Blogs from Flemish Brabant, Belgium, Europe - page 7

Today we decided to meet Jonathan close to his office on the grounds of the university We meandered down the street towards the Arenburg Kasteel (Castle). The property currently cover 29 hectacres and are filled with all sorts of walking and biking paths. Before World War I the Arenburg family could supposedly walk from the Atlantic Ocean to the Czech Republic and never leave their own land. After their involvement in WWI they were forced to give away a lot of land which is how KUL came to own this parcel and the buildings on it. The girls found the oldest church (kerk) in Heverlee up on one of the hills and we explored that. Seeing all of these churches has really sparked the girls interest in religion. They are a little confused because they ... read more

We are all getting up a little earlier. Even Emma was up by 9:30 this morning. Abigail and I went to the local bakery (about 2.5 blocks away) and picked up some yummy pastries for breakfast. It is a gray and rainy day but we thought we would head out anyways and maybe go to the flea market. It rained a little bit off and on at the beginning of our day. The kids were initially a little concerned about this but then luckily they found some fun. We walked through the Stadpark (city park) and found some cool sculptures. Then we found a large theater stage to tap dance on. Wandering through we found a very cool waterscape which had a waterfall. There was a cave so the kids could look through the waterfall; ... read more

Everyone slept until 10:30 this morning. It could have been a lazy morning except that we needed to get to the town hall to begin the process of registering ourselves as temporary citizens of Leuven. Hustled everyone out the door and went and had more passport pictures taken (that is about a total of 20 for Jonathan for everything he has had to do over the past few months). The town hall went smoothly as we only had to wait a short time and then basically they told us to come back after the police had done their surprise inspection to prove we were living where we said we were. After that we went to St. Peter’s Church with the girls. They were each mesmerized in their own way. Emma loves the stained glass windows ... read more

The beginning of it all. We touched down in Brussels at about 10:30am. Abigail and Eliza were still sleeping! It was a great flight for them. We easily made our way through immigration and customs with our luggage in tow and met Jonathan on the other side. What an adventure! We took the train (which departs from the basement of the airport) to Leuven where Jonathan’s friend Christian (who is sponsoring Jonathan’s sabbatical at KU Leuven) met us. He transported us, and, more importantly, all of our luggage to the Groot Begijnhof where we would now be living. Jonathan was right. The pictures just don’t do it justice. It feels as though we are living in a walled medieval village within the bigger town of Leuven. The apartment is great, much bigger than I had ... read more

For those of you wondering what has happened to me, this e-mail to my parents is the best I can do at this point. Sorry!!! Hi guys! I know it has been ages since I posted on the blog, but there have been some problems. The internet in Amsterdam seemed unreasonably pricy, so I opted to wait until we got to Brussels to just do a mammoth update then since we had a lot of time to kill until we could meet our friend from Thailand, Vicky, who has invited us to stay with her for a few days (she's so great!). However, once we got to Brussels, not only was the internet not thaaaaat much cheaper, but the keyboard was unbelievably different!!! It's not like Germany where just a couple, not very important letters are ... read more