For The Journey

This is our outdoor themometer – in American terms, that’s 86 degrees. Phew! It’s hot! It doesn’t sound too bad, until you realize that apartments and houses in Belgium don’t have air conditioners.

We’ve got all our windows open and today I bought a fan to help along the breeze.

I even moved our little guest bed out onto the back porch for a shaded breezy seat.

Now I just need to sit back and have a cool drink. Yup, I’m a bubble water convert.

When I moved here, I was told that the temperature never gets into the 80s…yeah, yeah,  just like it doesn’t snow here. :)

Recently, we’ve started hanging out some with Thomas’ coworkers and their spouses. In general, expats say that it’s harder to get coworkers here to socialize outside of work than in the US. I think it’s because there is such a strong value here for work/life balance and Belgians rate family time very high.  You just don’t see 60-hour work weeks here – in fact, the typical work week only 37.5 hours.

Earlier this month, we met a few of his coworkers at Ducasse du Mons, a celebration originating in the 1300s. We went on the first night, where there is a big outdoor concert, and the city of Mons gives away free beer. We also tried a traditional berry beer from Mons called Grisette. I really enjoyed it.

The Grisette Mascot

Grisette Berry Beer

Thomas and his coworkers

Later that weekend, we went to one of Thomas’ coworker’s house for a barbeque. He lives a little outside of Mons on a quiet street. I had a great time playing with his dog (if she had been smaller, I would have snuck her home) and getting to know some of the other spouses.

Thomas' coworkers

Snuggliest Dog in Belgium

Spouses at the BBQ

The wives, who were all expats too (from US/Netherlands, Trinidad, and Mexico) decided to meet up later in Brussels. Together, we wandered through a European market, an Asian supermarket, a typical Belgian grocery store, and an English book store. It was interesting to hear what products they all miss from home. I think the key here is to check every grocery store you pass to see what things they sell, since they’re all slightly different.

Cheese Stand at European Market

Our purchases from the Asian Grocery Store

Spouses in Sablon

If you’d like to see more photos from this group, check them out on Flickr:

• Hanging out with Thomas’ Coworkers (25 photos)

Last week, a friend asked if I could help introduce her kids to geocaching. Sure! Thomas and I are big geocaching fans and I’m always excited to get new cachers hooked.

Geocaching is a treasure hunt using your GPS. People have hidden treasure boxes all over the world and logged the coordinates on Geocaching.com, sometimes with riddles to solve. You can look up the coordinates, plug them into your GPS, and find them. Most geocaches have small prizes in them, and the idea is that if you take a prize, you replace it with a new one to keep it always full.

On Friday, my friend, her kids, and I headed into the forest and found three geocaches. Here they are with their prizes.

In the first cache, I left a travelbug.  Travelbugs are items that have been marked with a special dogtag with a serial number.  These items are not to be kept, but instead, if you take one, you’re expected to log it on geocaching.com and move it to a new geocache. That way, the owner can track the journey of their travelbug.  I’ve launched several travelbugs over the years, but only 3 (not including my new one), are still traveling.  The longest has been going around Sweden for almost 5 years.  I also dropped one off in Atlanta before I moved, and it’s already traveled over to Italy.

Last month, Thomas and I went to a Brussels geocaching event set up as a flash mob. A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. Our flash mob met in Grand Place, and when the clock struck 19:15, we opened our umbrellas for 15 minutes, hopefully capturing it on the Grand Place webcam, and then quickly left.

Unfortunately, Thomas and I don’t geocache as much as we used to, but I had fun with these caches.  If you’d like to see some more photos from the Umbrella cache, they’re on Flickr:

• Flash Mob Event Cache (12 photos)

While Thomas was in the US last week, I went to Sweden where my mother-in-law taught me the proper way to quilt. The best thing I learned while there is that she started quilting when her daughter was born – 28 years ago. My MIL is an amazing quilter, and knowing that she started somewhere around my age is a huge encouragement.

I took several projects for her to help me with. First she went through my sewing machine manual (since I couldn’t bring my whole machine with me) and explained the differences between my sewing feet, how the integrated dual foot system works, and some of the key features she really likes to use on her own machine.

The next day, I pulled out the Repunzel baby quilt top that I finished in January, and she taught me how to properly baste, quilt, and bind it. I’ve made baby quilts before, but more in a hacked together kind of way. I used a vintage sheet for the back and a diamond pattern for the quilting. I am so excited with how it turned out – it’s now my favorite quilt I’ve ever made.

I also brought the Timeless Treasures Central Park quilt kit with me – I have been intimidated by the bed size and curves. In the end, the curves were no problem, and I decided for it to be smaller so it can hang on the wall. I’ve now got the quilt top completed and just have to decide how I want to quilt it – any suggestions?

Another project I brought along was a duffle bag out of fabric I picked up on our honeymoon in Ecuador. I had messed up in several places and never finished it. My MIL helped me fix it up, and it should be a lot easier to finish now. Sorry, I don’t have a photo of this one yet.

She also taught me how to do some freehand quilting (very hard) and how to do some fancier stitches. I used the zigzag stitch to make Sarah’s bubbles for this month’s quilting bee blocks.

For a few months now, I’ve been in a sewing rut, but after this weekend, I’m much more excited to pull out my machine and try some of these things on my own. By the way, if you live in my area, there’s a quilt conference coming up in September in France…anyone want to go?

You can see all the photos from “Quilt Camp” on Flickr:

• Quilt Camp at My MIL’s Home (10 photos)

Last weekend, Thomas and I went to our friends’, Ali and Shannon’s, baby shower. Baby showers are not typical here – it’s more common to have friends and family stop by after the birth to meet the baby.  Since our friends are American though, we went to a typical American-style shower…well, except that the guys were invited too. But it was fun – we grilled out, played a couple of games, and oohed and ahhed as the parents-to-be opened the presents.

The Party Organizers: Maisie, Ali, Stephanie, and Leah

There are a few differences in baby stores that I learned through Ali (the mom-to-be) and my own experience in buying a gift. The main baby store around here is called Premaman. You see them everywhere, so much so, that Thomas and I have turned this into a noun – “there’s a Premaman on the tram, why don’t you give her your seat.”

The Premaman: Ali

When registering, the main difference is that they actually take the items off the racks and put them in a big box in the back. After the shower, anything that is still in the box, that they’re no longer selling (like seasonal clothes) has to be purchased by the parents.

Chilling on Leah's Back Porch

I purchased something off Ali’s list online. Many of the items on the website did not have images, so I had to decode the abbreviation (in French) to guess what it was. When I was ready to check out, it lead me to my bank’s website to pay. This is common here – I really need to do a post just on online banking because it’s very different… The online checkout never asked me to pay for shipping or where to ship it. It turns out that the parents have to go pick the items up at the store. Ugh, whoops. If I had known, I would have picked it up myself.

The Parents-to-Be Open Gifts

Anyway, here’s some links if you want to see more baby shower photos or read Ali’s post on buying baby supplies in Brussels.

• Ali and Shannon’s Baby Shower Photos (24 photos)
• Ali’s Blog Post on Baby Items

I haven’t posted about crafting for a while.  In fact, I really haven’t done much crafting until this past week.  I finally caught up on the blocks for my two virtual quilting bees, Another Quilting Bee 1 and Sew Connected 3.  Here’s a few of the blocks I made:

The top three were done earlier, but I never posted them.  I like posting all of them together because I can see that I’m improving.  Recently, I’ve been working on getting my points to line up better, and I’m very happy with how the last one, the whirligigs on black, turned out.

Sometimes these blocks can be tricky because you’re working with just one piece of someone else’s quilt, and you don’t always know what they want.  I’m really challenged with the wonky blocks because it’s just not my style.  Still, the virtual bees have been a lot of fun.

June is my month for SC3, and I’ve sent out fabric to the participants.  I eagerly check Flickr everyday to see if any finished blocks have been posted.  It’s still early, but they’re starting to come in and they look great.

I’ve only done one other sewing project recently, and that was a couple of burb cloths for a friend’s baby shower. I forgot to get a photo beforehand, but here’s Ali and her husband modeling them.

Later this week, I’m going to visit my in-laws and spend the week working on a bed-sized quilt with my mother-in-law. I’m bringing this pattern below, Timeless Treasures Central Park, which I bought in Atlanta, but have been to afraid to tackle because of the curves and the size.  My mother-in-law is a professional quilter, so I’m not so intimidated knowing we can work on it together.  I’ll be sure to post about how it turns out when I get back.

This is the view from our balcony.  Before you read the rest of the post, can you guess what time of day this photo was taken?  Note:  Other than cropping, it’s SOOC (straight out of the camera).

View from our Balcony

It was shot at 10PM. Were you close? The hours of daylight here are crazy. In the Summer, the sun rises at 5:30AM and sets at 10PM.  It really throws me off.  I tend to forget about dinner until it starts getting dark, but that’s way past a decent time to eat.  And Thomas, who wakes up with the sun, has been waking up way too early.   I just bought some fabric to see if I could make some darker curtains and give us a couple more hours of sleep.   On the otherhand, I really appreciate the extra daylight, since the winter is the opposite with a late rising sunrise and early sunset.