Oh Blogging, and Christmas is Coming!!!

SO, I know... I know that I am pretty terrible at this blogging thing. I always remember things that I meant to write here then I just forget them again! So just so you all know there is stuff going on ;) 
We went to Germany! Pretty much the closest city to Brussels, Achen! It was just a day trip, we took the train for the first time (I have never really been on a passenger train!) and we saw the opening weekend of the Christmas Market there! It was SO packed, we could hardly walk through the streets! We didn't see quite as much as I had hoped but it was fun nonetheless. We went to the Lindt chocolate factory and that was amazing (no samples though :P ) We had some Dunner (I think) and it was amazing! No sausages though, next time. We saw a really cool church! The ceilings were tile mosaics and it was just so beautiful! We went with our couple friends from church, they are from Finland and speak like a million languages! So that was basically Germany!
We also went to the opening of the Brussels Christmas Market! We say the tree lighting and some sort of show... with weird music and blown up horses.... I don't know really. Haha but it was fun, we will probably go do more shopping because we didn't see most of the market, and we still have a ton of presents to get!
Thanksgiving!!! So we got invited to two different dinners (yes!) and they were amazing! Oh my goodness. The first was on Thanksgiving at the senior missionary's house with all the missionaries there is like 5 sets plus 2 senior couples. We made pasta for a side dish and I was proud of it. ;) and everything was amazing. Especially the company. Those guys really became our European family. 
Then the second dinner was on that Sunday. I will be honest we totally forgot about it until that morning and we were supposed to bring a dessert. Haha so that was interesting. We ended up bringing a couple boxes of amazing truffles. This dinner was with Regina and her family and friends (the African lady who picked us up that first Sunday). That was so much fun! It was like half French,half English so it was good. There was SO MUCH FOOD!!! And I have never had lasagna that good. Seriously! It was so good, just a loud, fun night filled with love ^-^ so happy.
So we realized the hunger games came out so we had to go see that! We went to a theater downtown on Saturday? So we were really excited about the movie and we didn't expect too much of the theater. So we get there, make sure we get tickets for the English one (it still had subtitles in French and Dutch). We find our theater and walk in and I was just awe struck I almost cried! Haha. This theater had to be an Opera House with a screen. The ceiling and walls were elaborately decorated, you could tell it was made well for acoustics. The seating was perfect so heads wouldn't block your view. The seats themselves.... Oh wow. They were all comfy and padded and wow I was so impressed. The screen was almost as big as an Imax screen! Oh gosh it was just so amazing!
So I wanted to tell everyone about the fashion here. Seriously every single person that I have seen dresses better that Americans. There are no slobs, no sweatpants, no flip flops, no tennis shoes (except for me). It's amazing. And I don't know if it is just me, but everyone is just so beautiful! I think they wear less makeup here. But I have noticed that everyone is just beautiful and glamorous! I love it! Everyone wears scarves, and not many people wear jeans, it's awesome.
Christmas is coming up!!! I am so stoked this year (like every year) I just love it, and I love my family, and I love the craziness, and the music (which I have been listening to since October). and just everything. I am so excited. 

On an end note:

MY LIFE IS FULL OF LOVE AND IT IS FANTASIC

:D

Bruges, Antwerp, PARIS

Alright, so the past week has definitely been an eventful one! We went on a couple day trips with friends and spent the next weekend in Paris!
So our friend Aytaj just moved down the street from us so we can hang out more! She also has a boyfriend/almost fiance. His name is Daniel and he is awesome. He came down from Denmark to visit for a week. So for Aytaj's birthday we visited Bruges together (Daniel has a car! :D) we saw sights, a couple of old churches, we bought some DELICIOUS truffles, seriously they were to die for! and we went to dinner at an Argentine steak house, and it was great! 
The next day we took a day trip to Antwerp! It was pretty similar to the Bruges trip, saw some churches, ate some awesome food, did some shopping. Antwerp had this beautiful pier though! We walked all over downtown and everything was awesome!
The rest of the week was spent hanging out with Daniel and Aytaj. Daniel apparently loves the english language and the United States so we talked a lot about that, we watched a lot of movies and ate some awesome food that Aytaj cooked! It was a great weekend! Then of Friday we left for Paris! 
So we took the MegaBus to Paris (same bus as the one to Amsterdam) and we got there at about noon-ish. We were planning on taking the Metro to our hotel then exploring from there but we got sidetracked and ended up walking the whole way (which took like 3-4 hours) But we saw the giant arch thing and ran into an awesome Christmas market and other shopping places, we saw a couple stores with like shoes that were about $2600... they were beautiful... :) Lots of shopping downtown, but nothing that we could afford obviously haha. We saw the big Ferris Wheel there and the Eiffel tower from a distance as we walked. We found that bridge that everyone puts locks on and WE PUT A LOCK ON IT :D it was awesome, I have some pictures. Our hotel was in an awesome location, it was fairly downtown, very close to Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, and Luxembourg Gardens. We got to our hotel at like 6 PM and rested for a bit, Our hotel was alright, nice place, you had to pay extra for showers and the showers and toilets are shared, luckily we had a toilet right outside of our (small) room. But, after we rested we went out and explored around our hotel and got some food and that was about it for the first day, oh and it was raining like all day. On Saturday we decided to Visit the Gardens, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel tower because it wasn't supposed to rain. So we went to the gardens first and it was awesome, it was huge and beautiful and there were a ton of people and activities going on. The Notre Dame Cathedral was amazing, it is huge! and a huge line to get into the place! It was so beautiful though! We saw a mime of sorts! Then we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower and it was phenomenal! Way prettier than I thought it would be! And bigger of course! We wanted to see it when it got dark so we took a cruise on La Seine ( I don't know if it's a river or a canal). The cruise went past all the main tourist attractions and had a cool commentary so we learned some of the history of the amazing things we saw! It was great! We were walking and I saw something sparkle in the reflection of a building's window, and of course it caught my attention. After a minute I realized that it must be the Eiffel Tower, so we tried to get out of the tangle of building to get a look at it, saw another sparkling glimpse, then when we finally broke free of the buildings it had stopped sparkling and I was sad, BUT then Nathan looked it up and found that it sparkles every hour! So we decided to have dinner and see it sparkle again. Then we had dinner at a traditional french restaurant and had the best chicken I think I have ever had! Ate a Baguette! (Paid $5.50 for a tiny glass of coke!) We definitely passed on the escargots ;) Then after dinner we saw the Eiffel Tower SPARKLE and it was made for me, I just know it :D oh, I was so happy! haha. Then Sunday came and we spent the majority of the day discovering the wonders of The Grand Louvre! We took quite a few pictures. I think we decided that Nathan's favorite piece was Cupid and Psyche, a sculpture. and my favorite was the Winged Victory (Nike), also a sculpture. That place was so big and there were so many things! We picked out a few things we for sure wanted to see, then just wandered the rest of the time. Of course we saw the Famous Monna Lisa. Though she was quite hard to see through the crowd! We saw Venus de Milo, lots of chandeliers, Egyptian, and Greek artifacts, just a ton of everything! We really loved the sculptures though! and some paintings! There was a mall underground next to the Louvre that we mozied through, got some McDonald's in Paris :D Oh and there are a million souvenir shops that all sell the same thing for basically the same prices and it was ridiculous! haha but I found an awesome scarf that I love! :D I will post pictures on facebook of our adventure. But that was about it! It was amazing! I didn't want to leave! We could spend weeks in Paris and not see everything! But this upcoming weekend we are going to go to the chocolate factory here Brussels and then we are going to Germany! Specifically Aachen's Christmas Market! :D  

Half-way Through our Internship

Alright so it's been about a month and half since we arrived here in Brussels! It has largely been the same ol' same ol' but we have had some adventures! I made soup for the first time! We made some friends at church and at work. We visited a Belgium bank museum, that was cool, we visited a Freemasons museum, that was cooler! So, funny story about that. There was a lot of artifacts in glass cases of course and one of them happened to be a small journal, written in that journal was a coded alphabet language that would seem quite perplexing... had I not learned and used that same coded alphabet as a middle school-er to send my friends notes during class. Small world eh? Besides that it was all quite interesting! We went to the museums with our friends from church (a young couple from Finland). The other friend we have made is Aytaj (it sounds like Itouch) she is the other intern at Nathan's work, She's been around the world but is originally from Azerbaijan.We decided that we are going to go to Germany at some point (Ute will be happy) and we just got back from our weekend trip to Amsterdam with Aytaj!

Amsterdam was definitely an interesting place! It is known as the Las Vegas of Europe, and OH MY is that a correct statement! There was 3 or 4 cannabis shops and sex shops on every street! But we did happen to find some cool places! We saw a couple of really amazing Roman Catholic Churches. In one of them we sat down and a cellist came in and started playing, the acoustics were phenomenal and it made it an awesome experience! The architecture and art was so amazing too, the stained glass, the roof structure, everything! We even saw a Buddhist Temple! There were lots of little street markets and shops and we ended up getting a few Christmas presents! ;) We stayed in a "hostel" about an hour out of the city... this place was interesting. So when we first got to Amsterdam we just walked around the city and saw stuff, when we were done, we got on a metro to get to our hostel. On the way the metro broke down (apparently it did that a lot) and we met these two teachers from Uruguay who just happened to be staying at the same hostel! So luckily they were able to guide us to the hostel. When we got there we found that it was really just a bunch of cabins on a big campground. So we found ours and settled in, then we went to find the showers, bathrooms, and kitchen. SO there was no toilet paper in the bathroom. Apparently it was available to buy in the lounge (which was closed of course) Luckily Aytaj was equipped with some tissues that served our purposes (thank heavens)! Then we discovered that it costs 1 euro to shower and you also had to pay for towels, sheets, pillowcases, and HEATING for the cabin. I mean it was a nice place but SERIOUSLY?! haha but anyway the kitchen was interesting, everyone was smoking weed... haha but we got to go to a diamond factory in Amsterdam! And they cleaned my ring for free! It sparkles so much now! Anyway I think that's about it for that trip

We are going to be going to Paris next I think, probably next weekend, I'm really excited! It is going to be awesome! Everything is awesome! :D

Places we want to travel together in our lifetime

Washington DC
Chicago
Minneapolis
Brussels
Amsterdam
Paris
Rome
Seattle
Mount Rushmore
Barcelona
Scotland
England
All 50 US states (14/50)
New Zealand
New York City

Adventures of Fall 2014

Alright so I am supposed to writing in a journal or something, and I was going to do that I promise... except that I don't have a journal. So I figured a blog is the next best thing! So I guess I’ll start from July.

My wonderful Great-Grandma Louise passed away this July which started off my adventures a little earlier than expected. We live in Rexburg, Idaho because Nathan is going to school there. We were planning on traveling home mid-July so that I could go to fiddle camp but that just got bumped up a week or so. Nathan didn’t finish school until the end of July so we were apart for a while (waaaaay too long). The service for Great-Grandma was beautiful, I was able to play my fiddle. I got to see a lot of family which was nice. I spent that next week just relaxing and spending time with family. Then came fiddle camp.

Fiddle camp was different this year because it was in Moses Lake rather than Kittitas, WA. It was nice except for the blazing heat. My cousin came to camp with me and Grandma this year which was great, I am all for promoting Old-Time music to the next generation! Camp was great, I learned some awesome pieces, saw some friends, and played lots of music. Also (as every year) my resolve to play all the time and perfect songs got stronger. My teacher Katrina told us that this would be her last year teaching which made everyone very sad because she’s amazing. But then camp ended and craziness ensued.

My grandmother and I planned a trip to the Oregon coast after fiddle camp. That trip included 3 female cousins. 1 car. That’s 5 females and all their crap in 1 car. It was awesome (most of the time). We went to the coast, got in the ocean, saw all kinds of creatures, saw some family, had some frustrations, and I feel like technically some laughs. ;) Oh and we were camping the whole time so that was interesting too. And then we drove home (finally).

After that adventure I spent almost a week waiting for my husband to join me. I spent some good time with my grandma and the rest of my family. Then Nathan got there and I went to work. At Plato’s Closet, again. I really don’t know why I did it… oh yeah it’s because we have no money! It was fine… I just feel sooo done with retail. Seriously that is all I’ve ever done and to be honest I don’t even like it anymore. I mean yeah I like clothes and I like getting them for good prices but I just think I’m done with that. And I don’t really know what to try next as far as a job goes, so if any of you have any good ideas PLEASE let me know! Anyway, yeah so I worked 5 days a week and we house hopped between families. Nathan bought a new suit. Oh and we went camping with his family at the St. Joe. Camping is always fun with the Blacks! I ate spam for the first time! It was great! Then we got ready for our road trip!

So we started early September 1^st from Coeur D’ Alene, Idaho. Our first day was the longest. We made it all the way to Jamestown, North Dakota (home of the world’s largest buffalo statue).We were going to stay at a campground but then we realized that it cost money so we ended up just sleeping in the car in a wal-mart parking lot. J The driving was not as bad as I thought it would be! The second day we drove to Minneapolis, home of American’s largest mall. WHICH WAS AWESOME! We started early enough to be at the mall most of the day. This thing was crazy! There is a theme park in the MIDDLE of the mall. Like legit theme park, it had like 3 roller coasters, I wish we had more time (and money) so we could have gone on rides. The mall itself was so great they had almost everything you could image. Nathan got a tie, I got a dress, and we spent like $9. After that, we drove another hour or two to a campground. The next day we drove to Chicago, now that was an experience! As we drove closer to the city we could see the buildings on the horizon just rise from ground, it just got more and more incredible the closer we got. Then we got into the city. Now mind you, I have never been in a big city like this, the closest thing I’ve seen to Chicago is Salt Lake City. The buildings were gigantic and amazing. The driving was terrifying! I seriously thought I could die that day. The parking was crazy, and scary. The people were scary. The Navy pier was cool, we saw the stained glass museum, the hot dogs were phenomenal at Chub A Dub Flub. Then we left cause it was stressful just being in that city! I was so relieved as we left, even though everything there was incredible. We drove for an hour or two to a hotel… apparently this hotel had just opened the day before we got there! So I was expecting kind of nice, new things….no. It was a pretty old hotel that had be RE-opened. Let’s just say, there was an iron burn in the carpet… yeah. Then it was our last day and long stretch to DC! Little did we know there would be a million TOLL roads! We did not budget for that! But we did get to see gravity hill! That was cool! Then we finally made it to Nathan’s cousin’s house!

They were the best hosts ever! We had our own room and a nice air mattress. They fed us! We spent a week there near DC, we got to ride the metro, see some museums, some monuments, the white house, all the cool things basically. It was SO HUMID! I seriously don’t think that I have sweat that much ever before. But we got to go the the DC temple (which is actually in Maryland) and it was so beautiful! I was so glad we could do that! Then our Belgium adventure began!

We left the airport at about 11:30 PM on Sept 10^th. It was cool because every seat had a screen where you could watch movies (I watched like 5) they even gave us little tooth brushes! It was a very long flight though. They made us keep our window covers down so people could sleep… We got to Turkey at about 4 PM Turkish time. The airport was amazing, a whole shopping mall, a food court, a hotel INSIDE the airport! But 15 hours of a layover is kind of a lot… we tried to sleep on the seats but it was difficult, for me at least, Nathan can still pretty much sleep anywhere. But we finally got on our last plane and made our way to Belgium! I just watched movies again the whole time.

We got to Brussels at about noon their time. We were so excited to be there! As soon as we left the airport and got outside the first thing I noticed was that everyone smokes! After a little trial and error we found out which bus to take to get us closest to our flat. Figured out how to pay for it. Not having service on our phone was tricky. We got to the bus stop and figured out where to go from a picture of a map on Nathan’s phone. As we walked to our place we just saw the city’s neighborhood. There are a lot of pharmacies, convenience stores, and all the building are the same thing, there is just a long stretch of buildings that are all connected, there’s one door and like 5 doorbells then they unlock the door for you. Anyway, we were so relieved when we saw the door to our place! We buzzed our flat and the landlord let us in and met with us. His French accent was so thick it was hard to understand him. But he was nice and showed us around our tiny little place. Our bed is the couch. We have no oven. Our fridge is mini. Our bathroom is as big as our living/bed room. There is no shower curtain. A clothes washer but no dryer. But it’s nice! We have a TV!... Jet lag wasn’t very nice though! We would go to bed and not be able to sleep for hours! Then when we did sleep we slept in until like 3 PM! But we finally got over it

So we have explored the Grand Place (pronounced: grawnd plaz) a couple times and it is seriously so beautiful! The architecture is phenomenal and everything is amazing. Oh and the sidewalks are all like brick… and I trip over it all the time! We’ve been to a few grocery stores, still trying to figure out the best one, there’s nothing here like wal-mart, everything is smaller. Oh and I am SO glad that we don’t have a car here! The driving is crazy! There’s no yellow lines on the roads! I would get so confused! We went to church on the first Sunday but we didn’t know how to get there so we just walked…. For like 2 hours, it was 4 miles. Then right before we got there an African lady picked us up and takes us the rest of the way, luckily she spoke English! And when we got to church she told us where to go and helped us, she was so nice!!! So they translate all of church in French and English and there is a Spanish relief society. It was so great and everyone was SO friendly! It was awesome! A little too friendly though because we got roped into teaching Sunday school for the next two weeks! There were so many missionaries too! A pair of senior missionaries offered us a ride home and we ended up going to their place for dinner! They are so cute! The sister gave us a map and told us the best waffle places, the best grocery store, the cool fountains, and basically everything! It was amazing! So that was basically the first week

Nathan started his internship and he is doing really well and he is loving it! He is really interested in what he is doing which is great! He really likes the guys he works with! From what I understand he is compiling a list of religious prisoners throughout the world and this list is going to be published into their annual report that goes to the EU and helps them make human rights policies. It’s way cool! Me on the other hand, I’m pretty much a bum. I don’t do anything all day really. I have started working out! I clean sometimes… I usually don’t go outside. I probably will at some point, when I get more comfortable! I’ve been reading up on some things, playing games, and… that’s about it, but I’ll get more productive!

So that’s it so far! If I missed anything I’ll edit this or something. It’s been 2 ½ weeks so far and honestly I miss the states. It’s just more comfortable for me ya know. I am loving it here though, I am soaking in all the culture and having an awesome adventure, but I gotta say I will be very happy when we land in DC and are home for Christmas!