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August 01, 2002 : simply a good day
Today was a lazy day. Jessica and I, sans her fiancee Eric, caught up on our girl talk. She had decided to spend the day puttering around with me, helping me do laundry (consisting of needed items, like underwear) and we fixed ourselves a gigantic lunch. Jessica and I have the same general feelings on a lot of things, and we always seem to have good conversations, whether they be on long drives to Kansas City (see the journal entry from June) or over coffee. It is her type of friendship that I value most in my circle of friends. I have the pleasure of having several such friends, and they, along with my dearest Eva, keep me sane and mentally stretched. Among our usual topics of our upbringing and our families, we chatted about her upcoming wedding. It's not actually a pressing issue, but it's something fairly close at hand. Basically a year off. Not about dresses or colors of shoes and not about how many bridesmaids or who should sing what sort of hymn, just about a wedding which we dubbed a celebration. Not your typical, run of the mill wedding with a unity candle and vows said by a nervous preacher to an audience of just-as-nervous onlookers/witnesses dressed in their Sunday best. No, it's going to be a celebration of Jessica and Eric who are tying the not for so many reasons beyond wanting to become husband and wife. Not that my opinion matters much when it comes to weddings, but it made me feel special in a sort of way for her to ask my opinion on anything of the sort. I'm a lesbian in a committed relationship who has had limited involvement in weddings in general. Since most of my closest friends are of my "sort" I've been left out of the bridesmaid extravaganza, the wedding planning, the bachelorette parties, and weddings in and of themselves. And yet she wanted my opinion, and I gave it freely, and we shot ideas back and forth. We just happened to do it without pouring over 5 copies of glossy Modern Bride magazines. Not knowing how to add this to the entry, on a quite humorous note, while at the laundry mat helping Jessica out with her digital camera, we happened on pictures from her vacation and a few were of Jessica sunbathing...topless. Granted the image size was about an 1 inch squared, as it is the screen on the back of a camera, it took a second to soak in and became quite the joke of the day and on into the evening. Europeans may think this is odd, but I would venture to say that most good-friends back in the states really haven't seen the breasts of their good-friends. And the shock/humor would be just as entertaining. After coming back from doing laundry, I wrote a quick email to my mother in reply to what color of sandals to get Eva and I for Christmas. The sandals were supposed to be a surprise for Eva, but while in Perugia, Italy, at an internet cafe, she found out by reading over my shoulder. Something along the lines of an email from my mother that could be paraphrased like this: Hope you are having a great vacation. We're going to go to China next spring. What size of sandal does Eva need? Daddy and I are excited about coming to Europe again in November. Hi to Eva. Love Mom." Oh well. :) While writing this email concerning shoe color (the original color choice was sold out) I dropped the news that money was going to be tight this fall and that perhaps we should combine a November visit with Thanksgiving and Christmas. During one trip to the bathroom, during a discussion on "good looking" people of the world and whether or not they are deemed "good looking" by society and media or whether or not "good looking" qualities are innate, I got the email. "Daddy and I agree that if you want to celebrate Thanksgiving/Christmas while we are there, it is not a problem. If you see that you can come for Christmas, let us know. I understand Eva wanting to wait until the weather is nice. Maybe you can come for a few days at Christmas, and the two of you come late March or early April. We leave for China April 16. Maybe you can come for your birthday; that would be fun and the weather should be nice. Whatever works for you, works for us." Wow. I couldn't believe it. When we are younger we think of our parents being mature; mature in the sense that they are older and wiser. Not just in that they don't spit when they are on bridges or tops of buildings, but just parent-like. And then when we get older and more mature as adults, just when we think we are stepping into the circle of our parents, they impress us still. It's not that they ever stand still. They are always growing and changing. It's amazing. So in other words, it meant a lot to me. I wrote my mother back and told her how much I had needed that. That how now, since the pressure was off, we would probably be able to save even more money. :) IN THE NEWS: WHAT I ATE TODAY:
August 02, 2002 : past lives
I once had a dream in which I was in the audience at my high school graduation. Apparently you rarely see yourself in your dreams, and in this one I remember watching myself walk down the isle to my seat with other graduates. In fact, the younger me even smiled slightly at the older me. Something along the lines of a look of recognition. Friendly. If you hang out with me for long, whether it be here in Belgium or back in the states, the conversation will inevitably drum up my past life. My past life as a Christian wannabe martyr. My life as a 18 year old zealot servant of the lord. How I attended a Christian university before going for the cheaper (paid for) state university. How I went into college with every intention of graduating and going missionary and how I left it as a lesbian graphic designer with a Christian chip on my shoulder. There are many other very interesting stories, of course, one of which was brought up today. Last night, while looking through Jessica's vacation pictures (no, not the tittie variety I stumbled upon) there was a picture of Jessica that resembled a high school teacher I had my senior year. It just so happened that the way the picture was taken it was a spitting image of her. I told Jessica this, and over breakfast Jessica brought it back up. "You didn't happen to mean a lady that was a member of my parent's church, did you?" she questioned. And over the course of the afternoon, I retold her the story of Jamie Brown. The story of Jamie Brown goes something like this. She was the assistant volleyball and basketball coach, as well as the Spanish teacher at Fair Grove my last year of school. She was overtly Christian and over the course of the year, she became one of my best friends as well as spiritual mentors. She lived in a household of such mentors, and throughout the summer following my senior year, their house became my second home. Well, post my first Indigo Girls concert and the first few weeks of college, it became obvious to me that I was a lesbian. Weeks past, and my relationship to Jamie became quite rocky, but since friendships are strong, I never imagined it would end the way it did. In January, just 5 months after my eye-opening experience began, I made the trip to Springfield to have dinner with her. I remember it being a good evening. It was a return to "old times." As the evening drew to a close, I found myself sitting in the living-room of their new house, Jamie answering the phone and returning with her Bible. Not unusual, of course, but as she walked in she asked me, "Andrea, you believe we are in the end times, right?" And, drumming up beliefs I was already starting to shed, I answered, "yes." And then read: She then went on to say that she didn't want me to call her, write her, stop by, or hear from me at all. I left completely crushed. I could go on and on about this, but I'm not. For a long time I figured she had her own beliefs and I would defend them, but the older I get the more I realize what an impact that had on my faith. Not that there was a huge amount of faith anymore at this time. Certainly I still believed in any number of things but the fire was gone out. Christianly speaking, I thought I was going through a huge drought and even for the next 3 and a half years of college I would, at intervals of every 3 months or so, have a huge period of questioning. I even went so far as to mix and mingle with the Ozark Christian College folk that hung out at the coffee shop at Books A Million where I worked in College. But nothing stuck. Christianly speaking, once again, I guess one could say that I was calloused. That my heart was hardened. But I cannot look around me and say that my heart is hard, it is hard to the concept of a God that created the world in 6 days, or that women shouldn't become pastors, or that Jesus would like the church as it exists today...but hard? No. So I promised I wouldn't talk about it further. Obviously there are things to work out, as I have joked with Eva and her brother Joris, that in a year's time I will have worked out the secular equivalent of faith and prayer. What a project for a year! (wish me luck!) So Jamie Brown left my high school, got married, had two kids, and taught at Warsaw High School and attended Jessica's father's church. Her father, in fact, was Jamie and her husband's spiritual mentor. Small world. Jessica and I spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out Jamie's married name, and then, once we found out, we spent another hour trying to find her email address. No such luck. I'm usually quite a whiz-bang at internet searching, but I still came up empty handed. I told Jessica that it might stem from the fact that Jamie might think the Internet a bit too end-timeish, that I remember her not liking the concept of a Check Card (the debit card, the equivalent to the BancContact card here in Belgium, and even the Proton card.) shrug. So all of this stemmed from the fact that a picture of Jessica vaguely resembled Jamie, and that I mentioned it at all. Little does Jamie know that her pastor's daughter was my roommate in college and is still a close friend. There is something like a poetic justice in that. As for an accomplishment, Jessica and I made Falafel for dinner. If you grew up in a small little Midwestern town like I did, it just might be that you've never had it. I had my first falafel in Palo Alto, California and now I'm hooked. A Jewish (Middle Eastern) concoction of mashed chick-peas and spices, they are rolled into balls and fried, stuck into a pita, and enjoyed with or without garnish and humus. Few times do you make something out of a mix that ends up being so perfect. It was, as I often state, one of the best dinners I've ever made. Fresh falafel (though the package had been sitting in our cupboard for at least 6 months and was past-date) made in our own home. Yet another thing to add to my list of food-making abilities. And now we don't have to go down the street to the falafel place with the grumpy non-Orthodox Jewish ladies. IN THE NEWS:
August 03, 2002 : scooter at last
Ah the scooter. I have mentioned it many a time in not-so-recent entries. And most of the time I vowed that it would soon come out of the shop and in to our possession. Say no more...it's ours. We got up early and hopped the number 8 to the scooter shop only to get there and have the guy say, "um, it's lunchtime...we will reopen in an hour and a half." So, having not eaten breakfast yet, we headed into town. I ate a kaasbroodje (something I haven't eaten in awhile because I'm watching my waistline) and Eva got a waffle. Then we headed to Pablo's to split some guacamole. (Ok, so I know that the avocado isn't the most nutritious vegetable, but it's Saturday, and it's yummy!) Then we headed to the market, and I made Eva promise that we'd leave with bags. I've never been to the farmer's markets back home, as my mother is quite the "farmer" when it comes to her vegetable garden, and I've never been much the fan of vegetables until I turned 26. :) But the market on Saturday and Sunday in Antwerp is quite the treat. I've always given Eva crap about how we used to go and leave empty handed, but now that I'm into budgeting and the market seems like the perfect way to get quality vegetables at a fraction of the price of the Vergo. Now Eva used to be a pro at this. She knows not to buy from Belgians, but to buy from the immigrants. Sure enough, as we wound our way past the stalls with white folks and on into the darker skinned men in the stalls, the prices dropped. We bought everything from fresh mint to carrots. We left with several bags apiece and made our way home to drop the goods off and head on to the scooter shop. At the scooter shop we got the little scooter out, paid the fix-fees and happily scooted home. I've actually never driven/ridden motorized 2 wheel machines, so the affect was a bit daunting. And, since our scooter maxes out at 40 kmh, we're supposed to not only wear helmets, but have insurance and licenses. Since we had neither one, we slowly crept our way home on the bike path. So slow in fact, partly due to the fact that I was a little leery driving the thing since I'm the only one with a license, we were passed by a man on his bicycle. The three of us got quite a chuckle out of it but it didnt' mean that I was going to speed up. Over cobble stones and tram tracks, we arrived safely. The story goes something like this, Eva got it when she was at the appropriate age where image matters. Much like the transition from generic tennis shoes to name brand. I remember my last pair of Wal-Mart Pro Runner tennis shoes and how I wore brand names from then on out. And so the scooter story goes. Eva compared it not with shoes, but with souped up, low-riding cars. Having a scooter (a pretty beat up scooter even) meant being thrown into the group of people that had motorized transportation. So she stuck with her bike. Only now does she see the importance of getting places quickly. And now that she's older and wiser, she can see the beauty of fixing the plastic fender with duct-tape and riding it with pride. :) Since we were insurance-less, and still are, we didn't get to take the scooter on our evening adventure of dinner with Tom and Ilse. Always a pleasure, this particular evening was a farewell dinner for their trip to Thailand. Tom fixed a scrumptious (an Eva word I have picked up) dinner and, along with several other friends, we headed to Antwerp's museum of modern art for a late-night musical treat. Art installations and djs. All of the museums were open until ungodly hours, and after the rest of our party headed to a club, Eva and I headed to the other art museum. The city was so alive at 1 in the morning. Old men with their wives on their arms touring around the Rubens and teenagers who would never spend a hard earned Euro (or even the government's for that matter) on museum entrance fees perused the painting restoration rooms. There was even live music in the front room. This just goes to defend my point that Belgium is concerned about the arts. Whenever someone asks me what I like about Belgium, I have to mention their throwing money at culture. Culture is always good for society. Especially when it gets past the aloof art-historian poser and on to the working-class guy that works at the docks. Or, for what it's worth, when it gets to people like Eva and I. The walk home is always the worst part from a night on the town. No trams. No night buses that come near our house. It's always a pound-the-pavement time, full of discussions not appropriate for tram, bus, bike, or now scooter. Tonight we talked about passion. Or lack thereof. Not the passion that will keep Eva and I together until we wheeze our last breaths, but the passion that sustains people in their life. Like the Sound of Music tour-guide who was crazy about paintings from the 1600s. Or like people who collect LPs and dj on Saturday nights because they love music. Or even like people that can name every wild flower. That sort of passion. Eva drummed up a very good question that I will now post. She recalled using the internet for the first time, and how on the bus ride home she was in awe of how much information was available. How she wondered if she was "passionless" because she knew there was so much out there or because she just hadn't "found it" yet. So we are much in the same boat. I consider myself a menagerie of talents, though nothing is ever fired into something of any true greatness. (I'm being extreme here to prove a point, so don't think that I'm wanting to become the next Warhol or Dickinson or Gates.) The only thing I have ever been passionate about was God and followed by the tuba, which never saw it's potential reached because I was concerned with so many other things. There has always been so many "other things." I recall an art teacher in college telling me that I simply needed to buckle down and do something instead of so many things. And I knew what he meant back then, amidst playing on the college soccer team, working at Books A Million, majoring in English and Art. Nothing got all of my time. I have never given anything all of my attention. And of course it's not fair to say now that I give all of my attention to Eva. :) Eva's point, though, is this: are we supposed to have a few things we are passionate about? Is that something that is supposed to happen in life? For the "educated" in the "modern" world, I would say yes. If it's not something we are supposed to do out of our innateness, it is something we feel pressure to have because it gives us substance and/or worth, rather self-fulfilling or praise and respect from others. But I'm not convinced. We are still going to try to change. So Eva and I are big on change. I took a picture in Florence about just that. Change. (I'll post it later) We shall see in the coming months if Eva finds her niche and whether or not I will be able to find my own. Months is hardly the sort of time-line to discuss here, but maybe it's fitting for the subject matter. IN THE NEWS:
August 05, 2002 : nothing days
Some days you feel like nothing happened at all in the world. Or at least I wonder. Maybe no one else wonders, but I do. Days like today are smashed between more productive days. Or two days in a row happen like yesterday (journal entry-less) and today. It's not that they aren't valid, and I certainly wouldn't opt to have them not exist in my life, but they are just there. Nothing much happens. Nothing groundbreaking. ("Not that groundbreaking things happen to me on a regular basis," I add with a snort and a chuckle.) It's like when I read the newspapers or, rather, I scan the Yahoo 5 line news blurbs and nothing much happens. Of course there are tragedies going on around the world. Injustices occurring as I type this out. And to go against everything I am trying to explain there will, of course, be an IN THE NEWS at the bottom of this entry. But I was productive. I switched Gretta's saddle (bike seat) with the one that came with my bike. I found a set of keys we had sworn had disappeared. I updated the journal with three entries. I worked on pictures for bracketland. I went to the market. I took a much-needed shower. I wrote a few emails. And I made yet another delicious dinner for Eva. That's it. No searching online for lost friends or picking up my "learn Javascript" book and getting to work. No freelance map making or webpage fixing. No long walk through the town (as it was drizzle) or buying Eva treats from the corner store. Like I said, nothing groundbreaking. This was a day when I sat with myself. Poured myself coffee. Read a couple more short stories and contemplated doing so many other things as I have just mentioned. And Eva, slaving away at work, would be so jealous as to have such time on her hands and me with so much of it. :) I did fix a damn good dinner though. Pork-chops and yet another casserole using the leftover cream of chicken from last week. And, as Eva has learned well, she said it was absolutely delicious. Sometime, on an off-day such as this, I should write down the story of the one meal that didn't work out. And I mean REALLY didn't work out. ;) IN THE NEWS: And one other bit of news that I can't seem to sum up in words. Apparently my homeland stands a very good chance of attacking a much smaller country this week. AND, since the US is so big about "weapons of mass destruction" how come we have so many? Just two thoughts for your Euro cents. (by the way, I should figure out how to type the Euro sign, shouldn't I?)
August 06, 2002 : cracks
Here in Antwerp they are still the fans of cobblestone. If it's not cobblestone streets it's flat stone sidewalks. Actually I suppose there are few cobblestone streets left, but the sidewalks area ll made of concrete squares stuck together with the precision of the pyramids. No mortar, just stones placed together. They aren't always the square (foot by foot square) variety, but they come in different colors and sizes. Imagine going to a Lowe's (or any other outdoor/hardware/lawn and garden) and checking out the bricks they sell for garden paths. Some fit together like puzzles and some are gray and some are red. Here you can watch a regular ol' workman piece together intricate designs with well-formed corners, slants where I can only imagine Lowe's-goers frantically wondering what to do with the left-over angle at the end of a turn. They are used brilliantly. They make sense. Whenever someone needs to work on some pipeline or electric line beneath the sidewalk, they simply remove 15 squares or so, dig a little, do their business, pile the dirt back in, and replace the squares. It involves a certain amount of hard labor, I guess, a certain about of sand that is drummed down to the appropriate level with a flat-ended jackhammer. And then on top of what is already leveled, more sand and then the squares are beaten into place with a mallet. I figure it not only saves on dumping concrete, just the idea of a flat ended jackhammer juxtaposed with the kind of demolition version. The sort of pointy, slant-tipped screwdriver that destroys a long-gone days work just as easily as it was done the first time around. And there is no waste. The bits of sand or earth that doest make it back into the pit get washed off with the next rain. And it's Belgium, so rain it's common. And I like the concept. The idea that the cracks between the cobbles and/or the squares take in rain. Not much of it, but a little. Coming from a world of concrete slabs and tarmacked (Eva word) parking lots I know that the rain seems to go where it wants to go...lakes in the midst of poorly leveled and poorly drained neighborhoods. I'm exaggerating a bit, and of course in any modern city in a downpour will encounter strange bodies of water even with the best of city planning. All of this leads to the one thing that made me furrow my brows today. Not in anger, but a strange awe. It rained today in Antwerp like it rarely rains. It seemingly rained the whole day long. From the moment I woke up and walked my 20 minute walk to a meeting till the time that Eva and I went to bed. Rain doesn't really bother me except for when it makes me not want to get out of bed. Rain doesn't bother me unless I'm in the sort of mood that needs the prodding of the sun to get things done. Walking back from my early morning freelance meeting, umbrella overhead, drizzle getting ready to become full-fledged rain, I dodged an old lady stooped over her sidewalk. Many a time have I marveled at the concept that some Belgians treat their portion of the sidewalk as if it is a part of their house. I suppose it would make the whole of Antwerp a prettier place if people would pick up, scrub, and even wash their 12 foot portion of flag-stones, but most of the time I think it's funny. The stooped old lady, out in her pastel-flowered house coat, with knee-high stockings and nursing shoes had a box-cutter in one hand going over the wee little space between every square. She didn't just do it once, but two or three times. Maneuvering the blade left and right as she went over it. Hoping to cut out any grass or moss that dared to grow there. And passing past her I saw that she had already worked in-between at least 20 or more squares, the spaces between gaping open and slightly muddied around the edges. To each her own. I much prefer to think of the bits of green as bits of modern-day survival. Just as I am the fan of the dandelion that roots itself in a yard and will not be beaten. I once new a lady who would get up early and venture out into her country yard with a dandelion rooter in hand. (basically a long pole with a metal bit on the end forked like a snake's tongue) She would be damned if a dandelion would nestle into her yard. Once found, she would uproot it and throw it into the dirt road. (as I can remember driving by on my 4-wheeler over the carcasses of dried of dandelions, root and all) So just as moss or grass between cracks, I'm a fan of this bit of survival. I can remember driving on old highways (highways that have become side roads after new highways have been built) and seen fescue-stalks knee high between the place where the highway connects with the shoulder. Or being on our great American road-trip last summer and seeing a faint hue of green between the 10 meter chunks of American motorways. I appreciate their resilience. I'm not the fan of trees grown from the side of dilapidated houses, but in areas of obvious personage, it's nice to see green. Enough of that. It was just a strange little happening on a rainy day. It soon started to pour down rain and as soon as I removed my jeans (wet from the knee down) I climbed into bed with a book, read awhile, and woke up 2 hours later. For dinner I fixed the most delicious entirely vegetarian meal. Spaghetti with parmesan and pepper, diced carrots and fresh green beans, with falafel balls. Eva even took a picture as to show my parents what progress I am making in the world of vegetables and "new things." IN THE NEWS:
August 08, 2002 : surprises
Jessica has been a permanent fixture in our house lately. She arrived yesterday in order that she could spend the night and then head to Brussels early this morning to pick up her sister. Since my plate wasn't filled today, I decided to get up with her (at 6 in the morning) and make the journey too. Eva quietly celebrated (with additional sleep) the fact that we were getting up earlier than her, as Jessica handed her the alarm clock when we left. We got to the airport just in time to watch her sister's plane land on the screen with the word 'arrived' cycling through three languages. We crowded around the arrivals gate with every sort of person there to pick up passengers: taxi drives with last-names scrawled on letter-sized paper, grandparents picking up grandchildren, tourists with their under-shirt zipper-pouched passport protectors sticking out from beneath their un-tucked shirts, mothers with children waiting for their father, significant others waiting for their others, businessmen with suitcases, men holding roses for their returning-home wives, and Jessica and I. Every class and color of person. So we waited. Our neighboring waiting folk received their passengers and left; replaced by new faces. As the minutes passed I began joking about her missing sister. Was Vanessa, the sister, that petite girl with dreads? No. 'Is your sister Asian?' I inquired if she was a Hasidic Jew with 4 children? 'Tell me she's not wearing that American flag on her shirt, is she?' Is that 'Moroccan girl you sister Jes?' And I held Jessica's camera for over an hour. I was supposed to take the perfect reunion picture. But it was soon apparent that there was going to be no reunion. Jessica began to be concerned. I went to check her email for 1 Euro a minute (I took 2 minutes) to see if Jess had an email telling her that her sister had missed her flight. I went upstairs to the check-in desk to see if V. Yoder had made it onto the flight. No. Oh no. So I went to tell Jessica who promptly called her mother who quickly told Jessica that her sister was to arrive tomorrow. She left the states today but arrived tomorrow. Ha ha ha. Apparently a girl who can sleep anywhere, Jessica had been sure that she had overslept and missed the flight completely. Jessica's going to make the same trip she made today tomorrow. Lucky for me I have other plans...but the reunion picture won't possibly be as good as it would have been today. :) On the way home we decided to surprise Eva at work. There is rarely a sight more precious than the face of recognition, surprise, enjoyment, and thankfulness. This is what I saw as I whistled the normal "workman's whistle" of wooooo-hoooo through the open window by her desk. Lunch consisted of your basic Belgian broodjes (sandwiches) of which I will never get over. How a normal baguette with a 1 piece of cheese and 1 piece of meat can become a great meal I will never understand. A basic sandwich here outshines the most ornate of Subway sandwiches back home. A meatball or pepperoni deli-style (formerly known as '4-inch round') at Subway will forever make me miss the available-everywhere Belgian broodje. I suppose when/if we ever return to woon (live) in the states I will become one of those snobbish baguette people. I always associated them with an acute and strange love of French, but now I have seen the error in my ways. It might be a strange love of Belgium. After an over-garlicked dinner of nachos Jessica and I headed downstairs to work on the blue bike and Leila headed over for a night of reading with Eva. Jessica and I managed to Cuban-engineer (a term used by my father after we persuaded him that his former term was a bit racially improper) my new mud flaps and attach Gretta's back rack to it's new place on the megagoed bike. Though Eva and Leila seemed to catch up with more conversation than literature, the day proved to be eventful in spite of the fact that we returned from Brussels this morning without the sibling. IN THE NEWS: (the bold was added for affect!)
August 09, 2002 : antwerp in less than 4 hours
If I have ever managed to be a tour-guide, today I was one. Jessica managed to pick up her sister who had managed to sleep on the plane and was well-rested. Was she up for a day on the town? I kept asking her throughout the day how she was feeling...exhausted? woozy? eyes dried out? But she proved to be pretty hearty. We headed off into Antwerp on the tram and circled down the have-to-see streets; the narrow older part of town, the main shopping street, the cathedral square, the statues with stories. We walked under the Schelde in the footpath with wooden escalators and did all of the appropriate photo opportunity shots; Jessica and Vanessa with Antwerp giant, Vanessa in front of Cathedral, Vanessa and Jessica sitting in big 'giant's' hand, the old buildings, etc. Jessica and I fed her Belgian goods; a waffle, kaasbroodje, worstenbroodje, and beer. We pressed and squeezed my city into 4 hours of solid walking and looking. Quite impressive, though possibly disturbing. On the way home we hopped a busy tram and I had to stand away from Jess and her sister. For some reason, the tram was filled, but silent. Over all of the heads of people and cutting through the lack of sound was Jessica and Vanessa discussing the bars on windows and the wires to keep pigeons at bay. People smiled and looked in their direction. Jessica is not known for her whispering voice, and so this made it all the more funny to me. I leaned over to the man in front of me and said, "Zij zijn mijn vrienden." "They are from the states? You too?" "Ja, ik kom uit de V.S." "You learning dutch?" "Ja, ik leren Nederlands." "You live here?" "Ja, ik woon in Antwerpen..." And so the story goes. He told me quietly that he could tell from the accent and the loudness that they were from the states. Me too. I giggled out loud. Fridays are short days for Eva. She had told me this morning that she might be a little legless when she got home today because the bosses were on holiday and the co-workers wanted to party. Several people brought in wine and alcohol and by the time she got home she was all smiley, clingy, and funny-speeched. I didn't dare sober her up (because it was fun) and so the 4 of us headed into town. Along the way Eva spotted a silvery hair on my head and promptly pulled it out, sharing it with the other two to confirm that it was, indeed, a gray hair. Ok. That makes two. And I still have both of them. After dinner we headed over to have drinks in the place where I was first in awe of Eva (way back in October of 2000) In transit we passed a Drive-In-Wheel which has to be the most bizarre thing I have ever witnessed. I will say no more except that you must see the picture to believe it. Otherwise I imagine we would all say that it couldn't be done. Moving right along, at Zuiderpershuis (the fall-in-like-cafe) we decided that, since it was a nice evening and Vanessa was still awake, that we should go see the Water Film that they were showing in the open air, for free, down by the river. The film was "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" and all of us were sure that there was going to be some horrendous twist between the two central characters--a Greek man from Antwerp and a Chinese 10 year old girl. We waited and we waited, and once the film was over we sighed a breath of relief that it had been a good movie after all. The depths of Antwerp, from Eastern-European Gypsy beggars to cultural events, from harbor town to raspberry beer. Not to bad for a girl's first day in Europe. IN THE NEWS:
August 10, 2002 : Belgian fries
As both Jessica and Vanessa slept their morning away, Eva and I managed to slip out quietly, hop on our bikes, and head to the library. I didn't know that libraries were still thriving until my recent trip to the one in San Francisco a couple of months ago. With the bookstore/cafe phenomena (along with the fact that I was a rare-reader for a couple of years) my use for libraries has been next to never. All of this is about to change. (or so it may) Apparently libraries of the modern world have extensive magazine collections (my entire purpose in going to the coffeeshop of any bookstore) and also have cafes. Is that great or what? It's a long cry from my days as an avid reader stomping out of the library with a stack of books I couldn't even see over. :) The one in Antwerp has a huge music and video/DVD collection too--all available to check out for 1 euro apiece. And on the way out, why not stop for a cappuccino and the latest newspapers in a wide variety of languages. We returned home to find the sisters still groggy but ready to hit the town. Vanessa's whirlwind trip to Antwerp could not be complete without the addition of fritjes and so we headed off to find a frituur--not so easy to come by at noonish in the most-taken-off-week-for-vacations in Europe. No De Witte, they get back next week. The one around the corner is gone on vacation as well. The bicky-burger one with the pot-bellied man doesn't open until 5. This led us to meandering around the street stemming from the Berchem station looking for both food and spray-paint. (for the scooter.) I have lived here only 10 months. When we first moved into our apartment and made our way down this very same street, it was packed to the gills on a Saturday morning. Packed with old ladies and immigrants. The people who had lived here all their lives and the people taking over their neighborhoods. I am putting it in such light, as it was obvious that this is how it was taking place. And today, seemingly every other store was vacant. I don't mean vacation-closed, but empty, cleaned out. The street was fairly people-less, with only a few major-named shops and a couple of family-owned variety shops with open doors. Rarely do you see change happen so quickly. Or maybe it's because I"m not really use to urban decay except in the case of Main Streets in every town back in the states...but they are making a comeback in cities that can support cafes, used bookstores, and coffeeshops. At any rate we found our spray-paint (green) and fritjes. Bitterballen, kaas crokettes, loempia, bami, viandel, and fries with curry ketchup and pepper sauce. Vanessa could now leave. She had done Flanders in less than 24 hours and could move on to the Netherlands. When they left, Eva and I recouped by planning out our rest-of-day. I had fallen asleep on the couch as soon as it started raining. And with every window open, the sound of pelting drops soon made my eye-lids heavy. We decided on watching one of the movies we had gotten at the library. A movie called Left Luggage about a young hippie Jew and an orthodox Jewish family. All of it was filmed in Antwerp, and so it was really cool to see familiar locations in a proper movie. We headed to Eva's brother's house (home of the VCR and color TV) and much to our surprise, her mother answered the ringer and told us to come back later. Slightly miffed, Eva offered that we should go get a beer. She had two and I had two juices. Looza is the drink of the juice gods. I won't go into the details as why Eva was so surprised by her mother's comment. She was simply surprised. It was a night of Eva talk and I tried to listen. It ranged from her wondering if she had, in fact, been a really horrible kid to her admitting that she was sometimes like her father to hoping her mother felt slightly bad about not inviting us in. An hour later, with ramen noodles in our bag, we crept into the brother's apartment, cooked our noodles, and watched our movie. We laughed and eked out tears, and when it was over, we quietly washed the dishes we used and crept back out again. Arm in arm we made the trip down 2 streets and a slight turn and ended up in front of our apartment. A full day from rise until sleep-time and so tomorrow we planned to rest. IN THE NEWS:
August 11, 2002 : megagoed dag
After a pretty successful Saturday in which we accomplished quite a bit (minus the painting of the scooter which was postponed due to rain) today was sure to be a pleasant one as we woke to blue sky and sunshine. (what a relief after a bit of rain at least once a day for the whole week.) After a breakfast of American biscuits (my thanks going out to Jessica's sister that brought me a box of Bisquick) and coffee/tea (Andrea/Eva) we headed out on the open road and/or bike-path. Of course we have ridden around Antwerp already. Though Gretta (the old bike) wasn't much of a traveler we had managed to go quite a few places and now with my megagoed bike we're set. Eva still doesn't have proper gears but she's thankfully still stuck in a gear that is perfect for quick starts and steady pedaling. We went down familiar roads (when you are starting out on a trip the first few roads are always familiar) which led to less familiar ones and then on occasion we would cross a street that I recognized from a few scattered bus rides to the edge of town/suburbia. We passed the softball field where we've tossed the 'joining' idea around in our heads and there happened to be a game going on. Just like any softball field on summer Sundays back home, two uniformed girls/women's teams were going head to head. Same look, same style uniforms, same one-piece stirrup-ed socks, different language. I first slowed down to see if it was fast-pitch, and as I slowed, Eva stopped. We went into the stands and watched most of the game as the player's families and significant others looked on. The same handful of supporters you would find back in the states. Mothers and fathers with lawn-chairs and baby brothers growing restless. At least it was fast-pitch or we would have all been a bit more restless. :) Hand signals from the third-basement coach, bunting from batters, even the translation of 'good job' into 'goed job' something Eva said that Flemish people would never say. We ended up in Wilrijk where we noticed a considerable amount of people coming to and from the city center. Since it's a Sunday, and Sundays are notably dead here in Belgium due to the no-shops-open policy we were intrigued. Not only was there a flea-market (more fleas than real goods) but they had a carnival in town. Apparently the town has an affection for goats, because there were not only goats of every shape and size but there seemed to be references everywhere. A statue, figurines for sale, and I believe I noticed it on a city flag. Wilrijk staad van geiten. (Wilrijk city of goats.) After nearly walking my bike onto a sleeping child being pushed in her stroller by a grumpy mother, we surveyed the carnival, parked our bikes, and went to hunt down a hotdog. Over hotdogs and fanta we watched children going around and around on carousels and kids just a little to big for a children's spook house making their way from entrance to exit in no time. No fear apparent on their faces. By the time we were sitting on the stoop of the city house eating our vanilla ijsje and cream, old-time vehicles were lining up for a car show. Men and their toys. A universal. A man with an 1930s vehicle with the hood open to show a shiny engine. He was wearing a gangsters hat and a black t-shirt with a picture of his car on the front. Like I said. It's universal. We rode on through posh suburban neighborhoods and ended up on a bike-path with a sign pointing us on a 37 km journey. Having not that much time on our hands, we decided to follow it anyway, and we soon found ourselves without the sign and going back in the direction we came from. When we were in Italy and the blackberry bushes were 2 weeks from being ripe, I had counted on us returning to Belgium in time for a substantial blackberry find. The entire ride I had been spotting the plant but berry-less and/or old-berry filled. I actually managed to find 3. Three blackberries I ate with extreme pleasure. Free berries at last. On the way back home we found a supermarket open and jam-packed with people. Obviously everyone had found the market the same as us, once by accident and then found it again on emergency-Sundays. Over at the unorganized meat counter we found a little old lady waiting patiently to be waited on. Lines had formed in front of her and there she stood patiently, bottom jaw denture-less, smiling sincerely to Eva and I, her other goods (two yogurts, and two Sprites) neatly stacked behind us in the fridge section on top of stacks of butter. I hopped in line and Eva waited beside the lady. As soon as it was my turn I offered it to her and in a tiny little voice ordered 200 g of ground kalf. (no need to translate.) On into the checkout line we watched her from our line as she continued to smile and patiently open the envelope out of her bag to retrieve additional Euros. Her shopping cart was her purse and the cashier didn't seem to mind at all. Perhaps it was the old lady's smile. I couldn't help but think of my grandmother, as this lady's hair was the same bright white and the traditional cut of grandmothers everywhere, permed/curled and slightly sprayed. Eva mentioned that happy older people means that they were probably happy as younger people. And so I can only say that I too will be a smiling old woman when I am her age. Especially with Eva on my arm...two old ladies without our bottom row of teeth, waiting patiently for filet Americain. IN THE NEWS:
August 12, 2002 : young brains
My mom and dad are far from being old, but even they themselves would not say that they are young. I will probably forever believe that they are just under old as if there is a vast difference between one or the other. My dad has been gray (now white) headed for years, whereas my mother fended it off (slightly) with color...though she has grayed slowly and beautifully. My mom and I often joke that they are 'old geezers' and that they suffer from 'senior moments' like forgetting something trivial or having to write down instructions for how to scan a picture on her computer. (Had I not had a computer embedded into my hands for the last 5 years, I might have to as well.) At any rate I am always on the lookout for warning signs of memory loss. Since I moved away 3 years ago, and see them less frequently, they age differently than they did when I saw them every 2 weeks. When I first set my mother up on the internet I wasn't so sure she was going to "get it." I was completely wrong, of course, as she patiently wrote down step by step instructions: t wasn't as spelled-out as I just wrote it, but it was along those lines. In fact it might even have had short-hand in it...the old dated secretarial language my mother used on a daily baisis in her secretary days before she went to college, she still likes to drop it around every now and then just because she can. And then she was off like wild-fire. And I had wondered if she would 'get it.' Silly me. We learn things about our parents all of the time. When I lived in Cincinnati my mother would send me clippings from her Women's World weekly newspaper/magazine. It's not a tabloid, more of a magazine filled with quaint stories, helpful hints, recipes, exercise bits, and diet suggestions. They were actually quite interesting. Sometimes she would send me something about my cats...how cats eat grass to make a sort of 'tea' in their stomachs or how by not drinking a latte at Barnes and Noble every other night with Bobbie we could both lose 10 lbs in a year. I loved getting them, these large envelopes filled with mail to my permanent address, clippings, and most of the time it would be accompanied by notes from both of them. This was all pre-internet. When my mother started emailing me, the packets of clippings became few and far between. And now, whenever either of us sees something relevant, we quickly forward the URL or send a couple of lines of text. Sometimes she sends me recipe ideas and sometimes I send her airline deals. Today I sent her a book title. While sitting (being very productive) at my computer table, I was listening to an author describe on the BBC how our brain cells change as we get older. He said it was possible to stretch brain cells much in the way that we exercise our bodies. Not by actually stretching them, but by making them work. He suggested using your right hand if you are left handed for normal tasks. He suggested problem solving with books and puzzles and even coming up with new ways to do old boring meanial things. I sent this to my mother. I told her that she should start using her right hand and doing crosswords. It was more of a joke than anything. I told her that daddy didn't have to worry because the way he worked on the farm he was actually problem solving all of the time. She sent me an email reply and then we discovered that we were both online. She started telling me about the new library in town that replaced the bookmobile (bus) and about doing crosswords. Not only was my mother doing crosswords (something I could never, EVER envision her being interested in before) but if she couldn't come up with the answer, she found a site online that would try to solve the problem question for her. I guess it's something like this: '5 letters, begins with 's' and sheds.' The computer spits out 'snake.' And not only crossword puzzles, she's been taking online example tests, like the sample SAT, spelling tests, and whatnot. I didn't show her any of this this. If that's not problem-solving, I don't know what is. So I guess I don't have to worry about either one of them. My father manages to do brain-cell calisthenics every time he slightly alters the way a certain gate closes by itself and by sitting in his comfy chair listening to a recorded stock car race on the TV while reading until he falls asleep (don't forget that there is usually a napping cat on his lap too)...and my mother, always the avid reader, is off every week to pick up some new books she'll read in the porch swing or across from my napping father in the basement, and sometimes she'll do brain teasers and puzzles! As I said before, they aren't old yet. IN THE NEWS:
August 13, 2002 : cleanliness
Supposedly it's next to godliness. People with uncluttered homes and offices lead a more organized and care-free life. Yay for them. Since I promised to Eva that I was going to 'change' a couple of months ago, I have done my best to become a domestic wonder. Something of a marvel. I cook and I upkeep. I shop and penny-pinch. I don't do laundry (this is next on the list of my dislikes that will be sacrificed in the name of change) but I do dishes. Since we have now found ourselves in the active pursuit of a new tenant for our current apartment we had a hopeful renter stopping by today at 6:30. Hopeful-renter being our hope and she was basically a friend of a friend who was looking for a studio. Since I got up a little before 10, I had most of the day to whirlwind our place into a spic and span space-saving, well-lit, inclusive kitchen, 2-roomer. I worked so hard in the morning that I actually had to rest. I scrubbed the 'kitchen' and dusted. I rearranged the underlings of the high sleeper and cleaned the windowsill. I swept the floor and cleaned the bathroom toilet. I have come to only one conclusion. Long-haired girlfriends mean more dust and more hair. I have never encountered anything like it in my entire life. I have become a regular (at least once every 2 weeks if not every week) sweeper and yet it seems that every time I sweep I come up with the same mound of dust. And I mean mound. I described it to Eva like this, that insects coming back from vacation must shake their shoes out over our floor. They must flap their sheets up by our ceiling lights. We must be a dumping ground for dirt. I should put up a minuscule sign that says, "no dumping allowed, private property. Trespassers will be libel to poison in the air." And hair. I don't really remember how many hairs we have on our heads, but one things for sure, I keep mine and Eva loses hers. I don't find 4 inch pieces of hair the color of mine, oh no, I find 2 foot long tangled messes, great balls of Eva-cells in the most peculiar places; beneath a guitar case that hasn't moved in months, next to the ladder that leads to our bed, and inside of a shoe. It just doesn't make any sense. Well the apartment couldn't have looked better. The girl took one look and said, "It's really nice, great view, too small." Damn. Now we'll resort to online posting, Te Huur signage on our front door, and scheduling times for people to take a look. I guess this means I'll be cleaning on even a more regular basis. I guess the laundry will just have to wait. IN THE NEWS: Sure makes you want to go on vacation to the States, doesn't it?
August 14, 2002 : belgian summer
This has not been a Belgian summer. Or maybe it has been. If summer begins in August here, then it has turned out to be a rather nice season. It doesn't quite have the charm that school holidays had back in Missouri, with June being warm, July gradually becoming hottish, and then wrapping up with August and its grasshoppers and crunchy lawns, but August in Belgium has been a pleasure. Not only has the rain seemingly gone and the gray clouds replaced with cobalt blue, the mood has changed with the onset of shorts and sandals. (leather jackets still hanging on the clothing hooks from their last wear in June) Since I became the proud owner of a new bicycle, now in it's new form with rack and comfortable saddle, I've been itching to ride. And since Sunday's ride around town, I've been looking for a good time to peddle, and today was just the day. I'm still not in a position where I feel like I fit in on the streets of European cities, as the streets still feel awkward and nerve-wracking. The meanings of signs still don't come quickly and the tram-tracks look deadly. (Eva says that I will, inevitably, get a bike tire caught longways into a tram track, and so I avoid them at all cost.) There are just so many things going on on the roads here that are not going on on the roads back home. Besides the slight rule changes with 'yield to the person on your right' there are pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, trams and autos. A far cry from the auto-only world I'm more familiar with. Before I knew it, I was out on the road with my blue bike on the bike paths. Crisscrossing over motorways and waiting for the green bicycle light to come on so that I can go...go. Gears are a wonderful thing and I shifted for the sake of shifting on slight inclines, enjoying the fact that I didn't have to pedal-stand to accelerate. I was gone for at least an hour, if not more. I ended up lost in a sleeper-city suburb before realizing that the end of the road put me right where I wanted to be. I have to love that about being here, I consider myself orientationally gifted in that I can usually make out where I am in relationship to the world, and here, with it's spoke-like streets that curve back on themselves and that hide vast green-spaces behind buildings that distort the shape of a city 'block'...I am usually at a loss. The only thing that saves me are landmarks like the Provincie Antwerpen building, the Ring (the motorway that circles Antwerp), the KBC building, train tracks, and various parks. Some of which I only realize are the parks I know once I ride around them. The only thing that pulled me home was fact that I had to make dinner--not wanting to mess up Eva's return home by my frivolous riding. And it's not that it is frivolous, it's helping me. It's making my world here bigger one ride at a time. The more familiar this city becomes, with it's miles and miles of apartment complexes and city streets, the more I become an Antwerpenaar instead of a misplaced American. IN THE NEWS:
August 15, 2002 : orange pills
Today is Mother's day in Belgium. It's in conjunction with another holiday that Eva couldn't remember (possibly a treaty-signing day or a day or remembrance of some sort) and will be followed by yet another vacation day for those fortunate enough to be working at a place which believes Thursday holidays are pointless if not followed by additional Friday free-days. Eva is fortunate on that account. We had plans to do another camping trip. Eva had marked out a place to go that was bike-able and gorgeous. I told her that I wasn't big on having to camp, but that I was up for a day-long bike ride and since our day-long ride began after noon, it wasn't going to be as grueling had it been day-long. We were headed to Lier. As I've mentioned before, we joke about it's calling us there, about how all signs lead to Lier. Since I have no command of the road, I simply follow Eva. Through not-so-nice neighborhoods and under the train tracks, over the ring and out into another sleeper town. Through the park where we saw Ani Difranco and out onto streets that looked familiar but only looked familiar because every suburbia resembles suburbia. Just slightly different from back home because the houses here are stuck together and all-brick whereas suburbia back home scream housing-development and culdesacs. We crossed a street and were about to cross another one when I saw a bag laying on the road. Not a sac or a purse, but a proper bag. The purse-replacement that is never called a purse. Eva has one and I have one. Jessica has a small backpack. Bobbie has an over-the-shoulder zippered canvas organizer. Purses (in my group of friends) are out, and bags are in. This one was a bag. I remembered seeing a boy and girl biking opposite of us, and was sure that the bag belonged to the girl. I sped after her but soon realized that it was going to be impossible to find them. We'd simply call. Effortless and time efficient--we had half a day to make a day's journey. We searched the bag, found a number, called and got no one. We'd call later. We were out of Antwerp looking for a shortcut Eva swore existed. Right along a canal, it was both scenic and going in a Lier direction. We took off down a street that looked canal-connecting only to find it ended in an industry-related zone of distribution centers and small-time businesses. The businessy version of a housing development. Complete with the culdesac. Backtracking we took another option which was a dirt trail that wound it's way through dense trees, next to a creek and dumped us out between two cornfields...the Antwerp mall (Wijnigem Shopping Center) looming in the distance. I have mentioned blackberries before, and as I had recently decided that blackberry season was past, I changed my mind today...this time next week, it'll be in full swing. As I mentioned yesterday, August is the Belgian summer, and the addition of blackberries adds some charm. We had been biking for about an hour. I had started my period yesterday. (I don't think I've mentioned my period yet in this journal, and though this does not mean I haven't been having regular visits from the female-reminder service, what this does mean, is that I'm embarking on new territory...disclosing personal information once again.) I had started my period much in the way I usually do, only lighter. Not really a period full force, but a 'hello, this is a warning of things to come.' Fine. So this made today my 'hello, we will commence bleeding now' session. I don't cramp on a regular basis. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. When I am not so fortunate, I have the pain for about 45 minutes, and during this time I figure out if it's going to be bad or not. If it's bad, I take two ibuprofen, and in thirty minutes it's gone. By the time the orange pills wear off, my cramps have subsided. It's a pretty seamless process. Seamless unless you are in the middle of nowhere on a bicycle without any water in your water bottle and your biking companion is frustrated that she can't find a canal that leads to Lier. Back to the blackberries. The cramps have barely set in. It's endurable. I'm a little lightheaded from the ride and lack of proper nourishment and the lack of available fluids. I had gotten off of my bike and was staring in amazement at the number of plump, ripe blackberries next to the corn field. Handfuls of them just out of my reach. Usually I am very adventurous and somewhat barbaric when it comes to free fruit. Especially free fruit that costs an arm and a leg in the market. I can handle briar scrapes and stinging nettles (do we have those int he states? I had my first known experience with them just today) if it leads to a reward of purple-stained fingers and seeds in my molars. There I stood with a very deep ditch between me and the berries. A very deep ditch that had a very little amount of mud in the bottom. There was nothing to hold on to, there was no where to put a foot to steady oneself. The berries were out of reach. I stood there with my bike on it's side, Eva ready to press-on waiting up ahead and for a brief moment life imitated life. Me wanting berries, berries out of reach. How many times in my life had/are/will the berries (been/be) out of reach? I felt small. We rode on. On the corner of the Shopping Center is a McDonald's, where Eva graciously ordered me an orange juice and a cup of ice I continuously filled with water out of the tap in the bathroom. By this time I was doubled over and white-faced, nauseated diarrhea-prone and shaky. It was going to be a bad-cramp day and there was nothing I could do about it. (and the ibuprofen tablets were back at home, and home was 45 minutes away.) We hung out in McDonald's long enough for the ungracious girl to come and collect her bag. Three people had called us to judge our sketchiness, and once she told us she'd be on her way it took her 45 minutes to show...arriving with her boyfriend who gave us a once-over 'did you steal anything out of her bag' sort of look. Bastard. We should have kept her 3 Euros in change and her library card or all of the movie stubs she'd obviously been keeping since 1999. And no, I'm not kidding...dating back to Scream 2. I just wanted to be home. I couldn't bare to eat, though in retrospect it might have done me good. We headed home at a pace not worthy of a bike. Eva was the best friend a girl could have, as she patiently sat beside me during the intervals I had to sit down. Sometimes sitting down and spitting little spits between my knees. Sometimes laying back on the sidewalk onto ant-colonies who desperately tried to lift my life-less body and take me to their leader. I think they smelled the blood and thought I was dead. (enter smile here...) It took us almost 2 hours to make it back. We walked the bikes and rode them when I thought I was able. We even had to make a mad-dash into a cafe to use their toilet. Needless to say, we didn't make it to Lier. When we got back home I sprawled out on our bed in the summer heat and she made me a hot-water bottle. She fed me plain Wasa crackers and the 2 little orange pills. Rubbed my belly and sat visiting with me. Did I want anything? Was I feeling better? She read me Goodnight Mr. Tom, a favourite novel from her childhood that we are painstakingly making our way through. It's wonderful to hear her read it, knowing full well that she's read it a dozen times, watching her get teary-eyed when she reads parts that show the sympathetic side of Mr. Tom and the goings-on of WWII England. Having lost myself in the story and the English verbage of Mackintoshes and teas, I was well in no time. IN THE NEWS: Texas officials said, however, that they weren't clear whether Suarez, who spent most of his life in the United States, was Mexican.
August 16, 2002 : hot-dogs
A barbecue is not complete unless you are serving hot-dogs, baked beans, and homemade ice-cream. The Belgian equivalent is truckloads of marinated meat and warm beer. :) Eva's youngest brother Sebastian is headed for a year-long adventure in Brazil. Just as his two oldest siblings have done before him, Eva to Paraguay and Joris also to Brazil. The even sounds just as exciting as it will prove to be, I am sure. A year away from everything he is used to into a language and culture quite different than his own. The middle brother, Jasper, missed out on the chance by being in like with a girl who then dumped him as soon as he started college. We not only sympathize with him, I empathize, as the thought of a foreign exchange was not only not an option, it was something that never dawned on me to look into. Something my mother and I figured out during a chat-session two days ago. (American universities mostly only offer scholarships to people who are exiting high school and directly entering college. The world would be a better place if that was more open to people who need a year to figure things out.) Last night Jessica and her sister Vanessa returned as Vanessa's flight back home left at 8 something this morning. We staying up all night, as they had to leave at 6 in the morning to hop a train to Brussels. Eva and I woke to find Jessica returning from her trip and passed out on the couch...and Eva's mother and brother picking us up for a trip to a supposed-to-be-cheaper-than-a-supermarket store to buy goods for a surprise going-away party for Sebastian. I was still groggy from lack of sleep, and before they picked us up we had discussed what we would need from the store. Since I have become budget minded, I suggested that for our group of barbecue-ers (which included Susan, Leila, Jessica, Eva and myself) we should buy hot-dogs, buns, mustard, ketchup, chips and drinks. Eva was unconvinced, but would, by the end of the night (and day's adventure) would be convinced as well. At the store we bought enough beer for an army. Truckloads of teenage well-wishers were scheduled to arrive that evening, and so we saw fit to have them well-stocked. Eva's mother was also inviting a group of her friends, so it was two barbecues and a party all wrapped into one. Since I am of the group that prefers to plan party-purchases outside of the store instead of amid the isles, I figured on the aforementioned foods. Eva and her mother thought otherwise, and what should have been a short trip turned into a grossly out of whack event. After loading up all of the beer, we returned for perishables. The mother disappeared and Jasper was found in the deodorant isle. Eva and I both had a cart and were left wondering what to do. By this time I was miffed because we were standing in front of a meat counter offering mounds of different meats as party-platters. Eva was thinking sit-down dinner and I was thinking weenies on a stick. I took a cart and filled it with the low-cost version of a good time and she abandoned the other cart with her brother and set off to find me...and when she found me, she had an arm full of meat platters for 20 people. We were going to be 5. I told her to get rid of some meat, and by this time I was even more miffed. I had only brought the tampon that was inside of me because I hadn't counted on a simple trip to the store becoming such a phenomenon. I threw in two boxes of OB (which were actually twice what we pay for generic tampons), opened a box, and found a restroom. Returning to my cart, the meat having been cut down to one platter, I stomped around the store and returned the things I had so painstakingly bargain-hunted for. I told her, "I am not eating your meat. I am having hot-dogs." And so for 2 euros, I planned out my feast. (Yes, this was not a very mature way to handle it.) By the time we checked out and our bill was tallied, the meat that Eva bought that was supposed to be 8 something was really 8 something per kilogram. Her meat plate was 20 bucks, and though we can laugh about it now, it was not a pretty realization. And I, being in such the mood as I was at that time, said nothing more than the word 'hot-dog.' And I found great satisfaction in doing so. :) We bought wine-coolers and raspberry beers. We had no ice. I have never been the fan of beer in general, let alone warm beer. So as I baked my hot-dog-bun baguettes back home, our freezer was packed with alcohol. I wanted ice. Ice in the states is so easy to come by. Gas stations and supermarkets...all with the sometimes-padlocked Ice machine outside. Here in Belgium there are no such ice-boxes. They don't even know the recognizable 'ice box' font/logo we are so familiar with. Shame shame. I took a box and made a make-shift ice-chest lined with plastic bags. We packed up our things, my buns, and rode with Leila and Susan who wasn't very keen on going out of our way to find ice. I was miffed again for the second time in one day. Forget it, I said to Eva, and as we passed by an open Del Haize on our left, I was even more pissed. Don't forget that yesterday I had the cramps. Give me some credit. The barbecue was fantastic. We had a wonderful time. The five of us, after shrugging off the duties of cooking for Eva's mother's party (since we had to cook for ourselves) we settled down to a citronella candle and eating. I filled the makeshift cooler with water and hoped for the best. Later on Jessica and I saw that there was space in the fridge in the house since all of the space had previously been filled up with meat, and we had moderately chilled drinks all night. But let me get back to the hot-dogs. I lay out the hot-dogs on the grill, and Susan's face lit up. Hot-dogs! She said, and I couldn't have been more pleased. Eva's eyes couldn't have rolled back further in her head, as she promised that our next barbecue wouldn't entail cut's of meat, rather hot-dogs straight out of the jar. Susan inquired about home-made ice-cream, and I had to shake my head and said that she was right about that, a barbecue isn't complete without home-made ice-cream. We'll look into that for next time. But if you can't buy ice...what's an ice-cream maker to do? :) All of this aside, the evening was quite a success for Sebastian. As he was led blindfolded by his girlfriend and his brother back to where all of us were standing, we all screamed Surprise! We danced with the best of them and caught a ride back into Antwerp with Eva's mother. The cops had shown up and requested that the music be turned down, and we can only hope that they didn't return...but a backyard full of drunken teenagers leaves us little assurance that the cops wouldn't make a second trip. Jessica, Eva and I remarked on our age and our need to go dancing, as I can not remember the last time Eva and I had a night out on the town. The music seemed too loud and the unleveled mole-hilled ground did nothing for our dancing ability, especially mine. Perhaps we're getting old? No. I'm sure Eva and I have a few good dancing nights ahead of us, Tom and Isle will be back soon, and Heleen will return from her thesis writing in the Netherlands...there will always be something to celebrate. After all, I do have the most amazing girl as my dance partner, and though we dance more in our living-room than anywhere else, she is a just cause for a daily celebration. IN THE NEWS (of an editorial-type nature): In the American media, the flooding of Central Europe eclipsed the floods of southern India, even though approximately 90 people were killed in Europe compared to more than 800 in India and Nepal. Some will call this provincialism or Western chauvinism. But for the American audience, the Central European floods are more visceral than Asian monsoons. Germany is a country that many have seen in person or in movies or on the news. Prague is mandatory for wayward youth. An older generation of American men and women fought and died in Central Europe. Dresden, the city firebombed by American pilots a half century ago, now lies underwater. I guess we put a different price on the lives of our European counterparts, as we see them more "like us" than people in Asia.
August 17, 2002 : sight
I can barely remember what prompted me in 5th grade to ask my parents to take me for an eye exam. I can remember where I sat in Mrs. Herd's room, one row from the back Commodore computer and 4 rows from her desk at the front--the windows that ran the length of the room at my left. I had always loved school. I loved school until I hit university and the world took on a greater urgency. I loved school and must have realized that the blackboard had gone a little blurry...not much just enough that I knew it wasn't clear. A few days later I had glasses. Eva, on the other-hand, scammed the yearly eye-checks at her school by having an onion in her pocket and eking out just enough tears to provide magnification. No joke. In addition to our long list of must-do-s is a new eye exam for Eva. Since you can buy your own disposable contact lenses at any number of stores, she's simply upped the magnification when she deemed it necessary. And me, being the lover of crispness and hater of blur, am saddened when I realize that Eva and I aren't seeing the same things. The view from the fortress in Assisi last month or from last Christmas's trip to the St. Louis arch...we're not seeing the same thing. She's seeing watercolors bleeding together and I'm seeing hard-edged angles and precisely planted trees. She frowns and squints... And we've been planning to go for a year now. After last year's lay-off, I used every bit of insurance/benefit I had at Tellme and one such benefit was glasses. I got a new pair and a check-up, and Eva got a new pair of frames. We had planned during the week to get this taken care of, once an for all, in town today...only to find out after she'd already gone into the examination room that she had to have had her contacts out of her eyes for half of a day...which they had neglected to tell us when Eva called this morning. All this excitement over nothing. Eva standing on the verge of crispness but still standing there because of a formality. Next week. What you can't do on a Saturday in Antwerp, do the following Saturday in the very same place in the very same town of Antwerp. This could have been the highlight of our day if it hadn't been for the rest of the afternoon. Up the street is an old Military domain, an armory, acres and acres of brick buildings just out of use. Empty and progressively more run down, Eva and I walk through it as a shortcut when we are coming back from the olive store. I'm a complete chicken when it comes to sketchy situations that involve broken glass, abandoned buildings, squatter spaces, and not-supposed-to-be-here situations. It was broad daylight and since Jessica and Eva are kindred spirits when it came down to fear, I tagged along. Yes it was awesome, vast hallways lined with shiny tiles and old medical papers, empty examination rooms with tiny spaces to change your clothes, operating rooms, canteens, chapels, offices, you name it. All there just on the verge of being destroyed by people too bored to care about it's worth. Amazing. The evening couldn't be complete without the consumption of yesterday's leftover meat. I made fajitas and guacamole to the delight of Jessica and Eva and had we not been stuffed and exhausted we might have gone into town and done that dancing thing I mentioned yesterday. But dancing was the last thing on our mind...as we sat around, drank, and discussed the reasoning behind the disappearance/murder of the two girls in England. Around 1 in the morning Eva and I began making a list of our need-to-do-s and our have-to-do-s and by the time we were through, we each had a list one page long. At least tomorrow starts another week. IN THE NEWS: We were listening to the BBC tonight and during one of the interviews we heard someone that I thought spoke a lot like I would speak about a situation such as this...if I was the Food Aid Relations Manager for the Hunger and Crisis Management Corp. (made up names) The guy they interviewed animatedly discussed the problem at hand...this is a paraphrase. "Look, we eat this corn in the US all the time. Everything you buy has GM stuff in it, we're not growing third heads or anything, it's not like we're dumping bad corn, we're dumping corn that we, ourselves would consume. The situation is clear, if you don't eat, you die. There are going to be a lot of deaths..." And we all agreed...this was definitely an interesting way to put it. If you don't eat, you will die. I am sure that nugget of wisdom will stick with us for weeks to come.
August 18, 2002 : flashbacks
In 1997, when I was in my 2nd year at Missouri Southern, I befriended a guy named Rick. I don't quite remember how we met, but I believe it was through art--jewelry making maybe or the drawing class I took at night. Somehow we ended up friends. He was the sort of guy that didn't 'get it' at first. He didn't seem to get that I wasn't into 'him' and furthermore I wasn't into 'boys' at all. This went on for several years. He was nice and we had a lot of fun. He was the sort of guy that would call and talk your ear off for hours about such and such friend who went out and drank one night and...blah blah blah. But we had fun. We mountain-biked. Me on my 21 speed mountain bike from Walmart and him on his decked-out pieced together, good-components mountain bike. This became our thing. I became a cool girl that mountain biked and didn't care about scratches or getting muddy. He often wondered why girls he knew couldn't be more like me. Whatever. So Rick. Rick and I had a great time. We'd meet up after school, load up our bikes and head to the trails. Miles of trails crisscrossed and looped behind a cemetery and Ozark's Christian College. (OCC) He always took the lead and I followed on his train. Too slow to pace him, but fast enough to stay with him. It worked out great. If not there, then we'd go over by the quarry. Out over acres of pre-made gravel/chat and on through the woods on the old train tracks. (If you don't know what chat is, please know that it is what I have always called the man-made powdery grayish gravel so oftentimes used on road projects back home. Much like the stones from "chip-and-seal" back-roads only bigger.) Past where there used to be a bridge and next to the little electricity-less trailer where a hermit-man lived. Or so we said. When I started working at Books A Million Rick was soon replaced with Scott. (Scott might not be his name, but it will have to do.) Scott was a foreign-missions major at OCC and ran into me at the coffee-shop at BAM. I had befriended many an OCCer in my day, and he was no exception, though we became fast friends. He was more keen than Rick in that he soon surmised the fact that I was only interested in bike riding an friendship. He didn't seem to mind as he had a girl back home in Greeley, Colorado, a once-adventurous sort who had banged her head and now had to be more calm. I was happy to fill the gap until he joined her the next fall. The same goes for Scott that did for Rick. All the same trails only less-lengthy phone-calls and it was good for the both of us. A lesbian buddied up with a future missionary. All of this to lead into a story of our bike-ride today. Jessica on the now spruced-up Gretta, me on my blue tank, and Eva on her ol' beater mountain bike. Across town and beside the Schelde. Eva hadn't been to the end, and so we passed her last known exit and went further into industry-land. We passed a small cedar tree with children's shoes stacked in pairs beneath it, and we all sort of grimaced. Weird. After a sharp right we slowly walked our bikes out onto a pier. An oily pier with metal implements and proper machinery looking like no one had touched them in years. And our road suddenly stopped and became a proper pathway, a lady was out by the river practicing her lines to a play, and the greenery lined our path, little dirt paths shooting off in angles perpendicular to the road. We were back on paved road in all of 15 minutes, but for that span of time I raced on ahead, remembering Rick and Scott, both people I haven't recalled in some time. Rick with his passion for making art and his teachers that didn't appreciate his passion. Not the best art, but it was his art, and for what it's worth I understand. If you take a picture of a sunset it doesn't matter if anyone else likes it, you were there and you know that any ol' pictures is a poor representation of sunset. And Scott, a Jesus-crazed kid from Colorado that stretched me in all of the ways a friend is supposed to stretch you. And I hope I did the same. IN THE NEWS: Howell Raines, executive editor of The Times, said: "In making this change, we acknowledge the newsworthiness of a growing and visible trend in society toward public celebrations of commitment by gay and lesbian couples — celebrations important to many of our readers, their families and their friends. We recognize that the society remains divided about the legal and religious definition of marriage, and our news columns will remain impartial in that debate, reporting fully on all points of view.
August 19, 2002 : effort
Our new apartment is causing us considerably more grief than joy here lately. This weekend we decided to try to dump it off and let them keep our first months rent, only to find out today that we'd have to find a new person to take it. Just when you hope something can go easily, it takes a turn for the worse. Just when I had settled down in deciding that our current place could be made better with a little adjusting, it seems pointless to keep it. Oh what to do! Today Eva and I missed each other. It seems that neither of us is very good at having to go back to work after an extended vacation. We didn't do much this weekend, but it seemed to be enough to make it feel like a rest. More for Eva than me since I get as much rest as I need during the week. Since Eva's brother is leaving for Brazil tomorrow, tonight was the last night for Eva to see her brother. She was quite bummed about not getting to see him, and since he was only 30 minutes away, it didn't seem like such a deal. Leave it to me to forget about all of the quirky ways in which Eva's family work. Leave it to me to forget that we don't have a car or scooter insurance and so we're left in the throws of public transportation. I basically ruined our night. Sebastian had been promising to come and pick up his digital camera (Eva's gift to him to take to Brazil) but hadn't showed up in the 2 months since we had it. I just wanted him to get his camera and Eva to see his brother. And after all of the phone-calls and finger-pointing, Eva left to go to the movie store with Leila and I busied myself around the apartment. Eva left to sort out her night and I was left to sort out mine. I sorted it out in the same room I had barely left today except to go to the store. Enter my world of slight-depression. I chipped ice from our ice-encased freezer. I took out the maggot-laden bio bag. (gross!) I took out the paper recyclables along with the trash and I did the dishes. When she came back we spent a little time recounting what had just happened and I made vows in my head that I wouldn't try to understand the relationship Eva had with her mother and she made vows in her head that she would trust herself first when it came concepts about her family. After all, she's the Cordery. I'm the Wilkinson. :) So the night was long. Everything was amended by 11 and we sat next to each other on the couch and looked at old advertisements some guy had put together online complete with captions. It was hysterical. At 1 we headed back to bed and Eva, freaked out by a hapless moth, quit reading Goodnight Mr. Tom to me so that she could turn out the light that so drew the moth. As we lay there it was like the world sunk in on me. The apartment, money, mounting projects, lists of things that I was or wasn't doing. Lists of things I should have done but didn't do. Lists of lists. I felt disgusted with myself. Disgusted that I don't speak Dutch yet, that I don't know Antwerp like the back of my hand yet, that I haven't read through the library in our living-room, disgusted that I even wanted our new apartment (because I wanted us to have something that felt more like a 'home'), and disgusted with myself for getting so aggravated with Eva about hot-dogs. Not that I was still upset about hot-dogs, but how dumb of a fit was that that I threw. And so she held me tightly. That's all. Tightly. She told me everything was going to be fine and I believed her. It was enough to get me over my slight-depression and face my list that's still in my green notebook down on the multi-corded computer table in the room that is our closet that is our office that is our bedroom. Eva is the best thing that has ever happened to me. In the long and short-run, hot-dogs and apartments don't really matter. IN THE NEWS:
August 20, 2002 : old friends
August 20th is a day that will forever live in my brain as a day of importance. It was the day I sat in Memorial Hall's lobby in front of two strangers, Kathleen and Susan, as we listened to our dorm mother tell us the rules for living in the dorm and being a freshman in college. Little did I know that right then and there, the two girls sitting behind me were to mean so much to me over time. Susan was to become my first girlfriend (and the could-have-been demise of my college career) and Kathleen was to become my steadfast college companion, switching schools with me, road-tripping, bar-hopping, etc. I looked at the date on the computer haphazardly. I hadn't thought about it until I got into bed and lay there thinking about the implications of that one day. Not as important as birth (obviously) but nearly as important as any other day I can come up with. Of course the day I chose the university should be heralded too, but it wasn't until I started school that it really took off. August 20th it took off. And I'm glad it did. Though not all of the roads leading from this calendar date have proven to be smooth, all roads have proven to be useful in some way, and I am better for them. [I couldn't see this at ALL while I was on them, as most of the time my sight was impaired with puffy eyes and tears, but there were a lot of pleasantly high-speed paved roads as well as peaceful dirt paths beside serene waters too!] And so Kathleen called me while it was still the 20th of August her time, it was well into tomorrow here before she called. She stared off with "8 years..." and we both laughed at how long that sounded. "It's become a proper friendship now" I said, and I considered that she's one of my longest-running friends and certainly the one that takes first place for longest and most influential. (Will Manning would take first for longest-running friend if I could just get in touch with him...) We recounted every memory we could possibly come up with in 30 minutes for our countless adventures in college. Memories are old ones I guess. We'll have to hang out for awhile to make some new ones to add to the old ones. A weekend in LA just won't do. So happy anniversary to Kathleen and Susan and to myself. What a day to begin the travels that led me all the way to Antwerp and I don't plan on turning back any time soon. IN THE NEWS:
August 21, 2002 : being excited.
If you haven't read my dossier, if you are looking for reading materials, you might want to read it. It's jam packed with information about me and why I act the way I do--why I'm even doing this project. It hints to the reasonings behind my ending up in art as well as why this year has been a good one. It's been a great one. One only has to see the boatloads of work I've created to appreciate it. And if you don't appreciate it, I do. I don't rightly know if it's because I'm ready to go back to work/school or what, but something has snapped in my head. No more spending hours of hapless surfing on the web, I'm creating things. I'm stealing code from people's websites and tweaking it for my own. I'm taking code apart and learning about it...or at least enough to know whether or not I'm interested in learning more. I'm including bits of code I knew existed but never wanted to use. I actually stayed up until 4:30 in the morning the other night working on a project. I haven't stayed up that late working on something other than my dance-moves or conversations since I don't know when. Since e-cards are in my dossier, I've be working furiously to get something whipped into shape...and the whipping has worked. Bracketland now has e-cards: bracketland.com/greetings.html. I don't know what's come over me but I'm excited about things again. I'm proud of myself, and my brain is more like a sponge than a turtle's shell. Did I just need a little vacation? Maybe. But it's good to see that Eva and I have a little passion in our lives--the want to be something/learn something/do something. Of course our wants turn into humanitarian instead of self-centered on occasion and we realize how futile it is to work long hours for things that do nothing while children are starving and that women can still be stoned for adultery. (don't other people freak out every once in awhile about famines an injustices?) But there's passion...Eva turning page after page in her French novel and me setting the keyboard alight. She's excited about going back to school soon (our forever swapping places--her at home in SF, me at home in Antwerp, me in school in Belgium, her at school in the States) about being a student, spending hours in the library, researching and such. And me, I'm excited about being excited, after a short lapse into 'I should have gone into the health sector' and 'I am a loser' because of all of the reasons that made me slip into a slight depression Monday night. Yes, the apartment question still looms over us like a mosquito bite; sometimes it affects us like the bites affect me...they leave a mark, but don't itch, and sometimes it affects us like the bites affect Eva...they swell up and itch like hell. Regardless we are defiant in the face of opposition. As I used to close my letters/emails we have 'chosen joy.' (I didn't write 'chosen joy' I wrote 'choose joy') We'll be happy regardless of shelter, regardless of pocket-change, regardless of speed of internet connection, regardless of nourishment, regardless of my girth and her spindly-legs, just plain happy that we found each other. I must remember this, write it down, return to it on a regular basis, turn it into a card, put it in my pocket, dry-erase market it to our bathroom mirror. I'm in love. IN THE NEWS:
August 22, 2002 : should have done.
Always, always should have done things sooner. I always figure out after I get myself into a project that I could have been doing this all along. Instance number 1: Instance number 2: This had to be the most efficient Belgian paperwork I have encountered thus far. Instance number 3: Now we just need to know more info from our current landlords, find a place for our stuff, and apologize to the new landlord for sending her a long email in English about all of the ends and outs we have available to wash the new apartment off of our hands. (This too, I emailed today.) Basically what I have seen today is that procrastination doesn't pay. Actually, it pays rather nicely, but the vibe I'm getting is that all of these things could have gone just as smoothly if we had done them all months ago and eve years ago. Message to self in form of yet another one-liner: don't put off until tomorrow what you could get done today. IN THE NEWS (though a strange sort of news): He even has T-shirts and certificates. Aides say that the war on terrorism has increased his devotion to a rigorous workout regimen that has put the president's cardiovascular system in the top 1 percent of men his age, 56. In an interview with Runner's World, to be released Thursday, Bush said he has been "running with a little more intensity" since Sept. 11.
August 23, 2002 : freedom of mobility
I vaguely once recall reading an article on an online magazine about Europe and how a scooter helmet dangling from the wrist of a European girl is so chic. Well Eva and I are in fashion now. Not so in fashion with the HUGE blue helmet, but definitely with our green scooter and the red helmet I dangle ever so slightly from my dainty wrist as we make short stops on our journeys. The helmets add style and the scooter means mobility. Wide-ranging mobility. Areas of new terrain only dreamed of just weeks ago. As I mentioned yesterday, we could have (should have) gotten the scooter sooner. We should have gotten it upon our arrival to Belgium. We should have fixed it up last fall and used it to transport us all over Antwerp back when we were looking for an apartment. (oh...those were the days pre-bicycle for me...and I remember having blisters on my feet from walking all over this city from sketchy apartment to sketchy apartment) But we have freedom now, and that's what matters. Eva came home and we hopped the scooter to head to a bad-neighborhood's communal square to watch a dance troupe. Eva said something about modern dance and we arrived to watch teenagers performing dance numbers about violence, drugs, and racism to such hits as Michael Jackson's "They don't really care about us" and the forgotten hit, "Turn around bright eyes..." (not to be confused with the popular dance version out when I first started going out dancing back in the mid 90s) But they were great. The children and their parent's who gathered around were seemingly spellbound. Eva and I, becoming the sappy-hearted adult-like people that we are, were touched by the dancer's enthusiasm. We got teary eyed when the "girl" became "addicted" to drugs and how her "family" couldn't help her. Our hearts became heavy when the "gang" started beating up the "outsider" and moved when one "gang-member" returned to help him up. Eva heard about the program because one of the copy-writers her work works with is one of the organizers. It wasn't what we expected, but it was great nonetheless. I was expecting modern dance with flowing clothes instead of black tank-tops and baggy black pants along with elbow guards for the brake-dance-like numbers...but I'm glad someone is doing something to evoke change. What the world needs now...is more young people willing to give up their Friday nights to such a cause. Good for them. Back on the scooter we headed toward the city center. Past the city center and on to the harbor. A bit of a "discussion" in the direction we were going which I was positive would lead us to the multi-plex movie theater we had previously ridden our bikes to which Eva insisted was in the other direction. When we saw the neon of the movie-house, she re-nigged and simply said, "Ok. So that's the movie theater." And nothing else. :) She's cute like that. After deciding that it was too late for a movie, and after a dinner of Sbarros pizza and pasta, we headed home. Back over drawbridges and cobblestones (which are considerably more cobble-like on a small-tired scooter) Upon our arrival back home, sore assed but thrilled, we plopped ourselves in the couches to assess the apartment situation again. Yes, again. What conclusion is better than no conclusion? We're still wishy-washy, and both of us would rather fast-forward through time and get it all over with. Three months from now and it will all have been settled. If life weren't too short anyway, we would wish the months to fly by and the settling done at neck-break speed. But we're still in love and love means that when we're old and gray we'll be glad that these three months seemed like such an eternity...and we'll be wishing for more. IN THE NEWS:
August 24, 2002 : saturday in brief
This is like a news bulletin with only the highlights mentioned in a very brief fashion: Getting glasses on the Meir: The best thing though, will be that the world will be a whole new place to her. I'll get to link arm in arm with a girl who will be able to read the street signs from across the street, she'll start noticing things I've already gotten used to, and the 'eva-look' that is always accompanied with squinting (though usually attributed to sunlight) will be squint-less (of course the sun won't help.) Basically, we're really excited. The Sun Wah Supermarket: We also hit the Thai and Indian isle pretty hard, throwing in all sorts of mixes for tandoori and masala as well as two cans of Coconut milk. (a necessity if I am ever to be able to make that scrumptious green milky curry soup we both love) Last, but not least, we were going to buy stuff to make sushi, but alas we couldn't find the roller (the skewer sticks stuck together with string) and as I already mentioned, the seaweed was too expensive. We did, however, manage to buy some wasabe...so eventually our sushi cupboard will be complete. Should have/could have Fnac: So I can't give it more memory or a better processor. I can, however, give it more USB ports. (the ADSL modem is a power-hog and can't run off of any bus-powered USB port) And so, today at Fnac, I bought a self-powered USB hub for 31 Euros. I returned home, plugged it into the Ox, and not only does the ADSL modem love it, so does my ergonomic keyboard, my mouse (I had previously been stuck with the built-in track pad because of the port being used by the internet), the 20 gig external hard-drive, and CD Burner too. You might read that and figure out that a four-port can't deal with 5 add-ons, well the mouse is into one of the free ports on the keyboard. Which still leaves me with one USB port for the digital camera! Yay! If all of this leaves you wondering what in the hell I just wrote, and what on earth could be the meaning of it all, it just goes to show you that old computers are ok too... Apartment Concerns: IN THE NEWS:
August 25, 2002 : slap of joy
Ah Leila. Thank you for reminding me to 'choose joy.' I had forgotten what a mind over matter situation it was. Simply spin the table around for a different perspective or, rather, get up from my place at the table and take a different seat. I suppose it would apply to literally everything. Change does a person good. We woke up this morning and headed to the library. (it's becoming a sunday tradition.) While I readied the scooter (which consists of unlocking the pesky U lock and the simple Power U lock) Eva chatted with our downstairs landlady. It seems that it's over and done with. We're staying at 13 Marialei and dumping the new one. Even as I type this I become a little heavy hearted. We spent most of the day traversing Antwerp by scooter. We had belgian broodjes by the river and went to a flea market. While eating a man and his son passed us. "Smakelijk" which means "Bon appetite" or an English version would be what, "Happy eating?" or maybe "Enjoy" but in reference to food. He had smiling eyes and we reacted the way people react to strangers who approach. The funny thing is, we both felt bad when he left. Was he just being nice? Why did we have to automatically up our defenses? Of course there are a thousand reasons to do both. I can list more reasons to be caloused than to be welcoming. Two girls on a deserted section of the Antwerp city-center pier eating sandwhiches...a man approaches. (so did a woman speaking French who was walking her dog) Was it because he was Northern African looking? Oh man...choose joy, Andrea, choose joy. We did the harbor by daylight, riding for hours over drawbridges and waterways, by huge tin roofed warehouses and lines of cranes. By the time we got back home we were grumpy because of our bottoms and I was lead heartened by the loss of the dream digs. I let it cloud everything. I sunk into another slight depression. Dream apartment. Office space. Room to stretch. Room for yoga mats. A big kitchen. Gone. I somehow couldn't get over it. Eva kept saying that it was only for a year. A year. A whole freakin' year! Then Leila came by...a bit Sunday hard-day drunk to be specific. She invited us to the cafe we call the "pink house." Eva and I hadn't eaten and so we headed to a shoarma place for dinner before heading on over to the cafe. I was sullen and moody...this made Eva moody. A dark cloud decended on our table and we avoided each other's eyes. But then we nixed it. Right in the bud. I got over it and she got over my reaction. I had been so selfish. The two of us had made our decision and we were going to stick by it. It was only a year! :) Arm in arm we walked back to the cafe to join the waiting Leila, Susan and their friend. We decided to get back to our roots and stop letting day-to-day weigh us down. We acted goofy and danced in the street and I sprawled myself down over the tram tracks in mock-humility. I need her. We need us. We decided to get back to innocence...back to the Hello, I'm Andrea. Hello, I'm Eva. I think I like you business. Because we do. And Leila. Bless her heart. She's a gem, the one source we can both consider crucial to our coming together. She tells me how her screensaver at work is "choose joy" taken from my sign-offs of emails from yesteryear. She mentions how her coworkers have started dropping it in random conversations...how somehow it's sinking in. I may not have shown it, but it was a slap to the face. A big bucket of cold water to wake me up. A nice grab-shoulder shake. Choose Joy. And I am. And I will. And I will try to on a regular basis. It's something to believe in like all of the catch-phrases that don't seem to stick...but somehow this one does. You can't refute it. Thanks, Leila for reminding me.
August 27, 2002 : renting hell
Not as in renting a portion of hell, but being a renter and going through troubles. I haven't been very proactive since I've been here. If I can look at the result of almost one entire year in Belgium (10 maanden) then I can safely say that I'm quite hermit-like. I'm probably a bit pale even. I would be a good candidate for an analysis. Decently outgoing American transplanted into foreign country and brings own soil. (Just let that soak in. The key to the text is "brings own soil.) If I were proactive I would most likely have a real job and maybe even a couple of friends that I met on my own. (Enter shrug here.) But last week I did research on the internet in English and came up with a hopeful solution to our renting problems. The Renter's Guild. I simply went to Yahoo/Google and typed in, "breaking a lease in Belgium" and two links into it I was finding a phone number to call for those of us stuck in An Het Huuren Hell. And I called it. My first phone-call. No, I'm not kidding, my first phone-call. And they said to show up tonight between 7 and 9. So at kwart naar zeven we headed to the renters guild tonight to join up for 12 Euros and get free lawyeresque counseling...the hows and whats we're able to do. Eva got home and we headed over on our post-modern ride only to realize once we got there that we were sans contract. No big deal, we're no longer tramming it, so we hop back on and head back home only to return with contract in hand. "Nice scooter..." a man said as we propped it up on it's glorified scooter kickstand, "it's so...so...small...small and green." :) 3 hours later, being renters #23, after under-a-euro drinks for the both of us, after we've read every Time (European English edition) available (dated enough that they had obviously been purchased last fall after the wake of September 11th) we headed to see our helper. And she had nothing much to say. Nothing. No small little clause in every lease that leaves room for desperate peoples. Nothing. We leave. So of course we expect this, and we also expected the clause. I expected the clause more than Eva and as it turns out, my expectation of the clause rubbed off so that by the time we were home Eva was devastated that there was no clause and I was filled with newly-found vigor to rent the place. Make posters, make fliers, call people, send group email, post in papers, etc. But Eva was devastated. We were not on the same page. She sat on the couch re-evaluating the whole situation all over again asking things like, "Should we just take it?" :) "No," I said, "you've got to be kidding." I don't know how we equalized the balance between her panic/devastation and my shrug/enthusiasm, but we resolved it by making one of our famous Eva and Andrea To Do Lists. Mine read an assortment of things complete with little squares I put next to the items in order to give me something to 'X' or check off. (I never use checkmarks...and just thinking of that makes me remember that my mother is left-handed and when she graded papers I'm pretty sure she makes the left-handed checkmark...I'll have to inquire) The portion of my list that was Eva-inspired: And I promised to work through the list...giving priority to Eva's portion. In other words it's my have-to-do-Wednesday list. We'll see how tomorrow goes. IN THE NEWS:
August 28, 2002 : the list
Emailed Marc. Call Lady. Shop for Posters. Buy Koopjiskrant: Needless to say, Eva was mightily impressed when she got home. (we also went grocery shopping where I splurged and bought Eva 1 regular Hoegarden and 1 gold-label Hoegarden and me 1 Bellvue Framboise and 1 Morte Sorbte Framboise to drink when we feel like having something other than green tea, regular tea with milk, or coffee) I got home early enough to stop off the goods, hop on the scooter, and pick up Eva from the station. It's only a 10 minute walk, but there's nothing like the wind on your face, the weight of the helmet, the lure of speed... We Love Our Scooter! (Replace the word 'Love' with a red heart...like the I (heart) New York! bumper-stickers) And I must say that today was a rather productive hump-day. IN THE NEWS:
August 29, 2002 : niet goed
For months now Eva's been telling me that my Dutch is goed. Hael goed. Maar het is at a standstill. En ik heb nodig that this is the case. Drie maanden van vakantie zal doen it to anyone. Ik told her that I heb the gene neit. Mijn ouders spreeken een taal. Mijn vrinden spreeken een taal. Mijn landen sprekt een taal. Dat is fout, maar voor dit example, mijn land spreakt een taal. Ok? Ik heb gezegt, "Eva, ik weit het neit how to study en neiuw taal. Ik got en "D" in spaans de laaste jaar en universitait." So als, vanavond, op onze scooter, wij zijn gegaan(?) naar mijn nederlands school. Naar Hoboken. Ik heb gezijn(?) en de vrenigde staten de dag mijn clase examen taken, en zoals ik had to take the test. In antwerpse, "A Mai." (I dont' know als dat is hoe dat is het gespelt) Ik passed only omdat mijn teacher gave me the test. Hij hebt nodig dat ik wil nederlands sprek en dat ik ben slim, maar ik hou van slaap. We basically just talked, I filled in the basic, "Ik woon in Anwterpen, blah blah blah" and because there wasn't enough time for mij to take the vull text, ik passed. Ik was wit. Eva rolled haar ogen. Jij hebt to study. Ik gewillen haar helpen. An het beginen nu... Basically I was devestated. Surely if I had taken the test months ago I would have remember how to spell things...and maybe the word for 'parkbench.' But I felt like a fool. There I was in the waiting area with all of these 'true-sense' immigrants learning it if I want to, whereas if they don't learn it, they're not going to fit in here. They aren't going to be able to understand their kid's homework or gradecard or mail from the city. Two days ago I ended my entry paragraph with this: Decently outgoing American transplanted into foreign country and brings own soil. What i mean by soil is this. My language and my two favorite blankets. I listen to QKED, San Francisco's NPR station, and have a stash of Bisquick. I listen to the BBC on Long Wave (or short wave, I can never remember) and when we're in the company of friends...they make space for me in their conversations. I have my own soil. Let me put it in a great analogy which works with this soil verbage... You know how you go to wal-mart or some family owned nursery and you buy a set of marigolds? You are so excited about the marigolds and celebrating spring that you set them out in front of the porch (or in your flowerbox) and you water and tend and maybe weed...and inevitably in a month or so you can still distinctly see the line where the normal soil hits the marigold's soil. The soil that came fortified with crunchy white fertilizer in the shape of a popsicle. You planted it 4 inches down, but still it's as if you could pull it right out and it'd fit back in the plastic popsicle container. That's what I mean by bringing my own soil. IN THE NEWS:
August 30, 2002 : friday night culture
For the second week in a row our weekend has started on Friday night--no more lounging around waiting for Saturday to arrive. I picked up Eva at the station and we sped downtown to pick up her new glasses. I tried picking them up yesterday only to have them paid for, in my bag, outside of the store when I inspect them only to find out that one of the lenses is half-way popping out. This, of course, drastically cut into my dutch-studying time... But tonight we sped over to the shop and picked up the glasses. I insisted that Eva get a contact-lens case from the guy so she could start wearing them RIGHT NOW. No putting it off. With starter-contact-lens-pack in hand we rearranged our helmets and were off. Eva was taking me to a surprise. The location of which she needed to find on a map. We rolled up to a city-map and she found it without squinting. "This is pretty nice," she admitted. And she looks beautiful too. Slightly bookish, but not arrogant--they look great on her. Off over tram tracks and cobblestones, off to an openlucht theater showing Chinese proverbs acted out by French actors. Complete with live music, occasional dutch translations, stringed puppets (what's that called? Marionettes?), singing, dancing, fireworks, guns, blood...everything. It was wonderful. I will add a link to their site or grab some pictures if I can get around to it. Basically this means don't hold your breath. One thing that we really like about our scooter is that it brings joy to those we pass. We can't go out on a single outing without people smiling broad smiles or stifling laughter. It's a humble-mobile. Two approaching bulbous red and blue helmet-ed figures balancing on this itty bitty green scooter. It's bound to make people chuckle a bit. And the fact that we're smiling too (just happy to be moving so quickly and having such a great time) has to help a bit. We headed back down by the Schelde, topped off the tank, filled up the oil (they had warned us that it would need oil on occasion) and headed to dinner. We went to the place synonymous with Eva and I coming together. We sat at the very same table where Leila asked Eva for a bite of her quiche...which somehow stole my heart. I had my standard random meal lasagna and Eva opted for fish. As I later told my dad in an email, tonight might have been the night I took a bite of fish...because Eva's plate look delicious...had it not been for the fact that in her initial first rounds of bites she had to pull out tiny little fish bones. YUCK! YUCK! YUCK! Then she started eating it differently so it was fine. :) (but I had already been put off) :) Today was also Susan's birthday, so we came home, whipped up a batch of 5 peanut butter cookies (which unfortunately didn't turn out the best) and ran over to Susan's and Leila's for chilled mineral water and conversation. (usually it's coffee...that's why I put such an emphasis on the water...I don't know if I've ever gone to their house without having coffee unless I count the one night I had an entire bottle of pink grapefruit juice.) So Eva and I decided that Fridays should be a go-go day instead of a rest day. By the time we hit the hay we felt like the weekend had already started off with a bang...though I soon got out of bed, fired up the computer, and started working on a logo. (I can't help it if the creative process works better after midnight) I worked and Eva snored. There is nothing more comforting than a snoring girlfriend, unless you are right beside her. :) I just happened to be working. IN THE NEWS:
August 31, 2002 : shelving loneliness
Today smelled like fall. We rolled out of the high sleeper pretty late and readied ourselves for the day...a trip to IKEA on the scooter. Thats basically all we had planned. Having donned light jackets, grabbed the backpack to fill with future purchases, and helmeted ourselves, we were off. Like I said, today smelled like fall. I get melancholy every fall. I'm sucked into a time warp where I can't figure out where I am. Am I stuck in volleyball excited that basketball season is around the corner? Am I playing the tuba solo in tonight's half-time performance at the football game? Am I a freshman in college all over again driving around in Susan's brown Camero? Am I living in Cincinnati and rearranging my living-room or bringing in a door I found off the street and making it my dining-room table? I don't quite know how to describe it. It's a down feeling...a weight. It's the breeze that is highlighted with cool air instead of summer-warm. It's the trees with their leaves turning every so slightly brown. It's the smell of leaves and the remembering of my parents bundling me up in a blanket-full of leaves and throwing me into the pile behind our house--before we moved to the country and no longer had a leave-pile and started not caring about leaves in our yard in general. It's the feel of school starting and how excited I would be every year to do school-supply shopping and going to school with my parents to help other teachers past and present put up their bulletin boards. The clean-school minus children smell...the same smell it had after the three days that teachers have to stay after the kids had left at the beginning of summer. We did the IKEA thing and ended up with a lot of 'things' for 24 Euro. The everyone-has-to-have-one plastic shopping bag holder, a new set of duvet covers and pillowcases, a towel rack, velcro cord organizers, a dish-rack water-catcher/serving tray, and even more. We looked at every IKEA shelf display and every IKEA closet-organizing system and every desk-setup. We can afford none-of-the-above, but I am desperate to have some shelving out on the landing outside our door and a better system of desks so that Eva and I don't' have to sit on top of each other to both work at the table. (currently one of us usually surfs while sitting on the couch and the other at the table) We'll get it figured out sometime soon. Jessica is going to return for her farewell tour and maybe the two of us can rig something. Eva and I returned home and, though I wasn't up for it enough to convince Eva, I would have gladly rested and then gone out to do something else. Instead I configured email address for a site I'm working on, poked around with some more logos, uploaded a site to a new hosting system, etc. I busied myself while Eva busied herself around the house. She puttered and 'putered. (My dad's fun-word for computer='puter which sounds like "peuter") And I must admit that I did get a little down. I missed people. I played the San Francisco songs (If you are going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, San Francisco Bay Blues, Ballad of San Francisco, Come Back from San Francisco) I downloaded the other day over and over again and, combined with the day's weather, I got down a bit. I missed Bobbie and Erin. I missed Colleen. I missed seeing my sister Kelly and her family on a regular basis, I missed my old job, I missed Andrew and Holly, Emrys, Lisa and Lisa, Carolyn, and Dave. I missed my old life. I wanted to be there, call Bobbie up and say, "Let's go have coffee..." We manage to do this via IMs but it's hardly the same as hopping in the faulty-steering-ed Honda and going for a ride. And then my mother pops up on Messenger. Eva's asleep on the couch and I plug in my headphones and microphone and show my dad what technology can do...again. He reacts in a way I didn't expect. It doesn't surprise him that he can hear his daughter via a phone-line via a computer's microphone and speakers. He says, "Hey, I'm eating a smoked turkey sandwich and a couple of Lay's potato chips...wanna hear?" And he crunches into the microphone and giggles. "No one can eat just one!" he says. And so, though I woke Eva up with all of the noise, my parents unknowingly brought be back to earth. Back to the fall of 2002 where I live with my girlfriend in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium in a town called Antwerp. Where I am attending graduate school in Brussels and taking a Flemish course at the end of a tram-line in Hoboken. Where I am slightly unstable but always better off the next morning...getting to know sides of me I never knew existed (which will prove to be pretty interesting in the long run). :) IN THE NEWS: |
