March 10, 2003 : scooting troubles

Since Eva seems to think my "brief" journals funny, I shall attempt to do the same for today.

- In the morning I did my usual round of production work on getting De Magneet together. It seems to be content-heavy this time around and I'm dying to know how I'm going to fit it all together.

- For lunch I had, as usual, my now famous soup--Knorr Pumpkin and Tomato "just-add-water" version. I also added some egg-drop-soup mix that my aunt sent me, and the end-product was delicious. I keep expecting myself to hit-soup-burnout, but it seems I can't shake this habit. I've eaten myself sick on many an item here in Belgium, or at least gone through "phases" of food-loves. Various cheeses, breads, drinks, etc, and I even thought I was close to losing my love for the vegetarian fake-meat slices at Del Haize, but I was mistaken. I still like Wasa crackers with fake-meat, raspberry and blackberry yogurt, and my beloved soup.

- I went downstairs early on in the day to test-start the scooter. It seemed to it' getting "better" the longer that we used it. It started first thing. Good, that meant I could take the scooter to school tonight.

- I spent the rest of the afternoon updating my journal and making a CD for my fellow student at school in Hoboken, a CD of some of my favorite Dutch/Flemish songs, ranging from K3's Feest to Stef Bos's Mijn Stad.

- At a little after six I left on the scooter, drove to school, and was amazed at the scooter's ride. It sounded really great and was a smoother ride than it had been previously. It's a much better mode of transport than late-rides to Hoboken on the tram. I dont' know why they don't attempt to make the trams arrive at tram-crossing points at around the same time, because most of the time I just miss the second tram that I want to catch, which makes me late.

- I arrived 15 minutes early and chatted with the members of my class. One guy who hadn't seen me in his class before thought I was the new teacher. I suppose this means that my Flemish sounds pretty good, right? But then of course, all I have to do is try to have a discussion with my teacher during the mid-lesson pause, and I realize I'm lightyears away. (she sometimes gets a little carried away and speaks really quickly.)

- Muloud, my friend, appreciated his CD and also brought me a gift; a book in Dutch. I really think he's a great guy and I imagine that we might start hanging out a bit outside of school just to help our Vlaams. I think I'll ask Tom to come along, as I think Tom would get a kick out of talking to him in broken English, French and Dutch.

- During the pause I ran into Frank, the teacher from my first Dutch class the first year. He's currently subbing English classes, and asked me if I would like to come in and talk to his classes about America. He figured speaking with a native speaker would be far more applicable and useful to them than studying "how to write a coverletter."

- Had I known that the English classes were longer than my Dutch classes, I wouldn't have cut my own class for the last half. Tomorow I'm doing the same thing with another one of his English classes, but instead of taking off half the class, I'm simply going to go after my class is finished--30 minutes instead of an hour and a half.

- What they mostly wanted to know was where I was from and what it was like there. They also wanted to know how big Belgium was in comparison to my own home-state of Missouri. I did an estimation and will try to get back to them on the specifics. They aslo wanted to know what happens to a person in the states if they have no health insurance and they break their arm or have cancer. I can talk over my own country in terms of my own experiences, but I must admit that I'm a little unprepared in some cases; insurance being one of them.

- I also told them what an impact 9-11 had on my living here, and how I was so afraid when we first got here. I told them how I shuttered at the fact that my school in Brussels was in a seemingly muslim community, and how when Eva and I were househunting, I had grimaced when we were looking in areas of Antwerp where men roamed the street praying with their beads behind their back. (I should do research. It's not the rosary, but I dont' have any idea what the name of it is, and I've lived here too long to not find out.) I actually got a bit emotional when talking about it (my self-professed fear) and as it was the first time I had ever really talked about it openly, and the fact that it was an audience of Belgians, I was sort of moved. (I think they didn't know what to say!) Regardless, I'll do native-speaker talks whenever possible. I think it's a great experience and even better to be an ambassador of sorts in these awkward times.

- After school was out I headed down to my scooter and sped away. It started right off and was doing so well I was even singing a song in Dutch when 5 minutes from school (I found a damn-good shortcut that doesn't have me going through a wooded area behind the catholic school) the scooter literally gave up the ghost. I was speeding along and then it suddently started losing power. No attempt to give it gas helped. It was pointless.

We had had experiences like this before, and so I simply got of the scooter to restart it (as we had done so many times in the last week) and it didn't start. It also didn't start after I had walked it along the street for a half hour, trying in vain every 5 minutes or so to re-start it.

- To be quite honest, I was pissed off. I was in a decently good neighborhood, but one were scooters were prevalent. I just knew that if I left it there I'd return to its having no tires left, as both tires are practically brand new.

- Having no credits on my phone and having almost no battery life left in the phone, Eva was calling me every 10 minutes or so to see how I was getting on. I parked the scooter in front of an overly-well-lit laundrymat, locked the front wheel in its sideways position, and headed for the tram for which I had to wait only 15 minutes.

- I got home, made dinner, and tried to focus on the positive things in life; good looking and smart companion, good thai food, a comfortable living space...and then I proceeded to calm down a bit. Thankfully Eva was patient, as she could tell that I was a little stressed at the turn of events. Thank goodness Spring and it's beatuiful weather is around the corner. Each morning shows us blue sky, and someday in the future, those blue skies will stay through the day.

IN THE NEWS:
France and Russia vowed today to vote down a U.S.-backed resolution setting a March 17 ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to disarm or face war as the United States scrambled to get enough support to call for a vote.