Continue reading »]]> Wow. I’m not sure you can call it a vacation when it’s so much work. I’m on a plane again, trying to make the best of my limited battery life, and trying not to dwell on how metaphoric that is.

Four days ago I stepped off the plane in Newark and went through that weird adjustment phase where you look at your home through the eyes of a foreigner for about an hour. The cars are strange. The roads are wider. The spaces bigger, distances longer. And the heat. My god. It was well and truly warm. The entire “summer” in the Netherlands it reached a point where you could walk around in a t-shirt only one or two days so far.

Ken was kind enough to pick me up since Ann was at that very same moment receiving the keys to her new apartment that we would be moving into. I have to hand it to Ann, she found a place to rent and scheduled some movers to transport all our stuff from storage in record time. When she told me a week ago that she wasn’t going to get the place she wanted in Canal Pointe Blvd (after having signed the lease and submitted the deposit and everything). I was sure that this visit was just going to be a four day poker and barbecue event.

Instead, we spent all day Friday shopping for all those items you need when you start a life again. New pots and pans. New TV. New vacuum cleaner. Kitchen stuff. Cleaning stuff. All those essentials without which life as we know is it not possible. It took close to a thousand dollars and a trip to that now-familiar temple of domesticity IKEA.

Saturday we met the three movers at the storage facility, loaded everything into the truck in an hour, drove 45 minutes (and managed to get lost driving to our new home, typical), and unloaded for an hour. Less than three hours to move the entire contents of six years of marriage. It took the rest of the day to unpack everything.

We kept finding the strangest things. Bottles of shoe protecting spray that had been wrapped in three sheets of moving paper. A tangled mess of cables to devices we don’t even own any more. Boxes of memorabilia that my mom lovingly collected from my grade school years and now gets tucked away in yet another closet. An ungodly number of candles. At least four hundred tea lights. Maybe five. Fancy dishes and glasses that are still in the same bubble wrap we put them in after our first move in late 2000.

It’s an unsettling process, unpacking the physical manifestation of your life. Every item brings up its story in your mind. For a while it’s comforting, to see the evidence of your existence so solidly displayed. But it quickly becomes overwhelming when you unpack it all at once, and then you have the strange shame of so callously manhandling the silver candlesticks that were wedding gifts, or the souvenirs from that trip to Barcelona, or the hundred other things that have simply become a burden at the moment when it’s ninety degrees, humid as hell, and you’re jetlagged with twenty-nine other boxes to unpack.

But we got through it all. Hands dry and raw from handling cardboard boxes all day. Clothes stuck to our bodies. If I had to remember right now where I put a single item I just couldn’t. Everything went somewhere that it seemed logical to put it, and I’m sure that Ann will have to spend many hours re-placing all the items which I put in the closet which should be in the laundry room or vice versa.

Having done it just a month ago myself, I know what she’s in for and don’t envy her the time spent just putting your house in order. She’s got twice the space and five times the amount of stuff to deal with… but she’s a hundred times more organized and hard-working than I am, so I know she’ll be fine.

It’s always exhausting, turning an empty set of walls and carpet into your home. I imagine that, like it was for me a month ago, Ann will have some emotional vertigo as she gets used to looking at all those old items in their new positions and locations. But eventually they will look like they have always been there and she won’t do a double-take just to make sure that it really IS the same armoir as before. And eventually she’ll be able to navigate the breadth of the apartment in the dark and half asleep. Eventually… it will be home.

So, even though there is still so much left to do, welcome home Ann.

Continue reading »]]> So our Dutch colleagues don’t have the best sense of humor…as Brian and I experienced yesterday on his 30th birthday party.

While Brian was touring vodka factories and Mc Donald’s in Russia, I spent most of the week thinking what I could do for his 30th birthday. As our work colleagues Wouter and Itsco, and their girlfriends would join us for a three-course lunch al fresco, I had to get some patio furniture. So together with Linda I went on a wild after-work quest to find a fitting table and chairs. I did find a nice (read cheap) table and chairs in Ikea, but once down in the warehouse where you have to pick up the stuff, it was of course out of stock (how many times do I have to experience this?).

I let out some true Flemish curse words, thereby entertaining the store clerk, but then heading straight to the Ikea food store for Swedish meatballs, so we didn’t have to leave this place empty handed. Then with 20 minutes before the stores closed, we ended up in Intratuin, where I finally found a table and 2 benches (a la Pottery Barn). Linda and Wouter helped to carry everything upstairs to our apartment on Friday night. Everything was set for Brian to come home.

On Sunday we expected our guests for a lunch at 1pm. At 1pm, I already told Brian to call them as none of them had shown up. Brian told me to relax but when it was about 1:20 and nobody was there, he grabbed the phone to call Wouter and Linda. Wouter replied that he was terribly sorry but that he had forgotten and that they were actually at the beach and that he would pack up and be there in a few hours!! I asked Brian if this was a joke, but as Brian could hear that they were outside, he didn’t think they were pulling his leg.

I became frantic and asked if these people were retarded since they were the ones who had A) tasted the pre-birthday chocolate mousse to see if it was edible and B) went to buy the furniture for this party. Still in disbelieve, Brian called our other guest Itsco, but he got voicemail…Where were these fuckers? We once again called Wouter, who said he would be on his way, and apologized for forgetting.

At that point, I was ready to leave the house and leave all the preparations go to waste just so they would arrive here in an empty house. As they could clearly hear me get very upset, they all started to walk much faster, because these assholes were just on their way “bringing the surprise back into the surprise party”. 10 seconds later they all arrived together at our house. I can assure you that it took a good amount of verbal abuse from my side to get over this.

All in all, Brian had a nice birthday, and we enjoyed a beautiful day outside on our terrace with some good food and funny (HAHA) company.

But if you ever do this to me again, I will have to kill you.

–Ann

Continue reading »]]> So yesterday the American Studies students got together to finally celebrate the end of the program. Of course we did this in style with an all American picnic in the Bois de la Cambre, the Central Park of Brussels. There were frisbees zooming over our heads (by surprise nobody got injured), brownies being gorged down, and gossip being exchanged. Let it be known to those of you who were either in Italy, Spain, Graspop, or somewhere out in the wild with the youth movement, that you missed a terrific leisurely day. Floris also sort of missed it (his alliances lie elsewhere apparently), so Thomas became our man of the day. Don’t ask me why, I don’t have a clue, but we ended up chanting “Thomas, Thomas” and scaring away other peaceful park visitors. Releasing exam stress, I guess…

Thanks to Canan, we got a private tour in some parts of Brussels that were yet to be explored by us, ignorant people from other cities in this country. We saw the Avenue Louise, the Delhaize in Boondael, the park, and the cemetery area in Elsene, near the ULB university with all its cool student hangouts.

To wrap things up we had a drink in a student cafe called “Tavernier” where I had a caipirina and Floris (in true Floris style) started up a heated discussion about the entry of Turkey to the EU…I will spare you the gory details, but the next time you see Canan, I advise you not to bring up this topic (that means you too Thomas).

At last it was time to say goodbye and head back to the train station. Floris was kind enough to be taxi driver (including cool shades) and with Niel, Olju, Umesh, Thomas, and myself as his passengers (yes that is right, you counted 6 people in 1 car) we took a wild ride through the centre of Elsene, saw the fair, a blonde woman with a nice dress ( Thomas was the one pointing this out), and others with lots of junk in the trunk… We did make it to the train station in one piece and without getting a ticket from our friends in uniform, so I am quite happy about that.

Should do this again some time.
–Ann

Continue reading »]]> I’m finally done.

After my film noir exam today I got on the international train from Brussels for the last time. I’ve been on that train twice a week since last September!

No more delays. No more screaming kids. No more Morroccans proclaiming that all Belgian women are beautiful. And no more sniffing police dogs padding down the aisles looking for drugs. My monthly train bills were 200 Euros a month, which can now be put to better use at the V&D (department store) buying me new clothes.

Ugh. Tired and time for bed.

Continue reading »]]> I know, I know, this is only my second contribution to our blog…After someone called me a slacker (you know who you are), I decided that it was time to start cranking out another contribution. So I will tell you how the future America specialists celebrated the end of their first exam session.

Our last exam was US History on January 31st. I was not only looking forward to handing in my exam papers, but also to our little “After Exams Dinner” that was to take place that evening. I was looking forward to an opportunity to finally sit down with my fellow (but oh so much younger) students in an environment where I wouldn’t have to feel nervous about Professor Chew calling my name.

Canan, a Belgian student from a Turkish family, invited us all to her mom’s restaurant L’Heure Locale in Koekelberg. We were about 25 people (or was I seeing double?). We had a delicious buffet of Turkish vegetarian dishes (the stuff that makes Brian go green), followed by a main dish of real Turkish French Fries and chicken and meat. It was all very yummy, and I stuffed myself silly, which is not out of the ordinary when I am in a relaxed mood and talking everyone’s ears off.

So what were my highlights of the evening?

- George imitating a cat (I mean really well!!)
- Frederic being a master in making girl’s breasts look bigger when operating a camera
- The girls’ gossiping about good looking men
- Catherine trying to figure out who Ruben was, and then Thomas
- Being the cause of Floris’ hearing problem
- Finding out that the Walloon dictionary has 17 volumes
- Utku being really disappointed about his one meatball (no further comments)
- Tim and Niel contemplating when it was better to dump the girlfriend
- Kasper calling me ZOT (a nut case) for the second time this semester (??)
- Trying to figure out where exactly Clara lived, apparently she wasn’t quite sure herself
- Making my way back to the Central Station with 3 personal bodyguards

Anyway, I would say that we need to organize another social event. This was way too much fun. I am looking forward to the next semester, one without incorporation (if I hear that word one more time…), checks and balances, cash crops, Addison’s disease, the tyranny of the majority, enumerated powers, blablabla…

I rest my case.
–Ann