Politie - Part 2

I wrote a post a while ago about some of my super minor run-ins with the Poltitie since we've been in Gent. I also mentioned in that post that it didn't seem to me like there was as much of a police presence on the roads as there is in the U.S. Well, I have finally figured out their secret…CAMERAS!!! They are everywhere and, now that I know the secret, I feel very silly for not having realized this sooner. I mean, they really are everywhere! Unfortunately, I have now fallen victim to a traffic camera myself.

I got a letter in the mail several months ago informing me that I had committed a traffic violation and that they had caught it on camera. The first thing I tried to do was blame it on Cole! Of course, the offense happened on a day and time and in an area where Cole would have never been, so there was no way to pawn this off on him. So, I had to take the blame! After some help from friends to translate the paperwork, we were told that I had run a red light and would be fined. I really don't remember running a red light…I know that sounds like I'm playing innocent, but I consider myself to be a pretty good driver and am, in general, a very good follower of the rules of the road.  It was a big surprise to hear that I had run a red light and didn't even know it. Anyway, I had to send in paperwork stating that I either had committed the offense and would pay a fine, or I hadn't and would be fighting the charge. Cole and I decided that, even though I didn't think I had run a red light, that we would not fight the charge because we are in a foreign country, don't really speak the language, don't always understand the culture, and last but not least, I was in the country without a visa or residency card and didn't want to get in trouble for that. So we returned the paperwork to the police station and were told that we would either be sent the fine amount in the mail, or appear in court. Thankfully, we were just sent a letter in the mail…not so great, the fine amount was €175!!! Needless to say, I am very mindful of all the cameras throughout the city and on the highways and am doing my best to never receive one of those letters ever again!!

This is Different...

I'm sure posts like this will continue to pop up as we learn more about being here, but here are a few things that have stuck out to me as being pretty different from America. And when I say different, I don't necessarily mean bad, just different! I already posted a few things, but here are a some new things to add to this list of adjustments we have had to make!

Grocery shopping (or really any shopping):

I already posted a little bit about my struggles with grocery shopping, but as I think back over the past few months, there are some more things that stick out to me. When I first started going shopping by myself with the boys, it was very intimidating. I still struggle sometimes, but one of the biggest issues for me was that I couldn't then and still struggle with reading things. Take laundry detergent for example. I remember standing in the aisle looking at all the options. In my head I knew they were all laundry detergent and, for the most part, laundry detergent is laundry detergent am I right?! There were even brands I recognized, but I still had a crazy inner struggle with picking one! It would go something like this..."Ok, I recognize this brand...but I've never used it before...but there isn't anything else I recognize, so it's better than a total unknown...but it might be different in Belgium...maybe I should compare these two...you are a crazy person, just pick it up and move on." What is my problem?!? And I did that with almost EVERYTHING! I now have a translate app on my phone so I can find out what something is if I really need to know. It's not that efficient, but I can calm the crazies a little bit if I need to! :) The other difficult thing about grocery shopping is that measurements are different in Europe. In Europe they use the metric system, so things are measured in liters, kilograms, grams, etc. Of course, all my recipes have measurements in pounds, ounces, etc, so I am constantly converting things. There's no such thing as going to the store for a 15 oz can of something here. So, of course, I have an app to convert everything too...this is the 21st century! :) I hope by the end of our 3-5 years here, I will know the conversions without having to look them up every single time!  

Laundry:

This is an interesting one for me. We have a washer and dryer in our loft, which in and of itself is a very nice thing. There are many who don't have a dryer or neither of them at all! For me, laundry is almost a daily thing...or it should be! :) However, one load of laundry, from start to finish, takes at least 3 hours, if not longer! The fastest wash cycle I have takes 40 minutes and that's just a quick wash...not bad, but also not very thorough. A normal wash takes an hour and a half! Drying takes hours! I have never gotten a load completely dry in less than two hours. Two and a half hours is the least, but that's a small load! So this is VERY different from what I'm used to at home! 

Road Etiquette:

This is a big one and has been a huge adjustment...mostly because if you mess this one up, there could be very bad consequences! I think I mentioned before that bikes and pedestrians have the right of way when crossing the street. People and bikes come out of no where, so you always have to be on the lookout. It's stressful when driving, biking, and walking. You just always have to be alert of what and who is around you! While it is a little nerve-racking to just go across the street without waiting to be absolutely certain that cars are going to stop, you just have to go! If you hesitate, the locals get very annoyed with you! Now that I know that you are supposed to just cross the street without waiting for cars to stop, I get annoyed with people who hesitate...one step closer to becoming a local! :) I still haven't determined who has the right of way between a pedestrian and a bike, but I have seen a couple of people get run over by bikes! Ouch! A friend of mine who is also doing an expat assignment with her husband, told me that she always worries about her kids being run over by some form of transportation and I now understand why!  We are getting better with the rules, but it is still stressful to drive when everyone is out!

Clothing:

I'm not even sure where to start with this one. People dress very different here. Back home, unless it was a special occasion, I usually dressed pretty casual...especially if I was taking the boys somewhere to play. I will never forget the first time I took the boys to the park by myself. I was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a sweater with my hair was in a pony tail. There were two other mothers at the park with their children. Each of them, and their children, were dressed to the nines! The moms had on skinny jeans and boots, and their hair was all done. The kids also had on nice pants and shoes. I couldn't believe it! I had already noticed that people dress very nice here, but I guess I was shocked to see that almost everyone, in almost every circumstance dresses up. Biking, playing, shopping, you name it, they look nice! There is no such thing as a cute mom-on-the-go here (as we know it in America). I have to admit that I have gone shopping or to the park in my workout clothes or sweats and have been very happy doing so. I would get crazy looks here if I did that!! It has taken me some time to stop worrying about this very inane issue and just be me! It's not realistic for me to get a completely new wardrobe and it doesn't seem comfortable to me to be dressed so nice all the time, so I have decided that I am just going to be me, and that's good enough! However, I still get looks when I go out and I am still shocked almost daily by some of the outfits I see.      

Breakfast:

We were invited over to our neighbors loft a couple weeks ago for breakfast to get to know them better. They told us not to bring anything and to just come and enjoy ourselves. We had no idea what to expect because this was our first time eating with some locals! Of course when we think of breakfast, we think of eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, pancakes, cereal, etc. When we walked in the loft, we saw fresh breads, bagels, and pastries with butter, cream cheese, jelly, Nutella, etc., cheeses, tomatoes and cucumbers with balsamic vinegar, ham and salami, coffee, tea, and juice! It was very different than what we're used to, but it was delicious! As a side note, we have awesome neighbors and are thankful to have had the chance to get to know them.

Restaurants/Eating Out:

First of all, almost every sit down restaurant worth visiting in Gent (and other places) requires a reservation on most nights....usually several days before you want to visit. There have been several occasions where we have tried to go out to eat last minute and have been turned away from every place because we didn't have a reservation. We couldn't even wait for a table because literally every table was booked for the entire night! I'm not used to that, so we have missed out on some good meals, but I'm sure we'll get better at remembering this detail. The other thing about eating out here that's different is that meals take hours. It's not like you go in, order, eat, and pay within an hour. There's no such thing. You arrive, you have appetizers and drinks (or try to read the menus as we do), you order, eat and eat and eat, then you wait for a while and decide whether or not you have room for dessert. You then decide it's foolish not to order dessert and order what you want. During dessert and after, you are supposed to sit and drink some more, then sit and talk for a while. We have never had the ticket brought to us without asking for it so we could pay and leave. Eating out is definitely an event and, unless you really plan for it, it can be stressful...especially with kids along. It's very difficult, at least for me, to keep my kids quiet and sitting for two or three hours. Although I have yet to have a bad meal here, I usually leave a restaurant exhausted from trying to entertain the crazies so they don't disturb all the other patrons. Side note, they don't believe in ice here, so all drinks are served at room temperature, or at best, chilled. Also, water is not free, so meals can get very expensive! All that to say, eating out is a delicious event!

As I said before, these things aren't all necessarily bad, they have just taken some getting used to! It makes life interesting to introduced to new things, so we are trying to embrace them as they come and do with them what we can!

Politie

Recently, I have started wondering more about the police, or politie as they are called here, and what their role is in the city. You see them everywhere...on foot, bikes, motorcycles, cars, and vans. They seem friendly enough! Other than giving parking tickets, I haven't really seen them do much other than be a presence. I'm not trying to say they don't do anything, I just haven't really witnessed it. Obviously they keep people in line because Gent is a very safe place! In the past two weeks, I have had two little encounters with the politie while I was driving. The first time, I was driving in a bus only lane. The officer behind me passed me and pointed that out to me. He also waved for me to come out of that lane and into the proper lane, then drove off. I thought that was nice of him! The second time happened just yesterday. I was driving home from Ikea and got a little turned around. When I realized I was going the wrong way I, as I would back home, just quickly turned onto a side street, did a u-turn, and pulled up to the street to go back the other way. I knew this probably wasn't allowed because there wasn't a turn lane for me, but I decided to do it anyways because I didn't want to go any further in the wrong direction than I had to. I was also heading into a crazy construction zone and didn't know when I would have another chance to turn around. As I turned onto the side street, I pulled right in front of an officer coming the other way!!! I was sure this would be my first tongue lashing since being in Belgium. As I was pulling up to the stop sign to turn back onto the main road, the officer slowly rode by and motioned to me that I was not allowed to do what I just did! I threw my hands up and mouthed "sorry" a bunch of times. Rather than coming to chastise to me, he motioned that it was ok and continued to ride on! Again, I thought that was very nice!

So, while I'm still not sure if they are super strict, or what exactly you will get in trouble for, I am thankful that they have been gracious to me as I continue to learn the ropes!

Our First Week

Our first week in Gent is a little bit of a blur, but if I'm being honest, I'm not sure we actually did that much other than wonder around and try to acclimate a little bit. Cole had that whole first week off so we could get things done which was very nice. I'm glad I didn't have to do everything by myself!

We met with our landlady Wednesday (I think) to do a walkthrough of the loft to discuss any issues and also so she could show us how to work all the appliances. We turned the heat on that day and decided that, if we could, we wanted to move into the loft by Friday. This meant we had to get a few things to tide us over until our sea and air shipments arrived. We went to Ikea several times the first week. I have never been to Ikea before, but it is one of those stores that I love and hate at the same time. It is so huge and overwhelming, but they do have a lot of stuff to choose from. Anyways, since we didn't have our car yet, we had to make our trip to Ikea on the tram. Now normally, this would not be a problem at all. It's just a short tram ride to Ikea. However, we did not take into account that when we we would be coming home with lots of stuff from Ikea and that it would also be nearing "rush hour". After we purchased our things from Ikea, we walked back to the tram station with the boys, double stroller, and big bags full of a few dishes, pots and pans, kitchen utensils, towels, pillows, and blankets. When we got on the tram, it was completely empty. At that moment, we felt very confident that we could get home no problem. We picked some seats near a door and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible...not happening! :) As we got closer to town, the tram started to get more and more crowded. It got to the point where we realized that there was no way we were going to be able to make a quick exit. We made a valiant effort to get off at our stop, but the doors closed before we could get off. We again made an attempt to get off at the next stop, but we could not get all of our things and children past all the people standing in the way. Between that stop and the next, Cole and I decided that it was every man for himself and we just needed to get off as we could. We began making plans for what we would do if one of us got off and the other one didn't. It's funny now, but stressful at the time. So, armed with the stroller and Harrison, I prepared to push my way off at the next stop. Cole was in charge of Cameron and the bags from Ikea. At the next stop, a kind lady took compassion on us (I think she heard our game plan and didn't think it was very good), grabbed the stroller and ordered people out of the way so we could get off. So much for being inconspicuous!! At least we got off the tram and were able to head to the loft. We dropped off our bags from Ikea then went to the grocery store to get some cleaning supplies. We spent Wednesday evening and a good portion of Thursday cleaning to the point where we felt comfortable moving our things on. Our loft is quite large and the previous tenants left it in bad shape, so it took at loooonnnnngggg time to get it clean enough to move our things in. As I mentioned in a previous post, the loft was partially furnished when we arrived, so we had beds and couches to use until our things arrived.

Thursday, we picked up our temporary lease car . It was nice to have a car, although you really don't need one here that often. However, when we first arrived, it was FREEZING here! So it was nice to have the option to drive places if we wanted to. Other than picking up the car, I don't think we did much else except clean on Thursday.

Friday morning, we packed our bags at the temporary apartment, loaded the car (to full capacity), and drove over to our loft. I'm so glad that I had an excuse not to drive (seizures) because driving here is crazy!! The streets are narrow, there are pedestrians, bikers, trams, and buses everywhere, and the driving laws seem to be a little up to each individuals interpretation. Add to that, pedestrians and bikers have the right of way at almost every cross walk, so they were just walking out right in front of us without notice. Of course it startled us because we did not know that rule at first! Cole did a great job learning how to drive these crazy streets and has kept us safe so far! Now, getting into our teeny, tiny garage is a different story. Out of the first five times we tried to pull in, Cole scraped against the side of the garage 4 times.  Even with me out of the car directing! I suppose you could blame me for bad directing?? Now, we are both able to get the car in and out without scraping, but we definitely had to come up with a game plan.  We spent most of Friday cleaning, putting things away, and figuring out how to work things in the loft. Hands down, Cole's favorite part of the loft is the built-in coffee maker in the kitchen!

Saturday, during the day, we ran errands and continued to work on the loft and getting the boys on their schedules in this time zone. I haven't talked much about the boys, but they were rock stars during this week. We, of course, had some moments where we didn't know what to do with them, but for the most part, they went right along with everything and were great! Saturday night, we were invited to another American expat's house for dinner. We found out (through our mutual hairdresser in South Carolina) that there was another American expat here and we were happy to connect with her as quickly as we could. We also found out that she attended the same church that we anticipated attending! She invited us over to her apartment for dinner with her and some friends of hers from church. It was wonderful to just sit, eat, and talk with people and not have to worry about everything to do. The food and company was great and we felt very blessed to have been connected with so many wonderful people so quickly!

Sunday, we decided that we would attend the service at International Community Church Gent. We found this church even before we accepted the offer to move and had been in communication with the pastor. We even met with him during our trip to find housing. It's an English speaking church just 15 minutes or so from our loft! We were both excited and nervous to go. If I'm being honest, I was a little apprehensive about attending a new church. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have a wonderful church family in South Carolina. We love our pastor, leaders, family, and friends that are there. We grew so much while we attended there. I had a conversation with someone who, at the time, I didn't know very well, but I now consider a friend about this very topic. I didn't think any church could measure up and that we would just have to make due until we returned home. This friend gently reminded me that, even though this church probably would be different, it would be exactly what we need. I am so amazed at those words and how they were spoken to me at just the right time. She opened my heart and mind to the possibility that God would work through me and in me regardless of where we attend church. I am so thankful for her gentle reminder to just seek God where we. So anyway, when we walked in the doors of the church, we were immediately greeted with warm, welcoming smiles. It is instant community! The church is much smaller than our church in South Carolina, maybe 20-40 people on a given Sunday, but the wonderful, gospel-based preaching and sincerity with which the pastor spoke really encouraged us. What are the chances of finding an English speaking, gospel preaching church in such a spiritually dead area?! It is different from our church in South Carolina, very different, but still good! We left feeling encouraged! (I want to write a post to explain more about the church at another time.)

After we arrived back at the loft on Sunday night, we received a call from our realtor in South Carolina who told us about an offer she had received on our house! If you recall from a previous post, we had listed our house just six days prior to her calling us with an offer. Six days!!! After a bit of negotiating, we accepted an offer and were told we would close sometime in April!

That night, as Cole and I talked about the week and about selling our house, we were just amazed at how much we could see God's hand in everything that had been happening, even before we left. He has been so gracious to us and protected us all along the way. We are so thankful!  We have now closed on the house and don't have to worry about it at all anymore! Praise God!