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Hi again everyone,
Things are going really well here, and Marc is settling into his job. He has been working long, long days and is quite busy so he had to hit the ground running. He has been in lots of meetings with people of so many nationalities (French, Dutch, Brits, etc...) that his meetings with only the Japanese are looking like a piece of cake! Still, he seems to really be enjoying it and one cannot ask for more than that.
The arrangements for our move to our new apartment are moving along, though not without little hiccups. The moving company tells us we have to have our residency ID from the commune (area of Brussels where we will live... Woluwe - St. Lambert) before they can deliver our household goods, but supposedly we cannot get that until we take possession of the apartment. Once we take possession of the apartment we have to leave the temporary apartment. The residency IDs take a couple of weeks to receive after we apply, so that means we would be living in an empty apartment for at least a week or more...... unless we can get this all worked out..... We are learning the motto of life in Belgium...."TIB" or "This is Belgium" and things work strangely here sometimes. I am sure it will all work out, but one would think that these wrinkles would have been ironed out before as we are NOT the first expatriates to move to Belgium! In any case we plan to move in on the 29th of May so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, we are living in the tiny temporary apartment / hotel. Originally we were on the "zero" floor (not the first floor!!) and the Internet connectivity was absolutely horrible. Marc would wait 10 - 15 minutes to be connected then before he could type an email and send it it would go out again. Very difficult as he was still completing some work in the states. We finally complained enough that they moved us to the 3rd floor where... Wa La.... the connectivity is much much better. But.... this is a two floor unit with the tiny tiny kitchen and living room downstairs and the bedroom upstairs. No big deal right..... well the tiny toilet room is downstairs just the toilet, no sink or anything. The sink and shower are upstairs. Who ever designed this should be condemned to live in it for the rest of their life. Still it is a small price to pay to remain connected to the rest of the world.
I thought that living in Europe would be easier than living in Japan, and in some ways it is. But what I didn't expect was the problems with the appliances. In Japan I was spoiled in that I had all American appliances or at least all the dials and instructions were in English. No such luck here. They are all in French and Dutch. I have had a @#$$%%^^ time figuring out how to use the washer, dryer and dishwasher. With a little luck I think I finally have them all figured out now, but Marc did not come "home" to a happy wife a couple of days last week.
Other than settling in, we have been able to get out and about a little bit. The first weekend we were here the Royal Botanical Gardens were open to the public, so need less to say... I JUST HAD TO GO! We had a great time and are learning our way around
the metro, tram and bus systems. I took lots of pictures, but I used our good camera and I cannot download pictures from it to this laptop, only to my desktop computer, and I won't get that back until we receive our household goods, so I will have to wait to post pictures after we get settled. Last weekend though, was the best... we went to The Netherlands for the day on Saturday to see the tulips. We went to Keukenhof Gardens and it was spectacular......My idea of what heaven must be like! I took over 500 pictures (which means I MAY have 50 good ones) but again I will have to wait to post any of them until we are settled.
Anyway, that is about it for now... kind of a boring blog entry, but I just wanted to update all of you on our activities.
Arlene
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Suzanne
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Keukenhof
So glad you got to see Keukenhof in all its glory (something I have yet to do with all the time I have spent in the Netherlands). Looking forward to the photos. Pick up a couple of kilo of chocolate to ease the pain of the upcoming move!