Time to Catch You Up...

I apologize for the delay in my writing. I have been keeping myself busy and getting in to more of a routine with my day. Now let me tell you about what I have been up to.....

First, I am very sad to say Jared and Lindsey Quayle returned to Utah.  I loved going to Holland with Lindsey and seeing her beloved windmills, almost running over bicycles in Amsterdam, yelling at Stewie in the tiny Smart, waffles in Knokke and most importantly going to get milk! Jared, if you read this, please know Lindsey is a fantastic driver ;) Also please be on her team once in a while when you mini golf, bowl, play board games, etc… even if she sucks. I hope Lindsey bakes you all the cookies and cake you can eat with gallons of milk to drink. Lindsey helped me get through the big transition of moving to Belgium and I am very thankful! I still want to go fishing in Utah for littly fishys… which apparently have guts.

Next, Dior's team has been struggling a bit in their regular season games. They are 0-4. Not so great but I am confident its going to turn around very soon. In between regular season games they also play games against teams in their league for the "Belgian Cup." They won both games in the first round knocking the other team out of the Cup and now we move to the second round!! The Belgian Cup games are all season so we wont know who wins the Cup until May (unless of course we are knocked out, which we wont be).

I've found a couple new restaurants that I LOVE. The funny thing is neither are Belgian :) The first one is in Antwerp, Belgium and its called Amadeus. Their house special is ribs!! They are delicious and are not made with BBQ sauce but are instead covered with a sweet sauce. I guess the sweet sauce can be considered a Belgian meal. The second restaurant is Wok Dynasty, this is an Asian restaurant where you pick up all the raw foods from a table and then a chef cooks it in front of you. This place reminds us of Benihanas in San Francisco. Another restaurant we found (not my favorite) is La Cucaracha. I met a girl in the city who recommended it to us.... The food was "Mexican" but as you can see from the picture of the nachos it was not MY kind of Mexican. Guess I will have to wait till I get home to have real Mexican food.

I have grown confident in my driving here and am now venturing to other cities during the day. I go to the American grocery store in Everberg and the TINY two way road to get there is the definition of Belgian driving.  Here is a picture of the road to the store and the other two pictures are what surround the road a little river and gorgeous field of purple flowers.



If a car is coming from the other direction you have to make room by driving on the curb.



I've been visiting Brussels and taking lots of pictures but the problem I am finding now is that by the time I upload the photos I forget what the pictures are of. I need to start uploading my pictures daily and naming them so I don't forget.

A church in Brussels.

Last but not least its almost THANKSGIVING!! The other girls and I have divided the cooking for the Thanksgiving day meal. We will be having a big dinner with all of Dior's teammates. One of the dishes I will be making is "camotes."  Thats one of my favorite things my mom makes so I decided to do a practice run today. I wanted to make sure I could actually make edible sweet potatoes. I started making them in the morning which meant my mom was sleeping I did my best to remember how she makes it.  When I was finally able to get her recipe I realized I made it a completely different way!  I wasnt too upset since mine were delicious!! I am going to do another practice run before Thanksgiving with my mom's recipe.

I am glad we are planning a Thanksgiving meal, since its an American holiday no one else will be celebrating here. I was really bummed to learn that Halloween is also not celebrated here... Thank goodness Christmas is a Catholic holiday that is celebrated!! But hopefully I wont be here for Christmas!!

Dior would like to add to my blog..... "By the way shout out to the San Francisco Giants for winning the World Series!!!! YEEEAAAHHH! Hope you all had a Happy Halloween! Love Ya'll!"