Back from Belgium

At last I return, briefly, to the blogsite. I have returned from Belgium where I spent a little over a week dealing with all things HOUSE. It was one of the shortest trips I have ever made over there and one of the busiest. In fact, I wonder if I could qualify for a Guiness world record on the most amount of building-supply stores visited in a week, ha. (Let's hope that category does not exist.) I went over (alone! i.e. without Robert and more importantly without Evelina, more about that later) especially to make some decisions about materials etc. and to have face to face conversations with the construction team before they start up work again. I will spare you all a full report. In general, all went well. I decided on part of the kitchen, I decided on the organisation of the house, i.e. which bathroom gets a bath, which a shower, and so on, and I divided up the top floor in master bedroom, walk-in closet, and extra room where my dark room will be installed. (ahhhh to have a dark room again in this digital age!) I picked tile for the bathrooms, and colors for the entire house! I spent two sessions of 3 hours with the electrician deciding on lighting, plugs, and switches. And I discussed all the plumbing and heating issues with the plumber. There still are some talks needed between the contractor and the engineer on adding the right supports everywhere and the manner in which this will be done, but hopefully all that wil be straightened out this week (no pun intended.)

So what did I not yet decide on (even though I had planned to): the type of floor for the dining room and kitchen. Wood or not wood, that has been the question. And if not, then what? I also had hoped to have all the bathroom fixtures taken care of but I brought all the catalogues and after Robert and I went over everything together this week, we are making progress and I hope to finalize all that soon as well. See, the plumber needs to know where the faucets will be and what type of faucet they will be. He is the first to start now, along with the general contractor who will be adding steel in the walls so that the our 3rd floor will indeed remain where it is and not merge with the 2nd and 1st. So it seems like a detail, to be chosing this faucet or that when the house is basically reduced to a pile of rubble, but it is quite important. If the plumber can't move on, the electrician has to wait, etc. etc.

So, I have learned many things! One is that everything is very expensive! Ha. I can see now that it would be easy (provided one had the money) to spend hundreds of thousands on a house. Many of the 1st bids I received, I slashed in half by taking out luxurious items. Example: a single switch on a LCD computer-programmed panel that turns on all the lights in the house just as they are programmed while classical (or any other) music comes out of little speakers in every room. Nice, but no thanks. Not with that price-tag. Even after all my slashing and scratching out of items, the house will still be exponentially more convenient and luxurious than we have had here in our bungalow in Austin--where we have lived very happily for the past 14 years.

Another thing I learned is that there is always WAY, WAY more to do than one initially thinks there is to do. Would we have bought this house if we had exactly known all the work that is involved now? Maybe, maybe not. But gosh, it will all be worth it. We are very excited to see the end result. And I am very happy with everyone who is working for us. Everyone made a effort to come meet with me in Antwerp and go over everything in much more detail than normal, all because everyone is aware of our situation in trying to orchestrate this from across the Atlantic.

Together with my parents I kept busy with all this from early in the morning until late at night. After all the businesses were closed, I worked on revising bids and drawing plans. My mom joked that the architect ought to pay me, ha. That's a good one! I barely had time to miss my little girl. But when I did, I missed her much. I had her little PJ's with me and a little clay footprint and we saw each other on sightspeed regularly. She did not miss me much (thank goodness) as she was having fun in Austin with extra attention from her papa, Gramma who was visiting, and her aunt Rebecca who came over to play with her and who got a new puppy! Plus, she seemed to understand that I was on an airplane and went to Belgium.

I came back last Sunday with my mom, who is here now. Wednesday my father arrives for what may be their last trip to Austin while we live here. I keep hoping that everyone will come back when I finally will walk for my PhD graduation... but gosh, when will that be? Evelina is loving all the visits and learning new words every day. I promise I will post plans and photos next time. I just wanted to send out a quick update and apologize to all of you who are reading this and are not getting emails from me. I am keeping very busy.

Greetings from a very hot Texas, with love, vanessa
And PS Belgium still does not have a government! More on that next time too.

A trip to Santa Fe while Belgium is in political crisis

August is nearly over. Robert, Evelina, and I just got back from a nice vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We flew to Amarillo (well that was the plan -- more later), stayed with Robert's mom, and then drove from there to Santa Fe, which takes about 5 hours including a stop for a picnic. It is a beautiful drive. I have now in these past 15 years done it several times, in both winter and summer, and I still enjoy just gazing at the landscape. Evelina did really well too. She is becoming a seasoned traveler.


Of course non of us could have anticipated that the trip to Amarillo (which should have been a 35 minute flight from Austin to Dallas, and then another 50 minute flight to Amarillo) would take us over 12 hours and we never even made it to Amarillo! Robert's mom had to come get us in Lubbock (where Buddy Holly was born, for those of you who care) at 9 in the evening and then drive another hour and a half to Amarillo. We decided to fly to Amarillo because we thought an 8 hour drive would have been too much for Evelina. Then one cancelled flight and several rebookings later (and hardly an apology from American Airlines, let alone any reimbursement) it took us 12 hours of driving, flying, and 3 airports, but not the one we had planned to go. For those of you in Belgium, is this sufficient proof that Texas is a BIG state?

We were in Santa Fe for seven days and it was wonderful to be there again. It was hotter than we expected and wanted it to be but we nevertheless enjoyed the mountain air and the wonderful food. And the art. It was Indian Market, an annual festival that exhibits the arts of over 1000 Native American artists in the plaza. Lots to see and lots to buy (not for us though, most of it is way beyond our wallets.) But it was fun to look at. Over 100,000 people came to SF this very weekend for looking at and buying art. Santa Fe in general has lots of art to admire with the galleries and the public art everywhere, so with this market added to it, it was a real treat. Evelina loved all the sculptures of animals and made sure that all animals large and small were hugged and touched. Her favorites were the large elephants by an artist of whom we have a few small pieces.











She was also introduced to Native American music and loved the drums. She drummed so much on Grandma's drum that Grandma got her one of her own. See here in the picture, she could not even wait to get her diaper back on, so drumming bare-bottomed it is!


At Grandma's house in Amarillo she discovered the piano and that truly topped it all. She played whenever we let her and got so excited that she had to stand up. She did pretty well, considering the piano was slightly out of tune and it was her first attempt. In fact, it sounded quite similar to some avant-garde experimental jazz that is often played in coffee-shops. This type of music is much more bearable when you have a cute toddler to look at than as back ground over some coffee, lemme tell ya!












One of the events at the Festival was a competition in Native American costume. So here are a few shots from that. It was hard to capture them all due to the large crowd of spectators, but I think I got some of the splendor in these pictures.






















She did wonderfully on the way back again and on the drive and flight back. We stopped at the "Welcome to Texas" sign which now also proudly announces that Texas is the home of President Bush. In case anyone still was not aware of that connection.. I got out to take pictures. The plan was to take pictures of Evelina and each of us there, but with a temperatur of 111F (nearly 43 Celsius!) we decided to leave her in the car! The ones I took of myself did not turn out too flattering, so I post only this one:








And here is Evelina at the Amarillo airport ready to head to Austin again.


She was very happy to be home again too, and to play with toys that she had done without for over a week. Going back to day care the next day seemed exciting until the reality of that hit. She has not been happy there all week. I'd keep her home if it weren't for the fact that I leave for Belgium next week and she will have to be there anyway, and I don't want to make it more difficult on Robert.

So, what is going on in Belgium? On a national level, the country is in crisis! Remember how on June 10th there were elections? Well, all that is still not solved. The various parties cannot seem to agree on a coalition. It seems that all the subborness is coming from one particular woman on the French-speaking side. Because, of course nearly all of the stumbling blocks have to do with the language issue French (the Walloons) and Flemish. Can we please get over this? The funny part of it all (at least to me) is that in the Netherlands they did a poll about the Belgian situation and a whopping 64% thinks that Flanders ought to secede and join the Netherlands. Ha! And who shall rule them then? Well, the Dutch queen of course! That really got me. All the problems are due to the strong identities of both groups (Walloons and Flemish) and then to solve it the Flemish should become Dutch? Yeah right.

So now, the person who has been leading all the conversations and negotiations has called it quits. He has gone knocking on the Palace's door and said to the King, you solve it. (Doesn't it start to sound like some fictional tale of some far-away place now? Well, I suppose for many of you Belgium is some far-away place.) Anyway, the King now will have to fix it. Either by his own negotiations, or by putting someone else in charge of trying to appease the opposing views. So how abaout that! A democratically-voted parliament cannot agree and has to have the KING (!) come urge them to stop hooking horns so that the country can finally have a government again? Oh the irony of it all!

More personally, good news about the house. The building permit has FINALLY been submitted and while we wait to obtain it, much of the work can actually continue (or rather, ... start.) I must say that I am eager to be there again. I leave the 31st. The plan is that I will make several decisions about materials etc. so that all the work can continue smoothly. The architect is hopeful that all can be done by January. Let's keep all fingers crossed about that. I will post more pictures as they become available. I will post some more pics of our trip below the blabla here for you all.

For now, I hope you have enjoyed these and I send you all greetings from Texas with love, vanessa

Here are some shots of Evelina with a new friend at Grandma's house, Evelina walking with Grandma and Dale, strollin' in Santa Fe and looking stylish, Evelina at the SF children's museum with face-paint, and observing a rolly-polly bug on Grandma's front porch. And then a great shot (I think) of Evelina and Papa taken at our pic-nic. I absolutely love the wide-open skies in Texas and New Mexico. And then of course, even on vacation there is phone-business to do, even for toddlers.

The biggest lesson of all

Last Friday two television-network helicopters crashed in mid-air during a pursuit of a story in Phoenix, Arizona. Four people died instantly. One of those people was my best friend's brother, Jimmy. He was only 37, too young, and so full of life and passion. I only met Jimmy a few times but what I remember is his energy and vibrancy.

I have no words for the deep sadness I feel in my heart for my friend and her family. These past few days, Robert and I have done our regular thing, but heavily, and silenced, our minds constantly wandering and reflecting on how fragile life truly is. And how hard it will be to go on, to pick up again with this loss in their midst. His family wrote the obituary that was in today's Austin American Statesman and here is a part from it that I want to share with all of you: "While we will never get over this loss, or recover from this tragedy, I do hope that we can learn something from Jimmy. We should try to live life like him - passionately, with conviction and with a true zeal for life." That is the biggest lesson of all and the only one that truly matters in this life.

written from Texas, with love and sadness, vanessa

The weather, snakes, and Lientje

It is funny how it feels as if I have not posted anything in a long, long time, and yet, it was only 12 days ago. Maybe that is because it seems as if so much has happened. Not necessarily on a personal level, but wordly... I try to watch some news daily, and it seems that the world is flooding and burning. I just wonder if it is all just coincidence or if our big Mother is fed up and angry with us? I am sure that the fact that I only recently watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" adds to my sentiment. Austin has had more rain than any July I have experienced here, in Belgium several towns have been flooded, and that is only on the small scale. China just can't keep up with the down pours it is experiencing. All that wetness while the Western US and Athens are burning....

I must say I have enjoyed the slightly milder weather here, but today again was brutal! It was 98F (37C) and while we were walking to the overly airconditioned mall, on the parking lot with the tarmac and all the cars, it felt like 105 (40). Brutal! For all you readers not in Texas, imagine what the car feels like after being parked in that for a few hours. According to the forecast the mild (i.e. 80sF and 27C) weather is over now and we will be back to our "normal" summer heat.

Speaking of normal and Texas... I wanted to share a photograph with you that I took one morning after parking my car on campus and walking to the pook for a quick swim before starting work. As I mentioned before, I always carry my camera with me, and it served me well this morning. Here I am, strolling to the campus pool, alongside a little creek that runs through campus (Waller Creek for those of you who know UT campus.) Most of the time this river bed is dry but due to all the aforementioned rains we have been getting it is actually a nice little stream now. I was admiring how clear the water was when I suddenly noticed ...


Yep, a genuine watermoccasin. These things are not friendly to say the least. And that is when I thought, wow, not too many people run into snakes on their way to work. This is TEXAS for ya!













Let's stick with that subject for the next picture. The three of us went to Fredericksburg, Texas a few weekends ago. Here is a shot of a shop window in this little touristy town outside of the state's capital.













I can't say that, after all these years of living here, I have ever really experienced what this shirt so proudly advertises, but maybe I have just been going to the wrong places -- or I should say, maybe I have not been going to the right places! ha. Notice the taxidermic armadillo slurping Miller Light through a straw! Just thought I would call attention to the details that might otherwise be lost on my friends over there in Europe.

The Fultons have been having fun in the weekends and I thought I would share some pictures of some of our excursions. So here we go, lots and lots of Evelina shots! But first a first. A few weekends ago we ran into some friends of ours at a playground. They have a little boy and Evelina and him ran around together. Here she is goofin' around.

















And then, suddenly (well... encouraged by his father whose legs are in the picture) he smacked her on the lips. To my knowledge, this was her first uninitiated kiss! He then put his arms around her while she ran away. It was pretty cute. She is usually the dominant toddler, but little Stevie took her by surprise. Older men, oh well.

















So here are the rest of the pictures. We have been swimming, shopping, eating, museum-visiting.... I will be brief about them and will post the pics in small format. You all know that if you can always double-click on a picture to see it bigger.




There is Lientje and me at Barton Springs -- wow, the water was cold! Spring-fed and fresh! There is Lientje and Robert at the mall. She loved the little car. A $4 rental and sooo much more fun than her regular Bugaboo stroller. Then there is Lientje while eating her very first Nutella sandwich. Now, I suppose I feel obliged to make a little caveat here to anyone who thinks children ought not to have sugar. In Belgium Nutella is considered (even though it is Italian and not Belgian chocolate) one of the essential food groups in the food pyramid. And I must concur with my friend Leslie here, that chocolate is OK, all other candy-products are no-no's. Plus, this was just a taste, and it is not her daily breakfast or snack. So please no judgment on my mothering. Because see, next there is Lientje eating guacamole with much gusto. Avocados are superfoods, and she gets plain unseasoned and unsalted avocados very often. She loves them, and screams out "Cado!" when I offer it to her.

We went to Houston last weekend, where we visited the Natural History museum and saw the dinosaurs and butterfly garden. Here is a picture of Evelina and me with Sam Houston in the background, whom Evelina liked because he is on a horse -- so he must be a fine man according to her. And then a picture of us with the dino-remains, and one of her walking around in the very tropical (i.e. muggy and sweltering) butterfly garden.
























I will end with a few shots from our first trip to the Austin Children's Museum. Evelina absolutely LOVED it. She gave her all for about 2 hours and then passed out in the stroller once back outside. She ran around, touched about everything there was to be touched, made friends (again an older man though no kisses this time) and was in constant amazement. We will be returning.


















And then this is just too cute not to post. We had dinner at Chuys tonight, and they have a photobooth. So here we are. Lientje was not quite sure what the clicking and the lights were doing (hence the slightly freightened look -- deer in the headlights!) but she sure thought it was super cool when our pictures fell out.
So that is all for now. No news on the house. Belgium is still in its mandatory construction-sector-vacation. I certainly get more work done without the emails and phone calls from architects and contractors. So I brace myself as the quiet will end in a little over a week. Lots of people are working out bids for us, so when it all starts up again I might need some valium. Ha, just kiddin' (or am I?) As always I will keep you posted, greetings, from Texas with love.

Confessions and then to bed with Mussolini

I have a strange confession to make. I just spent a few minutes browsing on the internet and found a site that compiles blogs from various expats (www.expat-blog.com). Considering the fact that I have been (am?) an expat twice in two rather very different countries, I am slightly fascinated by other people's expat experiences. Moreover, I am confused about what being an expat truly means as I am facing my (in essence) sixth (!) transatlantic move, but this time "back" to Belgium, i.e. "home." Odd, because I think of it as yet another expat experience whereas I don't think of myself as such at the moment, living in Texas. Oh dear, I truly have been here long! Anyway, for anyone interested the site lists blogs by country of current residence and nicely shows by means of a flag where the author is from. Here's some trivia: there were 910 blogs for Western Europe, of which 24 for Belgium, 84 for Italy, and 214 for France! Does that mean that there is more to write about as a foreigner in France (or should I say, more to gripe about? ha, kidding!) Or do more people move to France? Obviously, these numbers mean nothing, but for some reason (maybe because it is late and I am tired....) I thought they were interesting. More than half of the authors writing about Italy were American. And from a first glance it seems that the majority of authors for both Italy and France were women who had fallen in love with a native and followed them home. Ha! I guess that is what I did way back when in 1993. If only there had been blogs then.

So what is my "confession"? I am strangly fascinated by the fact that so many people have no problem at all with going public with these things. They are filled with pictures, thoughts, etc. for just anyone to read and look at. Here is me, and here is my house and my dog, and here is a picture of what I cooked for dinner..... Some of the blogs are actually geared towards being useful to others, for instance people collecting information about an upcoming move to Italy and wanting to make it available to others. (Hey, I could help out all those other people who would want to buy a house in Belgium and then try to renovate it while living in Texas! Yeah, I betcha I would fill a real gap there!) But most of them seem to be blablabla-blogs. Like mine, actually. Although I must also say that looking at them I was actually not interested in reading any of them. Feels like a waste of time... so then, why do people do this--writing blogs I mean. (And why in the world would I think any of you are interested in what I rant about!) And what is the attraction of going public? Now, I suppose in order to get an sort of reply to this, I oughta go public, no? Several bloggers have numbers on their blogs indicating how many people have looked at their rantings. Wow, some are up there in the 800s. How bizarre that is. Yet also how fascinating. I guess they make the world yet again a bit smaller. What an incredibly strange phenomenon this internet is. I will never understand it really.

I will have to think some more on expatness. Can you ever un-become one? Have I lived here in the US long enough not to feel like an expat anymore? And can you be one in your home country? Aha, that is the biggest question of all. I will have to wait and see. There is the title for my next novel "A foreigner in my native land." I will keep you posted. For now, I head to bed. Mussolini lays there waiting for me. (well... his biography that is. Yes, I suppose it is an odd choice for evening reading, but oh well, I have my reasons.) Benito, here I come. Buona notte, da Texas.

the stillness of the photographic image

Another week starts tomorrow. One with new goals and resolutions. As you all know, my blog is not a public blog. I am not an avid blogger, and I don't really care about blogs other than those of my friends. But I will admit that I have done a search here and there to see if there are any American ex-pats living in Belgium who are sharing their thoughts and observations about that odd little (seemingly humourless-- as someone called it) country... Well, I found one, but I think if I were to meet that person we would not like each other very much. Plus, said person simply wrote too darn much for even his best friends to remain interested I'd say. In my search though, I also came upon a blog titled "frombelgiumwithlove" ! Now, that had to be checked out. This person hardly uses words at all, but posts his photographs. And very amazingly captivating photographs at that! Anyone interested in the still image is hereby encouraged to go take a peek. It reminded me of the fact that I too love photography and that sadly, I have not been able to do very much about this lately. But, even while taking random shots -- hooray for the digital camera and its minimal size, for I always have it with me now -- there is the occassional interesting subject just waiting to be captured. So, I thought, inspired by the 44-year old stranger in French-speaking Belgium, I would post, completely randomly, two of my slightly-better-than-the-random-shot pictures. I think these are perfect proof that even in every-day life the surreal and mysterious are right there in front of us. Often while we are moving we don't notice it, it takes one to look through a camera to halt that moment and realize how bizarre it really is. It is the stillness of the image that truly makes it come to live. To keep these images captivating, I will not explain their origins, except that one was taken in Hasselt, Belgium, and the other in Austin, Texas, from whence I write and greet you with love.

The week of the fourth.

The German artist Martin Schongauer made this engraving in 1475 representing the temptations attacking St. Anthony who though wearisome remains unfaced by the various demonic creatures plucking and pulling at him. Now try to replace St. Anthony's face with mine more in the state of that other, most likely more familiar, great work of art, Edward Munch's The Scream, and you will have a pretty good visual picture of how my week was. I.e. I was less serene in dealing with all the tugging and pulling than dear St. Anthony, but then again, I am no saint. Anthony was trying to medidate and through all of this he prevailed. I am trying to write a dissertation... but somehow all of my devils take priority.

See the creature with the long snout beating at poor Anthony with a stick, in my week that was a miscommunication with the architect (had in May) which now came to light and escalated. At the very best, some major work which we expected to be done in September (one of the things I was actually planning on flying down for) will not be able to get done until December (if we are lucky.) At the very worst, this miscommunication will cost us a very large sum, because we ordered and are having made all the windows, which it now turns out we should not have, and could be rejected by the historical commission. Yes, we are just a little irked at the architect, but we are working it out. Hopefully.

The ugly things at the bottom tearing away at the saint's robes were the fever and rash caused by a nasty virus that got into Evelina's little body and which caused her to be sick for two days and two nights, and morphed her into a very cranky and clingy little toddler. On top of that she got three major shots yesterday morning at her 15 month check up which made her even more miserable. She did not really fall asleep until 5 a.m. this morning. After about 4 nights of waking up several times a night I am very much reminded of what it was like when she was just a few weeks old. Except that she is now much heavier to pick up, more difficult to deal with when she is screaming, and I don't get to take naps during the day. Hopefully, she is on the better hand. Although we have been warned that the chicken pox shot could flare up next week sometime. Yeah!
Then there is the problem with my email. Minor really, but quite annoying. I have already made two trips to the MAC store to get it fixed and will now have to go a third time taking the desktop computer in. Quite a drag!

There are a few more devils which have been gnawing at me, but hey, this is a blog, not a diary. All to say, we enter into the weekend quite exhausted and drained and no, we did not see a spark of fireworks on the fourth. Oh well, I think in all these years I have lived here we maybe made an effort to see them 3 times. And since we are not reall BBQ fans either, not red-white-and blue-toting Americans, the 4th is not all that much of a big deal. It was a day off for Robert, but spent as I said, with a sick baby. We tried to leave town and make a little day trip, but we turned around half way there, because Evelina was so uncomfortable and that nasty rash just popped up suddenly making me quite worried I couldn't enjoy the trip anyway. We will give the day trip another shot tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Good news is that everyone is indeed working very hard on our house and I expect to have some more pics next week. I hear that the contractor will start chipping away at the plaster and uncover the original brick work which we are keeping "naked" so to speak. We have also decided to fill in the open space of the loft with a glass floor/ceiling resting on steel beams, so we are pretty excited about that. We still need to hear from the engineer and of course are awaiting a bid on this. Let's hope we will not have to nix this as I have seen some pictures of this type of construction and it looks pretty awesome.

In Belgium today the "bouwverlof" starts. This is a three week vacation for all people who are working in the construction sector as well as sectors connected to it. It is an estimated 400,000 people who have off until the beginning of August. The entire construction sector is down. We are lucky as it seems our contractor equals the Duracell bunny and wants to keep on going. Gosh, I wouldn't be surprised if in Belgium one could fined for working during mandatory time off! This weekend then this break will result in nearly all of those 400,000 people and their families getting into their cars and driving to France, or Spain, or Italy, or where ever as long as it is South, there are beaches, and the sun will be shining. Imagine the roads!

And in the US the frenzy over Apple's Iphone has slowed down after last week's release. I will admit, it is the first gadget phone I silently yearn to own. But I will wait for its European release. I will just have to wait to be hip a few more months. Ha.

Will keep you all posted, greetings from Texas wit love, vanessa