It has officially been a year since I landed in Brussels with only two suit cases andready to take on the world. My biggest confession from this past year? I had no idea what I was doing when I picked and moved to a whole new country. What’s even worse is that I had —no idea— I didn’t know what I was doing when I moved to Belgium.
Pictures from throughout the year
I really enjoy cooking. An embarrassingly large amount of my free time is spent scouring the internet for new recipes to test. I like doing so even now more because I have someone who is forever forced to be my taste tester since he decided to marry me. My recent experiments this past week have been rabbit slow cooked in apple cider with onions and raisins, and recipe for sweet potato feta muffins, both getting positive reviews from Mr. Isinvar. More often than not he really enjoys my cooking, leading me to the conclusion that I am a decent cook.
However, there is one comment that surprises me every time I hear it, “It’s too sweet.” Too sweet? I live in the land famous for its chocolate and waffles that have sugar clumps in the dough. How can anything be too sweet? Continue reading
This past weekend we celebrated my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday party. It was a lovely affair with lots of cava, good conversation, and delicious hapjes and cake. It was quite gezellig. I was actually really quite proud of myself because I enjoyed most of the evening conversing with Mr. Isinvar’s grandmother completely in Dutch.
My mother-in-law got a visit from Mickey and Minnie on her birthday!
We had a lot of laughs even though my Dutch is far from perfect and her particular accent was a little difficult for me to understand. However, the evening did prove that my Dutch lessons have been paying off and I can now spend entire evening comfortably conversing with native speakers, which is really exciting for me!
Anyway, in light of the party, I wanted to take a little time to talk about the differences between Belgian birthday traditions and American Birthday traditions. Continue reading
My first introduction to BRNS was a couple of days ago through this post from In Between The Tracks. (Sidenote: Some really quality stuff at In Between the Tracks. It’s definitely worth checking out. ) I saw that BRNS is a Belgian band from Wallonië and decided to check them out. I like supporting locals, and while they’re not Antwerpenaars, Belgium is local for me now.
Upon first listen to their track “Our Lights,” I was instantly intrigued by BRNS. I’ll admit am not sure I understand the music video and still find it a bit weird after 6 viewings, but I really like their sound. There is an element to “Our Lights” that reminds me of Jimmy Eat World’s “Goodbye Sky Harbor.” The sounds of the two bands are completely different, but the repetition and layering of the sounds in “Our Lights” immediately brought to mind end of “Goodbye Sky Harbor.” Continue reading
More Than Beer and Waffles 