Minnesota Niceness

It's hard to believe that it's nearly a month since we've been home in Minnesota. We had such a fabulous time! It's probably the longest period of time that I've been home since I was 19 years old. We packed a lot of visiting and fun into the time.

Some highlights:

• Going up to my grandpa and his wife Alice's cabin.

One day my brother and I went up there together to spend the day--Troy biked all the way up there to meet us. Later, Troy and I got to stay there for a night by ourselves, which was excellent after all of the moving stress. We relaxed, had a nice dinner, took a sauna and yumped in da lake! Here are a couple of pics from the cabin.

Ahhhh, the sauna

• Biking with my dad on the Mesabi Trail.

There's an excellent bike trail system right in our backyard that I had never ridden on before. We had a nice day riding with my dad and even ran into Courtney and Kevin's mothers--or as they call them "The moms."

• Visiting with Courtney
  

I stayed for a night with Courtney at her dad's beautiful and secluded cabin.

• Hanging out with many old friends and meeting a new one.
  

We got to see so many old friends and we met LeeAnn and KC's new little girl--Lukah. What a cutie! We ate bacon sundaes, camped, had bonfires, took a moonlight canoe ride and told hilarious stories to remember our friend Brad.

Lukah Gracy!

They serve strange things at the Country Kitchen in Virginia, MN!

Here are some pics from our camping trip to Fenske Lake near Ely. What a gorgeous site it was! And we had great weather and a full moon.




I was surprised by how warm the weather was in September and excited to go swimming!

My best friends from high school.

• Troy hit 2009 miles!

This is him as he reaches and surpasses his goal. I had to point out to him that his pants are too big the other day. He doesn't realize when he loses weight and thought nothing of adding new notches in his belt until I said something about it!

• Visiting with family

Here we are doing shots of Jag with Troy's family after a party they threw a great party for us at Poor Gary's Pizza. What a fun time! I wish I had more pics, but there were so many people who came out to send us off that I forgot to take pictures for once!


My mom and Tim had a "coffee an'" in our honor. For those of you who aren't from the midwest, this means coffee AND some other things--typically sweets, but my sis also made a taco dip and some tortilla roll-ups with the cream cheese and dried cranberries. Yum. We had a beautiful cake and a great time visiting with everyone.

Us and my fam -- minus Patrick and Shelly :(

My uncle Rob with his wife Dione and their sweet girls, Mahryn and Carina.

Troy and his mom

Grandma Jean and Roy


Ethan and a pregnant Laura :)

Patrick wasn't able to be at the party but thankfully we had some time to visit with him and with Shelly beforehand.

Patrick and Amelia

Shelly (my step-sister) and her adorable daughter Amelia

On our last day in Minnesota we were lucky to catch up with my aunt Barb and uncle Hank and their family for a bit and then Patrick picked us up and brought us to downtown Minneapolis, where our friends Aaron and Angel have a swanky new pad. We all went out to Brit's Pub for some food and beer. An excellent, final send-off!

New Blog

I've just started working on a new Belgian blog. I wanted to try my hand at using WordPress. Here's the link: http://belginians.wordpress.com/

Nomads

I know everyone has been anxiously waiting for a new post about our Belgian escapades, but I have a good excuse for not updating. We are still homeless.

It's been nearly 2 months that we have been living out of our suitcases and I can't even put into words how disorienting and strange that has been. But we've been making the most of it.

After arriving in Belgium, we stayed for 9 days in Brussels at a hotel. Much of the expense of this stay was covered by the Fulbright commission. For a week we went back and forth from Brussels to Ghent trying to find housing. It was daunting and exhausting. We were told it would be relatively easy to find a place but since classes just started in Ghent, many apartments had already been filled by college students.

We finally found a place on one of the last days in Brussels. It's a cute little row house not far from the center of the city and in the oldest neighborhood. It's more expensive than we'd hoped, but it's very cute and cozy and it's furnished not only with furniture, but also glasses, silverware, etc. so we won't need to buy much now (or sell it 9 months from now). We're about a two minute walk from the Gravensteen castle, built in 1180.

The only problem is that there is a tenant until October 1. He told us he'd be out by this past Thursday but our time at the hotel was up, so to save money we decided to go camping. We rented bikes and rode from Ghent to Aalter and then to Bruges and finally to the North Sea. It was quite a trip and is worthy of a blog post of its own!

On Wednesday we found out that the tenant wouldn't be out until the weekend. Now here it is the weekend and he says he might not be out until next Wednesday!

Luckily, we've been in touch with the Logos Foundation folks (who Troy will be working with) this whole time and they have been very helpful and kind to us. Godfried's wife Moniek called a friend--Valerie--who often rents out a room in her house. The room happened to be open and she agreed to let us stay there in exchange for our labor (she is painting the main floor of her house). So we have been doing some painting the last couple of days. It is a lovely, old home. It's very comfortable and Valerie has been very good to us. She even offered to check with people she works with at the University of Ghent to see if she can find me some editing work.

All in all, it's been a bit difficult at times lately, but we have been very fortunate to have encountered good people that have helped us along the way so we can't complain too much. We are having quite an adventure and are making some great connections.

Homeward Bound

These next posts are a bit overdue but we had such a great time in Minnesota and on the way there that I wanted to write about it.

Dave hosted a really fun going away party for us in C-Ville with a keg of Red Seal Ale. People shared incredibly sweet and silly sentiments about Troy and me. Here's a fun group shot from the end of the night.


Our roadtrip home was a bit stressful. We left about 6 hours after we had planned to leave, thanks to Troy having to go to the DMV for an unscheduled stop at the last minute! Of course it took hours. He now should have a Virginia driver's license in the mail (I hope). He realized that his Oregon license will expire while we are in Belgium.

We also had a lot of trouble fitting all of our stuff + the kitty and her stuff into our little Corolla. By now Troy is a pretty adept packer though. We managed to fit most of everything and only had to ship 2 boxes UPS.

We made it to Louisville the first night to meet up with Saralyn and Jason (friends we had met in Oregon who now live in Indiana while Saralyn attends Purdue). It was wonderful to have dinner with our old friends and to catch up with them. They drove several hours to see us even though they had to leave very early the next morning. Pretty hardcore!



The next day Troy stopped at a liquor store and spent a ridiculous amount of money on bourbon while I wasn't paying attention. He is worried that we aren't going to be able to find bourbon in Belgium, plus supposedly he brought some for "gifts." We'll see how that goes. If we really can't find it here I expect he'll be "gifting" it to himself.

What was supposed to be an easy, 5-6 hour drive to Chicago ended up being nearly twice as long. A terrible accident blocked traffic on both sides of the interstate and in all lanes.

Troy was excited to find this place before we came upon the detour, "Hogwild BBQ." We filled our guts with BBQ ribs and fried chicken. I thought "Why not?" Who knows how long it will be before we have this kind of food again? I don't expect to find it in Belgium.


A strange detour led us on a very long and circuitous trek that finally brought us to our friend Matt and Eryn's posh new Chicago apartment.

We had a blast visiting with them. We went out for tasty Thai food and got to see some interesting, subversive theatre.

Thankfully, their two male cats put up with Kyma's rude and hissy behavior (she isn't used to other cats so thinks she has to act tough around them) and let her stay on their turf for the night without too much trouble.


We made it to Duluth on the 3rd evening. My sister, Ethan and my dad met up with us and we all ventured out to a new Finnish tapas bar called Kippis--that's right, Finnish-inspired tapas! I've been excited to try the place since I heard it opened a number of months ago. It was a bit overpriced for the amount of food you get but the food and atmosphere were good and the company was great.

New Belgian Blog

Hi there. Sorry for the lack of posts lately. It's been a crazy month with lots of wonderful visiting with family and friends and not as much internet access. We made it to Brussels and will be here for 8 more days until we get set up in Gent. Internet access will be intermittent now that we are in Belgium too until we are set up in our new apartment. Wish us luck with apartment hunting!

We've been struggling with jet lag but have managed to get out for a big bucket of mussels and frites and we sampled some Belgian beers last night. Mmmmm....

I wanted to request your help in naming our new Belgian blog. Some ideas so far include:

• The Belginians (a play on our Virginia, MN and C-Ville, Virginia ties)
• Robot Brew (combining what will be going on while we are here--robot building and sampling lots of Belgian brews).

Please share your ideas and thoughts. We are interested to hear them!

Food and Farewells

It should be no big surprise that the last of our time in Charlottesville is revolving a lot around food. I had to use up a gift certificate for the Charlottesville Cooking School (thanks Steve & Angie!) before we left, so I decided to invite Troy to join me for an introduction to knife skills!

We had fun learning proper techniques and tips for slicing and dicing. We actually learned that in terms of technique, we are doing okay. The key thing that surprised both of us was how often knives need to be sharpened and how sadly dull our knives have gotten. Troy used a steel to maintain his edge several times while chopping that night. We didn't use the whetstone, but the instructor recommended using it every 3 months (if you are an avid cook) to maintain sharp knives.

I was happy to know that my Wüsthof knife is recommended by professional chefs. And that good knives hold up. Our instructor has had the same German knife (not a Wüsthof) since she went to culinary school in the late eighties!

Here's Troy practicing. We made a delicious chopped salad and bruschetta.


The last of our time here has also involved a lot of visiting with friends. We are going to miss our wonderful community of Charlottesville peeps!

Peter and Jaimee had us over for dinner last week to say goodbye to them and spend some quality time with their little boy, Ian. He's such an adorable and bright child! I am so smitten by him that I gave him some of the olives off my pizza (yes, he likes olives) and Troy fed him ice cream off of his plate.

Of course, Ian enjoys Troy's crazy antics (as do most kids). We'll really miss this little cutie (and his parents too)! But Ian assured us "I'm a big Skyper." So we'll certainly stay in touch.

We also got to visit with Scott and Sarah--who are expecting their first child this week! Here's us goofing around and pointing excitedly at Sarah's very pregnant belly.

We got together this past weekend with two other couples to attend a beer dinner at the 12th Street Taphouse. It was French food paired with Belgian-inspired beers from the Montreal brewery, Unibroue.

It was great to spend time with Steve & Aurie and Alex & Vilde!

The lighting only allowed me to photograph the first (scallops in a citrus sauce with herbs, shallots, and arugula) of the five courses well, but I assure you, everything was delicious!

Casey and Cassie's Visit

Troy's brother Casey and his wife Cassie came to visit us a couple of weekends ago. We were in the midst of packing madness but still took some nice breaks to show them the places we love around Charlottesville.

We hiked in the Shenandoah National Forest...

and visited the Blue Mountain Brewery.

Steve was happy to join us for beers too.

Casey and Cassie treated us to dinner at Maya, one of our favorite restaurants. They really enjoyed their food too.


We ventured to the downtown mall, but unfortunately got there too late for gelato.


It was a fun visit and wasn't too hard to say goodbye because we know we'll be seeing them soon in Minnesota. And when we return from Belgium, we'll be excited to meet their little one, and my sister's too. We're thrilled to soon be Auntie Lissa and Uncle Troy!