Probable Belgian Rental

Well, let's try this again. I have been trying for two days now to post a few pictures of the house Justin and I are probably going to rent here in Belgium. It is in a town called Erbisoeul, between the two posts Justin will be frequenting. We are probably closest to SHAPE, but that is o.k. since he will need to go there occasionally, and I am hoping to get a classroom there at some point. Once all the photos are uploaded, I will go back and type a brief snippet about each underneath. The pictures were an afterthought, so they are kind-of random, as the language barrier prevented me from truly evaluating how the landlords felt about me taking photos. Ok, the computer is putting these pictures in crazy places, but they are on here! Now, for the tour......

When you walk in the front door and turn to your right, you see the living room/dining room combo. Right now, there is still carpet that the previous tenants left behind. We may leave it in some of the bedrooms, but we are probably going to have it removed from the rest of the house. It prevents some of the doors from opening properly.

When you walk in the front door, if you look straight ahead, you see the three steps leading up to the bedroom/bathroom area. The door on the far right is what will probably be the master bedroom. The door on the left will likely be Claire's nursery. Just to the left of her room is the main bathroom with a shower/tub combo, toilet, and sink. Just past that is the room that will likely be Isaac's.

This is a picture of the kitchen. It is quite large by local standards. The cabinet space is a HUGE attraction. The only major appliance we will have to borrow for the kitchen is a refrigerator. That doesn't bother me, however, as it means we can go ahead and request an American-style fridge/freezer combo. Most Europeans do not use freezers. We still will have to get several small appliances, as ours are in storage due to the incompatibility of the plugs with European outlets.

I'm not sure why Blogger decided to put these two pictures beside each other. The picture on the left is the part of the kitchen area that got left out when I took the previous shot. It would be a nice place for a small breakfast table. The picture on the right is another shot of the living room. I panned a little farther left than in the first posted shot of the living room, so that I could show the fireplace and TV area. The lady in the picture is one of the landlords. The color of the brick in the last picture is approximately the same color as the exterior brick. The exterior brick may be a slightly more golden shade, but it's close. We meet with the landlord at the housing office tomorrow, where our "agent" will speak both French and English and act as a translator. Hope this helps to give you an idea of our (probable) new home -- Voila!

Still No Good Pictures

OK, I did not take the camera with me today. Inprocessing doesn't really provide anything photo worthy anyway. I was able to meet a number of people in the battalion this afternoon as well as the garrison chaplain. My office area is extremely nice. The weather was excellent, which I've been told is not the norm. Dreary weather is supposed to be a little more common. The area we're in is definitely farm country, which is nice. We passed hay fields being fluffed and baled today.

Since I seem to be unable to remember my camera, I am posting a few pictures of our hotel room and the view from the balcony. The army lodging facility was at capacity, so we're in a local hotel, which is nice. The restaurant in the lobby is really good. Since we don't have a vehicle or drivers' licenses yet, we're stuck spending a lot of time at the hotel after work hours. We are going over to our sponsers' home for dinner last night. They've been great. Otherwise, there's not much to tell about.

Arrival

We made it to Belgium around 0900 this morning (local time). We did a few of the necessary steps to begin inprocessing, mainly getting IDs made. Tomorrow we'll actually start doing the inprocessing.

Our hotel is nice. The room is pretty large by Belgium standards (I think). The area is beautiful. I'm just getting ready to move forward with getting settled and plugged back into ministry.

Isaac handled most of the trip well. His stomach got upset a little before we landed. We think that he'll be back to normal in another day or two. We didn't even take the camera out of the briefcase today. Between wrestling with Isaac and our own exhaustion, it just didn't happen. Maybe that will happen tomorrow.

Kids

I know the last several posts have basically been anecdotes about what Isaac is doing. A lot of that is because everything else seems to be a massive to-do list. Clearing Ft Hood is largely over. My last couple of places to clear will take forever, but I have the required paperwork, so it's just waiting in line. Most of our free time is spent tying up loose ends like getting the house ready for the move out inspection or closing out utilities. It's pretty mundane.

This leaves Isaac providing a massive amount of entertainment. The second picture you see is when he pulled the pack-n-play down for the
second or third time this week. He learned that if he threw the mat out of it, he could pull on a tab until it collapsed. He didn't really need to collapse it. He can crawl out of it any time he wants. I took this picture b/c we basically have no idea where he'll be sleeping when we check in on him at night. He seems to sleep on the floor, lay on the ruins of the pack-n-play or lay on the mattress we had once put in the pack-n-play. He generally throws that to the floor.


The last picture is obviously Emily's stomach. This child has been extremely sedate compared to Isaac. He constantly pushed and kicked.

This child moves a lot, but doesn't push against a lot of people or really do anything that anyone other than Emily notices. These pictures are the obvious exception to that. I kept waiting for an alien to burst from her abdomen and commence a killing rampage. (For those who are too old or young to know, I"m referencing a movie from the 80s).

Hopefully, this week will provide something of greater interest.

Getting things ready

I had to change the template of the blog back to something lighter. Something about the largely black background was annoying.

Anyway, we're a couple of weeks from leaving Ft Hood. I've finished most of the clearing process. I still have to get the Finance Office and the BN S1 to sign off on my paperwork. The Finance piece will involve a lot of waiting, and I'm still a little fuzzy about what that will accomplish for me. The unit I'm going to and the chaplains in the area have each provided me a great deal of information, which is making this move a little more comfortable.

I think I'd mentioned previously that all of the furniture and household stuff that is going with us has already left. That leaves our house largely empty. This is somewhat depressing for Emily and myself, but Isaac seems to be enjoying the empty house. The first picture is him climbing in and out of our empty cabinets.

The second is from his bedroom. His bed has shipped, so he's sleeping in a pack-n-play. I'm not sure if he flipped it crawling out or after he crawled out. The last picture used to be our den. It is now where Isaac has decided all of his toys not already shipped out should reside.