A Collision of Events

Apparently there was a horrendous car crash right outside our house a few nights ago! I didn’t find out until someone told me the next day because I slept right through it! But Mechthild is on the ground floor and it was right outside her window. She said she and Jerri (the cat that sleeps with her at night) shot out of bed as fast as an arrow from a bow. She said they thought the world was ending and that they weren’t going to be in bed when that happened!

So a guy was driving down the street at 4am (nobody has figured out why exactly) and they are guessing he fell asleep at the wheel. He somehow managed to twist the car so hard that he ran into the neighbor’s car, denting it and pushing two of its wheels onto the sidewalk and flipping his own car! There is also a chunk of the sidewalk that came off and flew into Mechthild’s window! So she ran outside and helped the guy out of his upside down car, yelled for Sam to come downstairs and called the police. In the meantime, I was sleeping soundly. The neighbor’s car was totaled, but thankfully nobody was seriously injured.

The other morning, I made a crepe with speculoos spread on it. There are these delicious speculoos cookies here and someone decided to make a spread from the cookies, which is delicious as well! It was my first taste of the spread, and my first time making a crepe, too. I also tried the speculoos on apple slices and they go together quite well.

Last week Mechthild invited me to a concert at the Bozar music hall. It was about a 10-piece orchestra with a small group of tenors singing the book of John chapter 5 from the Bible from the beginning until Christ’s death all in Latin. Some of the tenors had roles- one was the narrator, one was Jesus, one Judas, one Mary Magdalene and we weren’t really sure who the others were since we didn’t speak Latin. It was beautiful music, though.

This weekend I went with three girlfriends to the Cantillon brewery, the only brewery in Brussels. It’s also unique in that it only brews during the winter months because the humidity in the air ferments the ingredients better or something. Also, the brewery makes cherry and raspberry beer and it is the only brewery I think that actually uses real fruit as opposed to syrups. We had a free tasting afterwards and it was pretty good.

On our way to the brewery we kept hearing loud music coming from somewhere. As we got closer we became more curious. We eventually stumbled upon the loud music and found a band performing in the middle of this large parking lot and people doing the same dance and waving flags with some guy's face on it. We were so confused and curious as to what was happening and why! We finally asked someone and they said there is a conflict right now in Kurdistan and they were protesting it. Interesting… We happened to come upon another protest later on in the day. It was more of a stand and shout while holding bright posters with bold words on them type protest. But we didn’t know what that one was about at all. Lots to protest, I suppose.

We soaked up as much warm sun as we could the rest of the day by sitting in a park for a couple hours by the blooming daffodils. We walked around Brussels some and then went to our very first movie theatre since being abroad. It was big and loud and great. We watched the Adjustment Bureau, which was pretty good. There were both French and Dutch subtitles throughout the movie.

This week is the final week before spring break starts and it looks like it’ll great weather! I hope to spend lots of time outside helping Mechthild garden and exploring more of Brussels. For spring break, some girls and I are going to go to Italy – Venice, Cinque Terre and Rome, and then to Greece – Athens, the island of Santorini (where the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was filmed) and Crete. (My ticket home was cancelled unexpectedly and so as of now I'm not coming home from Greece. I'm sure that'll change soon, though.) I am really looking forward to it all! It’s going to be chaos because we’re cramming so much into a short amount of time, but it’s going to be a very beautiful chaos.