I think I had already mentioned yesterday that I woke up extremely early, so I'll start again there.
After I finished emailing/blogging, I decided to venture out to a store called Cora - which is like a Target or a Walmart - to pick up a few things. Cora is about 1 km (0.65 mile) from our current apartment. According to Google maps, it would take me about 15 minutes to walk there - so I assumed it would take about 10 mins. I wrote down the directions and off I went.
After wandering around for about 40 mins, I finally found a map at a bus stop. :-) I had written down directions with French street names, but some of the streets were in Dutch - and of course I went the wrong way a few times. It's hard to stop and ask for directions because you never know who speaks French and who speaks Dutch - and people get offended if you speak to them in the wrong language. Starting off speaking in English isn't good either. After about an hour, I finally found Cora - and my next adventure began. I only needed about 5 things in total. After about 30 minutes of wandering around, I had found everything but an alarm clock. I found someone who spoke English, and he pointed me to the kitchen stuff. After staring at pots, pans, and dishes for a few minutes, I noticed there were kitchen timers there and he must have thought I wanted one of those. Ahhh, the language barrier. I eventually found an alarm clock, managed to pay, and off I went. I still didn't go the right way home, but whichever way I went, it only took about 10-15 minutes. Thank God - because my backpack was heavy at this point and I was starving!
I spent the rest of the day reading and waiting for Brent to get home. We only have one key to our apartment, so I couldn't really leave. Brent finally got home around 6:30 and told me all about his day. Apparently we are going to Breda, Netherlands for 2 weeks beginning June 21st! Breda is a small town in the southern Netherlands - so that should be interesting. I wish I would've brought more books! I am sure I will find something exciting to do - i.e., try to learn a few Dutch words. ;-) Brent had a wonderful first day at work - about 2,000 people work in his office, so it is significantly larger than San Diego. He also has his very own office, which is pretty cool. They gave him a computer with a European keyboard, so he said that was fun to try and figure out - they are going to give him an American keyboard today he hopes. He also got a cell phone, but we're not quite sure how to make calls yet. He received a loaner car as well, not sure when our car is coming in. He said everyone he met was very nice, there is a huge cafeteria in the bottom floor of his office, and he's already fairly booked up with work until we go to Africa. There are a few more new-hires coming over from the USA later this summer, so I am excited to meet their wives. I should really make him blog some...but then again, I think people just like reading about our crazy adventures, not him sitting in an office. ;-) His new boss (Janet) is so wonderful though - she is always thinking of us and making sure all of our questions are answered. I think Brent is going to enjoy working with her.
So after we exchanged stories about our days, we set out to the grocery store I had found. Navigating a grocery store is fun when you don't speak French or Dutch or know the metric system. I know 1 kg is 2.2 lbs, but trying to convert kilograms to pounds and also trying to convert euros to dollars gets confusing. We eventually bought our bananas for €1,45/kg which is $0.80/lb. It's confusing, but we just want to make sure we're staying within our budget! Next up was milk - in french. We stood there staring at the different types of milk for like 15 minutes, trying to figure out what was skim milk. We eventually ended up with half-skimmed, half-whole milk per google's translation. They also have non-refrigerated milk, which is the most common in Europe. I guess we'll try that next - supposedly it's heated at high temperatures, so it does not have to refrigerated until opened. After milk was the bread section. Bakeries smell amazing over here - I wanted to eat an entire baguette! We noticed people putting their loaves of bread in a machine, and then pulling out sliced bread. We thought this was the neatest thing ever - a bread slicer! We couldn't wait to try it. We got our loaf of wheat bread, headed over to the machine, put in our bread, and pressed the green button. The bread machine started to spit bread out of the bottom, so we pressed the red stop button. Ooops. We then noticed our loaf hanging out, half-sliced - so Brent had to pull out the rest. Needless to say, our sliced bread did not look as great as the locals' bread, but live and learn. It was pretty funny at least! We finally exited the grocery store - and we'll probably laugh at our first grocery trip in Brussels for quite some time. We ate some baguette on the way home - so delicious! We also bought a few kinds of cheese - we're all ready to live off of baguettes, wine, and cheese now. :-)
After our grocery store adventure, it was finally time for dinner! It was already 8:15 pm, but we tend to forget the time because the sun sets so late. We walked down to the shopping center that is nearby and found nothing was open, so we hopped in our mini-Cooper and headed out for some Indian food. We made it safely to the restaurant in about 10 minutes (driving in Belgium is a bit of a challenge - lots of confusing traffic circles) and then spent 25 minutes looking for parking. We'll be taking the metro from now on. Dinner was delicious and reasonably priced - we found the area with all of the Turkish and Indian restaurants, so we'll definitely be eating in that neighborhood again.
We headed home after dinner, exhausted, and ready to watch Glee online. When I pulled up the Fox website and clicked on "play newest episode", I received the following depressing message "The video you are trying to watch cannot be viewed from your current country." Apparently you can't watch streaming American TV shows in Europe. We were a little bummed, because we can't really afford satellite TV over here. We don't watch very much TV at all, but there are a few shows we love. A few friends have given me suggestions, so we'll figure something out. We did eventually find a way to watch Glee on a very slow website, but we at least got to watch it! Luckily none of our shows will be on again until late September, so we have months to figure it out.
I woke up early again this morning, Brent and I enjoyed breakfast together (mmmm, more baguette) and then Brent left for work. Around 10:00 am, the plumber came to fix our toilet. I had no idea our toilet was broken, but with the little French I speak and his broken English, I just let him do his thing. I'm pretty sure we got a new toilet - after much swearing and singing in French by the plumber. It was pretty funny sitting here listening to him. I have more errands to run today, and then tonight we're going to do more exploring. I can't wait to see how lost I get today! :-) It's very entertaining - and it's not very hot out, so that's great! I also can't wait to explore more this weekend with Brent! More stories to come...
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