Now you know my ABC's..

A is for Airplane. I'll be on one later this year and I'm already dreading it. I HATE HATE HATE long distance flying, especially since I'm a curvy gal. Looks like I need to work on becoming more "aerodynamically" correct so I can sit more comfortably. 

 

B is for Belgium. I've officially lived here for two years now! Whooty Whooo!

 

C is for California. The state I was born & raised in.

D is for Domestic Goddess. Truth be told, I never imagined myself being a housewife, but I warmed up to it quickly when I realized I loved having a stress free life from the working world. 

 

 E is for England, which is definitely on my "favorites" list in terms of places I've visited since living overseas. 

F is easily for Family. My family rocks even though they've given me gray hairs prematurely. 

G is for Grandma. I absolutely adore mine! I know everyone says that they have the best dad/mom/grandma/grandpa/husband/boyfriend...blah blah blah... but I'd totally stick my Grandma in the "Worlds Best" competition...and she'd win. 

H is for Halleez, which is a nickname for Eric and I :)

I is for Independent. I'm pretty proud that I can fend for myself, function without having my husband with me 24/7 to run the simplest of errand, and I'm pretty creative when it comes to repairing things. Seriously, I rock.

 

J is for John. The best PITA stepson I could ever ask for! 

K is for Kids. Frankly, I'm on the fence about having 'em. There's parts of me that think "I'd rock as a Mom.", then I come to my senses and realize I don't have that kinda patience.

L is for Laptop. I'd die without it. It's my "go to" thing in terms of editing pictures, blogging, keeping in contact with friends & family, tons of wasted minutes surfing the web....sigh...

M is for Mom. I miss her terribly.
 

 

 

N is for Nature. I love taking random drives out into the country side, forest, water fronts..where ever! I can honestly say that I truly enjoy living in an area where I can literally go in any direction and find some amazing scenery. 

O is for Optimistic. Seriously, no Negative Nancys allowed.
 

P is for Pets. My dogs, to be precise. They're the best little buddies you could ever ask for!

 

Q is for Quality. I don't have all that many friends and I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. I'm more about quality than quantity. I can count on one hand the amount of people I consider a true friend that I could completely rely if I ever needed them.
 

R is for Rain. Honestly, I love the rain. I love it more than sunshine. I love curling up with a nice cup of tea and watching the droplets gather on the window, I love going to bed while listening to the droplets hit against the rolanda, I love how everything smells after a nice downpour..
 

S is for Scrapbooking. I have SO many scrapbook projects I need to work on, but I keep procrastinating with working / cleaning out my office. I'll do it next week... I swear...

T is for Twenty Eight. UGH. I'm almost 30. That's ancient. I'm pretty sure I can hear people snickering (who are younger than me and reading this) or there's people who are older than me, cursing me, and wanting to strangle me for saying 30 is ancient.
 

U is for Umbrella. After living here for two years, I've learned that you should always have an umbrella with you, even if it's gorgeous and sunny outside. Odds are, if it's three o'clock, the rain is about to come down!

 

V is for Vacation. I'm REALLY looking forward to when I can take a family vacation with Eric and John! With Eric's work schedule being fairly ridiculous, and Johns grades being atrocious, it's very hard for all of us to get together and go some where. Since we've been here, I've gone on more trips solo or with friends than I have with my family. Sucks :( 

W is for Weight. I've always always always had a weight problem ever since I can remember. If you're thinking "Get over it and do something about it", well, I have. And, it's still a daily struggle.  It's very hard for me to love myself despite hearing people tell me I'm beautiful.  

X is for X-mas (Christmas to those who liked posting all those things on FB about not removing "Christ" from Christmas..which in turn made it "X-Mas".). Best holiday ever. I don't think it's the best because of all the gifts and what not, but it's because everyone seems to decorate their home for the spirit of the holiday, people (for the most part) are nicer even though it's temporary, and you get to spend quality time with long distance family.

Y is for Yard. When we moved into our current home, our main reason was because we got a MASSIVE side yard for our dogs to play in. That's like hitting the jackpot since we have four very active dogs that love to run around and play. Sadly, our landlord (who also owns that property) is turning that area into a duplex. So, no more big yard for the puppies :(

Z is for ZzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzZz..... like any normal person, I love when I'm able to sleep! Especially since I have serious insomnia! 

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Official

I'm going home later this year!! Whooooo!!! Now, let's just hope I don't get shot :) The statistics I've been hearing regarding Salinas aren't exactly comforting!

I've been watching ticket prices bounce around all over the place for the last few weeks and they seemed to have leveled out around $950. At one point, they shot up to $1,300 (barf)! When we finally got our tax returns, I hit the ground runnin' to find a decent ticket....why oh why do I always have to connect through Heathrow? I mean, most people would probably think "Oh hey! How cool is that? You get to have a layover in England". Well, it's not all that cool. In fact, I hate Heathrow as much as I hate Atlanta International Airport. It's VERY spread out, you have to go through several security check points, lots of walking, add some more walking if not sprinting, and you have to wait till the last minute to figure out which gate you need to go to for your flight. The arrivals / departure boards update every 10-15 minutes and your flight won't show till about 30 minutes before your flight. Once yours is shown, you literally need to haul ass if your boarding gate happens to be on the opposite side of the airport. Not fun. Luckily, I found a ticket that has about a two hour layover there, which gives me a decent amount of time to go through customs, immigration, security, and then get all situated for the lovely 10ish hour flight to Los Angeles.Tell ya what, some of the tickets blew my mind in terms of layover times! Some of 'em had 10 HOURS of layovers between flights...so I could've been sitting at Heathrow for 10 hours till I got to Los Angeles, then another 8 hours to get to Monterey! WOWSAS! I couldn't imagine sitting around that long..it's bad enough that the whole travel time from Brussels to Monterey is going to be 17.5 hours...so extending that to 27 or 30 hours...no thanks! lol

I'm just looking forward to seeing everyone, especially my Grandma. Every time I talk to her, I get VERY guilt tripped about living over here. I mean, it's BAAAAD. She keeps telling me she's going to die before I ever come back to the States (nice, right?), so, I'm thinking she'll be a happy camper about me being home for a lil bits. Dad and I were thinking we'd surprise her with me coming home, as in he'd randomly take her to the Monterey airport to have lunch or something, then I'd show up. Thing is, I'm scared she'd have a heart attack or a stroke..seriously! I'm thinking it might be for the best that I tell her about a week or so before I fly back that I'm coming, that way, she won't be counting down the days for the next several months. She did that last time and it drove me a lil nuts :) At least I know I'm loved, right?

Once I'm over my lovely jet lag, spent some time with my family and friends, I'll be heading up to good ole' Washington to visit my Aunt & cousins. Whether or not my Dad will be joining me, that's to be determined, but I need to go up there to see 'em :) I'm really looking forward to it since where they live is SO SO gorgeous during the fall, plus I haven't seen them since June 2009! Lots to catch up on...

Since I'll be stateside for two months, I'm really hoping to be able to head over to Vegas for a lil get away. I haven't been there since August 2007... that may not seem like very long, but I like going there cause of all the fun and mayhem you can get into. Given, I'm older and wiser now (for the most part), so I wouldn't be going out and getting trashed, but, it'd be nice to go there, relax, be a tourist and just have some fun with some friends that I probably won't be seeing again for another few years. I've managed to find some amazing deals in terms of hotels and flights, so now I just gotta get a group of us together to have some fun! 

AHHHH!! I'm excited!

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I admit...

...I stole this from Stefanies blog

.... despite growing up in California, I have no desire to ever live there again.

... I'm embarrassed to say I'm from Salinas. 

..... I feel safer in a foreign country verses when I was living in the United States.

.... Cole is my favorite.

...I think antiques make much cooler house decorations. 

...I'm getting very tired of people asking ,"When are you guys going to have a baby?".

...watching "Swamp People" has enforced why I'll never live in the South.

... I think our current President was voted in for all the wrong reasons. 

... I think it's extremely narrow minded that people assume a curvy woman is a lazy fat ass.

... I can relate to A LOT of the post cards on Post Secret.

... I hope I grow up just as amazing as my Grandmother.

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Mechelen

If you're wondering about pronunciation, you say Mechelen like Meh-kelh-in. That probably doesn't help cause you still gotta sound like you're hacking up stuff while saying it, but still, it's Belgian. Yup!

ANYWAY! I ventured over to Mechelen the other day with some ladies from base to check out some old school tapestries from a company called "De Wit".  

The Royal Manufacturers De Wit was founded in 1889. Yvan Maes De Wit, its present director, represents the fourth generation of tapestry restorers and dealers of fine antique tapestries. They clean, conserve and restore tapestries. They're todays leading restorer of tapestries in the world for museums and one of the leading restorers for private customers. Plus, they're also an important international dealer, specializing in the sale and purchase of fine antique tapestries and is present at international Fairs.The Royal Manufacturers is established in a historic building, the Refuge of Tongerlo Abbey in Mechelen, founded in 1484. It organizes guided tours of its buildings, its exhibition rooms and its laboratories for the intention of individual visitors or groups.

 The building itself was very cool. I mean, you could CLEARY see it was older, but I didn't realize it was from the late 1400's.

 

 

The main door to get into the courtyard had this beautiful ironwork on it, then when you looked at the back of it (once you were inside), you could see the large locking mechanism they used to open the entire door rather than just the mini door.

 

 

The gal who gave the tour was amazing! Seriously, that was the best 10 euro I've ever spent. The tour lasted about two hours and learned all sorts of interesting facts about tapestries dating back to the 1300's to present time.I mean, the entire process was absolutely mind boggling as to what it takes to make a tapestry. The only downfall was that no pictures were allowed, which made me very very sad. I can describe things till I'm blue in the face, but actually seeing it is an entirely different story. ALTHOUGH, I managed to take a picture of a tapestry before we were told "no pictures". I popped onto their website and they have a slew of pictures of all the tapestries we checked out, so, I'm "acquiring" those pics and posting them on here so you can get an idea of what we saw :) Go me! *If you click on the picture, another window should pop up to allow you to view a larger version *

Here's the pic I took:

This is the same room where I took my picture. There was a variety of different tapestries in there dating from the 1400's to the 1700's. It was very interesting since our tour guide was pointing out the different ways you figure out how old a piece is by a symbol that was weaved into the border, the makers initials, or any sort of record keeping that was kept on that particular piece. Also, if the piece has absolutely no border, that means it's an older tapestry since they didn't start using elaborate borders till later.

 *photo from De Wit website*

 *photo from De Wit website*

 This loom was AMAZING! You could definitely see it's an oldie goldie and shows signs of wear. I really REALLY wish I could've gotten a picture of it from where the tapestry work sits. You can see hundreds and hundreds of threads that they use to weave the tapestry pattern in & out of. Then, there's a layer underneath that has a the tapestries design on it that they use as a stencil..the crazy part? The entire piece is done BACKWARDS! Our guide had one of the workers come in and do a demonstration for us..it was insane how fast this gal was working on it! From what she was telling us, with a days worth of work, a section of the tapestry done that's the size of your hand. YOUR HAND. A full eight hour day. That's a lot of work for a small amount of space! Not only that, but they ONLY work with natural light..never at night since it throws off the colors of the thread they're using.

I asked the guide about whether you needed to have previous experience working with tapestries to work for De Wit, and amazingly enough, she said no! When they hire someone, they don't have to have any experience because it's all taught on the job. The main thing they're concerned about is the "investment" they make when they hire the individual...this isn't the type of job where you work there for a year or two, then bounce. This is a fine craft they teach that's passed down and they want the person to pretty much stay with the company as long as possible. I mean, you have someone supervising you for THREE YEARS till you're allowed to work on a piece by yourself. That's some serious business! I think one of the coolest things I hear was, when one of the tapestry workers develops back problems, arthritis or anything else..they try to adjust accordingly to keep the person employed with the company. How cool is that?

*photo from De Wit website*

*photo from De Wit website*

The tapestries in this room were absolutely AMAZING. I mean, the room was ridiculously huge.

*photo from De Wit website*

Our guide ended up taking us upstairs to check out the room where the workers assess and restore older tapestries.

*photo from De Wit website*

The wall pictured behind the workers is amazing. All the different shades of thread were really cool! The funny part is..it's mainly there for decoration. There's a whole other section of categorized thread in drawers where the workers get their colors from.

*photo from De Wit website*

Overall, the tour was awesome. VERY VERY educational and by far the best tour I've been on in a long time.

From there, we walked on over to Saint Rumbold's Cathedral since the two gals I was with wanted to check it out in addition to Saint Rumbold's Tower.

I've actually seen the tower from afar on a few occasions, mainly when I've ridden the train back and forth to Antwerp. Tell ya what, when you're riding by, it's VERY striking..even from a distance. When we actually got to it, I just kept staring at the architecture because it was absolutely amazing. 

The cathedral was built in honor of Saint Rombout (Rumbold), a seventh century Irish missionary, and it is rumored that his remains are buried inside the cathedral. State-of-the-art examination of the relics assumed to be St. Rumbold's, showed a death date between 580 and 655, while tradition had claimed 775. Twenty-five paintings in the choir illustrate the life of the saint.The construction was started shortly after 1200, and during the final phase in 1452-1520, the tower of the cathedral itself was built.

The inside is absolutely GORGEOUS! 

Every time I check out a church in Europe, I get this sense of "awe" and appreciation. Given, I don't have a religious bone in my body, but these buildings are very humbling.

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