Week One – Check!

Schmoly cow. We live in Europe. Quite often we find ourselves realizing this..although rarely at the same moment, so the convo usually sounds a bit like:

     J: OMG! We like totes live in Europe!!
     A: Uhhh, duh.

     ..2.5 minutes later..

     A: OMG!  We freaking live in Europe!

     Disclaimer – J might not actually say things like ‘OMG! We like totes..’

In any case, here’s our little week ..

Sunday-Monday: 15 hours of traveling. Complete daze. Still exhausted.

Monday night: I met some of J’s Belgium fam. As we don’t speak the same language, there’s a large generational gap, and I feel the need to act things out when they don’t understand me, our communications are quite humorous. Lots of staring. Back at ‘home’ (our one month corporate apt), we took off exploring our temporary neighborhood. Discoveries: it’s hard to find eateries that are open before 8pm and they have Tobasco here.

Tuesday: We flawlessly navigated the bus route to PwC, only to find that the last bus stop is half a mile down the road…with no side-walk (note: just don’t ever wear suede shoes here, ever). After ‘take your wife to work day,’ we decided to take a walk. Seven hours later..

Someone asked us where the prince lives. We’re oooobviously doing something right.

I’ve developed a mild obsession with the cuteness that is french kids. It’s completely harmless, but, poor J get’s to hear ‘c’est mignon!’ all day long. Which, I think means ‘it’s cute!’

Where french kids learn french.

The typical circle drive.

La Tarrasse

China Buffet

Then, we found the Parc du Cinquantenaire. They built the arches for the 50th anniversary of Belgium back in 1880.

Oh, you know, just walking..

Constantly amazed by the hills.

Ended the day in Place Flagey..in true Belgian fashion.

Then we fell asleep.  16 hours later..we woke up..
Wednesday: We went to downtown Brussels and found the shopping district, La Grande Place, Manneken Pis and Rue des Bouchers, aka restaurant row..

La Grande Place

Manneken Pis – he stands like this.

The row from our dinner table.

Thursday: We found our new home!!..but more to come on that later.  Thanks to our lovely new Belgian friend, we had our first official Aperol, which is an Italian aperitif, in an Italian bookshop during book club hour – it was incredibly noisy and European..super cool.

Friday: J’s uncle signed up to teach him how to drive a standard. I opted out of today’s lesson to blog..much more calming/less dangerous. Friday evening we signed up for a Brussels Greeter through the Tourist Bureau. Our sweet tour guide took us on a promenade around our new home – after lots of parks and architecture, we talked her into grabbing a drink at Flagey, where we ran into her other American friends and it turned into a fun little Happy Hour..we’re settling in quite nicely.

The architecture here is insane.

Hidden parks!

This totally trumps my elementary school.

Apparently this door is on Pinterest.

 

Apparently this is on Pinterest.

Phew!  Au Revoir!
A