Helloooo nurse!

It’s a cold and rainy day here in Belgium, and this is the Day for Good News. If you have any bad news, save it for tomorrow, because for once in my glass-half-empty life, it’s nice to have a day that even I will admit is perfect.

First:
Our stuff came today. It is dusty, wrinkled, and a little dented, but it is here! Opening the boxes was like the best Christmas and birthday wrapped into one. Food from America! The rest of our clothes! Not that I don’t absolutely love the four outfits I was wearing for the last two months, but wow! Now I will have some books to read, chain mail projects to work on, sewing projects, genealogy research, yarn, drawing supplies, and loads of other stuff to keep me occupied. Obviously we aren’t going to unpack everything right now because a.) it is a fully furnished apartment, and b.) we are moving!

This brings us to news item number two:
We were notified this morning that we got our first pick apartment! It is in Gent on Verpleegsterstraat, for those who don’t speak Dutch, a verpleegster is a nurse. Our new place will be a two bedroom apartment on the second floor of a building, within walking distance of the Sint Pieter Station. It has no closets, a tiny balcony, and a small storage space in a damp, ominous smelling basement. We will get to cook on a gas stove. The previous owners painted the walls a nice, neutral cool grey, and the living room has a nice new wood floor. Decidedly strange linoleum covers the bedroom floors, but believe me, this was the nicest place we saw during our search. Plus we found out that we can move in the first of December. But wait, there is more…

The third tidbit of good news:
I jumped onto the computer this afternoon to tell Travis that I had found something that he was looking for in all of our boxes, and found an email informing me that I have been accepted for the spring into the Masters program at CSU Dominguez Hills. I am going to get a second masters in the Humanities with an emphasis in literature, and when I get back to the states, that will really help with my applications to work in an academic library.

You know in the movies when people find out that they have won a lot of money, and they throw it all over a bed and roll in it, laughing? I think I am going to do that with some of our possessions now.

Over and out.

You can go to America!

The rest of our stuff will be arriving next Tuesday! Since the end of July we have fundamentally lived without it, and I am looking forward to seeing all of my clothes, art supplies, most favorite books, and the printer for our computers...Well, you couldn't exaggerate how excited I am.

Without all of that stuff, my laptop is the center of my entertainment every day. I spend quite a lot of time on the apartment hunt, of course, and I've been doing some writing. I've noticed some real differences now that I am accessing the web through a Belgian internet service and server! For instance, I like having Google as my homepage. The clear white screen with its graceful, balanced searchbox is serene. It appeals to my sense of simplicity and design. The first time I opened Internet Explorer here, it automatically reset my homepage to Google.be! If you search Google.be, all of your top ranked results are in Dutch, in which I have about a three-year-old comprehension. I wrestled with it for a while, and we compromised on me getting to have Google.com as my homepage, with a prominent suggestion to switch to the Belgian Google linked on the page.

I've also noticed a change in the advertisements that I get in the sidebar on my Yahoo mail. Every day now as I log in, I am greeted with variations on, "Click here to get your American Green Card!" "Live and work in the United States!" "The only official site for a lifetime American Green Card!!". If that goes where I think it goes, I've been to the Immigration and Naturalization web page, and it's not nearly as much fun as they make it sound.

I've also discovered that the websites in America know where I am. I mean, of course they do, they can just ping my server or whatever. But this revealed that all computer users are not equal. The file for one of my games got corrupted, and I do not have the disk with me. I tried repairing the game every way that I could, but in the end, the only solution is to re-install. I figured, well, I can just download the game, re-install it, and I will be good to go, no problem. For those of you who are wondering, it's World of Warcraft. Travis and I talked about it, and we decided that we would pay the $20 to set up a new account and download it, and then when my sister, Nay, gets her new apartment and internet service set up, we could transfer her character off of our current account to that one, and we could all play together. I entered in the number of our debit card from our American bank account, clicked download--and horrors! I discovered that I am not eligible to download the game because I am in Europe!

After much searching, I found a way to download a free trial of the game, but it is trickling into my computer at a blazing 3 to 15 kb a second. It is a 2.8 Gig file, and for those of you who have no picture of how slow that really is, you can figure that it will be done downloading just about when the disk gets here with the rest of our stuff. ;)

Warm, Inviting Colors

I managed to find the one Mexican Food restaurant in Kortrijk last weekend on the way to pick up my Timespiral cards from Albion Games. Grill Resto, painted in the international colors of taco shops everywhere. They have guacamole, which is comforting because I haven’t so much as seen an avocado since we’ve been here.




I think taco shops are kind of exotic in Belgium, what not being next to Mexico and full of Mexicans and all. They seriously need to import some, as their supply of taco shops is dangerously low. This Mexican restaurant in particular is very exotic: they have the rare dish Nachos con Polio.

Ik ben jarig

This weekend we did not travel on Saturday, working instead with a grim intensity on our apartment search. I finally have a couple of appointments to look at apartments, so our blitz of calls and emails has yielded some results.

On Sunday we celebrated my 30th birthday. In Dutch you say, “Ik ben jarig”, which translates directly as “I am year-ing”. We celebrated by NOT going out and doing anything stressful. It was a relaxing day, getting me ready for another week of largely incomprehensible menus, signs, newspapers, television shows, bus schedules, and product labels. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an interesting challenge, but sometimes a little tiring.

This week our alternate quest is to get me a bike, which would help a LOT with grocery shopping, recycling bottles, and getting to the train station in Kortrijk so I can take the train to Ghent to look at apartments. New bikes here run a minimum of 200€, not counting a bike lock and a helmet, and you can go up in price as much as you like. We are trying to find a used bike nearby, on 2dehands, which is similar to Craig’s List in the US. I can’t wait to post a picture of my bike when we get it!

Televisie

Travis and I have not really watched television since we donated ours to the El Cajon library, but here in Belgium, there is really cheap basic cable that pretty much everyone gets. Every once in a while, it has been nice to unwind, sit back with the remote, and be entertained.

There are a surprising number of American shows with Dutch subtitles here. I don't have a library card here yet, as we wait for our visa paperwork to wend its way through the intricacies of approval, so it is a shame that I don't like Friends or Sex in the City no matter what country I watch them in. I have enjoyed the BBC programming we get, both news and the miniseries Jane Eyre that I watched a couple of episodes of last Sunday.

I have had the chance to catch up on a few American music videos that I had not seen yet in the States. We got to watch the Cartoon Network show Samurai Jack dubbed in Dutch, and found that not only was it enjoyable, it was still comprehensible! But the most fun has been watching The Simpsons in English with Dutch subtitles. You can rest assured, no matter what language Ned Flanders is speaking in, he always babbles incomprehensibly-diddly.

The thrill of the hunt

This weekend we went to Brugge, which is a picturesque town encircled completely by a moat. It was cute, pretty touristy, and had an interesting flea market. I’ve uploaded a few photos if you are curious.

We also started apartment hunting in earnest. Renting here is a convoluted process, and Travis' company has hired a relocation firm to help us with the operation. So far this help has consisted of emailing me some links to local real estate companies that have rental listings, most of which I had already bookmarked. Later on when we get to the point of having to sign a contract in Flemish, they will certainly be invaluable, though.

Armed with an idea of what area we would like to live in, Travis and I drove up to Gent on Sunday to walk around and write down some possibilities. It was a windy day that threatened rain, and our ears and finger were chilled by the time we had covered the entire Citadel Park area, which is near Gent University, the train station, and not too far from the public library.

When we got home, Travis had some homework to do, while I sat down to call some places. It’s weird; there is no standard way to write a phone number here. Some examples of formats we ran across:
5555.55.55.55
55/555 55 55
5555/55 5555
Anyway, I just started dialing. My search went pretty much like this:
Call 1: Strange beeping noises, and then a dial tone. Could not tell if this was a busy signal, ringing, or alien transmissions.

Call 2: Answering machine message in Dutch. I left an apologetic message in English saying that we were inquiring about the apartment and left our number. No call back yet.

Call 3:
Landlady: Hallo?
Me: Spreekt U Engles?
Landlady: Een beetje.
Me: I’m calling about the apartment you have listed in Ledegangckstraat? How much is it?
Landlady: the sjfof.
Me: Ah…okay. When is it available to rent?
Landlady: right away.!
Me: Hmmm. I’m sorry, could you please say that again?
Landlady: Right away!
Me (still not giving up): Can we come and see it next week?
Landlady: Yes, next week.

Then she hung up.
I’ve repeated that conversation with several other prospective landlords, and since then retreated to sending out emails in response to the real estate company ads instead. I’ll keep you posted.

Afval

Sometimes I feel like an anthropologist doing a study on the differences between the US and Belgium. I am always making little lists in my head:
Same/different
American music is on the radio, but they also play a lot more techno on the radio here.
I can still (guiltily) indulge in the occasional Diet Coke, but it’s called a Coke Light here.
They sell Nutella at every store here, but peanut butter is a more elusive prey.

One thing was a complete mystery to us, though. Day one: when we got our apartment keys, it came with a special handout specifically on trash. Because there is very little room for trash here, Belgians have very strict rules regarding waste disposal. For regular trash, you have to use a grey bag with the name of the town where you live. For plastics, metal and drink containers, there is the blue PMD bag. The PMD bags only go out every fortnight, and when they do, you also put out your paper and cardboard, which must be tied together. Glass you must take yourself to special glass recycling bins that are cleverly hidden around the town, the same goes for used clothes, but these bins are in different places. Okay, no problem, we figured. We’ll just grab some trash and recycling bags when we go to the grocery store!

Days two through four: We go to four or five different grocery stores, but at none of them do they have either the grey bags or the PMD bags. Is it some sort of national secret? A game they play with newcomers? I also can’t find the trash can anywhere at our new apartment.

Day five: I begin to suspect that everyone just eats their trash.

Day six: I screw up my courage at the local fruit store. “Heeft jij de PMD zak?” I ask the forbidding woman at the counter, in my panic and poor Dutch, I accidentally refer to her with the “informal” you. Perhaps this familiarity is the magic key! She produces the recycling bags from behind the counter! I spend about the rest of the day high on my success. Later in the day, Travis asks a woman in a different store if they have the grey Zwevegem trash bags. She seems to reply yes, but no bags are forthcoming. He has not used the magic word.

Day 7: We finally both corner a woman at the checkout counter at GB, one of the larger supermarkets here, and get her to admit that they do have the grey bags behind the counter. “Do you want the large or the small?” she asks us, in her halting English.
“Large, Alstublieft,” we reply, thinking of the growing pile of trash at home.
“Sorry, all we have is the small,” she says.
“No! Small is fine, really!” It takes several reassurances before we convince her to sell us the small bags, at 1€ a bag, one package comes to a whopping 10 €.

A local assures us that this is not too bad. In some townships, the bags are clear, and if you put something that is not allowed in them, they put a sticker with a hand gesturing STOP, and leave the bag. If you do not bring the bag inside and fix it, the police will come and fine you. Yes, the local customs here are…interesting. The beer is very good, but don’t drink too much of it before you find the nearest glass recycling container!