The Six Week Analysis

Six weeks and beginning to loose count… I’ve been here a surprisingly substantial amount of time already. It’s hard to believe.

On the one hand, I’m feeling a little settled-in:

• I’m beginning to feel as if I know my way around, and don’t need to consult my handy “map book” nearly as often. (I even once left home without it, travelled across the city and made it back alive).

Cool sighting on one of my city explorations.

Beautiful sighting: impressive church and
new dafodills in the foreground
- both equally glorifying God I think.

• I’ve found a place to live: a beautiful apartment (inside the ugliest building on the street – but at least it looks out at all the more beautiful buildings!), with a massive balcony and a great view, in one of Brussels’ hippest neighbourhoods, a few steps from multitudinous eating, drinking and shopping options and a beautiful old church on a cobblestoned square.

The kind of building I fancied myself living in...
instead of my boring modern concrete block
(which isn't worth posting a photo of here).
I'd like a room with those tiny windows in the roof.

But the view from my future home redeems the place,
among other good features. Here's the nightime
view towards the church at the end of the street.
(More photos to come when I actually move there.)

• I’ve found a housemate to live with, a lovely Hungarian girl who was in a similar housing search predicament as I was, and seems likely to be compatible housemate material (she cooks and likes houseplants – what more can one ask for?).
• I’ve figured out grocery shopping at the supermarket for the greatest ease and similarity to North America, have visited a couple of the many “corner grocer” stores, which are great options when you need food at odd hours, and they have everything you could possibly want, plus an excellent selection of Arab, Asian or African food supplies, depending on the ethnic heritage of the merchant. And I’ve also discovered the delight of weekend street markets. Streets filled with jolly fruit & veggie sellers, the tempting nut and olive stall, the intimidating cheese stand, the cheap clothing heaps surrounded by aggressively searching mothers and the happy display of weekend flowers.

Beautiful produce at the Saturday market on the square.

A happy site at the market: it's the waffle van!
Yes, you know you live in Belgium when...

• I’ve connected with a very welcoming church community here, have made several friendly acquaintances, already joined in on an engaging book club discussion, ate pancakes together on shrove Tuesday and am planning to join a church weekend away outside of Brussels in late March.
• I’ve had a few friends come to visit from cities nearby already, and potential for family & friends from further afar to come visit, and am already making fun weekend travel plans.

Another cool sighting on city walk with visiting friends.
If I was to own a shoe store, and call it "Ken" (naturally),
and it had a garage door on it, I would definately want
these spray paint artists to paint funky people all over it.

• I kind of feel like I might know a bit what I’m doing at work now. I’m digging in to the two smaller projects that are my responsibility: one in support to an orphanage and small livelihood investment projects in rural Nepal, the other medical and material support to marginalized families and individuals in Romania, including single-parent families, the elderly, people with disabilities and the Roma community. I’ve been searching for some funding, calculating budgets, completing reports, helping to create promotional materials for fundraising, designing the modality for a new project to support graduating orphans through secondary education…. Another part of my job is delving into some bigger picture “organization development”: composing a statement regarding our approach to development, designing a website to more-easily share resources with our field programs, and researching some of the key themes we want to mainstream in all of our work, like gender issues, HIV/AIDS and climate change, and figuring out just how we do that…. And I’m also a bit of an “odd-jobs girl” again (one of my fortes in life perhaps). So I’m the “Health, Safety & Environment Officer” and am now making exit signs, mounting fire extinguishers and tidying cables that were conspiring to trip people…I do a few IT random tasks…and I do lots of English editing since it’s my first language and thus I speak it (or more importantly, write it) especially well.

Hanging out with excellent colleague on the weekend

Eating my first mussels - a quintessential Belgian dining
experience. (Note that I'm normally a little uncomfortable
about eating small slimy, rubbery, or squishy sea creatures).

My face after consuming the first creature. I'll let you
decide if that's a look of "hmm...okay, not so
bad", or "eeekh, I'm not so sure about this".

• I’ve got a bicycle on loan and I love exploring the city on two wheels propelled by my lunch. It’s such a good feeling. I don’t miss the car-culture of Alberta one bit. The uphills feel great when you make it to the top and know your legs work just fine, and the downhills feel so exhilaratingly fantastic as you cruise down with nothing in the world against you but the gentle wind, and joy bursting out from your seams. It’s the perfect pace for getting somewhere, but noting the cozy-looking café, or admiring a particularly charming balcony on the way. Last weekend I visited the King’s forest. Good chap that King, to keep such a massive tract of green space within a highly developed European city.

My faithful 2-wheeled companion in the forest.
It'll be a lot prettier when the green times come.

Happy girl in the forest.

Reflecting upon trees reflecting upon water.

What do you think the sign at the bottom indicates?
I pondered it for a long time...a bow & arrow of some sort?
A ploughing implement? A T-bar ski-lift? Eventually,
I figured out it's a horse. It has no ears and a really
straight face. And no legs. So...no riding
deaf legless horses (obviously).

On the other hand…. (and yes, there is another hand), I’m feeling rather un-settled as of yet. In fact, I’ve decided that a good name for people like me might be EDPs (like an IDP). It stands for: Eternally Displaced Person. Okay, okay, so I’m not actually homeless, I have plenty of people who love me and will take me in in many parts of the world, I’ve never had to flee my home and I’ve never been persecuted. But…I do have a restlessness disorder, an addiction to change, a passion for living in an especially small world, a love for things new & different, and a lack of attachment to geography. And thus, I find myself on some occasions at the height of joy & wonder at the privilege of international adventure…and at other times, suffering from weary hobo-like feelings, wondering why on earth I keep wandering… So, why do I feel unsettled?

• I've been unable to move into my new apartment until March 1. In the meantime, I was living in the room above the office for 3 ½ weeks, and then I relocated to the apartment of my colleague who is away in Nepal. Both have been fine spots to rest one’s head, but I haven't bothered to unpack my bags knowing that they’re both temporary, and I just have this sudden longing to put my socks in a drawer.
• I don’t speak French. I’m a lousy Canadian. And I’m shy to even try. (That said, I’ve been having very good results lately with “Je suis désolé, je ne parle pas Français ”, at which point people happily start speaking in English to me.)
• I keep wondering why I’m here…if it’s just an “interim thing” for me to learn from this new job, and carry on with new wisdom to other places, if it’s going to be my new home and I’ll decide I want cobbled-streets and good cheese forever, if I might meet my soul mate and permanent travel buddy here, if it’s just another opportunity for an excellent experience to add to the overflowing adventure trunk?
• I miss Sudan. A lot. I miss my colleagues, I miss my neighbours, I miss my friends, I miss my lifestyle there. All lousy aspects have been forgotten (I have an excellent selective memory that way). I worry about the country, about the work I left behind, about my colleagues and their burdens. I miss the spontaneous and rich fun I had in my community there.
• I’m yearning for community. I had such an amazing sense of community in Sudan. Such an odd bunch of people thrown together in terribly odd circumstances, and what do you get? – beautiful community! And I have something of community in Canada too – an amazing family who has ridiculous fun together, a supportive church community, 2 grandmas’ ever-welcoming kitchens… I know community takes time to build, and I’ll probably find it here too. But I miss it.

So…it’s good, it’s bad…and it’s all the rich mess in the middle. C’est la vie. And that’s a French phrase I can say with gusto, fully feeling the meaning.