Winter Walking & Writing

Sorry for my lapse in posting, I've been trying to separate my blog posts into "regular life" and "Belgian life" (which you can read about here) and our Belgian life has been much busier lately!

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I've been lucky enough to find some writing work. Right now, I'm working on the third article in a winterwandeling (winter walking) series for Flanders Today, an independent weekly newspaper. It's been fun because it's gotten us out to different, beautiful areas of Flanders that we probably would not have gone to otherwise. We've been to a couple of gorgeous nature reserves and to an amazing arboretum that has redwoods.

The Bourgoyen nature reserve - outside of Ghent

But freelance writing isn't coming that easy to me. I'm up against another deadline and am having trouble concentrating. It takes me several days to write an article and I find myself getting easily distracted and needing all sorts of breaks. At times I find myself longing for the steady, clearly defined, well-paying job that I left behind.

The plus side of all this is that I've always enjoyed writing and now I'm gaining some great experience, both in writing and photography, because they are using my pictures with the articles. And I'm loving the flexibility of working from home. It will be interesting to see how this plays out when we head back to the States--especially with the economy still in the toilet.

It's surprising to note that we are now about halfway through our time in Belgium. The time has been flying!

Hello World!

And her name is... Ria Rain!

So beautiful!

Auntie Lissa and Uncle Troy!

My sister had a baby girl yesterday! Both mom and baby are doing well. Laura and Ethan are still trying to decide on a name. They decided once seeing her that she just didn't look like any of the girl names they had been considering.

I am absolutely thrilled to be an auntie. It's really tough to be so far away from my sister at this crucial time in her life but I am thankful again for technology because we were able to Skype with her and to see the baby too! She's simply beautiful. I'll try to get my hands on a picture sometime soon so you can see for yourself.

Beautiful Belly

Most of you know that my sister Laura is pregnant. She is actually due in a few days! Troy's brother Casey's wife Cassie is also pregnant--due in January. We're both really excited to be Auntie Lissa & Uncle Troy!

It's been especially difficult for me to be so far away from my sister at this important time in her life. Thank goodness for Skype and IM! We've been keeping in touch almost daily even despite the long distance between us.

Laura had some photos taken of her pregnant belly a few weeks ago. She used the same photographer that they had at their wedding. The pictures turned out great. My sister--and her belly--are simply gorgeous! I just had to share one.

Orchestrations

Here's a link to the article I wrote for Flanders Today in case you are interested in learning more about musical robots.

Deadlines!

Good news! I was able to find at least a bit of work with Flanders Today, the English language newspaper for the region of Belgium we are living in. I contacted the editor and proposed an article about the Logos Foundation (where Troy is working) and she agreed that it would make a fantastic story. Well, who could say no to an article about a robot orchestra? Strangely, even though they have been in existence for over 40 years, Logos hasn't had a lot of external press.

I'm working on a deadline of Nov. 18 and so is Troy. As most of you know, I tend to be a bit more organized than Troy, so I'm nearly finished and haven't lost a ton of sleep over the deadline. Troy, on the other hand, has been up for most of the last two days working on a piece for tomorrow's Logos concert. He just told me he was going down to use the bathroom and now I hear him snoring. Yikes. Well, I had better go try to wake him up and get back to my story!

Trying to Work it

It's hard to believe that I've been unemployed now for over 2 months. I've had long periods like this before when we moved to Eugene and when we moved to Virginia. It took forever to find a job each time. Somehow now things seem a little more urgent though. Time is flying and we want to be able to take advantage of our geographic location by traveling to some of the great European cities.

I have been keeping myself very busy, updating my resume, trying to teach myself more about web design, bidding on jobs on elance.com, and following up on a few leads we have gotten from people in Belgium. Hopefully something works out soon.

In the meantime, I've been trying to save money and calm my nerves by cooking. My chocolate "chip" cookies (had to make them with a real Belgian chocolate bar b/c I couldn't find chips) were a huge hit at the dinner party we attended on Sunday. Nobody had eaten cookies like that before and I already got a request for the recipe.

I just made a pot of carrot/ginger soup that turned out really great despite not having a blender or food processor anymore. I used a potato masher to mush it up and realized I kind of prefer chunky to smooth soup. The soup paired perfectly with the aged Gouda we picked up in Amsterdam and some whole-grain bread I bought today. It was a delicious combination, and just what I needed--some fantastically comforting food!