The markets here in Belgium (and I’m assuming most countries in europe) are really great. Each town, no matter how small or large, has a market. Most markets have cheese, meat, flowers, fruit and vegetables, etc. There are also some that are flea markets, or brocantes. I could have fresh bread and cheese every day of the week if i want to.

A couple of weeks ago I took my camera and went into town to the flower market. The town is called Mons which means hill in french. I decided to park at the bottom and make my way up the hill.

The building in the center is the local collegial. It would be a cathedral but it doesn’t have a bishop. Here are a couple of other pictures of the collegial:

and I of course snapped a picture of the beer truck parked in the rear of the church

the next picture is a spanish-architect building. It was built in the 1500s.

and finally I arrive at the Grand Place where he flower market lives. The fresh flowers here are amazing and so very affordable. I can spend $5 and come home with a beautiful bouquet each week. Apparently this market is year round as well! Most people who know me know that I love fresh flowers so this is a great thing!

Overall, things are going as well as can be expected from here. On the US front, we still haven’t sold our house yet. We have a contingency offer, but it is still showing.

The boys are doing pretty well! Ian has a lot of fun with school and is turning out to be quite the goalie in soccer. On his team he has french, german, spanish, and american teammates. I think it’s pretty cool that he gets exposed to all of these kids. A definite once in a lifetime experience. Abe is also doing great. He goes to daycare part-time and will start pre-school in decemeber. Here in Belgium they start at 2.5 years old

Drew is adjusting to work better. He took command on October 1 and is having a blast with that as you can imagine I will probably not get a job locally here in Belgium unless I really master the french language. There are programming jobs on base, but I’m not looking at anything right now though.

This coming week is a school holiday so we will be taking a couple of day trips. One day to Paris and another to Amsterdam. I will update with pictures then. I hope everyone is doing well!

A lot of you know that we did end up buying a second car here. We got one that was a little more economical and got better gas mileage. With the price of gas here, it was a necessity. We were looking around town and we had our budget. Originally we wanted something for 5k or less, but we ended up coming across a used volvo wagon that was selling for 6500. So that is what we ended up getting. Drew primarily drives it as he drives a lot more than me.

Just wanted to let everyone know that if you do intend to send something to us for the holidays, it is recommended that you mail it by Nov 15. Please don’t feel like you need to mail anything. It is going to be a tight Xmas for us since we still haven’t sold our house in Georgia. Most people can expect a picture or some Belgian chocolates! I’d send beer and cheese if I could

I know that you all missed me, and I am sorry that I have neglected my blogging duties for so long. I guess the latest and greatest is that Sara and I have hit 12 years married (as of Saturday). Since we don’t know much about the area, and we could only get childcare from 7 to midnight, we just went downtown. A lot of you are saying,” downtown?!?”. Normally I would agree, but…

It was absolutely the most insane dinner I have ever had. We ate at this place that people call Steak on A Rock. Not because that is the name, but because if you order steak, they bring it out on this big hot ass rock. It is raw and you have to use the rock to cook it.

That was cool, although I was worried about mad cow. The Belgians are not however. I watched a guy get his steak, flip it once and immediately start eating. Now, as we ate, we watched several people walk by in strange costumes. We assumed they were headed to a party (spiderman was at the bar in our restaurant). They weren’t. They headed for us. We finished dinner and were thinking about desert when all the lights in the square went out and then we heard this loud noise. It turned out to be rock music. We though we would go find it, but… it found us.

Crazy. This is my anniversary I thought. Then the drum corps marched in behind them. Then the crane started up…

So this opera style singer starts in and we don’t know from where. Then we see the crane start to raise a huge metal frame into the air. With people on it. And a trapeze artist hanging at the bottom. It then swung around the square for 15 minutes while the people sang, played string instruments and swung around like mad. Then they battled the rock monsters.

It was wild. Especially the weird dudes on the see-saw beating the giant drum.

I thought I was just taking the woman out for a night on the town, but nothing extravagant. I was wrong, and if I never go another place while I am here, the trip across the ocean was worth it for this.

That being said… I went to Bruges the next day.

The Belgians seem to herald this little statue dude known as the Manneken Pis:

Well, they like him SO much that they tend to emulate them. It is perfectly okay for peope to pee in public. Now, if they use good taste they will go to some bushes. This is the best pic I could get!

Normally, this wouldn’t be cause for it’s own blog post, but with SO many things going wrong (our toilet broke today and Grace had explosive diarrhea in the middle of the night), but last night, Drew got the satellite working for our Armed Forces Satellite.

We don’t have many chances (7 I think), but I do get to hear someone speak in a language I understand and I’m watching the Denver football game even if they aren’t playing very well. So right now, I am enjoying this moment.

I’ve been receiving emails and calls from eveyone asking if we are online yet; simple answer no. The long answer is:

Last Monday the phone company came to install the phone and DSL. They only spoke French so we didn’t understand each other very well. But what we got out of it was that everything was working, we just needed to go buy a DSL modem.

Off I went to get the modem and when I got home it didn’t work. So we called the phone comapny, Belgacom. They said it usually takes 4-5 hours after the installation for the Internet to work. So, that would mean by 5pm everything will be squared away. Well, we have errands to run so we decide to leave. We get back at 7 that day and the DSL still isn’t up. So we give them another call. Their support desk closes at 6:30. Lovely.

On Tuesday we give them a call and they run a test on our line and tell us that not only is the DSL not working, but neither is the phone line which is just priceless considering we are using the phone line to call them.

A technician comes out on Friday. I decide to log on through AOL using dial-up and use an online translater: Babelfish. We are able to understand each other pretty well. Basically what happened is there were two phone numbers set up for the account. One phone number was installed at the house and the other phone number was set up for DSL. He cancelled the 2nd line for us and requested that DSL get put on our current phone line. He said this could take a couple of days to take affect but that we won’t need any more technicians to come to the house.

What a pain in the ass. But, almost there I hope.

We haven’t been too adventurous here in Belgium I’m afraid. We shop at the Comissary on post which has American food. We have gone out to eat just a couple of times. One time was to a cafeteria called The Lunch Garden which is also where I get access to the web from. This is a cafeteria style facility but the food is pretty good. They have very interesting salads which I am afraid to try. I have no idea what is on most of them. I did order some kind of orange fish from the menu with a brown sauce I’m assuming it was salmon but really don’t know because I typically only eat white fish (no I’m not a fish racist). But all in all it was okay. I had fries with it (more on the fries later). The kids had meatballs and fries and Drew had Schnitzel.

Our next dining adventure was a pizza place. Drew went inside and tried to explain to him he would like to order and then come back and pick it up. It took a while but they finally understood. Apparenlt that doesn’t happen very often. Apparently people with 2-year olds simply avoid leaving the house here. Anyway…the pizza was tasty. Drew said it was real Italian-style pizza and I guess he would  know since he used to live in Italy. We have a pizza place close to us that delivers but we don’t know how to say that yet o we’ve stayed away from it.

Our next time was a trip to our local friterie (french fry place). Friteries are as popular here as Starbucks are in Seattle; there is at least one on every corner. We had fries and strange long chicken sticks that were breaded in something that looked like corn flakes. It was okay.

Drew and Ian went out to a sit-down restaurant before we came and it isn’t like in the US; the meal is very slow. Some people have told me it takes 3 hours for a full meal. When you have a 2-year old who can’t sit down for longer than 5 minutes, dining out is not an option.

So then, what do we eat at home? Well, our options are limited as our oven is broken and only one burner works on the range. We have Cincinnati Chili, chicken alfredo, lots of sandwiches, meatballs and pasta, pasta, pasta, sandwiches, eggs, etc.

Someone was supposed to fix the stove on friday but they couldn’t make it, so again they were supposed to come yesterday, but couldn’t make it, maybe tomorrow!

Well, i had my first ring of the doorbell today and it was the nice folks in the Jehovah’s Witness. Good to know these people get around :).

The nicest part of the whole experience was I had no idea what the were saying and they didn’t quite get that I didn’t understand and kept trying to talk to me in French. I just smiled and Abe looked at them like they were crazy.