Good Deed for the Week

I remembered 2 days ago that for a while I was trying to make sure I went out of my way to do a good deed at least once a week. This was to be something out of the ordinary, daily stuff. I don't know when I forgot about the habit, but I was inspired yesterday to get back to it. I was reminded of it because often my good deed was to pick up the beer cans littered along the roads I like to run on. Sometimes I've had the boys come with me after school with their bikes and we'd clean up the whole route. When I headed out for a run Wednesday I was disappointed to see how many cans were along the road. Within about 5 minutes, I passed a plastic grocery sack with 3 empty beer cans in it. I picked up the sack, crushed the cans and continued carrying the sack to put any more empties I saw into it. Before I finished my run the sack was full to bursting - and I had stomped down all the cans! Belgium doesn't have a refund program for cans. Bottles of beer and wine are refundable here but for some reason the cans are not so many get thrown out of car windows along the roads. 

Het is jammer! (It's a shame!)

Dancin' at School: the Belgian version of Hokey Pokey

I parked at the school a couple of Fridays ago to pick up the boys. All the kids in the school were out on the playground with music playing and everyone was pacticipating in the moves for the songs. The first song I heard when I got there was something in dutch, with certain movements (like sleeping, waking up, brushing teeth, running, swimming, skiing....) like all the things you do in a day. The Hokey Pokey was next, first the Belgian version and then the English one. It was very fun to see the kids not quite sure which arm or leg to put in (right or left) when the English one was on. Then there was another English song with dance steps called out (The Cha Cha Slide). The kids cha-cha'd, jumped, stomped and did the slide for that one. It was so fun to see all the kids laughing, dancing and enjoying the dance time with their teachers joining along.

(Zwarte) Kattentocht

On a recent Friday the boys' school had a (Zwarte) Kattentocht. This event, usually done near halloween, is partly in lieu of trick-or-treating. Plans to have it last October fell through and it was rescheduled for February. During the Kattentocht, groups of kids and parents make a circuit around the area surrounding the school and stop at stations for activities or performances. At the first stop, next to a barn a parent was dressed in a Hello Kitty costume and music was playing for the kids to dance. Then the kids were given stuffed "black cat tails" to put in the back of their pants (like, well, tails). The game is to see how many tails they can grab off each other. Most kids ended up with one tail "caught" but a couple of the older girls got 2 or 3. All the kids were given a prize (a red flashing bike light with the school logo) which they wore as they continued on their way. Then it was through the fields to the second stop where a moving truck with it's back end open was set up as a theater with benches for the kids to sit on to watch. There was a thick white sheet stretched across the other end of the truck, with dark blankets along the sides and parents put on a shadow puppet show to music. It was pretty cool. The third stop had 2 parts: first a drinks, fanta for the kids and a shot of flavored Jeniver for the parents (no OLCC here), the second part was a short play about a black cat that follows a wizard around until he gets a great wizard to come and take it away. This was done in a nature resource site shaped like a huge, white dragon-fly, adding to the mystique in the dark. The last stop I can't describe because Nathan was running ahead with other kids and we didn't get there. He was hurrying to get back to the playground where a frituur (fries maker) was set up. The Belgians like fries with everything. There was also a bar with beers and wine, something the parent group sets up at all school functions (again, no OLCC). The procedes from the bar help cover the costs of the events. Overall it was a fun night, especially since it wasn't raining and the moon was just past full. A good night to be out wandering - it felt like October.

Vacations/Vakanties

We really like the vacation schedules here in Belgium. Because one of our main reasons to move here was to be able to travel around Europe, the longer vacations really work to our advantage. Instead of lots of long weekends in the school year with 2 weeks off at Christmas and 1 week for Spring break (as it was in Oregon), we have only a couple of long weekends with two 2-week breaks and two 1-week breaks. For example, next week we have the week of  "Krokus Vakantie" off school. We aren't making a big family trip that week (Kevin will be in Oregon for work the first part of the week) but Jordan and I will be able to take his 10-year-old-trip-with-mom toward the end. In April we have a 2-week spring break. In the fall there's a 1-week fall vacation and 2 weeks off at Christmas. All together there are 6 weeks of vacation during the school year. The school year is longer, running until the end of June. This made last summer see short, but we'll take it so we can take advantage of the long breaks to make trips to places like Egypt for Christmas.

Driver's Ed

It's been interesting to drive here. 

First I had to get used to driving a stick shift again. (nearly everyone drives stick shifts here.) It came back to me pretty quickly, but given that I'm driving a stick shift mini-van it's a bit different than my old Honda Civic. 

The other thing I noticed back when I first started visiting here was that traffic really flows. There are more round-abouts and merges than hard stops, so the traffic really seems to keep moving. There's still traffic and slow going during the rush hours, but otherwise you can slow and roll through most intersections. In fact, not moving is what throws things off. Whenever  I was tentative in the beginning, that got me into trouble on the road. Once I saw a small car turned into because it didn't merge when a big truck assumed it would go.

There's a "no right turn at a red light" thing here. It drove me crazy at first to sit at one of the few stoplights and no be allowed to turn when there were no cars coming! I've only forgotten that once.

The idea that "the person to the right has the right of way" is very strong here. There's a clear outlook here on who has the right of way in any situation and people will go out of their way to make sure their rights are not usurped. This includes on neighborhood streets, unless there are triangle marking that denote when one street yields to another. There are streets that are the "through" streets, but on them you have to give way to side streets that come from the right. This doesn't make sense to me and I've seen it ignored many times. 

At the same time, there seems to be greater respect for other drivers' rights. There are a lot of streets which are barely wide enough for 2-way traffic. Then people park on the sides of the roads making room for 1-way at a time. For vehicles to go either way, one car has to give way to the other. I find most people are "fair" about whether they wait or go. I think it's because they have to do it so much around here that it would really cause trouble if too many people didn't follow the rules. So, if the parked car is on your side of the road, you give way to the oncoming car. Similarly, if another car is already coming between parked cars (where there is room for only one car to get through) you allow that car to continue. The times I've messed up on this I've been amazed at how determined the other drivers can be about making sure I know that I'm the one who needs to get out of the way. One woman kept driving toward me until I backed up a car length or two to make room for her to get by. (The parked car was on my side of the road, after all. I didn't get past it quick enough.)

When there is doubt about who should go, the signal here that you're letting the other person go is to flash your headlights at them. This caused me some confusion when we first moved here. I kept wondering what I was doing so wrong that would make people flash their lights at me! I kept thinking that I should have the right of way, but they were flashing at me. I didn't realize they were agreeing with me. In fact, people flash their lights a lot to other cars, to bikers or walkers. It also helps keep things moving.

When I was in Oregon last month I know I sat at a red light when I could have gone ahead and turned. (Okay, it probably happened more than once.) And I had to remind myself to make full stops at stop signs. Oh, and I kept trying to hit the clutch when coming to a stop and after I got back to Belgium I kept forgetting to depress the clutch when starting or stopping my van. Habits are hard to break.

"Language Arts"

It's pretty amazing how kids can absorb a new language. Our boys have been exposed to the dutch language in school for 18 months while we've been in Belgium. They hear it every day for 7+ hours and they talk to their friends mostly in dutch. (Some of the older boys' friends like to practice their English, too.) It's to the point now that at times, when they are telling us something (in English), they get stuck on a word that their brain has come up with the dutch version for and they can't think of the English word for what they want to say. It goes something like this:

Cameron: "In school yesterday we were doing something in our W.O. lesson. We read information and made observations and then we ... had ... to .... to... we had to... "

Mom: "You can't find the word in English, can you?" 

Cam: "No." 

Mom: "What is the word in dutch?" 

Cam: "Uitrekenen" 

Mom: "You had to figure it out?" 

Cam: "Yeah, we had to figure it out!"

This has happened a few times lately and I'm sure it'll happen more in the next year and a half, especially when they're talking about things they do in school. It's pretty cool that they are so comfortable with the second language. For Andrew and Cameron, they've also added French in school, 2nd and 4th year levels. It's a pretty cool thing how multiple languages are just part of life here and everyone is able to converse in 2-3 languages minimum. Of course, when the next country over can be less than 1 hour away and uses a different language, it's important to be able to communicate!