Chicken Tuesday

I’m sitting here tonight watching some NCIS (it’s in English!) with my host mom eating chocolate mousse. Yum! Tonight for dinner we enjoyed some curry chicken with rice and broccoli. Mechthild is a great cook! She has cooked many delicious meals including lamb, shepherds pie, meatloaf, soup and other things. She also bakes us homemade bread!

Tuesdays our looked forward to a lot in this household because Tuesday is chicken night! This may not sound very exciting at first read, but let me explain exactly what chicken night means. First, we take the tram 44 a few stops down. There is a stand that has rows and rows of whole chickens and ribs slowly cooking. The juiciness is visibly flowing out of them. There are potatoes sitting in the bottom of it all soaking in the juiciness of the meat. We usually get a couple ribs, a chicken and some potatoes and bring them home and then chow down! The most recent Tuesday Ryan set a house record of 18 ribs in one sitting. We’ll see if I can top that next week…

Since a lot of things are packaged differently than in the U.S. here I often use the "it looks like, it smells like, it must be..." strategy when trying to make myself a snack. Along with being a great cook, my host mom is also a very talented knitter. The first few days I was in Belgium she was appalled that I would walk around on the bare, cold floors without socks on and so she decided to knit me some wool sock/slippers. They’re wonderfully warm! One is a little bit bigger than the other because she just got a little bit carried away I suppose, but it’s not noticeable.

Another fun fact about Mechthild: she served two terms as a Member of Parliament in the European Union. This is impressive to think about considering the time period in which she served. It was during the time that it was quite unusual for women to be in that high of a government position. She was one of few women in that high of power not only in Europe, but also throughout the world.

Update on the weather: it’s still grey 95% of the time. One thing I love about the people here is that they have no shame in running for the metro. At Iowa State whenever I run after a bus to try and catch it before it pulls away I’m embarrassed and feel like everyone is entertained and laughing to them self (at least that’s what I do when I see people running after buses). Here, everyone runs up and down stairs and escalators and through hallways to catch their metro. I appreciate this and don’t feel embarrassed at all when I have to run for a tram or metro. 

Lately, I’ve been wondering how families with more than three kids get around. I think I’ve seen two vans the entire time I’ve been here. So there’s either two families with more than three kids, they have to take two cars in order to carry the entire family on trips, they squish together, the smaller kids go into the trunk (this is a benefit of being an older sibling) or they have a secret way of carrying around a family for six or more that I’m not aware of.

I finally have all of my books for my classes! I have a lot of reading to catch up on from the first week but it should be fine. In my classes I don’t necessarily have a lot of small homework assignments but instead a huge paper, a midterm and a final. I haven’t decided if I like this style or not yet. So far in my classes I’ve learned that:

1.     Language is arbitrary.

2.     The U.S. government has pretty much lied to us about every major war or decision. I decided to not believe the news anymore. I mean, I was reluctant before, but now they’re really going to have to come up with some amazing evidence to get my approval.

3.     We have worse memories than people in the past due to the fact that we don’t have to utilize our memory as much as they did in the olden days. We have written copies of everything. In the past they had to memorize books if they wanted to remember them. We can copy and paste information and even store phone numbers in our cell so we don’t have to remember them. I have an awful memory. I wonder if there’s a way I can utilize my memory more so it improves…

4.     In two of my three classes we’ve discussed if animals share a language in which they can communicate with the other animals, which I thought was intriguing. It seems the general consensus is that they have ways they communicate but they don’t necessarily have a language.

Saturday morning Ryan, Sam and I are heading to Cologne, Germany until Sunday evening. Should be fun! Tomorrow I start my internship with Accessible Art Fair. Wish me luck!

Edward (Mechthild's son), Ryan, Sam and Mechthild ready to eat our ribs and chicken!

He was the champion; 18 ribs. Household record.

We kinda ate a lot of meat...

My new cute little slippers.

The view of the backyard from my bathroom window.