Lilac Colored Glasses

I was walking to a tram stop this afternoon when a large German Shephard going on a walk with his owner came at me. I flinched back, the dog went the other way and as I continued on down the street I thought to myself, “amai!”

Amai is the equivalent of “oh my” in English, but also a common Yiddish phrase, “oy vey”. I’m typically an “oy vey”er, so much so that I’ve turned gentile friends into users of the phrase. I was sincerely surprised that the Dutch word came into my head before the Yiddish or even the English.

Perhaps some of you out there have had this sort of experience before. I asked CB about it but he’s been speaking English so long that I don’t think he recalls the early stages of becoming fluent. See, lately I’ve been having moments where I can’t think of some words in English, but I can think of the equivalent in Dutch. Or I often start thinking half and half, with some words coming out in English, and some in Dutch. I imagine this is because I’ve made it a habit when I’m alone (which is often) to try to translate my thoughts as I’m thinking them into Dutch. It usually works something like this:

Me, thinking to myself: Ugh, I’m thirsty and I’m out of water. I wonder if there’s a shop nearby so I can buy another bottle of water…
Then I propose the question to myself in Dutch, in case I would want to ask someone: Excuseer meneer/ mevrouw, is er een winkel in de buurt? Ik wil een flesje water kopen.

And most of my thinking goes along those lines. I’m constantly trying to think of how I would say what I’m thinking in Dutch. Most of the time I can think of how to say things, but when I can’t I try to remember what words I was lacking or what expression I didn’t know so that I can ask CB about it later. But the end result is that I often mix both languages when I think to myself. And actually, when we get together with CB’s family it comes in handy because half of his relatives will speak in Dutch, the others in English, or they’ll throw in a Dutch word if they don’t know the English or an English word if I don’t know the Dutch, so much of my conversation with others is often mixed as well.

This isn’t a bad thing, by any means. In fact, I find it encouraging that the lines between the languages are blurring more noticeably for me. Lately I’ve even noticed that when someone tells me something in Dutch, when I try to recall it, I hear them speaking in English. It’s strange, because I know for sure I was spoken to in Dutch, but I recollect it very clearly in English. It’s an interesting process, this whole learning another language thing.

I wonder when I’ll be ready for French…

You know those commercials for Special K? The ones that say how good it is for your health and how easy it is to lose weight by going on the Special K diet? The one where you eat a bowl of Special K for breakfast and one for lunch and a sensible dinner? Sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it? Especially now that they make like 8 different variations on the traditional Special K.

Well, I still have to lose 60 pounds before the wedding so I’ve been calorie counting and eating healthy again (I make exceptions on weekends…I started having dreams about chocolate fudge ice cream cake and waking up drooling so I figured I better give myself a break one or two days of the week). Breakfast has been consisting of cream of wheat with a tablespoon of jam or maple syrup (the real, fresh, Canadian kind…which we’re running out of quickly….waaah) but I’ll tell you, when I wake up and it’s already close to 80° in the house (we have no AC), the last thing I want to eat is hot cereal.

Hence my epiphany today while cycling past the supermarket: I’ll buy a box of Special K! Then I can still have a healthy, whole grain breakfast without raising the temperature in the room a degree or two. So I went and grabbed a box and glanced at the calories. Hrm…30 grams was a serving and a serving is 115 calories. Okay, well I use 35 grams of cream of wheat (that’s dry, pre-milk) and I’m always full, so 30 grams of Special K can’t be much different, right?

Until I got home and weighed out 30 grams of cereal.

Well, shit! No wonder people lose weight on the Special K diet…they only get 6 mouthfuls of cereal for the first two meals of the day. I mean, come on! I’m making sure that I only eat between 1200-1300 calories a day but to do that I need to feel full after breakfast and there’s no way that’s gonna happen with this cereal. Tomorrow I’m going back to the supermarket and buying a box of All Bran…sure it tastes like lightly sweetened wood chips, but at least it’s a decent amount of lightly sweetened woodchips!

Jovanka is a fellow expat living in Gent. She’s also a stand up comedian, so I’ll have to see if she’s performing in the Gentse Feesten this year. Anyway, I really liked these questions because they are from an expat living in Belgium perspective, so they were sort of unexpected, insomuch as when I am asked about living here, these sorts of questions never really come up.

What is your favorite Dutch word and why?…My first one was “Nachtwinkel” which used to crack me up for some reason.
I’m not sure if I have a favorite word in Dutch. I kind of like the word “waterzooi” I guess. I have to say though, the word I’ll always remember in Dutch is “ongeloofelijk” because it’s the first Dutch word I learned all by myself. From a Pizza Hut commercial actually.

What’s your favorite topping on frietjes?…Mine used to be “Samurai” (before I went vegan).
Hrm, I’d have to say garlic sauce or tartar sauce.  Vol au vent is good too, but I don’t like how it makes the fries mushy towards the end.

The three kiss thing when greeting people: Do you love it or find it invasive and tedious? (Personally I found it charming until I had to kiss everyone like a million times at my wedding).
Crap, I totally didn’t even think about the fact that I’ll have to do this at our reception here. I’ve never seen it as charming…I find it more than tedious if the group I’m greeting is larger than 2 people. I really felt uncomfoartable doing the kiss thing when I first moved here. I enjoy my personal space. I’m not a hugger at all. In fact, there are pictures of me throughout my childhood where you can see me clenching my fists (unconsciously) while I’m being hugged. So kissing was very difficult to get used to and I still feel awkward doing it if I’m meeting a group of people who are more or less strangers.

So, there you have it! Mind you, I’m always open to questions if you have any, so feel free to ask away at any time. Oh and here’s a quick list of terms:
nachtwinkel – night shop
waterzooi – a thin stew made with chicken or fish, vegetables and cream (Gent’s specialty)
ongeloofelijk – unbelievable
frietjes – fries (which are not, nor have they ever been French, fyi)
samurai sauce – a spicy sauce made from sambal and mayonnaise

Luisa, blogger of Novembrance and author of Comfortably Yum (amongst other works)asked me:

Are there any things (food, tools, magazines, etc.) from the States that you absolutely have to have? If so, how do you go about getting them?

And seriously, there really aren’t that many things that I haven’t learned to live without.  I’ve never “cheated” and used American rulers or measuring cups or scales here. I’ve gotten used to knowing about what temperature it is outside or what to set the oven to if I want to bake certain things. I can convert kilometers to miles, grams to ounces or pounds to kilos relatively quickly in my head and if I can’t I just write it down and convert it later. And while I can list a ton of things, especially foods and beverages that I miss, I don’t absolutely have to have them. You’d be amazed how much you can appreciate a gourmet hamburger or a bowl of chili or a peanut butter sandwich when you only get to have it once a year.

There are two, possibly three things that I do have to have from the US, however, and there really is no super easy way of getting it. First, and I’ve mentioned this one before, is my chewing gum. I MUST have my 5 chewing gum from Wrigley’s. I will chew no other gum, especially not the nasty, eucalyptus or menthol flavored, little hard bits they sell here. My mother is kind enough to ship me several packs of gum every couple months, cause I’ve never seen it in Belgium.
Second is shoes. I like shoes with thick, wide rubber soles and lots of support. The shoes here are crap, in my opinion. They’re over priced, fall apart fairly quickly, and usually have very narrow, very thin soles. I bought a pair of shoes here in Gent last year and they were awful. My feet hurt constantly and the soles started coming off within 3 months of buying them. Overpriced, evil foot manglers, those were. So my solution thus far is simply to buy a couple pairs of shoes while in the States. The ones I have now will definitely last me until October, when I visit for a friend’s wedding, and the ones I buy in October should get me through till next May when we’re there for the wedding.
The possible third is a hair stylist. I am very picky about who cuts my hair, only because I’ve had several haircuts that end up in me having a giant fro where my only option is to pull my hair back, lest the monster on my head begin devouring small mammals. The woman who cuts my hair is a friend of the family (my mom’s best friends daughter) and is the only person I know who cuts and layers my hair so that I can wear it down and not look like a big angry poodle. Unfortunately I can’t have my mom ship her here every few months and I’ve been dealing with a haircut once a year for the past two years when I go to the US, but my hair grows fast and I end up going through a lot of conditioner and shampoo because of it. So, I might suck it up and look for someone to cut my hair at the end of the summer. I just have no idea how to find someone good.

But other than that, I really can’t think of anything that I direly need that I can’t find here or compensate for with something else.

Except my family, of course, but I don’t think they’re quite ready to move to Gent.

Yet.

These aren’t exactly the winners of the week, so much as the winners of the day. They’re pictures we took today when we went to try the food at Hof ten bosse, the Belgian wedding reception venue. CB and I both really love the place and the way it combines modern with rustic to create a really unique, cottage-chic atmosphere. So cool.

Reception hall/ Dance floor

Not quite sure what it is but it’s kind of steam punk meets Little Women, no?

This is the coffee buffet. The actual coffee is off to the left in a big urn but see that bowl? Homemade whipped cream. Swoon!

Nekked baby violinist – every wedding has to have one

This is the sort of thing that I really love about this place. It has so much character. Some of the corners of this place are like visiting an old homestead in the countryside.