Hello . . .

This is a picture I took after I grocery shopped. I wanted to show my family. Hmm . . . the backpack is full of spaghetti sauce, 12 little yogurts? Probably brie cheese, who knows what else- but it is FULL! FULL! FULL!!! And the bag is probably filled with the produce (trying to keep it from getting smashed- which can be difficult when you're trying to cram things in as fast as you can!) And this is what I wait at the tram stop with, hop on- which is sometimes a challenge (fitting in the narrow door) and then walk to the apartment. When we first moved here I HATED this, but I've adapted- though somedays it is very heavy. Oh yes, and because we can only bring home so much, and the fridge is only so big, we grocery shop atleast twice, if not 3 times a week. This is a LOT more than back at the states.

Belgians are very eco-friendly people, we've discovered. To the point that everybody brings their own bags to shop with. EVERYBODY!!! Some places charge for bags and some don't even offer them. We discovered this the hard way. Normally I don't feel bad about using bags because at home we always recycled them as garbage bags. But here, you have to use special bags for your garbage. So we always make a point to bring our backpacks but it's rarely enough room so we always ask, "Un sac, sil vous plait?" But lately I've been feeling very wasteful! At first it was a peer pressure thing, but now I feel like I am wasting. I wish I had a sewing machine and I could sew myself something. Which would be way better because I could custom make it. I could have a narrow pocket in the corner for the baguette, and thin wide pouches for flat things, etc. Also, in Belgium- they don't bag for you. And the counter space is SMALL!!! So as they're ringing you up you're rushing rushing rushing to jam it all in the pack in a hurry. And then you pay and it's TIME'S UP!!! And then they just wait for you and you feel awkward. Well, this might have been boring, but I thought my family would find it interesting. Ha! Did I just call my family boring?!

This is new. Our International Ward is SPLITTING!!!! The good news is we're changing buildings and it's in the middle of the city, instead of across the city- which hopefully means it will only take a half hour instead of OVER AN HOUR- which it takes now- to get to church. Greg and I are always on the verge on insanity once we get home from church. It takes an hour and 15 minutes each way, plus 3 hours for church, plus the chit chat time- so we're talking almost 6 HOURS without food or drink! YIKES!!! We always bring snacks and a bottle of water (hence the lack of water fountain at church) but it's never enough. So I'm glad to say goodbye to this trek!

However, the extra interesting part . . . it will be a dual speaking ward. There will be primary and classes in French and English. There are headphones that we'll wear in sacrament and someone will translate on them (that's how stake conference was, we wore headphones the whole time because it was in french). There was a big ward meeting last sunday so they could announce it and the moment it came out I thought, "Well, times up! It's time to learn french!" No more excuses. So I've been studying and determined, and then people were talking and saying that this ward is even MORE international and our current ward is more like an american ward. That our new ward won't really have any native french speakers. So that just eliminated some of my motivation, but I'm just gonna keep going. Everytime I step outside I'm wishing I knew French. So we're a little anxious to see what happens with this ward, but we have LOVED our ward and will miss it. The switch will start with the new year.

Life is good. Things were kind of in limbo for awhile and it seemed so long, I didn't know if "our life" was gonna get back to normal. But it is and I'm glad. For instance . . . today. Those who live near us ( I guess that means Amy and Mike ) know Greg and I like to cook and try new recipes all the time. Eating well is definitely a prioritiy. But just getting the basics here used to be SO stressful, so trying to find a random ingredient? Forget about it! I've been looking at the one recipe book we brought wondering if we'd ever open it and then I finally did and remembered that we love to cook and decided, "I'm just going to do it!" So I wanted to try this red pepper pasta thing and I needed 1/2 and 1/2. I had no idea where this was or what it was called, but I figured it out and it was DELICIOUS!!!! Everything is here (ingredients), you just have to know what it's called and where to look. When we first got here it seemed like NOTHING was here. Getting around used to be such a pain (and sometimes it still is), but it's so much easier now. It seems like every weekend we have something to do and somewhere fun to go, where as before we sat on our buns and watched the office every single night for 5 straight weeks. Oh and work. Man was THAT hard to get used to. But now work is great! I absolutely LOVE my family (the one I'm working with) and I don't come home feeling like crap (like I did for a good 4 weeks). After a month I was starting to wonder if "the way things were" was ever going to happen again, and now it finally has. My point being, things are good.