Favorite things about Belgium

At two weeks two days in, here are what the kids are most excited about.

Sam: "Everything except school"

Kate: "The chocolate here and the Eiffel Tower and seeing the castle".

Matthew: "Being able to live in the chateau".

I will have to agree with Kate on the chocolate. It's the real deal here. Those little stinkers are everywhere and they are GOOD! I think I know what people are getting for Christmas this year.

I'll go ahead and answer for Brian, as I'm pretty sure he'd say "beer". Just like the chocolate, it's everywhere, and it's good. We went for lunch on base yesterday in a most fascinating place, if you can call a cafeteria fascinating...and there was beer lined up along with the soda and water, and taps next to the espresso machine in the coffee shop portion. Interesting tidbit about the beer...Belgian beer drinkers are adamant that you must drink a particular beer in that beer's particular glass. Don't be pouring Leffe Blond into a Trappists #8 glass. It must match. Perhaps some lucky recipients will be getting beer and glasses for Christmas as well?

What do I like most? Hard to say as of yet. I like that we get to live in a chateau. I like that it will be really spacious and it's historical and I have an excuse to hunt for an antique or two to fill the space. I like that I'll be able to look down from the kitchen window onto a pasture of sheep. Brings me back to a most special time of being a kid on my grandparent's farm. I like that they speak French here, and that I'm getting an opportunity I so wanted many, many years ago to live in Belgium and learn the language. Confession...I applied two years in a row for our town's Rotary scholarship to send one student overseas for a school year, all expenses paid. I wanted to go to Belgium because they spoke French and it was closer to Ireland than France. That's how my seventeen year old brain justified it. Two years in a row I did not get it, but the second time I was the runner-up, and don't think I didn't have a few evil thoughts that something would happen to that ultra goody-goody phony Mormon boy from our rival high school who won. Mr. Student Body President Kiss-A*$...ok, very ancient feelings of jealousy bubbled up for a moment there. But really, it's very funny how things work out. By not getting that scholarship way back then my life took the path it did, with lots of interesting and mostly really fun twists and turns, and here I am twenty-something years later with the husband I love dearly and our three kids, getting to live this life in Belgium, in a chateau, meeting locals, meeting people from many other countries, meeting other Americans who can relate, and really, just getting to be here and experience it. I think I can appreciate it way more now than I could back in the day.

Here's something for the moment I'm not liking about Belgium. The locals absolute lack of any sense of urgency. Some of you who know me well may be laughing that I of all people can criticize anyone's lack of sense of urgency, but hear me out. It is going to take around five WEEKS to get internet and cable hooked up in the house. Five weeks. Seriously, that's just nuts, but when it's explained why it takes so long it makes sense. The Belgians don't mess around with their time off. It's their time and they max it out. Lunch hour is untouchable, and nobody works a minute past quitting time. In fact on our first day of in-processing I was in the middle of getting my ID card which you must have to do anything else on post. I'd filled out the information and had the picture taken, and had to go next door to the police to finalize things. Well, that part didn't happen because it was 4:30. It was a step that would take around four minutes but it couldn't happen that day, "this is not possible", so I had to go back the next morning. Oh well, I really didn't care, it's just an example. So, bottom line is I thought life with no iphone was bad, well now they'll be no internet period for an extended period of time. Whine whine whine. Really though I love that they are so laid back here. And again, very, very nice people. There is more to life than cable I suppose...beer and chocolate perhaps? Over a long lunch hour? Yes, I can appreciate that.

***Update!!! Exciting update!!!***
It turns out they are going to come hook up cable and internet our FIRST DAY IN THE HOUSE! I guess that five week deal is more for those arriving in the summer months, all the move-ins and move-outs must add up to a lot of business for Belgicom. And of course I like to exaggerate for the sake of decent reading so I was taking the worse case scenario. So far there have been perks to PCSing off cycle! We may not have our furniture or our TV or desktop for another 3-4 weeks but we'll have cable and internet, woo hoo!