If they were worth a thousand words...

If it's cold and gray, maybe snowy or rainy, wherever you are, here are a few island photos to cheer your day.

You can read my account of our trip to Capri here.

In this photo we are on the Mediterranean side of the island (as opposed to the side looking towards Vesuvius and the bay of Naples, the windy side). We strolled from about where we are here (just a few steps away from our B&B) along the island lanes to that bright orange hotel you can just see in the top left corner. Then we followed a trail down past the faraglioni, the rocks you see in the distance, and then up about a million stairs past several of the island's other natural wonders.
Peeking across someone's terrace.
Looking out...
....and over the rooftops.
Once we had hiked around the point and up those stairs (first exploring a large natural cave, which had served as an ancient church), we got to the "Arco naturale," an arch naturally formed in the rock, offering precipitous glimpses of blue sea below (and the spit of land from whence we had come).
The next set of photos are from Villa San Michele. The interior was wonderful, but the gardens blew me away. Here, a long loggia of white columns covered with twisting vines leads to...
...amazing views of the port of Capri below, and beyond to the Bay of Naples and the Amalfi coast.
At the very end of the gardens, where the earth practically drops away, perches a tiny chapel. Behind it, a sphynx presides over the island and its waters.
The sunset that accompanied us on our ferry ride home.

Symmetry

Last night, we called my sister. Our nephew, the two-year-old, didn't really feel like coming to the computer to talk.

"Don't you want to come talk to aunt Robin?" said my sister.

[Off-screen: putter putter, busy busy, toys toys... general lack of enthusiasm.] He was kind of skyped out, evidently, having just been online with our cousin's kids.

Skyped-out, that is, until she asked, "Don't you want to talk to uncle M.?"

"Yeah! Uncle M!" And he ran over to the screen lickety-split.

***

Tonight, the Mister called his sister from his office in France (where he is working this week, yuck). Our nieces talked to him for a while, with lackluster interest, but kept asking about me.

So they called me on skype, and I just spent an amusing ten minutes with two pajama-clad little girls. They danced, and sang, and showed off their new English words, and showed me pictures.

***

What I'm saying is: it's funny that the American nephew is more interested in the Catalan uncle, and the Catalan nieces are more interested in the American aunt (at least in the 2-4 year old range; our 10-month-old nephew is just happy to smile at anyone on screen). And I wonder if it's because we're foreigners and have funny accents, or if the same thing would happen if we weren't foreigners, and it's just an effect of little girls looking up to big girls and little boys looking up to big boys?

I kind of suspect the latter, given the adoring way that the little guy speaks of his other uncles (my brothers). And in any case, all of the kids are wonderful and adorable and most of the time like to talk to both of us and make funny faces at us, and they always love to see us when we visit.

Being apart from our growing nieces and nephews is the hardest thing about living away from our families right now, but if there's a silver lining it's that we get to be the fun aunts and uncles who come for a visit swooping in on a plane.

I am 10:02 am

This is so me, all mid-morning laze and sunshiny optimism (still so much time left in the day!):

"You are breakfasty, like a pile of pancakes on a Sunday morning that have just the right amount of syrup, so every bite is sweet perfection and not a soppy mess. You are a glass of orange juice that's cool, refreshing, and not overly pulpy. You are the time of day that's just right for turning the pages of a newspaper, flipping through channels, or clicking around online to get a sense of how the world changed during the night. You don't want to stumble sleepily through life, so you make a real effort to wake your brain up and get it thinking. You feel inspired to accomplish things (whether it's checking something off your to-do list or changing the world), but there's plenty of time for making things happen later in the day. First, pancakes."

Take the quiz. What time of day are you?

(Full disclosure: the time-stamp on this post has, indeed, been manipulated. At 10:02 AM we were supposed to be on our way to church, but were still doing last-minute coffee gulping and teeth-brushing.)

Capri

Small islands have a magical way of distancing you from your troubles, as if the blue stretch of water you must traverse to arrive there reduces them to blips on the horizon, as insignificant as the twinkling lights on the mainland. After barely twenty-eight hours in Capri last weekend, I felt rejuvenated and calm, like we had been on an entirely new planet.

I remember the first times I experienced this effect, astonished and fascinated by the way everything seemed cleaner and quieter on an island, more straightforward somehow. In consecutive summers, our family traveled to Isle au Haut, off the coast of Maine, and San Juan Island, off the coast of Washington. The two islands are on entirely opposite ends of the country, but they both had that same quality, the quiet of island living. I wouldn't even consider myself a boat/beach/ocean person, but I love the cocoon-like feeling of knowing exactly where you are, always having the sea around the next bend, able to locate yourself precisely on a little patch of rocky earth. Perhaps this is connected to my love of little, miniature things. The world is shrunken, hunkered down. On Capri, every bus is a mini-bus, the roads are lanes, and the shops are tiny arched niches carved into the rocks.

Capri in February feels a bit surreal. Few tourists wander among the closed restaurants and shuttered luxury shops. The breathtakingly perfect little lanes are all but empty. We had the island to ourselves, it seemed. Of course, ferries still disgorged daytrippers, but they were content to remain in the central square, the Piazetta, and environs, long enough to snap a few pictures and get back on another ferry to avoid the bitter wind blowing mercilessly into the island. It was easy to imagine the place in summer, when the Prada and Gucci shops are open for business, when the gift shops aren't empty, when the museums are elbow-to-elbow with flash-happy tourists. Their ghosts are everywhere, the ghosts of the wealthy in leather sandals, tans, and white shorts. The unbelievable blue of ocean and sky and sun helped me imagine them.

But for us Capri's dramatic cliffs and jutting peaks spoke with the roar of a cold wind. When we entered the church of San Michele in Anacapri (the second town on the island), with its magnificent majolica tile floor depicting Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, we were the only ones there. The small elderly man who ushered us in was happy to see us, happy to point out the details. When we strolled the piazzas in the evenings, we did so among the locals, eating at the same restaurant twice in the same day, the one where all of the Caprians went, half the dining room filled with a family celebration at lunch and a birthday party for an 18-year-old at dinner. We took a trail around one the edge of the island, leading us past the faraglioni ("lighthouse") rocks that rise from the sea, big as skyscrapers. And we were alone, adrift on the outer limits of an island traversed for centuries, as we explored the ruins of an ancient cave-church, the Matermania.

My favorite visit was the Axel Munthe house, Villa San Michele, a breathtaking home constructed by a well-connected Swedish doctor on the site of one of Tiberius' notorious villas. Again, we were alone as we listened to the terraced gardens and Roman marbles sing to one another under the blue sky and craggy cliffs. An Egyptian sphynx sits at the edge of the garden wall, looking out to sea, an enigmatic symbol of the island. Evidently, the book that Munthe wrote about the construction of his home, The Story of San Michele, is an international bestseller, second only to the Bible (or something like that!), although I had never heard of it until last weekend. We bought a copy (yet another of our book souvenirs), and I started reading it as the minibus wound its way impossibly close to the cliff's edge, with views of Capri town and its sheltering mountains.

(These sorts of museums are always my favorites, the kind that retain the personality and particularity of their prior owners. They're small enough to explore in an hour or two, the art collections are eclectic and interesting, and they usually involve fascinating architecture and charming gardens. The Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and the Musée Rodin in Paris are at the top of my list, as is now the Axel Munthe museum. Here in Brussels, we have the Erasmus house and the Van Buren museum, a lovely art deco home where I discovered the artwork of Gustave Van de Woestyne and wandered the exquisite gardens (complete with maze!). In Boston, we have the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, where I fall for that ivied atrium every time. I'm sure I'm forgetting some museums that should be on this list. And if you know about more, let me know! I'll go there.)

All too soon we had to catch the ferry back to Naples, but our stay had seemed so much more than those few short hours. From the ferry we watched the hot-orange sun set over the city, its molten-gold rays casting everyone and everything on the old boat into gilt still-lifes. As soon as the disc touched the horizon, it moved so quickly, sliding down as if swallowed, and reminding us of how quickly we spin around on this earth. It was then that, after a slow, sun-drenched weekend on Capri, time sped up once again.



(Note to readers: apologies if you saw a scrambled, truncated, list-like version of this post from earlier this week. I made some random notes to myself that inadvertently were published as an entry. Note to self: Don't use blog for note-taking.)

Be mine...

...is a command, a request if said in a rising tone of voice. A selfish demand if said in a forceful tone of voice. The frilly valentine of grade school sent to the secret crush is a hopeful gesture of what might be. But today is also a day to celebrate what is, the ones I love who are mine.

One of the greatest gifts that love brings is a sense of reciprocal belonging: you are mine and I am yours. I am your daughter, you are my mother. I am your sister, you are my brother. I am your wife, you are my husband. I am your friend, and you are mine. This is one of the great gifts of faith, as well, to claim the God who claims us as his. The peace of resting in the possessive, the relationship signified by embracing someone as "mine."

So consider this a valentine to those I cherish, and thank you for being mine.

Napoli

Monday we returned from Naples, the city whose favorite sport is crossing the street. Skills required: motorcycle dodging, traffic-light defying, and split-second timing. No scaredy-cat scurrying allowed; you are supposed to move like a stroll in the park, calmly and fluidly. The officially sanctioned unisex costume is a black poofy jacket with a fur-rimmed hood, sunglasses, and a telefonino clamped to your ear. Bonus points if you are a waiter carrying a covered tray of miniscule espressos as you weave in and out of moving vehicles.

The piles of trash that I predicted before leaving, amazingly enough, were nowhere in evidence, apart from the to-be-expected urban dumpsters. Our taxi driver told us they shipped the refuse out to the suburbs. In fact, everything was cleaner and more charming than I had remembered. The impressions I had held of Naples (based on two short visits, once a brief stop in 1998 to meet up with my father and a tour bus full of opera buffs, and another in 2006 which amounted to two taxi rides and a short walk before heading to Procida) were chaos, crazy traffic (that hasn't gone away), dirt, dark alleys, oh, and did I mention the chaos?

But I was pleasantly enchanted by Naples during this visit. I wandered around by myself while the Mister and his boss were in a marathon stretch of philosophical discourses (in Italian) on the topic of socialism. Of course, I stuck to stretches of the map that were well-populated, and only in the daytime. But the buildings, even the crumbling ones, are beautiful, eyefuls of architecture to scoop up and savor. I spent hours in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, the number of visitors practically outnumbered by museum staff (in general over the weekend we saw very very few tourists, which is just how I like it).

Although a portion of rooms were closed for restoration, it was a satisfying visit with discrete sections: the most intricate and astounding of Pompeii's mosaics, an exhibit by a contemporary artist named Luca Pignatelli whose work I just fell in love with, the Gabinetto Secreto (the over-18-only portion of the museum featuring sculptures, paintings, and objects with "adult" themes--by today's standards, all pretty tame and sometimes giggle-worthy), the contents of the Villa Papyri in Pompeii (scrolls and wonderful bronzes), and finally, a temporary exhibit of the 19th-c British painter Alma-Tadema, who recreated scenes from Pompeii and other Roman cities in the lush, romantic, idealized Victorian vein. A nice touch: the artefacts (sculptures, furniture, lampstands, etc.) that show up in the paintings were presented at their side.

Also adding to the "I heart Naples" effect: food, of course! Both Thursday and Friday the folks from the two conferences we were there for took us out for delectable meals. As the Mister points out, these people seem to see conferences as a pretext for the real event: long, delicious hours dedicated to eating and conversation. Our dinner Thursday night was at least six courses, and I was able to converse with the guy who is a French professor sitting next to me. (By the way, I SO want to learn Italian. That will come after French. It's almost there, I can understand it just ...almost, but speaking is a disaster.) Friday, we fully expected to be on our own for lunch, but when M. asked for restaurant recommendations, he got the "are you crazy, of course we're taking you out, I absolutely insist" series of gestures that only an Italian could produce. They didn't even know I'd be there, but it was taken for granted that I would be invited, as well as, it seemed, whoever else happened to hang around after the end of the conference.

That hospitality, by the way, is the other reason I am enamored of Naples. Forget the mafia, forget the chaos: these people are incredibly generous. After the Friday lunch, we all tramped over to a beautiful gilt bar for coffees, and because we had asked about Napolitan desserts, a girl we barely knew bought us three plates of pastries and cakes. Just to try. Because those desserts represent her city. Then on Sunday night, when we came back to the city to catch the plane in the morning, we stayed at the B&B of a Brussels friend's mother. The place was palatial, the views amazing. We expected to get a reasonable rate, but we did not expect this: she insisted that we pay her nothing. And oh, the kisses and smiles and embraces and fond farewells of people you have only known for an hour or two.

But can I go back to the food for a second? SO delicious, and even in "fancy" restaurants, really reasonably priced. We followed some New York Times restaurant recommendations that were spot-on (Amici Miei and Da Ettore), and ate in a restaurant called Brandi, where the pizza is said to have been invented. There, we were regaled with guitar-accompanied Neopolitan songs, and a woman who seemed to be a friend of the restaurant (not connected with the two guitar guys) sang O Sole Mio: she was a trained opera singer, without a doubt, and her voice was AMAZING.

The Centro Storico, the gothic city, was beautiful but a little scary, too. I was always glad to be with the Mister after nightfall. And we stuck to well-lit streets; some of the dark lanes were positively medieval. But I really enjoyed it, because it reminded me of Barcelona's Barri Gotic, without all of the tourists (ps to the one British couple we saw: is it TRULY necessary to wear hiking boots and safari vests? When I'm guessing you didn't set foot outside of the city?). Stepping into what seem like your average neighborhood churches you discover elaborately gorgeous interiors. Every corner seems to have a few Roman marbles stuck into them. Towers and convents appear out of nowhere. And we dawdled endlessly in the warren of bookstalls behind Piazza Dante, purchasing what turned out to be our only souvenirs of the trip (not counting wine and limoncello purchased at the airport): books, of course! (Most of them unrelated to Naples: an English novel, a Catalan-Italian edition of Catalan women poets, and a gorgeous French coffee-table book on Provence for only five euros.)

The one drawback of our trip: we seem to have picked the only winter weekend where Brussels was warmer than Naples; turns out that in our absence, Belgium had experienced record-breaking February warmth and sun. In Italy, the air was downright cold, with a frigid wind. True, the golden sunshine drenching everything did much to warm us, mentally and physically, but we were shocked to experience such a chilly weekend. M's boss didn't bring a coat, and he was freezing the whole time. I wore a scarf and gloves, and wished for a hat, especially at night, and especially on the island of Capri, where the windward side of the island was positively gelid.

Ah yes, Capri. I haven't even gotten to the two days we spent there! But I'll save that for another post (photos, too!). For now, I'll just say that it was actually pretty nice coming back to (a sunny) Brussels. When I stepped onto the streets of this dear Flemish city, in comparison to Naples, it seemed downright tranquil, slow-moving, spacious, and tidy.

Trashy

As it happens, we will be vacationing this weekend in a dump.

In a nutshell, Naples trash collectors stopped collecting trash because there was nowhere to put it. All of the dumps are full, and nobody seems to be able to figure out what to do about it. The mob runs waste disposal operations (causing major pollution issues due to lack of oversight), and government proposals to fix the problem have been met with resistance because no one trusts the government to do a better job than organized crime. They've been ordered to clean up but as far as I can tell, the problem (such a paltry word when referring to tons and tons of garbage) still remains.

So this weekend I may be photographing monumental trash piles instead of monuments. I have no idea if the problem extends to Capri or not. Crossing my fingers for "not."

Superfat Tuesday

Yesterday was an adjective-enhanced Tuesday if there ever was one. Because the day fell on Fat Tuesday of carnival fame, and Super Tuesday of political fame, it was bound to be exciting. Super exciting, if you will.

The Mister and I tried to squeeze as much excitement out of it as possible here in Belgium, which is both geographically distant from the Mardi Gras ideal of tropical Brazilian parades, and temporally distant from American political reporting (most results didn't start to come in until 2 am, well after our bedtime).

For the "fat" portion of Superfat Tuesday, we went to Binche (pronounce Baansh, light on the "n"), a small town south of Brussels that is known for its centuries-old carnival celebrations. The Binche carnival itself is, in fact, a UNESCO "masterpiece of the oral and intangible patrimony of humanity." Despite the buffeting winds and rain, the parade we saw was indeed pretty darn cool. It features hundreds of men and boys (no women, harrumph) dressed up in the traditional "Gille" costume, which is... kind of hard to explain. The costume involves wooden shoes and towering feathered headdresses, belts of bells (they all clonk shoes and jingle the bells in a shuffling kind of dance to the drums and horns that follow them), elaborate lacy cuffs and collars, white skullcaps and ear-bandages and a sort of puffed-up back and front panel that makes them all look like their too-small heads are perching on hugely inflated shoulders. Earlier in the day, they wear those scary green-glasses masks, but not for the afternoon parade (trading them for the ostrich-feather headdresses). So I was happy and unfrightened.

Oh, and they all carry narrow straw baskets of blood oranges, which they hurl into the crowd one by one. We lugged home about three kilos of oranges, and fortunately managed to avoid being injured by flying citrus. I wondered aloud as to why the oranges, and the Mister replied: "You know how Belgium is known for its sunshine and its orange trees, right?" The streets after the parade were cobbled with muddy, crushed fruit. I fully expected the oranges to be rather tasteless, but on the contrary, when we finally ate some at around midnight, they were fantastically sweet and tart, and bright red inside. Yum!

How I do go on. Instead of trying to explain the bizarre spectacle, I should show you some pictures.

Before the parade, we caught some of the Gilles leaving their house. Each one has a sort of entourage, people to carry backpacks full of oranges (for refilling the baskets), people to help out with the feather hats (from the looks of it, they were heavy and tough to hang onto in the wind, and were thus only worn for short stretches at a time), and people to ratatat-tat on drums everywhere they went.

This little Gille didn't want to go with his dad and brother. He was crying, and I felt kind of bad for taking his picture, because that's probably why he didn't want to go in the first place: all those scary tourists snapping flashy pictures.

A group of Gilles heading to the parade.

And here's me, with one of the oranges we caught, just before the camera battery died.

After a crowded train ride back to Brussels, we went on to the "super" portion of our superfat Tuesday: a big primaries party thrown at one of the nice hotels in town. There, the signage insisted on calling it a "Mega-Tuesday party" which may be a French way of saying it, who knows? The Mister and I really just wanted to follow the primaries on CNN or something, and since we are TVless, we asked some friends where to go and they recommended this party. We paid five euros to get in, only to discover that: food and drinks were not included (to be paid for apart, at exorbitant rates), all of the rooms were intensely noisy and overcrowded, and there was no TV. Instead, there was an endless (and endlessly boring) parade of pseudo-debates, people trying to get you to sign up for Republicans or Democrats Abroad, and eurocrat "celebrities" talking about how the elections were important (duh), none of which you could hear over the crowds anyway. We just wanted some news!!! And the friends we'd thought we'd see there never showed up, so the whole shebang was one big superbust.

We went home, ate some blood oranges, and scoured the internet for some news. There was precious little, so we went to bed. I do have to say, though, HOW exciting this primaries race is. Regardless of your political affiliation, is it not AMAZINGLY awesome that a woman and a man of color are neck-and-neck as frontrunners? This, my friends, is history in the making. Who would've thunk?

I find myself feeling hopeful about American politics for the first time in a long time, and Obama has a lot to do with those hopes. If he is elected, and can deliver on his messages of hope and change, the nation will be in for a major turnaround, one that is badly needed.

Anyway, I've gone on for superlong, and you're probably supersick of me, and supertuesday is over, so I can stop using superlatives. Hee hee!

Getting lost

Yes, it's true. We would have to call ourselves Lost fans. We're already on the bandwagon for this season's episodes, short-lived as they may be. Last night we watched the new episode (with Estonian subtitles! ain't the internet grand!), and although it wasn't the best one ever, I was so excited to be watching it again that it didn't matter how good or bad it was. One thing that Lost never fails to do is to raise twice as many questions as it provides answers, and man, I love that. (It's the same detective-y feeling I get when reading Faulkner. Take Absalom! Absalom!, which moves backwards and forwards in time at will, confuses the reader with referents [who is the "he" they are talking about here?], and never lets you be sure whether characters' motivations are good or bad [Is Locke a Sutpen?]) I was glad to see that they're continuing the flash-forward style, which is a nice switch-up and creates oodles more mysteries for our viewing pleasure.

OK, I'm done now. Sorry for the supreme geekery. I'll go back to making phone calls to companies who don't want to give money to our choir, and you go back to...whatever you were doing.

On a Sunday, does "this week" mean the last six days, or the next six days? Depends if you're asking an American or a Catalan.

In case you weren't aware of the fact, it is February already. I myself am only barely aware of the fact, and this is probably because I am in denial. February means cold weather, and still more to come. It means a little blip of red hearts (the chocolate stores, which in Brussels are as omnipresent as corner groceries, won't let us forget it) and then back to the gray wait for signs of spring.

So, in order to pretend that it is not February and not gray and not cold, we are going to Italy. More specifically, on Thursday we're headed to Naples, where the lemons are the size of your head. The Mister has a conference for two days, and I'm tagging along, and then we're taking two days for ourselves to go whither we wish in the area. Capri? Sorrento? Amalfi? Any recommendations?

Also, on Tuesday we're going to try to make it to Binche for carnival, which is the most famous of the Belgian celebrations on shrove Tuesday. It involves lots and lots of people wearing the costumes pictured here, which I find to be slightly scary. We'll see how I feel about it in person. I may have to keep my distance, especially if any break away from the parade formation and head directly for me with those eerie green eyes and twirly moustaches.

We're thus hoping this coming week will be an improvement over this past week, during which the Mister had surgery on his hand, and I developed even more of a cold than I had before. On Thursday, we spent seven hours in the hospital for the surgery, and in hindsight (and because it went very smoothly, and because it wasn't *me* having the surgery) I can say it was kind of a cool experience. The doctors were able to remove the strange lumpy thing that was in there that has been puzzling them for months (they're still analyzing it, so it will remain a mystery until next week), and the Mister has had hardly any pain in his hand. He was calm and collected when I would have been a nervous pre-op wreck. And in the end, he ended up taking care of me, instead of the other way around, when my cold took a turn for the worse.

The good news from the week was that I passed my French class, at the head of the class! That's not saying a whole lot when you consider that half the class failed and our teacher called the general level of our class très faible (I got the highest grade with a 77, a figure that in any other academic context would definitely make me cry). But it is saying a lot when you consider that I skipped a level, didn't have very much opportunity for conversational practice, and wasn't terribly confident. I'm looking forward to starting the next level (like a video game!), hopefully with a congenial teacher and friendly classmates.

There you have it. The news from this (last) week, and the plans for this (next) week. American calendars place Sunday on the left of the grid, and European calendars place Monday at the left of the grid. The Mister would say "next week" when referring to this coming Thursday, whereas I would say "this week." It's all very confusing.

Catalan word of the day: teixó

I came back from Barcelona a little sunburned, and with a nasty feverish cough sickness thing. Probably unrelated.

The sunburn bridging my nose and cheeks was the result of a Sunday afternoon in the park, basking in the golden January sun. We had a picnic with the Mister's family in the hills of the Collserolla, the ones that embrace Barcelona like a bosomy grandma.

While traipsing through the woods, the little girls gathering all manner of sticks and leaves and rocks, we came across animal-track and leaf-print sculptures. I could translate the names of most of the animals, except for one: teixó. They described it to me as an animal that digs in the ground. But it doesn't live underground. It's not really small. But it's not really big. I was stumped. At last, when we got to the nature center, there was a picture of a teixó, and I'm proud to say I was at least able to identify the creature from the picture: a badger!

One new vocabulary word richer, I joined the others in a sunny spot and noshed on sandwiches. There is something terribly satisfying about eating outdoors, especially in the middle of winter and after days of Brussels gray. Also, being a European picnic, it involved having coffee in tiny espresso cups at the nearby bar. We lounged at the bar for hours, reading the papers and chatting and soaking up sun.

Later that night, the cough I had had for a few days seemed to develop a fever and I went straight to bed at like 6 pm. Getting up at 4:30 the next morning for my flight (the Mister had to stay in town for meetings until today, but I had my French oral exam on Tuesday) was miserable.

By 11 am I was back in bed, in a different city, still coughing and still feverish. Fortunately, I felt better by Tuesday morning and was able to take a stab at the oral exam. I have no idea if I did well: when nervous, I tend to speak foreign languages too rapidly, stumbling over my own words, and after the fact I am unable to recall what I said, let alone whether I said it well. I do remember that I used a direct object pronoun (which I remember because I noticed that my teacher took a note after that: score!) but also that I couldn't think of the word for "knife." Awkward sawing motions were involved.

So I guess the French word of the day is: couteau.

Adventures of red bag

A quick update on where Red Bag has taken me so far.

The French final exam yesterday went surprisingly well (for the second half, we could use a dictionary! my thumb got as much of a workout as my brain, because I had to obsessively check the spelling of all the words that I could). The test consisted entirely of making up a news article to match a headline (mine was about a poor old lady who got beat up by a guy in the metro; I almost cringed as I wrote it) and writing a letter from one of our video characters to his Parisian pals. The letter was a multi-step thing, where we had to explain his daughter's trip to the doctor (surprise! she had the same thing as the Mister! come to think of it, why didn't I give her ear problems?), the rumors flying in his village, an amusing anecdote about some Dutch tourists (do you know hard it is to MAKE UP an amusing anecdote about Dutch tourists in an exam situation??? Mine was along the lines of: they ordered pizza! but there wasn't any pizza on the menu! ha ha!), and then convince the friends to come for a visit, making enticing suggestions about what activities they could do. I suggested mushroom hunting and swimming in a lake.

Red bag got complemented at choir, by the girl with whom I have an ongoing weekly conversation (mostly one sided) about how fat she is and how she has to lose weight and how the chips we noshed on at the break were her only "indulgence" for the week and how she has to look good in a bikini for her vacation in two weeks and blahblahblah. The girl is BEAUTIFUL and skinny, at LEAST two sizes smaller than me. How to respond in these situations? I just tell her over and over again that she's not fat, that she looks great, that her vacation will be awesome no matter what she looks like, and so on.

Today Red Bag will be accompanying me to Barcelona, where it is WARM and sunny. Here, it's actually sunny today, but it's due to a cold front that came in after yesterday's pouring rain, leaving the sky blue and the air frigid. I'm actually happy with that, but I'll even be happier when I get to Barcelona and can pretend it's spring.

I won't have a computer with me (although I checked, and YES, my laptop fits in Red Bag!) so I'll be out of touch if anyone's trying to get a hold of me by e-mail. I even considered taking ONLY Red Bag and no suitcase. I've always wanted to fly without luggage! I would feel as light as air! I would prance through the airport! I would feel like a true jetsetter, with her chic sac rouge! I would do it except that I will probably need to bring dirty laundry back to Brussels with me (still leftover from Christmas break; we don't have a washer/dryer there yet and we can't treat M's grandmother like a private laundry lady). It's a kind of weird situation of modern life: carting dirty laundry between two European cities. How NOT jetsettery and cosmopolitan is that?

Still, I vow that someday I'll fly without luggage. You'll see. Just me and Red Bag.

Red and roomy

For the last several years I've been carrying my books to class in one of the following bags (when I am not forced to resort to the "I'm in high school" backpack look, definitely not an option for the city, when all I usually have are three slim French books anyway):

-a navy blue cloth Aspen Institute freebie that the Mister picked up at a conference years ago
-a cute but cheaply made pink/purple floral bag that came FREE with a British airport magazine purchase (the straps have already broken twice and the Mister's mom sewed them back together)
-a plasticky black handbag that I bought on sale for 3$ at Bath & Body Works four years ago

Needless to say, it was time for a grown-up European girl bag, and the Mister concurred. But I wasn't quite ready to pay a gazillion bucks for a fancy leather item (I'm a cheapskate; witness: list above), OR to pay ten euros for one of the plasticky suitcase-sized "hand"bags to be found in H&M or Mango.

I found the middle ground when I visited one of my favorite little boutique stores yesterday (the kind of place where I adore everything in it but never buy anything because it's too expensive, and I feel slightly uncomfortable because it's tiny and as the saleslady watches me, the only customer, browse the too-expensive items, I'm positive she can tell I'm a cheapskate and won't buy anything).

BUT! Yesterday, everything was half-off, and the 60-euro handbag was only 30 euros, and even though it's not real leather, I'm kind of glad (no need to wear an animal on my shoulder) and it still looks classy. And it's really roomy, but not the size of a suitcase! It'll fit folders sideways or upways, and maybe even my laptop. For travel, it'll be perfect to carry all the cables and crap I have to cart around. And it has cute buckles but not thousands of unnecessary ones (a pet peeve of mine).

And it's red! Who isn't cheered up by red?

Cute red bag in nighttime light:


Cute red bag in daytime light:


Close-up of cute red bag because the new camera has a pretty sweet macro setting:


I stayed in last night, skipping a dinner that the Mister had organized for a friend who's leaving his job. I didn't feel super great and didn't feel like going out, but the one thing that made me want to get dressed up and ignore my complaining ovaries? The cute red bag!

But I knew that soon enough I'll take it everywhere, my new companion on the gray streets of Brussels. Tomorrow, it'll accompany me to my French exam, and the red will cheer me up so much that I'll channel my inner French girl and ace the exam!

Or, erm, at least it'll reassure me when I can't remember the subjunctive or how to spell that tricky string of vowels.

Hospital jaunt

I spent much of my morning today at the local hospital. For the past week, I've had a blocked up left ear, which never was painful, but was a tad annoying: I either couldn't hear well enough (conversation, music), or could hear all too well (anything going on in my own head, such as cereal-crunching or my own voice). So I showed up for my ear-cleaning appointment, nervous as all get-out because I was alone and would have to negotiate in French.

Unless, of course, I broke down and begged my doctor, or the receptionist, to speak to me in English.

Fortunately, the begging did not happen, as I managed to understand what was required of me at check-in, as well as the rather complicated instructions for how to negotiate the labyrinthine hallways up to the otorhinolaryngo area. Hooray for that day in French where we practiced giving each other directions to different floors in imaginary buildings!

After a long sojourn in the waiting room, during which I furtively flipped through my dictionary to find the words I would need to explain what was wrong with my ear, I met the nice doctor. She nodded sagely as I spoke and I had barely gone through two of my carefully mentally-prepared sentences before she had me on the examining chair and was shooting a jet of water into my ear while I held a basin below it. It was over in a flash, and it was pretty gross to see the quantity of, um, particulate matter that came out of my ear canal. Even she sounded impressed.

They did a test of my hearing, during which I sat in a little (totally NOT soundproof) cabin wearing ill-fitting earphones, and had to click on a little trigger whenever I heard a faint beeeep. I passed with flying colors.

On my way home I stopped at an unfamiliar grocery store (I don't know about you, but I love wandering around strange grocery stores, especially in foreign countries) and bought some ice cream. I rarely buy ice cream, especially in the winter, but it somehow seemed that, after a trip to the doctor's office, ice cream was the appropriate response. Not that I had my tonsils out today or anything, but still: ice cream!

Green bananas

I mentioned in my last post that I bought some lovely free-trade bananas a while back. Problem is, "a while back" is over two weeks ago, and the bananas were still as bright green and rock hard as the day I picked them up.

A little research on the web revealed that sometimes, bananas just don't ripen, and will go bad without going through the stage where they get yellow and nice to eat with breakfast.

So suddenly, my Saturday afternoon project became "make something edible out of green bananas." I had no idea if this was even possible, but again, the internet to the rescue. (It's gotten to the point where, last night, my husband, who is skeptical of my reliance on google to answer any unanswered question, suggested that I would someday be driven to google "What to do when your husband thinks you google too much.")

I discovered that green bananas (distinct from plantains, although some recipes use them interchangeably) are, indeed, a legitimate substance for cooking, especially in southeast asian cuisines. You can make soups, salads, curries, and fries out of them, or just cook them up with some coconut milk and enjoy.

I opted for this recipe, which calls them "green banana kebab" but are basically little fritters. It suggests boiling the bananas in their skins, but suggests an alternative, microwaving them for 6-7 minutes. This I did. They came out steaming hot, and fell out of their skins like sweet potatoes, but less sweet. They were starchy and bland-tasting. Boy, handling a familiar food in a way that feels and smells and tastes completely different from how you usually prepare it creates a considerable cognitive disjunct!

Once I started mashing them, though, I realized they were still way too hard, so I popped the peeled bananas into a pot of boiling water for about ten minutes. (Again with the disjunct: BOILING bananas just felt so WRONG.) They still came out dry and starchy when I mashed them, but at least they weren't hard. I added some soy milk because the bananas seemed way to unlikely to merge together to form little cakes.

At this point, I was still pretty sure my experiment was going to be a disaster, but I have to say, quite proudly, that the finished product was tasty, spicy, and delicious with a little ketchup. If I hadn't been wrangling bananas for the previous hour, I would have guessed they were made from potato. I'm not sure that I would make them again unless I had the green banana problem, but to aid anyone out there who is looking for a green banana recipe, here's what I did. Oh, and I'm calling them beignets, because the Belgians seem to call any fried frittery thing a "beignet." And I am a fan of alliteration.

Green Banana Beignets

(adapted from Mamta's Kitchen)
makes about 16 fritters

Ingredients:

6 very green bananas (not plantains)
1/4 cup (or more) unsweetened soy milk
1 red onion, finely chopped
1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 green onion, green portion finely chopped
2 teaspoons coriander
1/2 teaspoon spicy chili powder (or more to taste)
salt to taste
vegetable oil for frying
one egg, beaten
bread crumbs (I made mine out of a dried baguette, grated in a box grater)

Instructions

1. Boil bananas in their skin until tender. Or, prick with a fork and cook in a microwave on high for 7-9 minutes.
2. Cool, peel and mash bananas by hand or with a masher. Do not use a food processor.
3. Add milk until bananas will hold together when pressed.
3. Add onions, ginger, garlic, all the spices, salt and mix well.
4. Form into small round patties.
5. Heat a couple of tablespoons oil in a frying pan.
6. Dip each piece in the egg, one at a time, roll in bread crumbs on both sides, and fry in a non-stick pan. Cook four at a time in a medium pan, and add more oil between batches.
7. Fry all beignets, until golden brown and crisp on both sides.
8. Serve hot, with chutney, salsa, or ketchup, plain or on a bun.

Can be kept in the fridge or frozen. Reheat in a medium-hot oven.

Dilemmas and quandaries

Having just finished Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, I'm hyper-aware of the hidden costs of the things I buy and eat. But the book, while it was illuminating in many respects, and well-written, leaves me with just as much of a dilemma as ever when I shop. Perhaps MORE of a dilemma, because it has made me question what I too often before took for granted: organic? great! Plop it in the basket!

Pollan's useful distinction between "industrial organic" (the kind of organic that relies on the traditional industrial market processes and [inter]national supply chains) and local organic (grass-fed cows, multi-species farms, local supply chains) has made me question some of the claims of organic foods. Is that chicken really free-range or does it just live in a giant, smelly, chicken shed with a tiny door where it can spend five minutes on a little patch of green grass?

Throughout the book there are tantalizing hints that the situation is better in Europe: stricter regulation of the term "organic" (here it's "bio"), closer ideological ties among farmers, fresh-food markets, and consumers, and greater pride in traditional foods and cuisines. At several points in the book, Pollan mentions some absurdly poisonous or otherwise detrimental product or method that is allowed in American processed food, and then, to underscore its toxicity, points out that it is outlawed in Europe.

This cheers me up. For a long time after I moved here, I missed places like Trader Joe's and even the variety of organic food and vegetarian products that one can find in any regular supermarket in the US. But on my own at first, and then after reading Pollan's book, I started to realize that I was lucky to find fewer processed corn-based items (do I really need a cereal aisle that stretches as far as the eye can see?) or even industrial-organic processed foods and to find more local produce and artisanal breads, cheeses, etc. Here, the markets happen every day of the week and the local supply chain has never really been interrupted.

That said, I still find it a confusing juggling act to go shopping. I find myself balancing the relative importance of health (eat lots of fresh fruit, even if it's not in season?), organic, and local claims. Is it better to eat the non-organic local tomato? Or the organic tomato that's been shipped farther? Is it better to eat the local tomato that's packaged on a foam tray and wrapped in plastic, or the tomato flown in from Spain that is unpackaged? Oh, and not to mention habits: I like to eat a banana every morning. But the bananas have to fly across an ocean to get here! Is it better if they are free-trade organic bananas? They still have to gobble up a whole lot of fossil fuels to get to my fruit bowl.

Earlier this week, I stopped at a grocery to quickly grab some things for dinner. While I noticed that the lettuce I put in my basket was Belgian, my thought process for the grapes that I picked up was: Ooh! grapes! I haven't had those forever! And these look so good and tasty! We can have fruit for dessert tonight! When I got home, I noticed that the (admittedly delicious and sweet) grapes were from South Africa. Again, aaargh...the fossil fuels.

Another example. I sent away for a free guide to local and organic merchants and markets, which promptly landed in my mailbox. I read that the Monday market just up the street hosts one of the farmers known for his great organic produce. So I went there, and the man was charming, and I felt so great buying from him! The zucchini was beautiful, the potatoes wholesome and friendly.

Then I spotted some kumquats and asked for a couple hundred grams. The guy was surprised that I asked for such an unusual fruit and said so, asking if I was familiar with them. I said I was, and that I liked them very much. I was so wrapped up in the little charming conversation and the effort involved in speaking French, that I didn't stop to consider: kumquats--an Asian citrus fruit--in January? Who knows, maybe they are in season and were grown locally, but I didn't ask. My French limits my endeavors in this respect, sometimes. I barely was able to express the elementary assertion that yes, "I like kumquats."

And the dilemmas extend from food into the realm of other products and purchases. Pollan's principles could probably apply to organic clothes just as well. I look at purchases in terms of the packaging I'll have to end up throwing away.

I bought organic clothes (50-70% off!) for the first time in my life the other day. I'm betting that organic cotton is better for the environment than regular cotton, having avoided that much more chemical fertilizers and waste runoff with crops that are grown organically. But as Pollan's book convincingly shows, the organic industry is still just that--industrial--and as such includes hidden costs of transporting goods far and wide, and isn't necessarily better for the soil (due to aggressive plowing and the dominance of monoculture). But for clothes, what other options are there?

I also wondered why organic clothes are A) always yoga-style tees and comfy pants and sweats and B) in light "earthy" colors? It's not that I don't like these options--au contraire, my favorite clothes ever are comfy swingy yoga pants, and my favorite colors are peaceful blues. BUT, why should the organic clothes option be limited to these kind of clothes? Shouldn't we be able to buy, say, organic dress pants and structured jackets? Organic dresses?

Anyway, you're probably tired of reading by now. My own head hurts. It's frustrating that it's such a struggle to live in this world in a way that does the least harm to the good resources we've been given.

The system, it is me

Life is proceeding in a very January fashion. Save excursions to the market, the video store, the swimming pool, and the pharmacy (to purchase various ointments and pills for the various afflictions the Mister and I seem to have acquired: he bronchitis, me swimmer's ear), oh and church and French class, we have been more or less housebound.

Fortunately for us, today we gussied up the house part of housebound, cleaning and organizing and picking up and throwing away. It felt really fantastic to throw away papers that have been crowding my desk for a while. I did find some disconcerting items, however. Among them: a paper I was supposed to have read and edited for a friend (but then completely forgot about), and a receipt for a bedspread that I bought using wedding gift cards IN 2006 OVER A YEAR AGO and NEVER received. Yet, I didn't realize that I never received it until now. Which, on one hand, means that it didn't affect our quality of life overmuch not to have had that particular item. But, on the other hand, it was a wedding gift! AND we asked for bedding for Christmas, so maybe we DID need that bedspread after all.

And tonight, over a yummy lentil-spinach-tomato soup that I threw together, we had our first 2008 official pow-wow, during which we went over all of the pressing issues that should be dealt with in the near future and/or over the year to come. There were some bits of drudgery in there (what to do with that humongous pile of receipts?) but also some things to look forward to (Italy this winter, Paris and maybe Amsterdam in the spring, South Dakota in the summer [one can't very well spend ALL of one's vacation time in chic European cities, can one?]). We have vowed to make this a weekly pow-wow, which I think is a fantastic idea, and one that I hope we can stick with. It's a new year's resolution, if you will.

I haven't made any official resolutions this year, but I'm sort of keeping ideas for them in the back of my head. Meanwhile the days of January drift by, and I am so far doing well fulfilling some of the not-officially-resolutions resolutions, and feel incredibly victorious for doing so, i.e., for keeping resolutions THAT I HAVE NOT MADE. I feel like I'm beating the system. Even if the "system" is made by me. It's like adding something to my to-do list that I have already done, just so I can feel the satisfaction of crossing that item off of the list.

I'm crazy, I tell you.

(But I'm beating the system.)

Rays of sunshine

I have to admit that I contained, for the sake of poetic cohesiveness, the depressing complaining stuff in the last entry. There are bits of niceness, too:

We continue to celebrate the Mister's promotion. Although it's now not likely to take place until late March/early April, he's already having strategic meetings and listening to those who are clamoring to be his future assistant.

One must not forget the aforementioned baked goods. A little bit of chocolate, coconut, or almond can go a long way as a balm to one's spirits.

And good books! Among the Christmas goodies this year were two new cookbooks, 1008 Recipes, the Spanish classic with fabulous hand drawings, and The Moosewood Cookbook, which I have never owned yet used over the years with friends. It was high time to have my own copy. Over break I read Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and am tempted to read it again right away, it was so good. And now I'm reading another Christmas present, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's an eye-opener regarding food and agriculture policy in our country, and quite depressing even when it comes to eating organic. But so well-written that I look forward to reading it almost as much as a novel. Which is saying a lot.

Oh, and one must not forget post-Christmas sales as another holiday-withdrawal boon. Even though I usually end up buying little things, socks and hairclips and picture frames and whatnot, the sales satisfy both my cheapo and trinkety tendencies.

Another thing that combats the blues is getting off my rear end and going swimming at our neighborhood art-deco public pool. The pool is lined with galleries of individual cubbies, which at first is weird (you can look through the slats right into the pool as you change) but I've come to love them for their warm womb-like feel. Unlit from within, and each with its own heater, the air is so warm and moist, filtered with slatted light, that I sometimes think I could just curl up and fall asleep right there in my own cubby.

There. Now I feel better.

Warm welcome

I realize I have been avoiding writing in my blog, partly because to do so would somehow be to admit that I am no longer living the internet-free, sleeping-late, holiday-meals life of the previous three weeks. Instead, I am back in Brussels, where the golden Christmas sun of Barcelona is but a chimerical dream.

We've been here for a week, but the Mister was home sick for a few days (like everybody else in the world, it seems) and so the normal schedule wasn't quite normal yet. I have been baking up a storm, but avoiding washing dishes in protest against having had to leave my dishwasher in Barcelona behind. The chocolate-encrusted bowls sitting in the sink mock me.

Also mocking me: the unlit Christmas tree and the dust bunnies under the dining room table. Coming back to a not-quite-sparkling-clean house is never fun, and in this case, when combined with sleety rain and buffeting winds...

An incident occurred on Monday night that is utterly representative of the way I feel about returning to Brussels. As I rounded the corner to our street, carrying a couple of bags of groceries, I heard a terrible coughing sound. The crazy old man who always totters up and down our street smoking a cigar was in the process of hocking up a lung.

As if in slow motion, I realized he was about to spit, and his position, leaning against the wall of the corner building, meant that I was directly in his line of fire. I dodged, but I wasn't quick enough, and a large clod of spittle and mucus OH HOW GROSS I AM GROSSED OUT EVEN THINKING ABOUT IT AGAIN landed on my jacket sleeve and glove. I sort of screamed and looked at him, but what does one say to someone who has just SPIT ON YOU?

Plus as I mentioned he might be crazy, and I don't speak the kind of French that allows me to quickly formulate a response to invasion of personal space and cleanliness by spit. So I rushed on, my arm awkwardly outstretched in front of me, all the way up to our apartment where I ran to the sink and washed it off as best I could, holding back a gagging reflex. I still have yet to use the gloves again.

With that as an emblematic welcome back to our neighborhood, you can see why I just want to run back to Barcelona. Actually, running there is a good idea because I might work off a few of the million Christmas calories I ingested over the break.

I suppose I can pretend I'm still there by downloading the pictures we took. One of the presents that came out of the sturdy Christmas box from Vermont was a FANTASTIC camera, so pictures will indeed be forthcoming, I promise.

Meanwhile, it's still January, and all I can think about are the weeks and weeks of cold and gray that we still have ahead of us. They should make Christmas later in the year. Are you listening, "they"?

Bon any

Happy New Year!

We've just popped the twelve grapes into our mouths as the twelve tolls of the bell rang in the new year. We're at M's grandmother's apartment in Barcelona, not exactly a venue known for its wild nightlife, but one that suits us perfectly. Rather than shoving through the hordes flocking the Ramblas and Plaça Catalunya, we're calmly nibbling our desserts and drinking our cava, and calling friends and family to wish them a happy 2008.

This year promises to be an exciting one, as the Mister just received news of a major promotion: within a month or two he'll have a new, extremely prestigious job in European politics. In fact, it's one of those pieces of news that hasn't quite sunk in yet. It may mean major decisions about our living situation (Brussels? Barcelona?) but whatever happens, I'm looking forward to it, and I'm definitely proud of my husband.

Now it's past my bedtime, and I'm rubbing my sleepy eyes like a child who has mustered all her strength to stay up for the grownups' party, and is now ready to crawl into her pajamas.

Tomorrow the three of us (the Mister, his grandmother, and I) are putting on a big dinner for the family here at her place, yet another in a long string of overly abundant holiday meals over this Christmas vacation. Still to come: El Dia de Reis, the celebration of the arrival of the three Kings, whose camels come loaded with presents. Which means more presents! (And, ahem, more shopping for those of us who seem to wind up doing everything at the last minute...)

Wishing you a 2008 that is full of warmth, happiness, and joy!

Merry Christmas, Bon Nadal

A very merry Christmas from Barcelona! Here the sun is shining and Papa Noel has already visited, leaving two little delighted girls with fairy princess costumes, a scooter, and a miniature iron/ironing board. They are dancing around and waving their wands, the two-year-old announcing in her best tiny announcer voice, "Senyors i senyores, mireu els pallassos!" (Ladies and gentlemen, look at the clowns!) In turn, we are each dragged to our feet and made to play the clown.

We also found ticket-sized presents in the stocking hung at the mantel, a nod to American tradition, and the Mister and I and our brother-in-sister in law are going to the theater on Friday!

The Mister, sneaky guy that he is, made sure Santa visited my pillow, under which I found a slender volume of Christmas Catalan poetry AND the classic Spanish cookbook, 1080 Recipes, newly translated into English and lavishly illustrated with colorful drawings. Boy Santa sure knew what I wanted, and I didn't even write a letter!

Later in the day, we will have an afternoon meal that will no doubt burst some buttons, and then we will take turns singing songs asking the tió to poop us out some presents. Lifting the blanket that covers his rear end will reveal some brightly wrapped gifts, unless we haven't behaved and we find only onions or salted fish.

We also will connect with our Vermont family in their snowier corner of the world, and watch as they open some presents, perhaps from the box that arrived from Belgium. Last night we also video conferenced the two families, after a tasty Christmas eve meal cooked by our brother-in-law. The little ones looked at each other on the screen, our nephew in his adorable suspenders looking a little scared and wide-eyed as our niece excitedly tapped his image, saying "Hola!!!" I couldn't hear much in either direction, and as I tried to translate for approximately a dozen people at once, I ended up saying things in English to the Catalans and in Catalan to the Americans, but I think everybody was happy just to see each other and wish each other a merry Christmas.

Which is what I wish you, dear reader, wherever you are. I hope your Christmas is full of joy and love, the warmth of family, and the peace of God.

Too bad about the spangly dresses

I am wondering why my header is all the sudden looking so squishedy. Any web design geniuses (*cough*my brother and brother-in-law the designers?*cough*) have any idea why this is happening?

Again I have totally failed in the blog-as-advent-calendar idea. What with the traveling and the no internet while traveling, and the crazy days and--one must not forget--my laziness, the blog has taken a back seat.

But because Christmas is in only six days, here I am to rectify the situation! And to tell you about various Christmas related activities of the past few days. (The nice thing about blogs is that if you get bored, there is a solution: STOP reading.)

Oh, but the first thing I have to tell you about wasn't really Christmas related at all. I promised I'd explain about the whole band-at-our-house event. You see, my cousin, who rocks (literally and figuratively), knows a guy who is on tour in Europe with his band for a couple of weeks. They arrived for a one-night stay in Brussels, after a gig in Antwerp and before another in Denmark, only to discover that their lodgings have fallen through. They went to a café, and via the magic of the web, in a few short minutes they had talked to Anna, she had written to me, and I had talked to the band, giving them directions to my house.

An hour later four scruffy guys with guitars and a keyboard shuffle through my door. They were super nice, and I took them to the best little beer pub in Brussels (which happens to be around the corner from us) as well as to the frites stand across the street, all of which were met with rave reviews. Back at home, I pulled out all of the sheets and blankets and mattresses we have and they spread out in the living room. It wasn't the Ritz, but I'm sure it beat sleeping on the street.

Anyhoo, that was last Wednesday, and even though none of the Christmas parties that have filled our time since then justified buying one of the 75 million sparkly dresses that fill the stores these days, all of them being more on the slacks-and-a-sweater side of dressy, we've had some nice and Christmasy celebrations.

Last week, the social event ladies in the choir (you can tell which ones they are; they have the perfectly coiffed hair and the perfectly tailored Euro-dame clothes) put on a wonderful party. I thought it would be a slightly upgraded version of our usual beer break in the multi-purpose room of the school where we practice. But they actually transformed the place; you would never have guessed where you were, had you not walked through a hallway lined with absurdly low coathooks and hand-print paintings to get there. There were silver candelabra and candles everywhere, fine linens, lots of greenery and Christmas lights, homemade Christmas treats (rather British in emphasis, with mince pies and Marmite-flavored crackers). There was lots of champagne, and a group of instrumentalists to regale us with Christmas music. And, as we are a choir, and as we had ingested lots of the aforementioned Champagne, there was a lot of loud singing along. And as you might know, Christmas carols always make me happy.



Monday, after our flight back from Barcelona, the Mister and I invited some friends over for Christmas cookie decoration. Several of them had NEVER decorated a Christmas cookie, and had NEVER seen the use of food coloring in a home kitchen, fascinated (and a little wary) of the brightly-colored drops I was mixing into the vats of sugar icing. In Spain, cookies tend to be bought, not made, and the whole idea of Christmas cookies is a rather less colorful and more traditional than that of the Americans, focused on two types of sweet that aren't really cookies, turrons and pulvorons. But they loved it, we had a great time, and I was thrilled to introduce them to this quintessential Christmas experience. I also made a pumpkin cheesecake, because I had a pumpkin (bought for the purpose of seeing if I could make my own puree) and a big vat of mascarpone cheese. It turned out...just OK. I have to admit I missed the Libby's, and the cheesecake turned out to be European-style, which is to say, much less sweet, and missing that delicious cream cheese taste.

Last night, we went to the annual Christmas dinner at the Mister's boss' house. This is always a nice evening, and full of tasty food, during which we also do the "amic invisible" (invisible friend, or in our lingo, secret santa) and the "caga tió" (hitting of the pooping log). I have to complain a little bit regarding this event. Every time we suggest including a price range for the gift, the idea is shot down. The reason we always suggest it is that every year, the boss' wife inevitably overspends, and everyone knows which presents are hers because of how nice they are (a tailored shirt, a brand-name pajama set, a silky set of lingerie, a sweater...). Just as inevitably, someone gets stuck with a lame gift, and this year, it was me.

I opened a crumpled brown bag to find inside one unwrapped, smallish, beeswax candle. I object not as much to the gift itself, but to the way it was presented. A crumpled brown bag? The Mister and I spent a long time deciding on the gifts that we bought with the recipients in mind, and made sure they looked nice in pretty wrapping paper. Initially as I opened the gift I thought it was one of the new guys who had never been to this event before, and was inclined to chalk it up to inexperience. But I found out later who they had, so by deduction know that my gift was from one of the guys who has been coming the longest to the gift exchange. Sigh. What could I do but to smile nicely and proclaim how much I love candles? Which I do. But not so much the brown bags. And in the end, I accidentally left the gift sitting in the foyer of their house, so perhaps there was some subconscious desire to publicly reject the gift, even if consciously (and ironically) I was terribly worried that the gift-giver would think I hadn't liked it.

That brings us to today, and tonight's not-technically Christmas event, a joint birthday party for two friends. I have to go and find some presents, and I want to go swimming because it's been FAR too long since I have done any exercise, especially given the increased calories involved in making cookies and cakes and attending parties. Tomorrow we fly back to Barcelona, this time for all of the holidays! It will be the first time since the summer that we'll have more than just a couple of days there, and I'm looking forward to staying put for a while. In a place where the sun is capable of warming you up. Internet will be spotty, but I'll try to post from time to time.

Cheers to you and yours!

In which I interrupt myself

The sky right now is a nice icy blue strewn with some slightly pink clouds. I don't know why the clouds are pink, but I like it. I feel like this is a very appropriate holiday season sky, and I would encourage Ms. Brussels to consider exchanging this sky for the grey spitty one, on a permanent basis.

I apologize for four whole days of bloggish silence. This hasn't happened in a while, has it? It used to be my modus operandi. But it has been both busy and boring at chez Birdsong, if that is any excuse. In fact, even as I write now, I am supposed to be coming up with some brilliant song-lyric-style ad copy for a catalogue. I have never really written a song, despite the oodles of poetry under my writer's belt, and am discovering that it requires a bit of a different sensibility. Also, there is no melody, but there should be the suggestion that there could be one...so this is challenging.

***

The above was written (and left unfinished) yesterday; I hereby interrupt the whining to bring us back to today. I just wanted to let you know that I'm alive and haven't forsaken the blog altogether.

And, just to prove that life can really throw you random experiences sometimes, a band slept at our house last night. Like, four guys with guitars. Slept in my living room. I'll tell you about it later.

Right now I'm supposed to get on a tram and go to choir. It's our last of the semester, and I think there will be bubbly.

I would even settle for fake snow

Today we're going to visit the annual Christmas festival in the center of Brussels: there are oodles of little wooden huts selling all manner of crafty and gifty and yummy foody items, plus lights and ice skating and performers and music and who knows what else. This year I think there's a ferris wheel.

A few minutes ago it was raining pretty hard, and the wind was blowing so much that I could hear people on the street and the children in the schoolyard reacting to it. I suppose we will just have to pretend that this is a winter wonderland. What I wouldn't give for the sight of a little snow.

Tomorrow we head to Tournai for a repeat performance of the Messiah. It'll be fun to get acquainted with a new city, and especially fun to sing once again those spine-tingling choruses. But you probably won't hear from me again until Sunday or Monday. Have a lovely weekend!

Saint Nicholas and the little pigs

Today is the 6th of December, the day on which children here in Belgium wake up to find that Saint Nicholas has come to their house, bishop's mitre and all squeezed down the chimney, and left them some goodies in their shoes. He comes accompanied by a donkey and a man named Pere Fouettard, which roughly translates to Father Whipper. Fouettard is black, due to sliding down the chimney first, he bears a whip, and he's looking for bad kids. Nothing like a little crack of the whip to warm the Christmas spirit!

One of the day's beloved Christmas songs involves three little children who get killed and chopped up like sausage by a butcher, and all of that within the first two stanzas. Saint Nicholas comes to find them seven years later and wakes them up from their salty nap. They say they feel great, and are then alive to run around the countryside again. In some versions, the butcher becomes Pere Foettard and ends up as Nicholas' sidekick.

Besides the kids being chopped up like little pigs, the stores are full of little marzipan pigs. Turns out it's not because of the song, but because pigs are symbols of prosperity (think piggy banks, and also the days when families fattened their pig all year long and then killed it right around Christmastime).

Much of this I learned from my French professor in today's class, and we listened to the song with the lyrics in front of us, so I am confident this was not a question of misunderstanding. She was very nice and brought us chocolate and a special Belgian Christmas bread vaguely shaped like a baby Jesus, but she also started making crazy claims about the US and Santa Claus, one of which was to state that America is a mostly Catholic country.

This is not the first time professors and others have made wildly incorrect assertions about the US. I think it's normal for people to have stereotypes and preconceptions about other countries that must sometimes be dispelled. But I think in the case of good old America, people believe themselves to be knowledgeable about the place because of cultural exports like movies, products, and so on, even though they have never been there. So a false confidence causes some false assumptions to be believed. Which can be rather annoying to someone who finds herself in the position of trying to explain what the (crazily diverse and geographically huge) country of America is actually like. Anyway, I have now officially gotten off on a tangent! Back to the bishop born in Turkey who became a symbol of goodwill and presents. Mostly presents.

So how did we celebrate Saint Nicholas here in our little household? The Mister came home bearing a huge speculoos cookie (a cinnamon Belgian specialty) in the shape of Saint Nicholas. I had also purchased Nicholas cookies, wrapped them, and placed them in his shoes. Yes, we got each other the same thing! It was kind of like The Gift of the Magi, but without me cutting off my hair or him selling his watch. The poverty is there though, because this month's paycheck has been lost. It never arrived in the bank, and M's employer insist they made the payment. We are in dire straits, so much so that we debated whether or not to buy a two-euro sandwich on our way home last night (from seeing Lorin Maazel conduct Beethoven's 9th! for free!) and had to beg off paying rent for a few days while we wait for people in Spain to finish partying. (M's employer is incommunicado because today is one of its numerous holidays, and since there's only one day between today and the weekend, why, they take that day off too! So no contact until Monday.)

For further amusing tales of wacko Christmas traditions from around the world (why does this holiday seem to inspire such specific and bizarre practices?), I recommend listening to David Sedaris in this episode or this episode of This American Life. Too bad he doesn't get to the Catalans and their pooping log.

Every word a madeleine*

Learning languages is hard. But one of the things that for me can recompense the stumbles, limited vocabulary, and awkward mistakes is that words are much more than words: they are little storehouses of memory.

When you began to speak English, it was so long ago that you can no longer remember when you learned everyday words. But in new languages, many words retain within themselves the memory of when they were first encountered, first learned, or first spoken.

I still remember some of the mnemonic devices my childhood friend Melanie and I came up with to memorize Spanish vocab lists. The word mural still evokes her face and the grassy hill we sat on when we came up with the oh-so-brilliant way to remember that "mural means wall, and you paint a mural on a wall!"

I enjoy those moments of recognition, when the meaning of a word I've heard or seen before is suddenly clarified. Only recently, I learned that nuit blanche, "white night," means a sleepless or restless night of insomnia, after having long ago attended the Nuit Blanche music festivities here in the city, and rented videos from the nighttime convenience store chain by the same name.

Often, words have buried within them the embarrassment of a major gaffe in using or trying to use it. Gafas recalls the laughter of our high school's Spanish foreign exchange student when he heard my friend and I use the word anteojos for "glasses." This was straight out of our textbook, but in Spain actually means something more like "spectacles." He taught us the correct word, gafas.

I vividly remember some of the Spanish words uttered by my husband on the first nights after I met him, the words we spoke during a breathless, impromptu vocabulary lesson. When I say the word bufanda, I always recall him grabbing his scarf on that frosty March evening. And now countless Catalan words are intimately connected to memories of him, and memories shared with him.

The word for that gruesome fish, rap (anglerfish), brings up images of the first time I saw one in all its toothy-mouthedness at the Boqueria market. The word turró, Spanish Christmas nougat, always places me back at New Year's Eve some five years ago, with friends, and the little plaza where we went to buy my first taste of it. The verb gronxar "to swing" will always be associated with the face of our then two-year-old niece when she taught it to me. (Today is her birthday! Felicitats, Sora!)

Simply hearing the "sit down" command in Spanish, siéntense, always and immediately brings me back to the first day of Spanish class in ninth grade, the excited nervousness of starting a new language. I was thrilled to be there, but scared that I wouldn't understand our teacher. I remember him walking in, and his strawberry-blonde mustache, and the way he began by saying simply siéntense as he sat down, motioning with his arms, then levántense as he stood up again, with a lifting gesture. He motioned for us to do the same, and we felt ridiculous saying the words over and over again as we stood and sat, stood and sat, but look at me: fifteen years later I still will never forget what those words mean (and I think this would be true even if I no longer actively spoke Spanish).

Some six years later, when I went to Mexico for the first time, I remember being bowled over when I heard a woman on the streets of Tijuana say "siéntate!" to her little white dog. It was the moment I realized--experientially, rather than intellectually--that this was a REAL language, and that I could use in the real world the things I had been learning for so many years in a classroom.

That trip changed once again how I used Spanish, and a host of words are linked to memories from it: the laughing face of little Luis, with whom I played "tigre," the way I learned the word for belly button, ombligo (while trying to demonstrate CPR on a plastic dummy at the health clinic)...and many more.

I love this about language. It's true that this doesn't just happen with new languages, that in your native tongue words can have immense associative powers, but I think there is something so wonderful about their specificity and the feeling of discovery word-memories can retain even as you use them a thousand times over.

To bring this back to the advent season, I remember very clearly that when the Mister first told me about this crazy Catalan Christmas tradition called the tió, I thought either he was mistranslating something or I was misunderstanding something. You whack a log? With a stick? And ask it to poop presents? And it does poop presents? I suppose no matter how much this tradition will be incorporated into our family's Christmases, the word tió for me will always contain a bit of that first incredulous shock--and amusement.

Today's advent calendar window contains pretty wrapping paper. I found it yesterday at one of my favorite shops, and although it's not strictly for Christmas, it has gold and green and red and light blue. And birds that might be quetzals. This makes me happy, as does wrapping it around presents to send to Vermont.



*I refer here to Proust's madeleine, and the flood of memories released upon biting into its crumbly sweetness.

Crafty Christmas

It was one of those "meant to be" coincidences.

My most brilliant and beautiful friend from Bloomington sent me a link to this Christmas craft project. But I had already bookmarked the very same page! So it was without hesitation moved up on my "get around to it" list, and today I got a little crafty.

I've only made three of the ornaments so far, without much difficulty, despite my lack of any fancy materials such as an x-acto knife, cutting mat, or proper ruler. With my Ikea scissors, a measuring tape that kept unhelpfully snapping back into its body, and a mini stapler purchased for the occasion, I managed to make some pretty ornaments. I bought some colorful vellum paper in blues and greens, and I used some Ikea notecards that I had picked up on sale for fifty cents a few months ago, which actually ended up better because the paper is stiffer.

I'm going to try to use the webcam for a quick picture, even though I know this is doomed to yellow blurriness. Here's hoping santa brings us a new camera! If he doesn't, we will take matters into our own hands and go bother some elves.

Here we are. The pictures turned out OK thanks to the Mister's handy camera light setup. But then he sat on one of them, and so it's a little the worse for wear.

Aren't they cute? I'm going to make more and string them up somewhere. It's easy, and you don't even need an x-acto knife, so go ye forth and make ornaments.

Hitting a high note

I've never ingested drugs in my life, but I can't imagine that the high would be any greater than the high of just having performed one of the most most triumphant works of classical music, seeing the crowd leap to their feet in an instantaneous standing ovation, and hearing shouts of "Bravo!" ring from the balconies of the grand, gilded hall.

By all accounts, the sound in the audience on Saturday night was spectacular: I only wish I could have been both singing with the choir and listening out in the audience. In those moments where the endings of the most powerful choruses hung in the air, we got some of the reverberation back to us and a sense of what it must sound like to someone who doesn't have that booming bass and that fortissimo soprano in her ear, where the voices and orchestra are fully blended and balanced.

I'm often surprised by the musical moments that make every molecule in my body stand up on end: this time around it happened in the alto solo, He Was Despised, in the choral response, Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs, and of course, Hallelujah and the final Amen, where the sopranos hit that high A and everything comes welling up together. Ironically, it's hard to sing when that happens: there's a necessary balance between feeling the music emotionally and being distanced enough from it to remain technically on task. But I selfishly give in to the emotion from time to time, and move through the music from the inside out.

Fortunately, we get to perform again next Saturday, in Tournai. The Mister and I plan to go early, with some friends, and see the city before the evening concert. I'm looking forward to repeating this weekend's experience, although not as much to the exhaustion of a three-hour performance! (Somewhat unusually, they didn't make any cuts at all in the Messiah.)

So what I didn't explain very well on Saturday, when I dashed off my post, is that I'm going to take the month-long thanksgiving theme of November, and make it into a (nearly) month-long advent theme. Every day, I'll try to write about Christmas preparations, in the sense that (I hope) each activity becomes an act of joy and anticipation, instead of a laundry list of ThingsToDo. It'll be a nice way to focus the blog for another thirty days (!) and see if I can keep this up. My sister gave me the idea, and referred me to this list of suggestions (the picture to the left is from the same place). Singing the Messiah was a great way to begin on Saturday.

Today I plan to purchase Bing Crosby's Christmas album, and listen to it until even the poinsettia starts drooping with saccharine overkill. (I'm hoping it'll help cure a mystery ailment that I woke up with today: my jaw won't shut properly and it's very painful to chew. Not good.)

Yesterday our advent activities included delivering a cheerily-wrapped Christmas present for a child in a homeless shelter, participating in the inauguration of our church's gorgeous new stained-glass window, and beginning the season with familiar hymns of anticipation:

O come, O come Immanuel,
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear:
Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel
shall come to you, O Israel.

The first day of Christmas

I'm off to sing the Messiah. I consider it a perfect way to open, metaphorically speaking, that first little advent calendar door.

O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion....