I am not going to make resolutions. Because we all know that most resolutions are not kept anyway. But I do want to put here things I’d like to do this year. In no order of importance, small or big, doesn’t matter. I’m not even going to call them goals, like other bloggers are doing this year. Because having a goal (or a resolution) will most likely set me up for failure. So this is just a list of things I want do do!

Here we go:

• Getting my bachelor’s! Yes, halleluja. Moving to Belgium and finishing my studies here was the smartest move ever I think. Right now I am one exam period and one semester (with its own exam period) away from this. I still can’t believe it!
• Sewing more, and drafting some more patterns. I want to try a t-shirt and some trousers.
• Knit more. I am enjoying knitting my first cardigan, so I might jump in and make a second.
• Crochet more. I’m still taking toddler (not any more baby, I’d say) steps in crocheting. I prefer knitting, but there are some things that are more suited to being crocheted.
• Keep reading. Brain candy! Something to let my brain rest after studying in Dutch.
• Cooking. I want to try new recipes, adapt some Belgian classics so they’re vegetarian.
• Blog more. I wrote a whopping 5 posts last year :(
• Getting acquainted with our Nikon D7000. Maybe even read the manual gasp
• Be happy!

And there is probably more to it. But that covers the basics. Enjoy the year, and don’t be hard on yourself. Who’s going to love you if you don’t?

We celebrated with a feast for two, watching the Spanish tv with the 12 bell tolls from Madrid, fireworks from the balcony and bubbly in our glasses.

A quick recap of our menu with pictures. Just because I’m such a meany ;)

Click on the pictures for a bigger view

Those are, in order from left to right, first row then second: Cavi-art on toast, Faux Gras (de Gaia) on toast, Cottage cheese mint samosas served with home made mango chutney, Mushroom & Sundried tomato risotto served with Rosemary focaccia (home made, of course), and Chocolate pear cake with cinnamon whipped cream. All accompanied by a lovely Spanish Rueda Verdejo and some bubbly.

Wishing you a lovely 2010, and hoping your wishes come true. I’ll be working on mine to come true, because well, fate always benefits from a bit of pushing in the right direction.

And then we went out and had a snowball fight, and tried to make a snowman but didn’t go all too well. And I made a sorta snow angel and froze me butt in the proceed. But it was fun! Then we came back up, warmed ourselves up with a cup of “winter mix” tea, and some speculoos. Winter is starting to look like winter, now it just needs to snow a bit more for Christmas!

Last week I went to Knit Flanders. And I forgot my camera so I didn’t take any pictures. Mostly we knitted, had some drinks, and some people had cake too. It was fun. I had to leave early because I wanted to go to UCT and ask about enrolling in the intensive Dutch courses. I have to go again this week after I filled some paperwork so I can enroll and take a placement test.

I also won the Free Fabric Friday over at Sew, Mama, Sew‘s blog. Which means I got a yard of the fabric of my choice. And I chose a lovely Japanese Floral Blue Full Blossom:

Picture Credits: Sew, Mama, Sew.
Click on the picture to go to the store and buy this fabric.

I still don’t know what I will do with the 44″ wide yard (110 x 90 cm approximately) . Options that come to mind: easy peasy A-line skirt, some sort of top, bag of some kind, or just thought of decorating a bulleting board with it to hang in the studio.

Maybe next week I have more news, maybe not. Stay tunned!

What has been going on since then? Not much, I have been getting used to living in Ghent with Jan, me mostly been at home doing stuff, as it was pointless finding a job for two months, then come back to Madrid for another month, then finding another job when I get back to our home at the end of the month. Officially, I’ve been marked as house-wife, never mind I’m not a wife! And that’s actually what I’ve been doing most: grocery shopping (thanks given that we have two shops within easy walking distance), cooking, cleaning, laundry, ironing, and so on and so forth.

I’ve also been preparing more paperwork to enroll at UGent. I need to fill in a lengthy application form and give them ton of information from my previous University. I’m hoping they’ll accept me and also transfer my credits. It’d be a great help if I only have 1 to 1.5 years left to get my Bachelors, and then another 2 for my Masters. The end is near, way closer than at my previous University, which is sad. I’m also going to enroll at UCT for either the preparatory year of Dutch, or only the levels I still need to take (3rd to 6th) preferably.

On the cooking and baking front, I haven’t innovated much or made up any recipes worth posting. I’ve kept to my staples with the savory, and not done much baking either. I made curry, and stir fries, some baked casseroles and the usual. I baked some muffins and was planning on cookies but forgot to buy cookie sheets!

I did get three balcony rectangular planters, and filled them with dirt, put some seeds in, and patiently waited for them to grow. I have Lettuce, Rainbow Chillies, Rocket, Leaf Beet (or Perpetual Spinach), Land Cress, Basil, Rosemary, Marjoram, Chives… All ready to pick when I need some. Nothing better than a sandwich with lettuce right off the plant. Or a pesto with such fresh basil (crossing fingers it grows enough that I have enough to make pesto soon).

Craft wise, I finished a beret (no pic), that still needs the ends sewn in. And I started on a lace shawlette using the Luna Moth Shawl free pattern from Elann, and a fingering weight yarn that’s a bamboo / silk / cotton blend, in creamy white. Since a post without pictures is boring, I’ll put one here of the shawl:

I also got a set of funny giraffe rubber stamps. I made some thank you notes and gift tags that I plan on putting up for sale. I sewed a beach dress for me, using my brand new sewing machine that I plan on use a lot (Promise!). I’m right now waiting on an eBay auction to finish, and hopefully I’ll be the owner of 3.5m of MacKenzie Seaforth tartan to make a high waisted skirt.

I think that’s about it. Hopefully next time it will be sooner than with this post.

Cheers!

On moving, I’ve already moved in with Jan. There are only a few details in the apartment left to do, namely paint one small thing, and do some retouching here and there. And then putting everything where it should be. But we’re moved in and happy! We survived our first week together already, inluding our fifth anniversary². One lovely view out of our balcony happened a couple of days ago:

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So first, lets talk about the tariffs, shall we? You can buy a single trip ticket on the bus for 1€ (approx $1.50). Or you can buy a single trip ticket via SMS with your cellphone for, if I remember correctly, about 1.5€ ($2.30). Yes, you read well, you can buy a ticket via SMS. You send a SMS to the number (that I do not remember because I’ve never used it), and then they send you a message back with a “ticket” that is valid for half an hour. Another option is buying a ten trip card. If you buy it in a shop, like a tabbacco shop or newspaper agents, it’ll cost you 8€ ($12.60). Or you can buy it in the bus, and it’ll cost you 10€ ($15).

And then you have the monthly card. This one is great. Mostly because it’s not valid for a “natural month”, that is, January, February… Nope! It’s valid for 30 days starting the day you buy it (or the following day if you ask them so). So you can buy it the 20th of the month, and still use it for 30 days, until the 19th of the following month. Lovely! And then the price: a normal month ticket costs 27€ ($42.5) for people between 25 & 55 years old, and it allows you to ride any bus from De Lijn, all over Belgium, as many times as you want, for the whole 30 days. And the best part? Living where I live, it’s half price! So I only pay 13.5€ for 30 days of buses!

This is my OmniPas, 30 days of bus rides!

The downthing of the buses it’s that they don’t ride very often. For instance the line I use the most, drives 3 times an hour (every 20 minutes) Monday to Friday, with the first bus at 5.45 am and the last at 10.10 pm (except during summer, when the last bus is at 9pm). Saturdays is also three buses an hour until 6pm, then once an hour, first bus at 7.50 am and last bus at 22.30 (that could get me home). And Sundays and Holidays are even better: one bus an hour, starting at 8 am and finishing before 9pm. However, if you have the schedule, you know when the bus will be at the main stops, and they are there at that time. Which is handy.

And then the drivers. Most drivers will know the routes the do like the back of their hands, or even better. You can politely ask them to please tell you when such-and-such stop comes, because you know you need to get off there, but don’t know the stop. They will greet you when you get on the bus with “Goodmorning / Goodafternoon / Goodevening” as approppriate with a smile. They will say “Thank you” after you show them your bus pass, or “Please” when the machine spits your ten-trip card out after validating it. And they will wave bye when you get off the bus. I have to admit that the “Goodmorning” really makes my day brighter.

And thus we conclude (hopefully) the talk about public transport in Belgium. Stay tuned for the next chapter of life here.

This is long so go on!

So, mother in law bought a trunk (copycat! (-; ), and asked us if we could go to Hoksem (near Hoegaarden, town of the beer with the same name, I guess) to pick it up. We said sure, no problem, we’re half there today anyway. And so, we entered the address in the biatch TomTom. We looked at the time, and were happy we were going to be there earlier than we said we would, it might give us some time to have a coffe and relax some. The road was nice, not too much traffic, and a nice lovely highway.

Then after some kilometers, the highway’s firm wasn’t so firm anymore. It looked like they had planned to lay a new layer, and scrapped the old one a bit, and then completely forgot about it. Shaky butt! Nothing we haven’t seen before. They even put these nice signs on the road saying “Careful, not so good road” instead of fixing it, it’s quite normal – even on highways.

Go on with the shaky butt, we got off the highway into a normal towny road. You know, one lane each way, no lines painted, and risk yourself with the speed limit: 70km/h are you nuts!? Biatch TomTom was doing good, we were sticking to paved roads and stuff, with houses around and some “civilization”. Then it asked us to take a right turn that looked like we were going to be driving through the middle of a field. But the part of the road we saw was paved, so we said, ok, let’s see where this ends. It ended in an earth track made by tractors. Yep, and it was mapped as a road by TomTom. Biatch I tells you.

So at the point where this earth track split in two and got completely undriveable with the Prius, we turned around (againsts the biatch’s recommendation of “Make a U-turn when possible”, and decided to take the actual road that looked like it wouldn’t make us have to call on-road assistance tog et us out of the crap. TomTom kept asking us to “Make a U-turn when possible” and getting a “Sod off” or “Shut up” back. After four kilometers, it got the hint and retraced the route to follow the road we chose. All was good and nice, until it made us turn into, yes, you guessed it, yet another earth track, that we only saw after the first 100m of cobblestoned road. Fuckit, turn round, and get back on the “main” road. Why on earth are these crappy earth tracks that are barely driveable for a truck mapped as streets, I wonder.

This went on a few more times, until we decided that really, sodit, we’re not taking any more of this “cobblestoned” roads that end nowhere. The TomTom got the hint and ended taking us to our destination. We arrived half an hour later than it said in the beginning. All because of the insistence of taking rural paths that I would only take on a (mountain)bike on a dry day after a full dry week.

Got there, picked up the trunk, got it in the back of the car. Love the folding down seats, yes we do. And love the hooks to tie stuff as well. We tied the trunk good, and set off. This time we avoided any street that looked like it might perhaps end in cobblestones and earth paths. And tried to wing the way back to the (crappy) highway. But then, the local government decided that working on several roads at the same time was a good idea. Yep, the roads that lead to the highway, you guessed it. TomTom kept asking us to “go straight on” through road block-barricades. No, I’m not driving there, biatch!

We drove in what felt circles around the small towns that form the area. We found: a garden center, a bread vending machine (empty), and a butchers. In the four towns we drove through. No small shops to buy day-to-day groceries, not an Aldi or a Lidl or any other supermarket. This is rural, this is the kind of rural I don’t want to live in! I mean, seriously, having to drive about 25 km to buy a bottle of milk? You kidding me? No wonder we saw so many veggie gardens, and houses with a couple of cows in the back garden, and chickens. You need to provide your own food!

Anyway, we finally saw a sign for the highway, and TomTom was sending us in… the opposite direction. So we did make an U-turn (against TomTom’s suggestions), and decided to try and follow the sign. On a road on works. It took several kilometers more to see another provisional sign for the highway, by then we thought we had screwed it and were ready to believe in TomTom once more. Luckily, the TomTom and the sign agreed for once. We got on the (crappy, shaky butt) highway, and decided stopping at the first road restaurant to be seen. Because hell we need a break or else we might go nuts, we’ve been digging through crappy rural roads for over an hour.

Uh, yeah, on road restaurants here: Carestel = good, AC = bad. Seriously, there is road restaurant food (not expecting anything like a semi decent restaurant here, edible and something veggie is the most I aim for), and then you have AC. It looked disgusting.. At least the coffee is from an automatic machine and tastes as everywhere else. So we had coffee. Oh, and a piece of Normand Apple Pie (that looked ok, tasted ok, but nothing to call home about). AC is also a chain of “road hotels”. Seeing the outside of the rooms, and the lounge-bar-restaurant-cafeteria: I rather sleep in the car. Yep, it’s that bad. I mean, hell, there were no truckers, it’s gotta be really crappy! Had I seen the parking from the highway (like you usually do for other road restaurants), I’d skipped to the next one. Not a single truck. That means it’s going to be bad (thanks grandpa’ for the tip, very much appreciated, and very helpful).

Oh, and then, following suit with the rurality of the area and lacking of road signs, what we thought was the exit back on the highway, because, uhm, these places usually only have one way in (from the highway) and one way out (back on to the highway), was, in fact, not the way to the highway, but back in more crappy rural roads. No way we’re getting back in there, as soon as we realized that, the U-turn was inminent and found the actual exit back on the highway.

I’ll spare you the traffic jams and general slowness. Just saying, what usually would take an hour (without getting lost in the middle of nowhere because TomTom likes to take you for a panoramic trip), took us three hours with the getting lost and the traffic jams and all that crap. But we got back home, and we got the car through a wash cause the rural tracks had left it full of mud and bugs and other stuff that we didn’t want on it. Yep, in these past five days when we’ve been touristy with my mother the car has gotten dirtier than in the previous two months and a half.

An finally: home made food tastes delicious after five days of restaurant fare. Even if I have to cook it!

Pics are: Road to the rest of the world, Bench with snow, Garden, and Snowman. Why, yes, I had fun playing in the snow!

To cheer me up, I entered this contest that Cinnamongirl put out to celebrate spring. If you go there, make sure to tell her Diana sent you!