Bedtime stories and air hostesses from the sixties...

I am back.

Did you miss me, O silent readers whose commentaries are so scarce? Did you even notice I was gone in the first place? Is anyone reading this, anyways? Well, if anyone is, here are a few of my latest adventures...

Things have been moving pretty swiftly since the last time I wrote on this blog. Babysitting my cousin ended up being quite an exciting adventure. As general common sense should have already thaught me, taking care of a 3-year old is pretty demanding. It was odd to pick him up at the "Petite Grenouille" day-care centre after school, especially since it's the same day-care I attended when I was his age... with the same nice ladies making sure he doesn't throw too much sand in other children's faces as back in 1988. If it was weird for me to meet 55 year-olds that all called me "Mumu" and knew what I was like when I was 4; it must have been even weirder for them to hear I was in university finishing a bacc in education. In any case, having Tom at home made me realize that writing essays and reports becomes more difficult when you have to entertain a child and prevent him from eating marbles or crayons all at the same time. I gained a lot of respect for people who do that full time. Jessie, you are a wonderwoman. Oh, and of course, as I mentioned last time, we also took care of Ginger, my uncle's chocolate labrador. So after reading Thomas his bedtime story about firemen I went for a stroll with her. My uncle got one of those new short leashes for Ginger since she pulls like a freakin' sleigh dog, but it's not particularly efficient... so I decided to just keep walking until either of us would get tired. After going twice across the entire city, I gave up. I really want to get another dog some day.

The day we were done babysitting Tom was also the day we left for Europe. After my morning class, thanks to my dad's controversed sense of efficiency, my parents came to get me on hwy 132 where the bus had left me 15 minutes earlier. What greater way to start a trip to Amsterdam than being picked up like a prostitute on the side of the road... I smell irony, here. We flew with KLM for the first time to get to the Netherlands. Apart from the fact that the flight attendants might have the most hilarious costume ever designed for a flight company, the trip was pretty uneventful. In KLM transatlantic flights, they installed those individual entertainment devices that allow you to watch the movie you want instead of only the back of the head of the 6-foot tall guy in front of you, which is neat. There was a language learning program, too, so I tried to learn a little dutch on the way. The course was sponsored by Berlitz language schools and, just like Marilyne and I found out in your 1st year research paper, that method is bullshit... anyways, at least I know how to say hello and thanks, now. The basic outline of the trip was that we were going to spend a family day in Bruges, then my mom and I were going to visit Brussels while my dad had his meetings and then as soon as he's done we'd take the first train to Amsterdam and hang out there until the end of the week... My first contact with Brussels was walking out of the hotel and strolling around a disorientatingly flat area of the old town to go to Grote Markt (Grand Place) and have a drink. Grote Markt is basically the heart of Brussels. All the houses around it were built by bourgeois corporations that tried to show off to everyone else, and the result is beautiful.

The next morning, still pretty messed up by the jet lag, we booted it to the Centraal Station and took the first northbound train to Bruges, a relatively small town in the Flemish part of Belgium that is well known for its lace, its architecture and its canals. In the train, we met a Alec, a poor dude from Russia who had no idea if he was in the right train or not. We started chatting after being kicked out of the 1st class wagon we both accidentally sat in (told you I don't understand Dutch... fucking Berlitz...) We understood from his rudimentary English that he was an ingeneer in Moscow and he left us a postcard from his hometown. Nice dude. Bruges is a very cool place. Upon our arrival, the morning fog was still thick and therefore the tall church towers and the canals looked somewhat mysterious and eerie. As the sun rose higher, though, the fog dissipated and revealed the city in its entirety. While my mom was busy systematically going into each store to look for lace and pretending she knows what good lace looks like, my dad was trying to hide his exasperation in wandering off and filming whatever was around with the camescope we got him for christmas. Amused by my parents' classic family vacation scene, I walked around a little and gazed in amazement at the hundreds of gables and at the old ladies making lace in the back of their little shops. It was a warm and sunny (thus busy) Sunday, but the city was still pretty quiet. The afternoon went by slowly as we looked around for antiques and walked along the canals in which the brightly coloured leaves were reflected. Awesome. Bruges also has an impressive amount of parks considering the size of the city. We made a detour through the Minnewasser, one of them, before heading back to the station. The silence was only broken every now and then by someone ringing on the bell of their bicycle to tell us to get the hell out of their way. That night we went to Chez Léon, back in Brussels, one of Belgium's most famous mussels and french fries place. I ordered a gargantuesque mussels dish with a pint of Léon's house beer (house wine is just not an option in Belgium...). No kidding, even the chocolate smell emanating from the Godiva's shop on Grand Place seemed disgusting after eating so much.

The next day, my mom and I decided to go check out the famous Atomium. The Atomium is basically a building shaped like a giant iron molecule enlarged I-forget-how-many times. It was Belgium's hall for the universal exhibition of 1958. I've seen quite a few odd-shaped buildings in my life, but I must admit that this enormous molecule is pretty ridiculous. You can visit the inside and take escalators to go from one "boule" to another, and everything inside is arranged like in the 50's. The best part is that it is located near other random weird-looking buildings, such as a Japanese tower, a Chinese house covered in golden dragon sculptures, a park with miniature reproductions of all the most famous buildings in Europe, an amphitheatre entirely made out of organic matter and grass, and, last but not least, the royal palace of Belgium. Let's simply say that it is easy to find your way around this part of town. In the afternoon, we checked out a few art nouveau buildings from the beginning of the century downtown and then we walked all the way up to the outrageously big Brussels Justice Hall, in front of which is located probably one of the most moving unknown soldier monuments ever made. Our third and last day in Brussels consisted of walking around a lot, drinking an unhealthy amount of coffee, checking a modern art exhibition about (believe it or not) Jesus and religion in the St-Michel-et-Ste-Gudule cathedral and, more importantly, going back in my childhood days while visiting the Comic Strip Museum of Belgium. Because as you may already know, Belgium is the hometown of most of the best known comic strip characters ever created, at least in the strange world of French speaking people. So I spent a good chunk of the day with my dearest childhood heroes: Tintin, Spirou, the Smurfs, Blake&Mortimer, Gaston Lagaffe, Cubitus, Achille Talon, Boule et Bill, and so many more. All of a sudden I realized that the sketches I do are absolute amateur work. "J'ai des croûtes à manger", as we say here. Speaking of which, this week I have to draw key scenes of the novel "The Lord of the Flies" for a project in ESL Literacy and Language Arts. It's fun, I get to experiment with media I hadn't touched for years (watercolours, charcoal, etc.), but on the other hand it's hard to find key scenes that can be represented graphically without having any gory or other traumatizing, inappropriate stuff for teenagers. Anyways, that was about it for Belgium. Whenever I get time to write some more I'll let you know about Amsterdam and its wonders...