs I did event planning for both business meetings and continuing education classes. Both were great jobs, but they each definitely entailed a lot of printing nametags, greeting people, cleaning coffee pots, early mornings (5:30am at the office for breakfast meetings!), room setup, agendas, powerpoint presentations and information packet compilation. So today when I went to the international school to be the speaker for the Adjusting to Life in Belgium presentation it was so nice to be on the other side of things. I got there at 8am and the room was set up, the powerpoint was ready to go, there was a pot of hot coffee, nametags were printed and 50 information packets were ready to go. It was wonderful! The best part is that after it was all done I was able to just enjoy the lunch and head home without having to clean up one thing. The meeting room was up 100 stairs (it was in an old chateau) and my heart when out to the event planner knowing how many times she had gone up and down those things with laptops, projector cords, adaptors, folders, drinks, cups, and so many other little things. Maybe event planning is in my future when I go back to the States, but for now I am enjoyoing life on the other side!

This photo makes me laugh because of the title of the slide. Although trash doesn't seem like it would be that stressful, piled on top of all the other changes newbies are experiencing, it can feel like you are having a panic attack on trash day just trying to figure out all the different colored bags.

Random Musings

We enjoyed watching the Olympics. However, out of the channels they were on here, we could only watch them in French, Dutch, German and Italian. You don't quite realize how much you rely on the commentators to understand stuff...until you can't understand them. Kyle and I took over the role of commentators for each other, but since we really don't know anything about most of the sports, we spent most of our time making things up. We know that a big splash is bad for diving, so we based the whole dive just on the size of the splash. What made me laugh the most was the confidence with which we would say, "Oh, well the reason the judge took off for that was because..." As if we have any clue about anything to do with pole vaults, high jumps, gymnastics or any other Olympic sport.



I am beyond sick of my fall/winter clothes. Although I have beefed up my cold weather wardrobe considerably since living here, I can't stand to see another one of my blazers, pants, or knee high boots. Last year we had a beautiful April, but after that it was cool throughout the summer then straight into fall and winter. This summer has had some nice days, but I still have probably only been able to wear shorts for a total of three weeks. The average temperature of August has been 64 degrees. Although I do enjoy the slightly cooler weather, it means that I have been wearing the same clothes for over twelve months straight -- and we are just about to start fall and winter! The good news is that I shouldn't feel guilty spending money on clothes since I definitely know I will get a lot of use out of them.

Surprise, Surprise

Wow! I recently installed Google Analytics on my blog and am shocked at the results. I honestly thought the same three people (my mom, Kyle's dad, and Kyle's grandmother) checked my blog each day. Apparently about 40 people a day check in to see what is going on over here in Brussels! Now I feel a lot more pressure to post often! I know how frustrated I get when I am trying to waste time and no one has written anything new, so I will try and give you something to help you procrastinate just a little more. The best/worst part is that I have over 50 posts I have started and just not finished (can you tell it is part of my personlity that I like to start things but hate finishing them?) I'll work on finishing those so you have something to read here more than just once a week.