I miss it more and more each year I’m away (okay, only 2 so far, but it’s still true). I don’t know anywhere else in the world with the type of people and atmosphere. I mean, where else can you get on a tiny little air taxi and end up discussing the leaves changing, PenDOT, Halloween costumes, and a story about someone’s great uncle driving for General McArthur in WWII all in 35 minutes. With multiple passengers involved in the exchanges.
There really are no other people like Pittsburgh people.

Anyway, that said, my trip went smoothly and I got in exactly when I was supposed to. I spent most of the trip on shopping excursions with my mom, but I also managed to eat some of my favorite foods (Spanish black olives, this amazing hamburger, a shmagel, STARBUCKS coffee, Japanese hibachi) as well as my first PB&J sandwich in two years.

Seriously, I hadn’t had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich since before I moved.

When I wasn’t out with my mom or watching reruns of Roseanne and The Nanny on Nick at Night, I was attending a bat-mitzvah and the wedding of my Little. And since I got a new camera while I was there so I’m sharing not only a few pictures from the wedding but a few gratuitous shots from here as well.

I promised I wouldn't show anyone this picture but c'mon, how could I not?

I'm an equal opportunity photo embarasser

Pretty church (wedding)

My Little and her Husband!!! She looked so pretty.

I haven't seen some of these girls in years!!

My brother Zorro...er, Scooter

It was a Halloween wedding afterall, so we had masks at our tables

The coolest table at the wedding

Six generations of Theta Phis

Here's me the day I got back to Gent

Rawr Kitty says, "I R Fierce"

I am headed to Pittsburgh tomorrow for one week to visit family and go to my Little’s wedding.
The railway union in Belgium has a strike scheduled for the day I get back, so getting home will be interesting.

I got out of work an hour early this evening.
My wallet was stolen on the metro during rush hour.

sigh….

Latest lesson? It is not easy to accurately estimate daily food consumption in a daycare. Every day* I try and every day I failto cook the right amount of food for the kids. Most of the time I end with way too much, usually because either some kids don’t show up but the parents never call to tell us, or because on any given day at least one child refuses to eat.

Since day one I’ve been in pursuit of the perfect child:food ratio because I find that wasting food really, really irks me. And not for monetary reasons, mind you. Even if I was paying for the food, the price of one potato isn’t worth as much as the panties that get in a twist over the waste of it. No, the reason that wasting food bothers me so badly is because there’s starving kids in China.

Really.
I mean, duh, yes, really, there are starving kids in China, but that’s literally my actual first thought when I see edible food in the garbage can.
So I guess you could say it’s definitely in my nurture (not to be confused with nature) to be so strongly against the waste of food. Cause I didn’t come up with that one myself. That’s what I (and many generations of American children) heard if I didn’t clear my plate of its contents at dinner time.

“Eat your brussel sprouts. There’s starving kids in China who would be happy to have food right now.”
And like most kids I remember thinking, “Works for me! Send my sprouts to China if they want them so much.”

But now, as an adult, I just can’t help it. The food hits the garbage can and my subconscious screams, “NOOOOO! Starving Children! China!!”

Mind you, I’ve never said that to any child and CB and I have already agreed that it is not a method we plan on using on our own children. So I just grit my teeth and smile as I dump the bowls into the rubbish.

But until there’s a way to freeze dry chicken potato zucchini puree and ship it to China, I guess I’ll be forever seeking the perfect child:food ratio.

*Every day I open, which is Monday, Wednesday, Friday…except this week, which I have opened and closed almost every day due to my coworker being ill. 11 hours working plus 3 hours of commute=melted puddle of Korie on the floor and begging for the weekend.

My little Norwegian kiddo who turns one this week. I love her to bits and she’s adorable. Big blue eyes, blonde whispy hair, a great personality. And she’s usually a pretty easy going kid. She just started walking so she’s usually toddling around, thumping to her diapered bottom every few seconds and generally having a good time in the crèche. But yesterday?

Holy molars Batman, was she ever teething. I’d asked her dad to bring some Ora-gel (or whatever the European equivalent is) to help numb her obvious pain, but my request was either forgotten or ignored (her parents seem pretty good so probably forgotten, as opposed to the mother in the old crèche who put up a fight about taking her feverish kid to the doctor only to find out the kid had tonsillitis and was highly contagious) so she showed up yesterday with nothing but a binky and a clingy, bawling disposition that plagued her the whoooole day. And I ended up working from open to close practically on my own so I do mean the whooooole day.

I swear, the only time that child was not screaming in agony and frustration was when she was eating (done twice a day), sleeping (from 11:30am-1:30pm), and clinging to me limply with a river of drool pouring from her little mouth. No lie, Peanut soaked through two of her shirts with the gush of saliva that was coming non stop. Her cheeks were bright red as well and I tried everything I could think of (okay, not everything, but I don’t think I’m legally allowed to use the whiskey on the gums thing in a daycare setting) to distract her but most of the day she simply screamed for me to hold her and then chewed on my shoulders, legs and arms when I did.

So that was yesterday. My coworker caught the stomach bug from last week and she came in from 10 until 1-ish but I told her to go home and get some rest. There were only 4 kids yesterday (which made it easier to handle Peanut’s exploding teeth) so I figured I’d be okay on my own. And I was, but I was exhausted by the end of the day. I have a feeling the rest of the week is going to feel pretty long because of it. But that’s okay, cause in 8 days I’ll be on my way to Pittsburgh!

Where no child will be chewing or spitting up on me!

Yay!

Because I am an American and we, as a culture, have rendered ourselves totally useless with more than one language.
Seriously, in a country like Belgium, which is tiny and surrounded by much larger, historically more powerful, influential countries, and which has been occupied by several of those countries (the ones I know of are Spain, France, Holland and I think possibly Austria-Hungary and that’s just off the top of my head), it is pretty much essential to know more than one language. CB is fluent in English and very proficient in French (I think he used to be fluent but lack of use has made him rusty). He also has a very comprehensive passive knowledge of German and a background in Latin. It’s not difficult or unusual for him to switch between English and Dutch with relative ease. I’ve only ever seen him get hung up when he’s trying to speak three languages at once.

Yeah.

Two years ago I could count to ten in a few languages and I knew enough Spanish to say “no more” and “for Spanish, press two”. I had taken German in high school and I’d done well but in retrospect the class was pathetic. We barely learned anything aside from basic grammar and vocabulary in 3 years of class. I tried French in college and did well on the basic level but floundered once I hit grammar. In all honesty I think part of my problem was that I didn’t need French. I had a minimal language requirement to fulfill for my degree so I took French, but I wasn’t really interested in learning or using it. So I passed with the help of a horny old Dutch prof and a lot of cleavage.

Now I consider myself almost fluent in Dutch. I can certainly hold my own in a conversation and I can watch television without subtitles (although I still prefer them so that I don’t miss nuances or to help when people are speaking dialect) and I can read newspapers and magazines and comprehend most of what I’m reading. I actually sometimes think of words in Dutch before I think of them in English. About ten seconds ago I wrote “ondertitling” instead of “subtitles” because I couldn’t think of the word in English. On top of that, over the past month I’ve begun to develop a passive understanding of French after being bombarded with it in Brussels. And I’m picking it up much faster than I picked up Dutch. Granted, I did have 3 semesters of French (10 years ago and not consecutively), but still I’m surprised at how much I can understand already. I imagine a large part of it is from being surrounded by written French every day (Belgium, being a bilingual country*, has to have both languages on everything i.e. food packaging, public notices, official websites). I’m still not speaking any French aside from a few basic words that I need to plug in to my English to help my mostly French speaking coworker understand what I’m talking about. Oh and “oui”. I’m trying really hard to say “oui” instead of “ja” because most French speaking Brusselars really can’t seem to make that intuitive leap and realize that “ja” means “oui”.

The result of all of this isn’t huge, overall. It has made me appreciate how much Dutch I actually do know and can speak and it has made me want to learn that third language, just to be able to compete in a Belgian job market (I’m much more driven than the majority of Wallonia apparently). But the biggest thing I’ve noticed?
My English is suffering.
Yeah, seriously. I play several gaming sites (okay, not since I got a job, but I still play at least one regularly) and I really notice lately that when I respond to people’s comments my sentence structure is really jumbled and confused. It really reads awkwardly at times. And sometimes I can’t always think of the best way to say something in English. A good example was a few weeks ago when I was waiting for the train and was suddenly inspired to write a poem. I had some really great imagery in my head and I wrote it down but when I got to the ending line of my stanza it just didn’t sound right. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why until I reread a few times and realized I was taking a Dutch phrase and trying to anglicize it and it just wouldn’t work. See, in English we say “the train is arriving” while in Dutch they say “de trein komt zo dadelijk aan.” And in my poem I was writing “the train is coming on” which made perfect sense to me because I was literally translating the Dutch. But it clearly wouldn’t work in English and it took me almost a half hour to figure out why.

So yes, the Dutch is coming along just fine and I’m learning some French, to boot. Now I just have to work on retaining my English and I’ll be all set

*And they are actually a trilingual country, but German is kind of ignored in most areas

** For those of you hoping for baby stories, sorry to dissapoint but there was a stomach virus going around this week so most of my stories revolve around projectile vomiting and I thought it best to spare you from those details.

In a way it’s soothing in its simplicity: peeling potatoes.
I’d always used a peeler until I moved in with CB who tends to use a paring knife (the peeler is actually rusty now) so I started using a knife as well. The peeler at the new crèche* broke the first time I used it (don’t get me started on the list of broken items at the new crèche) so today I brought one of our knives with me and was consequently struck by how positively “middle ages” I felt in the act of peeling these potatoes. I kept getting mental images of the La Laitière commercials from Nestle:

Only, like, I was actually do that sort of thing, I just don’t get the fun, uber-Dutch costume.

I mean, think about it.
Small pox has been effectively eliminated.
Cars now have computer chips and on board satellite systems.
The compostion of Saturn’s rings can be researched and analyzed.

And here I am still having to peel potatoes every morning for lunches.

As I was pondering this my hands continued to deftly rotate and peel, excising the occasional brown spots and I realized no mechanism could judge how deep to go to dig out a spudly blemish. No computer program could accordingly adjust itself to the contours of each individual tuber. Nothing can do that so well as a pair of human hands. And after all that deep thought and reflection I silently came to the conclusion that there will always be someone peeling potatoes.

The early morning light turns the trees into some surreal oil painting – full and still and impossibly dark green with careless smatterings of autumn crimson and gold. I walk along one of the grey stone lined paths, shuffling through sienna slurries of fallen leaves and burnished buckeyes. The rooks nag with nasal cacophony from the well maintained lawns, glossy black and immense.
Otherwise the stillness is only occasionally interrupted by the crunch of rummers’ trainers or the whizzing whisper of a ten speed and the flash of fluorescent safety vest. A Belgian flag languidly dances in the subtle breeze, framed gracefully if somewhat grandiosely by the central arch of the arcade that commemorates Belgium’s fiftieth year of independence.
For twenty beautiful minutes there is no traffic, no beggars, no clamoring bodies blindly hustling to the next location. The world is cool and collected. Picturesque and pleasant. A place I love to be.

For instance, all the younger (7-15 months) kids have colds right now. Every nose is overflowing, every little mouth is coughing and I’ve realized that apparently when your food is already the color and texture of A&D ointment, a little snot on top probably adds to the flavor. Really, the children are not picky. If it’s warm and liquidy they eat it, be it from the spoon, their nose or both.
So anyway, yesterday I was feeding Kong (I called him this because he climbs on babies and then sits on them) his afternoon fruit puree and as I lifted him from the highchair and set him on his feet he sneezed on my wrist, leaving a long sticky string of slime connecting his nose to my arm and watch. Kind of like this (fast forward to 1:50).

Last week one of the other kids had filled his diaper to the brim and I was trying to change him while keeping my hands and the changing table clean at the same time (no small feat, I’ll have you know). I took my eyes off him for 5 seconds to throw a truck load of poop smeared wipes into the trash can and when I looked back he was fecal fingerprinting all over his chest.

I used a loooot of wipes that day.

And those are just the bigger examples, not the day to day noses wiped on my shoulder or sore mouths gumming my knees or slippery little baby fists tangled in my hair.
The other day after work I was helping CB prepare gratin potatoes and he accidentally dropped a few slices of spud on my leg. He went to put the slices back in the pile and I said, “keep in mind where my leg has been today. I’d rinse those.”

CB took a look at my pants and promptly threw the dropped potatoes away.

Today mine was “I hate it when the German dairy farmers have a protest.”

Never, ever in my most obscure musings would I have ever guessed that that very thought would be running through my head most of my way home from work.

First a bit of background:
Dairy farmers in Europe used to have a milk quota. To my understanding they were basically paid by Europe to not produce over a certain amount of milk. The point of this was to kill off third world country markets in the dairy sector. With new international free trade agreements, however, Europe could not maintain the old system and so it has become much more “dog eat dog (cow eat cow?)” in the land of European dairy farming. As it is now, dairy farmers have no quota and so they’ve been producing more milk expecting equal profits. However, the milk quota was keeping the market in check and therefore allowing all the farmers to stay in business. Without the quotas the farmers are effectively driving themselves out of business.

And they’re pissed.

They want the old system back, but Europe can’t cope with the old system in the context of the new trade laws.

So the farmers have been holding demonstrations every so often since the beginning of summer. At one point farmers filled some swimming pools with milk in protest both in Brussels and Wallonia (and apparently some Polish farmers filled a cloister pond and killed all the fish). Today they brought a ton of tractors and blocked off Schuman Square as well as the Schuman Metro Station, which, coincidentally, is the station I use to take the metro every day. The tractors were sort of interesting, but by the time I was headed home, it was starting to get rowdy. People were setting off cherry bombs in the middle of crowded areas. One went off about 5 feet from me while I was skirting the square to find another metro station. Apparently there was also a hay launcher and a manure machine aimed at the riot squad that was monitoring the situation and as we speak a veritable river of manure is floating down the street towards the royal palace. And while I used to sympathize with the farmers, what I saw today totally wiped that out.

I can understand having demonstrations to try to keep your livelihood going, but these people were endangering passers by with the explosions and hay and manure being launched across the square. Not only that, but they inconvenienced thousands of people who had to get places and who had nothing to do with their issue. And were they chanting or marching or doing anything mildly “protesterly” this whole time?
No. Not at all. They were actually having a giant cookout and smoking ribs and pouring milk all over the square. It might as well have been a farmer’s block party.

All the dairy farmers in Europe are proving is that they lack class and dignity and I can’t say I’ll feel very sorry for them if half of the dairy farms in Europe go under. At least then they won’t have any more access to truckloads of shit and the ability to shut down one of the main arteries of a major city in the world.