Grocery Store

This is about the food here.  I am so blessed to have food & someone to prepare it for us here.  I am thankful.  We had heard before we came that the food will get "a little old".  This is the food schedule:

Breakfast is served between 7:30-8:30 each morning (our class begins at 8:30....that is 1:30am Memphis time).  Every morning I have the same thing....banana, toast, & yogurt (provided they have yogurt).  They do offer cereals as well though, & sometimes a hard boiled egg has been available a few days.

Lunch is our "hot meal" of the day served at 12:30.  We are always in for a surprise to see what we may have.  Today, we had some unidentified something.  The people here didn't even know what it was, or even if it was meat.  I wasn't so brave, so I just had an apple.  The girls have been eating mostly cliff bars for lunch.

Dinner is always soup & salad.  The soup usually consists of whatever we had for lunch the day before.  You can be sure you will see it again if there was any left :).  We also have sandwiches.  We have one toaster/panini grill for about 25 of us, so we all wait our turn to make a grilled cheese or grilled ham sandwich.

Monday, I needed a little more so I decided to go into Zaventem to buy a hot meal & make a trip to the grocery store.  Avery came with me so we had a nice walk in the pouring rain.  I am also thankful for my rainboots!  It was worth the trip in the rain to have a good meal & have a few other groceries here for us.

At the restaurant, I ordered Coke Light.  I received the bottle, along with a glass with a lemon in it & an ice cube.  The bottle is already cold though.

Lasagna.

I ate half for a late lunch & Avery microwaved the rest for dinner.

This is where I ate.  It was a cute little place & they were playing US pop music.

Aldi grocery store

We have seen a lot of Aldi's in Europe.

Sugar cubes for your coffee or tea

milk

eggs

They are not even refrigerated.

waffles

These aren't refrigerated either.

Nutella spreads

hot dogs

We will try these out this week.

I'm excited about the turkey lunch meat I bought!

This is sampling of what the grocery stores look like here.  Besides Aldi, there is another store called the Carefour.  That is where we have been buying grocery items.  Grocery items are very expensive, but so is everything.  Grocery shopping & going out to eat will seem affordable when we return!

Brussels at night

Believe it or not, I don't feel like I've spent much time in Brussels.  Our time is busy & it takes a while to get anywhere. Tuesday afternoon, I was able to go back & spend about 4 hours there, mostly alone.  That part was great after living in such close quarters here.   Our family rode in together to the city (via train), along with 4 other missionaries.  Avery & I went different directions to work on our ethnography reports (due that same day). The girls went to the movies with the missionaries.

The Marriott, with a McDonalds on the bottom level

The famous peeing boy statue

I don't know why, but there are little statues & souvenirs of him everywhere.  Apparently, he is very famous here.  Lots of people were surrounding this having their picture taken.

Self photos were taken today!

This is me on the Grand Plaza.  It really is beautiful. This was taken before the sun went down, & then below you can see it had gotten darker.  It gets dark around 5:30pm here. 

Grand Plaza photos at night

This is the movie theater where the girls were.

I proceeded to the Hard Rock Cafe & found Elvis' army hat.

Oh, this burger & fries was so good.

It was a good night wandering the streets of Brussels alone.  I got a good feel for that particular area & felt safe walking at night alone. After our return back to the building, our church team had a 9pm meeting because we have church presentations tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.  It is almost midnight here.  Momma's going to bed now.

Belgian Chocolate

No needs for many words on this post........

Even from the grocery store, it's good chocolate

The displays & number of stores are impressive

A lot of the chocolates are wrapped neatly in these cones

(photo courtesy of Isabella)

How much is that chocolate in the window??

Elisabeth chocolate

Perfect souvenirs!

chocolate covered oranges

The Grand Plaza building in chocolate

A huge chocolate Christmas tree

Amsterdam

Saturdays are our day off from training here.  We decided to go to Amsterdam for our day off this past weekend.  We left on Friday afternoon to make the most of our time.  It took us 4 hours to get there, & 3 hours to get home.  Clearly, we had a better train schedule on the way back!  We like the people here, but it was much needed to take a break.  I needed some quiet & down time from our group.  A few others went to Amsterdam too & traveled on the same train there with us.

The girls & another friend walking to the train station

Brook had a side twisted braid & she looked like a little Dutch girl.  She reminded me of the Dutch girl in the original Miracle on 34th Street movie.

Isabella & Avery on the train

Tricia, Kyria, Lauren, & Brook on the train

The views were pretty between Belgium & Amsterdam.  We saw sheep, lots of farm, & went through some cities as well.  

Our family stayed in a hotel room.  It was so nice & refreshing.  It was the first time in 2 weeks I didn't wear flip flops in the shower or walk down a long hall & up stairs to use the bathroom or a sink.  It's the little things :)

Isabella with the fanciest grilled cheese in Amsterdam...maybe even Europe.

cute little presentation with the fries

Avery had mussels in  Brussels  Amsterdam

Notice the very, very small building in the middle.  The people in Amsterdam built their houses high because of the high taxes if you had a lot of land.

The beautiful canals of Amsterdam

Outside the Anne Frank house

We toured this & it was very interesting.  Anne was almost 13 when she went into hiding with her family, which is the same age Isabella is now. We were thankful we didn't have a long wait to enter.

Avery & the girls waiting on the canal boat ride

This is Brook in front of the famous I Amsterdam sign

I for Isabella :)

Behind her is the Reich Museum

The girls at the Van Gogh museum

A cute little side street

Amsterdam Central train station

This is a parking deck of nothing but bicycles.  There are more bicycles than people in Amsterdam.  They are everywhere!

I took some more pictures in Amsterdam, but they are on my regular camera, and I don't have the cord to put those pictures on my computer.  It was a good 24 hours away as a family.