Before heading to Mechelen to pick up Eva, I heard some English floating through the window from down on the street. Not native English, but English as the common language. A Russian/Polish woman (accent/look of somewhere over there) was saying that she did hit him, but that she couldn't see him, and that he hadn't been going very fast, but that she was very sorry. The man she was talking to was Turkish/Moroccan (accent/look of somewhere down there) and he was saying that she hit him, that she couldn't see him, and that it was true that he hadn't been going very fast, but that he too was sorry that she had hit him.

They were both relaying the story to a smartly-dressed Belgian guy (accent/look of somewhere here) and to be honest, I couldn't figure out the relationship of any of the three to the other. No one was very angry, though the girl was definitely animated. This went on for at least a half-hour, and though as a curious bystander I wanted to know what was going on, I had to head to Mechelen to pick up Eva.

Traffic in Mechelen was horrific. No wonder public transport sometimes works really well. I daresay I'd hope to never become a 2 car, 2 person household here and vow to use the train when the train is the best choice. I don't mind, of course, that there was traffic, as I consider myself quite calm in dense traffic. I tuned my duct-taped speaker/stereo set to anything Flemish speaking, and set to practicing my Dutch. I still can't believe how much I understand. I can, by no means, speak back, but at least I understand that there are words coming out of the speakers and that half of those words have some sort of meaning to me. Cool.

I picked her up and we calculated how much time we had to get from there to Carrefours and Aldi before heading to Het Roze Huis for my meeting with Tom (a different Tom) about working in Cafe Den Draak. (an effort to rocket my Dutch to the next level and get me out of the house.) We didn't have much time, but as I avoided the Ring around Antwerp at all cost, we were not hindered by harbor trucks, people returning home at rush hour, or weekend-vacationers trying to head to the Netherlands.

At Carrefour Eva did something she's been planning on doing for quite some time. She saw her Friday-night-headache approaching coupled with her lack of shopping enjoyment hand in hand with my taking too much time to look at yogurt potjes and tried to fend it off. I did something I always try to do in this sort of situation, as I saw it most when I was attempting to try on sunglasses and gain her approval for just one pair. I just dropped it and tried to finish our shopping as quickly as possible. Together, we managed for her to get over it completely (only officially did it subside in Aldi) and the two of us managed to have a wonderful shopping adventure. :)

En route to the cafe after a stop at Aldi, we stuffed ourselves full of snack items as we were both starving. I chose strawberries and Tiger Nuts and Eva chose strawberries, the Belgian version of marshmallows, and a granola-ish bar.

At the cafe, Eva sat down to read De Standaard, and I headed upstairs to talk to Tom. One hour later I returned with papers to fill out and we headed home to officially start our weekend. We decided it was again a movie night and settled in with Bourne Identity (a movie to watch!) and a fake-chicken stir-fry.

IN THE NEWS:
Clerics from both of Islam's main groupings — Sunnis and Shiites — called for unity and equality in a new Iraq. The Shiites, long repressed under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, comprise 60 percent of the country's population of 24 million and are calling for Iraq to be established as an Islamic State.