concerts

It has been the month of concerts. To be honest in the past I have rarely if ever gone to concerts. Most of that came out of the fact that I was not that into music. That's not to say I don't love music-cuz i do! but I didn't really follow the "music scene" and pretty much only knew big names artists that one would hear on the radio all the time. Things have changed in the past year or so. I think I have found my genre of music and therefore have done a bit of research into similar artists. This has also been helped out by the fact that some of my good friend in BXL are VERY into music. So in the past 5-6 weeks I have been to several concerts- some of them more my style and some as a result of friends and students. The first concert was with students-THE SCRIPT-an irish band came through town. I was smart enough to get tickets ahead of time(it sold out early) and went with a few high school students. It was a decent concert- the lead singer was a bit full of himself but I am guessing that a lead singer of a rock band should be a little cocky? The next concert 2 weeks later and more my style- IRON & WINE. I was quite excited about this concert and was actually the one who organized my friends to go. Sad to say it was very disappointing. The music was all changed up and slightly self-indulgent and I walked away feeling like the best part of the evening was going out afterwards. Then the week after that we had our YoungLife fundraiser concert where we had THROW TELEVISION open up for RUE ROYALE. Both amazing bands and quite possibly my favorite concert so far! Monday night was yet another concert- KT TUNSTALL was in town. Fiona got tickets way back when and though I did not know much of her music-let's just say black horse and a cherry tree was probably the only song I DID know- the concert was quite good. She was fun and unassuming and gave a great show. We started out pretty close to the front and since I am somehow taller than most Belgians I had a pretty good view of the entire stage(even the awesome orange drum set!) We ended up in the back after a near fainting scare from Fiona but all in all a good concert

No more concerts for a while but it sure was a fun month!

all in a day

Sometimes I crack up at my life. For instance- today by 1 PM I had

1-been to french class where of course I spoke french and as much english as I could get my neighbors to speak:)

2-Gone to the car dealership because this morning I wanted to check my oil but the hood would not open. SO I went to the dealership to see what I was doing wrong-YES i did try reading the french manual first but it just said to do what I was trying. The problem was NOT me-but a loose cable so the nice french belgian checked my oil for me:)

3-went to the grocery store where I got to speak the little Flemish I know(thank you and I would like to pay with credit please:))

and then back to my place- yes 3 languages in 1 morning-

only in Belgium where not only can they not choose a language but we also hold the record for longest time without a government! GO BELGIUM!!

Italian adventures

There are many moments in my life when I step back and have to tell myself- "this is my life!!" Some of those moments are in the best of times and some not:)

As far as best of times go- Since November I have been to Italy not once but TWICE!! ridiculous-I know!! considering I had not been since my "european adventure" of 1999 it is pretty impressive:)

Trip 1-In november I went with my amazing friend Kate who was living in Spain at the time and wanted to visit Rome before she moved back to the states. We stayed in amazing apartment right around the corner from the Colosseum. It was so much fun to walk around Rome and eat lots of pizza and Gelato with one of my dearest friends. We met lots of fun people, heard opera being sung outside the Pantheon, took illegal pictures:), and mastered the art of public transport in Rome-it's impressive believe me:)

a picture in the colosseum looking out towards the Roman Forum-amazing history!

in the Roman forum-I actually learned how to use this type of fountain by watching Eat, Pray, Love- at least i learned something:)

My favorite outfits of the trip- really -do they have to make the Swiss guard look like clowns?

Trip #2- For my birthday back in October my 2 dearest friends in Brussels gave me an amazing gift. They planned an adventure for us to Italy in january-figuring we would need an escape from the dreary belgium weather! We flew to Pisa and then stayed in acute little Tuscan town at the top of a hairpin turn mountain road. We built fires every night and walked around fairly deserted italian villages during the day. These ladies are amazing and I am so blessed to have them in my life. We chatted and chatted, made s'mores in our fireplace at night and ate breakfast on the rooftop terrace.

IN pisa taking the obligatory-"it's gonna fall without me" picture

Fiona, me and Sarah in Pisa

Eating on the rooftop- it was sunny- but COLD!! hey coming from Belgium we will do anything for some sun!

In one of our tuscan villages:)

Thanks ladies for giving me the best present ever-TIME with you in an incredible setting!

more watches

This one goes back to a blog I posted about 1 1/2 years ago titled "daughter of a farmer" which involved my ingenious fixing of a watch with electrical tape. Well that watch that I was fixing was one of about 4 that I had from my days of living on Hilton Head Island when the Nike outlet was just around the corner and it was cheaper to go get a new watch than get the battery changed. Well each of those watches eventually ran out of battery and was replaced by a clone watch and being the pennsylvania dutch girl that I am I did not throw the unused watches away-i mean they may be useful SOMEday. That means that YES they have moved through 3 different countries! So over the past few years I have replaced the batteries in each of those watches and worn them until they actually broke(I mean seriously friends they are made of plastic-they were bound to eventually break). And when they broke I fixed them with electrical tape for as long as they could be fixed and then and only then did I throw them out-NOOOO!!! i did not throw them out-are you kidding?- I mean someday someone might come up with a way to reattach plastic watch bands to themselves- I put those watches in the medicine cabinet to wait for that day! So back to the watches which hadn't fallen apart, been fixed with electrical tape and then retired to the medicine cabinet. Over Christmas I took the last one home with me in hopes of changing the battery. On my last day there I realized I had not gotten the battery changed so I decided to go to Wal-mart to get a battery. What I forgot to take into account was the fact that I did not have a way of getting the back opened and I did not know what type of battery I needed and at Wal-mart or any other store for that matter they will not change said Nike battery because they cannot guarantee the waterproofness of it afterwards. I mean come on!-I am not going deep sea diving, I just want a watch that works! I will take all responsibility for the lack of waterproof abilities! So I waited at the watch counter for like 10 minutes hoping the person that came would hand me the tools so that I could open it and find the battery number and replace it. The lady comes and was about as helpful as I was when I worked at Wal-Mart for 1 month back in college-in other words she looked at me, said she couldn't change it, she didn't have the tools and there was a place in the mall(20 minutes away) who might change it. Now any other time that would have been my excuse to go to the mall and get Chick-Fil-A but it was my last day in the states and I wanted to avoid the mall. So long story short- I came up with the plan to go to the eye glasses part of the store and borrow one of their eye-glass repair kits that they sell. So I stood in the store and used their handy tool to open the back of my watch only to find that they did not have the correct battery-drats! well wal-mart got an extra 97 cents because I bought that repair kit so I could take it to the rite-aid and buy the correct watch! (and while I was there I found this stuffed "Woody" pillow that my nephew freaked out about when he opened it for his bday- he is a HUGE toy story fan!) So thank you wal-mart for all of your help! Oh yeah- and this being the LAST watch in a long succession of identical watches-it is also the best because the indigo light actually works! way to go out with a bang!

Home

Above is a picture circa 1980 of my older sister Trisha, my Grandmom and me at Christmas(take note of all the green-the doors,couch and pj's!).

"Home is where the heart is" If that is true then I have many homes. As I get ready to head "home" to the states this week it brings up odd feelings because it is also "home" here in Brussels and to be honest I am "home" in Atlanta as well. It is an odd sensation to say you are going home to a place you have not actually lived in over 10 years and yet it completely feels like home. There is something so great about my time in PA-Family! I have a lot of family all over the world-not biological but people that I would do anything for and who would do anything for me. And yet there is something to be said about people who have literally known you your whole life-all 34+years of it!:)

People that remember this cheesy grin,

Or this great late 70's look!(At least the 70's were almost over by the time I came around-and I didn't get to enjoy the full feathered hair of my sisters-I just got the crooked bangs!)

They know I am not perfect so I can just be me! They know the Marissa who used to walk out of the house with ketchup all over her and not even realize it, who did not shower regularly until probably the 8th grade, who would follow them around like a lost puppy-just wanting to be a part of whatever they were a part of, who played sports all day every day, who always wanted to go places, who acted like she didn't want to be like her big sisters but who really wanted to do everything they did, who yelled at their boyfriends for not treating them right, who was a typical youngest sister! The girl with the crooked bangs, crooked teeth and mismatched clothes.

And so this week as I look forward to going HOME I am looking forward to a lot of things but the biggest one is just BEING with my family and enjoying each other. I am looking forward to the traditions of Christmas-cooking baking while listening to Johnny Mathis, all the kids sleeping on the floor at Grammy and Poppy's on Christmas eve, having breakfast casseroles, opening amazing stockings, going into Philly and so much more!

HOME- it's nice to have a lot of places to call home but for me there's nothing like the original!

PS-the picture above is the show you that the wings have been replaced and we have grown up past the 70's!

Thanksgiving and snow

Last saturday I celebrated Thanksgiving with my friends here in Brussels. It was a lovely day of cooking in Fiona and rasmus' amazing kitchen(pretty much any kitchen with an oven qualifies as amazing for me these days! but theirs even has a dishwasher!!), listening to Christmas music on their high-tech internet radio gadget, eating way to much food, laughing til our sides hurt(as if the food hadn't made them hurt enough), and then consuming dessert!

Fiona always decorates things so great-last year was a purple, black and white theme but this year it was a much more traditional fall colored them-yeah for the orange!!!

I totally forgot to take any pictures of the main meal but here we are digging into some dessert! I can't tell you how;) but I even managed to get Zielger's apple cider(anyone from PA will know what that is!)

This is some of us trying not to go into a turkey coma whilst sitting on their amazingly large and comfy sofa! We also got some american football on the computers for a little while-I have to say the europeans were not as into that as us americans.

This week has been a week of snow- There was even a snow day on thursday-not for the Belgian schools but the international schools went for it:) My street is scary steep even on the best of days so on snowy days most people are wise enough not to attempt driving up it. That meant that there were not many cars parked on the street and the neighborhood kids have been using it as their sledding hill. It's pretty fun to watch:) and last night they were out there at 12:30 enjoying themselves-I think I may have scared them with my stalking out the window:)

Here was my terrace yesterday-so pretty with all the snow-but at some point last night it got a little warmer and must have rained away the snow. But no worries it is snowing again as I write this!

I kissed the waiter

So perhaps I have lived in europe too long or perhaps it was just one of those nights but about a week ago my friend hannah was in town. Hannah is a friend i met while working at YoungLife camp in Canada 3 years ago. She had brought kids up for the week and we struck up a friendship. The next summer I again worked at camp and at the end of that time I needed a place to crash for a few days so Hannah let me crash with her in Seattle. I had not seen hannah in over 1 1/2 years but she recently moved to Ireland so we had great plans for visiting each other. Hannah finally came for her first visit to Brussels. It was kind of an insane work week so she was getting dragged around to all my various YoungLife stuff(good thing she's used to that!) The first night she was in town she came with me to basketball tryouts and then we came home to meet my friend fiona for dinner.

We don't often go out to eat but since it was getting late and I didn't have much in the way of creating a meal we decided to walk down to the Italian restaurant on the corner. When Liesl lived here we used to go to Cicio Bella a few times a month but it had been a while since I had been there. The people who work there are all Italian and speak mostly italian with a little french and english thrown in.

when we got there it was pretty empty so they seated us near the bar. we ordered our food and began chatting and enjoying ourselves. Throughout that night we apparently became the entertainment for all the staff:) It began when our waiter twice dropped stuff while he was serving us-first butter and then utensils. Our conversation was also creating a lot of laughter on our part so i think we began to attract attention.

Long story short- as the night went on a particular young and cute italian waiter began a slight flirtation with me. This led to us getting free dessert and drinks. we were having a lovely evening. After being there for several hours we decided it was time to head home. We got up to go and the cute young italian guy and I ended up in an uncomfortable closeness. I wasn't sure what was going on so I kissed him on the cheek and headed out.

I got out the door and looked at hannah and burst out, "i kissed the waiter!" we had a great laugh on the way home- I mean how many times do you get to kiss your young cute italian waiter?:)

Needless to say Hannah wanted to return to the restaurant every night after that!