April 5, a big day

04.05.06. That was this day last year. It was the day Evelina was born. She had her first birthday today. Of all the birthdays in a child's life, this first one is no doubt the most significant for the parents. Evelina had no clue of course that today was her birthday. Although she probably realized something was different when both Robert and I showed up at her day care in the early afternoon and stayed there for the little party we had for her. We brought home-baked Belgian sugar waffles and Belgian crepes with Nutella and sugar. She was both excited and confused. What were we doing there? And then she got to home to spend the rest of the afternoon with her grandparents Moeke and Baba. But for me it was a day of commemoration, reflection, amazement, and pride. Robert and I did well I think, this first year as parents. Of course I thought of this day last year, although this day itself (Evelina was born at 8:27 a.m.) was not one of my best as I was suffering through my allergic reaction to the painkillers they had given me. But I very vividly remember holding her bundled little self for the first time, and softly kissing her little forehead. A most beautiful little face. And now she is a loving little person with a strong will and a most happy constitution. She walks and babbles. Sometimes she seems not even a baby anymore. Here is a picture of a series of portraits we just had done to celebrate her birthday and to give as presents for Robert's birthday. Well, we think she is the cutest baby ever. Keep checking for more pictures of her upcomming birthday-bash. I pray to the weather-gods for a sunny day for a very sunny child. Rain is predicted, but in Texas April ought to be sunny, darnit.

Books, birthdays, steps, and plans.

Great news. Robert received his published books! A whole box of them arrived from Italy and they look great. They feel great as well. They are light and printed on nice smooth paper in a format that is portable and easily readable. What a birthday present, no? He turned 38 on the 27th, so the timing was wonderful. Here is the jacket. The photograph of Robert on the back was taken by me on our wonderful balcony of the apartment in Castiglion Fiorentino in Tuscany.












He is quite pleased with it. We don't really know yet how it will be sold, or where. For those of you reading this in Italy, check if Feltrinelli has it, especially the Bologna store. The book was published by the University of Bologna press. Pretty impressinve, no, to have one's book published by the press of the oldest university in Europe! (1088 for those of you who wonder.)

The other wonderful news is that Evelina is walking! Here is she is in a field of bluebonnets. Of course this picture only shows that she can stand, which she has been doing for a while now. Those first steps came several weeks ago as well, but jusst this week she actually for the first time resolutely marched away from me towards her toys and she is able to turn around without first hitting the floor with her diapered behind. She can stand up from a sitting position without pulling herself up as well. Yes, a whole new world it is all of a sudden. I suppose she was determined to be walking at her birthday party!













I finally received plans of the house! I have been promising these for a while now. I don't know what it is about plans, but I really like them. I do think I should have gone to architecture school all these years ago when I was trying to decide on what to do after highschool. But that was (oh my!) 1988 and I choose graphic design (yes, entirely unrelated to computers then!) for some reason I have now long forgotten. But I digress. Forgive me reader, as it is nearly midnight and I have been up since Evelina got really hungry this morning at 6:30 a.m. So, the plans. Here they are.







So these are obviously the plans of the exterior and a section. If the section is confusing to you it is because the house is confusing. The house actually has four floors with two "in-between floors." This works as follows: from the first floor (i.e. above the ground floor) you ascend the stairs towards the second floor and halfway there, there is a small room that sits exactly inbetween those two floors. This happens again on your way up from the second floor to the third floor. I don't know exactly what these rooms originally were used for. In our house one of them is empty, and the other has been converted into a bathroom. They are too small to be bedrooms in our case. In my friend Inge's house in Antwerp these in-between floors are actual bedroom-size rooms. We don't really know yet what we will use the little space for that is empty right now. It would make a pretty decent size closet if nothing else.



And these then are the four floors. I have fiddled with the plans a little, i.e. erased some walls on the ground floor and moved some other walls so as to create one large open space and a little more outside-area, and sent this to the architect to give him an idea of what we have in mind. For the third floor (our bedroom I turned the three doors into one and added a little bit of the hallway to the room to make this more convenient. It will be just us up there so we don't really need three entrances. Here is this:





The architect is now going to put together a design concept of his own, based on what he knows about us and then ta-da everyone will live happily ever after in a wonderful house. Yeah, right! Then the negotiation starts, and the payments. Ouch! I will keep everyone informed.

So, this was a meaty post in terms of visuals. But I cannot resist and end with one more photograph. One of my recent favorites of Evelina and her amazing "papa." Seeing these two together just makes everything else vanish into unimportance.





Warm spring greetings, from Texas with love, vanessa

Architects, Italy, and Evelina

Keeping up a blog is hard work I now realize.I seem not be good at regular postings. Either that or time has accelerated lately and I continuously find myself short of it. I so looked forward to springbreak, to be able to catch up. And what have I been doing? I have been scrambling to get a fellowship application ready and in the mail. It is due tomorrow, I will be sending it overnight. I am still waiting on a letter of recommendation. All that work and all that time, my springbreak nearly over, and the chances that I will get the fellowship are so slim that buying a bunch of lottery tickets would have been more cost and time effective. Come to think of it, I might still go out and do that too. I also decided last minute to send in an abstract for the big AIA conference (Archaeological Institute of America) which is in Chicago next year. I made that submission by a few hours. Phew. So all that and my house--which I had planned on giving a good clean-up, drawers and closets and all--is still a mess.

So what has been happening otherwise you ask. Well after a long silence we got a long report back from the architect. We don't have the plans yet, he promised those for next week. But he did go to the house and send us his findings. Good news: he thinks it is a great house with many possibilities (well either that is good news or merely a marketing ploy to get us to work with him, on those possibilities you see... ) and we can keep the floor! Yeah! Not so good news: he thinks there might be quite some work necessary on the bay window. But no bad news really. Of course we have not yet gotten any bids from him. I am sure we will consider that very bad news.

What else? I have been (sort of) hired as the art history instructor for a program located in Umbria! If the classes fill I will teach "Umbrian painters" to the program's participants in July and September. This will be one of those things where many aspects will have to fall into place to make it all work. But it does give me something to look forward to. The lady that runs the program sounds very nice and eager to make it all work. So fingers crossed. If you want to check out the site, here it is: www.caifiordi.com

Evelina is doing swell! She switched day care in February and is now at the UT developement center in a class with bigger kids. She seems to be loving it. I can't believe she is almost 1! One year old. See that is what I mean, time has been accelerating. Is that what happens when you have kids? Anyway, she is starting to say words. "Papa" seems to be here favorite one. She understands an aweful lot. She knows and uses appropriately various signs. She is putting food in her own mouth (and ours as well) and she is starting to walk. Six steps is sofar her record. And she is just such a joy to be around. And still as cute as a bug! Here are some recent pictures of her.









Other than that, we are expecting my mother. She arrives this Sunday. And in time for Evelina's birthday party my father will fly in as well, as will Robert's mom and Dale. So that should be lots of fun. It is the first time that everyone will be together. There will be pictures of that event for sure.

For now, lots of greetings from Texas with love.

Not that many people are reading my blog (there remains the list of people who were invited but have not reacted... what am I to make out of that?) but those who do are becomming demanding! (Lea!) ha, thanks for the kick in the butt. I have been wanting to write, but just not had the free moment to do so. Between life with husband and baby, teaching, disseration work, and trying to deal with paper work etc. relating to the house in Belgium there is not much time left. Of course, I could try not sleeping anymore. Oh, wait, I did that after Evelina was born, for about four months... not a good idea ultimately. Of course then I had no choice. (And yes, it was all worth it!)

So you want to know what is going on with the house? Well not much. We are trying to take care of the final closing. We have until May 16th to complete the paperwork. We first thought to take care of things in person, since we plan on going over there right after my semester ends (May 4th!). But my very cautious husband does not want to push it that close to the deadline. What is one of us gets sick, he forwarns, and we cannot go as planned, then what? Well, then... everything just gets much much more expensive as we will then be responsible for paying daily interest on not paying for the house. So, we will take care of it by power of attorney. That document was drawn up in Belgium, and has been translated already. I am waiting for it to get here. For some reason it showed up as a blank document on my email yesterday. Once I have it, Robert and I have to sign it in the presence of a lawyer and then that lawyer has to sign it stating that he saw us sign it and that we are who we claim we are. And then, it needs an Apostille stamp, and off it goes back to Belgium again.

The University here has legal services for students, so I called to ask if they could take care of this for me. The girl on the phone was not sure so she had to go check with one of the lawyers. I explained several times what it really was about. When she came back she said they were not sure. It turns out that they are very hesitant in dealing with anything foreign. Hmmmm.... let's see this is one of the biggest universities in the country with slightly more than 50,000 students of which about 9 % is foreign. That is about 4,500 students. That is as many of the entire student population of many other colleges. But no matter, they do not like to deal with foreign issues. They will however deal with small wills -- small, that is, up to
$ 1,500.000! Well, I guess that's Texas for ya! Anyway, we will get the document taken care of no doubt. So after all this (and then of course some financial transactions!) the house will be legally and officially ours. YEAH (and...gulp)

So for now, the only thing we are having done is inquiring about bids and having the whole house measured by an architect. The architect will plot every little detail into Autocad and we will have very accurate plans. I will try to post them when I have them. After all that, some of the breaking down of walls can start. That is exciting too, as it will open up some spaces and make them bigger. I will be eager to receive (via my parents) and post pictures of work in progress. But at the moment we are not sure at all when work can, let alone will, begin.

So other than this my class keeps me busy, more than it should. But my students just had their first exam (and no I am not grading the 80 tests myself, thank goodness for beginning grad student-graders! ) and I have started teaching Roman art and architecture. And here is were objectivity falls by the way-side: I will spend several lectures on Rome, even though I only spend a few on the Sumerians and Akkadians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks. I can do that because it is my class. And thinking about teaching and the Romans, I would like to share this image with you all which I will (carefully!) show in class. It always helps to make comparisons with current issues, although one needs to be careful. By university policy I am not supposed to or even allowed to make politically loaded statements nor any religious ones for that matter. And even though UT and Austin are in general quite liberal, we must remember we are in Texas. Not that I want to make those type of statements in class anyway. All I do usually is ask (rethorical) questions and leave them to ponder. Here's an example: The Roman emperor Trajan erected an enormous forum with a large column monument in the heart of ancient Rome after he defeated the Dacian people and returned home with the booty. There were statues of the defeated enemy all over. What would such a public display of victory look like if our current President would be allowed to put one up, let's say in DC? No answers needed on that one.

So here's what you get with a comment like "where are the posts?" Answer: ramblings. I'll post some more pics next time. For now, greetings from a very warm Austin, Texas, with love

Musings of foreigness

Since this house is not the only thing happening in my life, and this blog is not only about the house, I will change the subject just slightly. Hmmm, let's see, let's write about food! The other night the three of us went out for a quick dinner at a local burger place. It is an Austin landmark and they have very good veggie burgers, it is cheap (relatively) and kid-friendly--something that is of course important to us now considering we haven't gotten into the groove of hiring baby-sitters yet.

So as we were sitting there, eating, talking, and entertaining Evelina (really that took most of our attention) I did suddenly notice that I was eating my food with my hands, from a small metal tray lined with paper. I had poored ketchup on the paper and was dipping my (unpeeled!) fries into the ketchup on the paper. Now for all you American readers there is nothing peculiar about that. And there hasn't be anything odd about it to me either. But suddenly, this evening, I realized once again, how odd this is for non-Americans. I suddenly, momentarily was a Belgian again.

I think now that we are directing quite a bit of our attention to this house in Belgium (oops, I am talking about it again) and thinking about living there again, I will continue to experience these brief flashes of non-Americanness. I have been in Texas, in the USA, for so long now that mostly evertyhing here is second nature to me. Usually it takes having a visitor to bring back the foreigness about it all (no pun intended.)


Now look at this photo I took in a local restaurant in Roswell, New Mexico in July 2005. I was taking this sort of photos then because we had just returned from living in Italy where I had taken many many table shots, and because, having just returned I did feel like a tourist in the US all over again. But look at how the bread rolls are served: on paper, in a plastic basket. To Belgians, this is weird.

Just like serving drinks in huge plastic cups with straws (for adults!) is nearly unheard of. And this is a shot taken in the burger-joint I started this triade out with. Sorry to all of you Belgians who now wanted a visual of the ketchup and fries on paper... I will have to procure that next time I go for veggie burgers.

Not that we don't combine fries and paper, mind you! In fact, one of our most famous "dishes" (not a dish at all) consists of just that, fries (double-fried) in a conical paper tote smothered in mayonnaise (the fries, not the bag!). Hmmmmm. I promise photos of this after the May trip.

Here is another Belgian staple, now that I am going this way.

Mussels and fries, or since we had it in Brussels, moules avec pommes frites. Not my favorite, but one of Robert's. With, of course, a good dark Belgian ale.





But I digress (of course this entire post as well this entire blog is one big digression). I was writing about "deja-vues" of foreigness. All these things and customs I have gotten so used to over the many years can seem suddenly foreign again to me if I only pay attention. If I only try to remember what it was like to come here for the first time. I will never by the way, forget the very sight I saw stepping foot outside of JFK the very first time I came to this country: a sea of yellow cabs going this way and that, standing in line noisily. I was overwhelmed by smells and sounds and business of people, waving, yelling, running. It was sweltering, I hadn't slept in over 24 hours and I thought "well, here you are, you made it to America." (Of course, at that time, I did think in Dutch still.) That was 1987.

Well, here I am now, 20 years later (ohmigod!) and this might be my last year in the US at least for a while. So that, not the burger in the basket, is the other thing I will write about from time to time. I have plenty of pictures to accompany any digressions I choose to divulge in. I will leave you with one of my favorite visuals from Texas, that amazing horizontal line underscoring that vast deep blue sky. Ya can't get that in Belgium either.

Greetings, from Texas, with love.

Architects and Interior Designers

So remember how I wrote that I had not heard from any of the professionals since sending all the pictures... well today I heard back from both of them. They both think the house is great with tons of potential and they both want the project! So now, somehow I have to get myself out of this. I am not sure how yet. (No, they are not part of the audience of this blog!) Anyway, the great thing is that they agree with my unprofessional view that the house can be turned into something amazing. Well, of course anything can be turned into something amazing with the right number of euros, right. In any case, they both want to start measuring and putting everything in Autocad so that they can start on the design. Just having that done will put us back quite a few. Oh my. The big decision then is, is the design worth the money, or do we spend that money on materials, etc. and try to design it ourselves? The first of (I am sure) many dilemmas. In any case, it is good to know I wasn't dropped from the drawing board so to speak. More on what we decide later, naturally. For now, it is Friday evening, I am ready for the weekend (but then I always am, and most so on Monday evening) so greetings, from Texas with love.

A few more pics

Great, the audience of the blog is growing. Michele left a great comment and tip in regard to the contract that will be drawn up between us and the contractor. See Michele and Greg just finished fixing up an apartment in the 15th in Paris, and I have seen the pics on their blog. It looks fabulous! So she advised to have a clause in the contract that stipulates that in case the contractor does complete the work in the agreed timeframe, 100 euros gets taken off of his price. Turns out that became a good deal for them since of course the work was not completed within said time. I am surprised any contractor would even sign that! Good thinking on their part. I wonder if that is an OK thing to do if the contractor is a friend of your father?

Anyway, I figured now that several of you are checking in, I will post a few more pictures.
Here is one of the Cogels-Osylei, the main avenue in the district Zurenborg. The lei (avenue) is known for its mix of architectural styles, Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Neo-Gothic, etc. Some of the houses are absolutely stunning. Most of this building occured from 1890 onwards and the architects competitively tried to outdo eachother. I was reading recently that they put all of their creativity and efforts in the facades, because once inside apparently these houses are nothing special. I find that hard to believe, but oh well.

The next architectural phase came in opposition to all this ornament and attention to detail, and characterizes the houses that are built in the streets that veer off of this main avenue. This much more simple and subdued building style was applied from the 1900s on, and our house is one of those.

Here is a picture of our street.
Notice how the facades of these houses are all much more streamlined. There is an emphasis on horizontals and verticals. This is all in direct opposition to the frivolous curviness of the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil. It is hard to believe now, but those styles were heavily criticized in their day.

And here is the facade of our house.
Ours does not have one of those wonderful little balconies but it does have a bay-window, which on the inside is really great.





So here are two shots of that.





I will leave it at that for now. Greetings, from Texas, with love.