Daily encounters

Why is it so difficult for the Flemish people to smile and say hello?!

Someone please help me solve out this mysterie!

Too icy!

At last we got some real winter weather with snow and temperatures way below zero.
Unfortunately the snow was too icy to build a snowman. Perhaps, therefore Maarten searched for an alternative amusement: such as removing the cover from the water meter!



That frosty Saturday morning we woke up with no tap water.
We had to call the water company. The plumber had to remove the water meter and advised us to wait till the weather gets warmer or try unfreezing the exposed pipes with a hair dryer.
We didn't want to wait and risk bursting the pipes so Rob bought the hair dryer and spent his afternoon in the water meter pit.

Hope next time the snow will be wet enough for a snowman!

The more languages you know ...

Spending another winter in this cursed old hovel with single glazing and no insulation is quite a punishment. It’s freezing cold!

As we were forced to delay our departure again there are more downsides to cope with, a. o. the distance learning Dutch we’ve already started at the beginning of this semester. We’ve supposed to be gone well before the end of 2011 therefore we enrolled Maarten for the Dutch primary education program. In Luanda he is going to attend an international school taught in English. So we thought it would be a shame to lose the Dutch language which he has already started here in Belgium.

The program is developed for Dutch children that live temporary abroad so they can (re-) enter the Dutch education system again. I should point out that at this time I don’t even consider returning to the Netherlands (and definitely not to Belgium!) which might sound rather paradoxical and yes, we had our doubts before enrolling him. But one is never sure about what the future may bring and as we Czechs say Kolik jazyků znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem, meaning The more languages you know, the broader is your mentality.
Well, our intention was good but! and here we go again, since we are still in Belgium Maarten gets already enough Dutch at school and above that he also has to complete the additional distance education assignments.
And even though his spoken English is still quite good it’s obvious that instead of getting double Dutch he should already practice reading and spelling in English.
What a mess!