Maman Pingouin

Due to my health condition I was not able to attend the traditional French evening at Maarten’s school.
Have I ever mentioned that his school focuses much attention on the importance of early French language learning?






The children were practicing singing and dancing for weeks and I felt really bad I was not able to see them all dressed up like cute little penguins all lined up on the stage.
Luckily Rob recorded everything and the film turned out quite well.



Today when cleaning out Maarten’s school bag I found a wrinkled drawing picturing their penguin performance.
Naturally Maarten is the biggest guy all the way on the right and guess who the redhead is in the bottom right corner?!

The week Maarten turned 7

Recently I told someone I never really get ill. I can have a bad day when I feel that my resistance is slightly lower but usually the next day already I’m as fit as a fiddle again.
Obviously not this time!
Maarten returned from his first camp day with a bad cold and day after something happened to me as well. I had not a cold but an unbearable joint and muscle pain all over and traditionally no fever. I rarely get fever. My body temperature is naturally low so I can feel feverish already at 36.2 °C. Well, I can get a real fever, like back in the 90’s after the pub crawl in Prague I got almost 41, but that’s a different story.


Anyway, we couldn’t celebrate Maartens birthday in Efteling as we planned and I wasn’t even able to join the boys to the local Quick (kind of McDonald) which Maarten loves. I was hoping to be on my best for the family celebration on Saturday but not this time. I was getting worse, but I didn’t have the heart to spoil this event for Maarten.

It was his last birthday in Europe and we don’t even know when he will get the opportunity to celebrate with his family again. Therefore, completely against my principles, I stuffed myself with some miraculous medicine which promised some relieve. I felt truly awful but the medicine delivered a great job and I even enjoyed the hustle and chatting which I thought will be the toughest.
I might be punished for my ignorance to my sick body because after that I got even worse.
Now, ten days further and I’m still physically exhausted and not able to walk, can hardly eat a thing, lost 6 kg already...

I have to ask myself again why do we appreciate our health most and only during illness?
I've had enough of this!

It’s very selfish but I was really thankful seeing Rob returning from the airport on Tuesday morning when they didn’t allow him to depart for England only with his Belgian ID, as his passport holds the Angolan embassy! Not sure how Maarten and I will survive those 3 days Rob was supposed to work in London.

Ending on a cheerful note... Guess what?! 5 days after his 7th birthday Maarten finally lost his first tooth!

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!

Trips into the countryside

That's what keeps me going!

Congratulation on obtaining MINPET approval!

Congratulations on securing MINPET approval! This is a great milestone on your journey to secure your Angolan working visa. You are now a few weeks to relocate to Angola.

Nice start of the day with this long awaited message from HRM.

After 7 months of bureaucratic snag if was difficult to believe and it even brought me to tears.
Hard to believe indeed!
I could feel that something isn’t quite right and unfortunately my guts were correct again.
The evening same day we received a message from our visa agent who just visited the Angolan consulate informing us about the processing time for the work permit.
From now on it’s going to take 1 - 3 months, another period of time-wasting bureaucracy!
Of course, we were still hoping it’s only an unfortunate typo. Weeks instead of months this is what the message should have said!
Sorry, no typo.

And what about the process flow chart we were sent months ago? Accordingly, it should take 10 - 15 business days to stamp the work permit visa in passport.

Surprise, surprise!
This flow chart is not applicable for expats outside the States.

Still in Belgium

Not a really post but rather a shout out of despair:
We are still in Belgium!
3 months after our planned (and desired) departure date!
Unfortunately some documents provided by the Angolan Ministério dos Petróleos were returned as Rob's name was misspelled. Now we have to wait until they reissue it again before he can finally apply for his working visa in the Netherlands.

One ice cold day at the beach

Why does it always have to end like this?
And don't you even think that Maarten was uncomfortable in his completely wet clothes!
We poured water out of his boots and hurried him back to the car despite his consistent protest and effort trying to convice us that he is absolutely fine, that he is rather sweating than cold!

Wildflowers in January?!

Not only the plants go crazy!