Just life and bits and bobs...

Nothing too dramatic to report over here.... Life seems to have settled into a somewhat chaotic rhythm of sorts. It is possible that we have finally reached something of an equilibrium.  In case anyone had not noticed, the World Cup has just started and this country has gone football mad. From some reports, Belgium may in fact have something of a underdog chance. Their first game is tonight so we will try and watch it!

So what has been happening in the Ponky clan..? Well since C's birthday, we have had Mother's Day, my birthday and Father's Day (which oddly seems to be a different weekend to the southern hemisphere and america). The older two have been watching Masterchef and feel convinced that they are destined for reality TV greatness. Any attempts at actual cooking are greatly encouraged in this household :)...although the day that they decided they wanted to prepare a complete 3 course meal for dinner when hubby was working late and it was a school night, was what I would call stressful rather than entertaining... Dishes everywhere, hungry preschoolers crying, homework left undone.. you get the idea. 

Summer is here, although the winter pyjamas have not been put away quite yet. It is nice to not be covered head to toe in sweat (a la Brisbane) so I suspect that I will really enjoy this european summer.We have discovered a few more parks and visited some castles and seen the spring flowers. And just this last weekend, a FunFair has been set up directly outside our apartment. How great is that?!!! And there is no loud music so it is not disruptive.  And no crowds, and no queues for anything, most of the rides are not full. Best FunFair we have ever been to- sure beats the Ekka and Easter Shows.   

Here are the highlights....

Hanging out in cafes. 

Castles and flower shows- Groot Bijarden

 Special visits from our friend - what better to do than visit more castles?!! This time in Ghent.



Princess S on her throne!

Followed by more food and drink




















Huizingen domain- a spectacular park with outdoor swimming pools, hydroslides, animals, boating, restaurants and massive childrens playground.  A fantastic day out for the family - thanks mum for introducing us to this place :)!

 And a random castle

Also a quick trip out to Antwerpen for my birthday and we discovered this fantastic venue - playgrounds galore and all with outdoor eating for the grown ups. 

Some Belgian cuisine :) and beer - I am gradually learning to appreciate it

As far as school goes, the older two are mid-exams. Yep they are doing a full week of exams in french. It's pretty rough but I talked to the principal and she said they just need to show improvement from when they arrived. Normally the system here is very quick to repeat students which is quite an outdated concept in education. Little miss S has suddenly started talking french at home, and she's quite the character. She has a natural beautiful accent that is cute beyond words. Even D at 3.5 years is starting to say a few things. He has settled in well to the kindy class and is quite the Mr popular with the other girls.  We were looking at old videos of the older two when we had arrived in Australia and they were laughing about their accents back then.  They had both developed a bit of an aussi twang  living there and this seems to be disappearing now. Soon they will be back to pronouncing "france" "dance"and "chance" the proper way ;).

Here is D about to board the bus on his end of year school excursion - 4 classes, 80 kids and 2 teachers per class. It was a 40 minute bus ride to a zoo/circus - no parent helpers. 1 teacher per 10 children ages 3-4 years old. Maybe it's a good thing there aren't any parent helps, it just sounds stressful to me! But they managed to bring them all home in one piece and all had a wonderful time! 

This is C at her end of year school concert.  They had to wear traditional costumes of their home countries. Of course, bringing along Maori costumes was not high on my list of priorities when we packed to move here. So I had to improvise. Goodness knows what you would do for Australia???!!! All the other costumes were extremely decorative and elaborate and beautiful. Dressing as a kangaroo would not have gone down well!! 

I should also mention that with the arrival of summer, we also have loooooooooooong days! It is still light at 10pm, and broad daylight at 8pm. Makes bedtimes tricky and confusing but the blackout curtains at least give an "illusion" that it is evening time...!
Next stop is our trip to italy. To say we are looking forward to this is an understatement. Hubby needs a well deserved break from his work grind, and I have been wanting to visit Italy for years. I, once upon a time, enrolled in a beginner italian class, so I will have to try out some basic phrases over there. The plan is to eat, swim, eat, drink some wine, oh and do a bit of sightseeing as well. We have booked a villa attached to vineyard and olive groves. I will be stocking up with the local olive oil and wines! Put your orders in now! (But only if you come to pick up from us in Belgium hehehe). 

Until next time - a bientot!

First french birthday party....!

Recently we had the first birthday party for our troops.... I was a little worried - new culture, new language - what DO they do here for birthday parties??? I was really in the dark as the girls had not as yet been invited to any birthdays from their class, but then again, none of their friends had had a birthday so far this year. What are the chances of that?! Honestly, I did feel like chickening out, it was too hard, too unknown and too much stress. Not to mention that hubby working every second weekend and various other commitments on the few weekends off made it a little tricky to even find a date between her birthday and christmas.

But I bit the bullet and so glad that I did now.... although hosting birthday parties is never going to be a favourite activity of mine.  This one was possibly the most successful party I have ever had, largely due to the wonderful blessing of having my mother also staying here on that weekend.  My mother is an expert at birthday parties. I would prefer to avoid them except for the joy that they give the kids.

I had been told many things about birthday parties in Belgium (in the french sector) - that they don't do them, that they don't play party games, that they arrive late, that they are too busy on the weekends doing family stuff, and that they don't RSVP and may or may not turn up.
Given the RSVP issue, I didn't particularly want to spend a fortune booking a venue only to have potentially noone arrive, so I organised the party to be at our apartment and asked them to bring roller blades or scooters to have fun in our outside courtyard.
Invitations went out and I was pleasantly surprised when 2 mothers RSVPd immediately. I had an interesting conversation with the first mother on the phone when I was trying to explain that our apartment entrance was at the back,  but unfortunately I was actually saying it was at the backside (yes, as in butt), I suspect she may have been silently laughing at me as she corrected my french... Two other mothers I knew by sight and saw them often at school so I was able to ask them directly, and the last girl did not RSVP but did turn up for the party (although she appeared to get the time wrong and arrived an hour late).

I had no idea what the usual custom is - whether parents stay or drop and go.  But it appears that they drop and go, and do not come into the house or make small chitchat or anything. Then to collect, they arrive at exactly the finish time and wait outside the building until the child descends.

I organised a craft activity - making paper flowers and decorating flowerpots which they all had a ball doing, followed by party games.



















 I had the impression that they were not used to party games: cut the chocolate game was a huge hit, and the egg and spoon race also went down well.

 They spent a bit of time scootering around outside and then we had the cake. Given the choice, they decided to sing happy birthday in English.  Nothing quite as cute as little french kids singing in English <3.... now if only my kids start to pick up on those accents...

And then it was time for presents and kisses all round.  

And so we survived.... We managed a houseful of girls who pretty much only spoke french.  My girls appear to be speaking and understanding enough to be fully in the midst of all the activities. I managed to explain the games and activities using a combination of french and lots of gestures. All in all a huge success. My big 10 year old had an amazing time and was just glowing with self confidence.  Oddly she appears to be more confident and sure of herself in this foreign land speaking a language that she does not yet fully grasp than she ever did back in Australia.  We have definitely been lucky that she has a class full of girls who are all universally lovely natured and kind.
Since the party, some definite changes- the mums that I know by sight are actually speaking to me! (and more than just a cursory bonjour) and I now get kisses from many kids at school pick up time as they run to greet me when I arrive. It is a lovely culture here, the kids kiss the adults and even the teachers as a greeting, and even it appears from my experience, if you don't actually know them.  I was quite surprised that all the invited kids could come to the party and I suspect this may be partly out of curiosity to know what this odd english speaking family do for birthdays, and maybe birthday parties are a novelty for the french kids here? Time will tell once a few more kids have their birthdays later this year....  Having conquered this one, I feel more able to tackle the next one in a month or so.

Sweden- Photos and photos and more photos...

Finally I have a few moments to finish off our adventures in Sweden. Well, it was really only Stockholm and I am sure that Sweden has a multitude of other spectacularly beautiful places to visit, but with a a travelling family of 6,  one destination was all we could manage this time round. 

As for what I have been doing since our holiday.... school has started back, we have had several NZ visitors including  my mum, so it has been busy and fantastic to be connecting again with some special people in our lives.  Also, I am greeted by this on a regular basis:

Sadly, this is not a week's worth, but only 2-3 days... I am kept pretty busy most of the week.

Now back to Sweden, it did feel a bit like we had returned to a civilisation that was more familiar to us... many echoes of some of the luxuries that are standard in NZ such as table water served with meals (for free- gasp!), lots of ATMs and everywhere took bank cards making it easy to live a cash-free existence, and some of you may be worried that I am now overly obsessed with this subject, but there were PUBLIC TOILETS everywhere which meant heading to a park or outing was not an exercise fraught with anxiety about whether two little ones would be able to hold on... 

There are so many sites and wonderful things to do in Stockholm, even with young children.  I had a long long list of potential options and we did not get through half of them. Here are just a few highlights: 

1) Exploring Stockholm Old Town: we spent a day wandering around the beautiful cobbled streets, taking in the architecture and browsing through shops.  

Adventures in Sweden - an almost family holiday...

Our first trip outside of Belgium since we got here was to Sweden. Probably not a country that I would have put on my "must see immediately" list. Mostly, because I had no knowledge of anything there whatsoever. But there was an international conference in Stockholm that hubby had to attend. Hence the statement that this was an "almost " holiday, or in other words, our usual type of holiday where the family accompanies hubby as he attends conferences in interesting places. We did have 3 days after the conference finished to have some real family time and this was enough to feel slightly refreshed again.

Is it just me or is there something wrong with the fact that I could dedicate a whole post just to the journey there??? Surely, travelling places should just consist of: we left, we caught the plane, it was boring, we arrived? Some day I think we will have the luxury, just not this day....
Our trip to Sweden was somewhat complicated by the specific requirements for our travel arrangements. As hubby was working on the Friday and presenting papers at the conference on the Sunday, this left one single day to travel there. And lo and behold, what do you know? There are absolutely no (reasonably) priced flights from Brussels to Stockholm on Saturdays (or at least not this particular Saturday). And the majority of the flights that did go, went off somewhere else first (like Croatia or Switzerland) resulting in a 12 hour journey. After much research, I booked flights from Amsterdam, so that we caught the bullet train from Brussels to Amsterdam and then flew direct to Stockholm from there. All up a 3 hour trip. This was all straight forward and organised 3 weeks before the departure date (I must, I must, I must learn to be more organised, last minute bookings is not the way to go for stress free holiday management).  To get to the train we were taking public transport and left the apartment at the designated time. I had not checked the bus/tram schedules and they were a little less frequent than I had thought on a Saturday morning, and then the bus was 3 minutes late (a big deal in the end).  We had to be at the train to get on, 2 minutes before the proposed departure. I had originally laughed at this, how ridiculous, wouldn't 5 or 10 minutes be more appropriate? Well, we hurtled at top speed, 6 of us running with the two very mobile suitcases and arrived with 1 minute (literally) to spare. This is not an experience I would wish to repeat... missing this train would have meant, missing our flight, which potentially mean hubby missing his important conference presentation.
But here we are relaxing on the train trip:

Arriving at Schipol (Amsterdam), it turns out that I have unknowingly booked business class. A few minutes of confusion (and later we realise that there is no difference between the business and economy class on this flight except free food) and then we are offered to go hang out in the business class lounge. Yee ha!
I am not quite sure they knew what they were thinking when they offered that, but here are the Ponkies enjoying business class lounge.... For once the volume levels were appropriate in this deadly quiet space.

The flight itself was short- 1.5 hours and after the initial reactions of shock and disbelief from the kids that there was no inflight entertainment (accompanied by tears, gnashing of teeth and wails of "but what are we going to dooooooooooooooooooooooooo???") we all settled in well and made full use of the free food on offer.  They, surprise, surprise, did manage to find something to do and did not die of boredom in the entire 90 minutes they had to stay seated. And they had messed up our seating so I was with the 4 little ones, and hubby was 2 rows ahead by himself so I was thankful the flight was so short. Peace, more or less, reigned until the descent process started. C again had ear pain (she burst her eardrum on the flight to Belgium) and she was not a happy camper, but the real disaster came from little S (4 years old). It started off with wails that her ears hurt. Yes I can completely sympathise as it can be very painful. Possibly she might have had a bit of a cold so this would have made it worst. Unfortunately, this pain appears to have triggered a chain reaction in her brain that caused it to go into some kind of uncontrollable, inconsolable, irrational domain and the wails continued to crescendo throughout the 20 minute descent. She shortly moved on from her ears, to shrieking that she wanted daddy (inconveniently seated 2 rows in front and across an aisle). After no joy from this request, she moved on to screaming "you're hurting me" while thrashing and writhing in her seat, eventually ending up with "you're choking me" at the top of her lungs. Presumably referring to the seatbelt that was dangling somewhere around her knees by this stage. I'm quite surprised I didn't get  reported to some child protection agency with the accusations that were being hurled around.  Of course the grand finale as we were just touching down - "I NEED TO GO TO THE TOILETTTTTTTT!!!". Deadly silence in the plane, I expect everyone was hoping beyond hope that she could find it within herself to hold on another 5 minutes... I have had my fair share of horror flight moments with small children, but I think this one, must just take the prize.

Finally we arrive at our apartment in Stockholm after 10 hours of travelling. The arrival at the apartment has its own semi disastrous story but I won't share it here - just to say that the owner of the apartment hung around for 2 hours after we arrived.. in the end everything worked out fine.

So onto more pleasant matters- Stockholm is actually just lovely! Some sightseeing I did with just the kids (during the conference) and some we did as a family. Some things worked out well, but others (like the hopon/off bus) were not quite as good as I had expected (not because they weren't good attractions, more that I was doing it alone without another adult present to help steer the wandering children).

Our first adventure I highly recommend for anyone going to Stockholm with children. It is a kids paradise and you can spend the entire day here. It is called Junibacken - and is the home of Pippi Longstockings. Here are a few photos although my iphone camera does not do the place justice.There were 3 play areas and a story train.  An absolutely fantastic place to let the imagination go wild....... And a cafe with, as we were to discover fairly quickly, the standard swedish fare- swedish meatballs (a la IKEA) and pancakes (crepes) served with jam and cream.

Of course, we purchased a pippi longstockings book which the older two have been loving since coming home. I will post the next lot of Swedish adventures in the next post. 

Update on public transport....

So it looks like there may have been just one too many near miss incidents between pedestrians and the tram... Look what they have just painted on our crossing:

Phew..guess we were not the only ones that assumed a green flashing man meant you could cross safely.

And I should add there are distinct advantages to living in a NON english speaking country when you are taking public transport with small children...  On the whole, I am relatively confident that the other passengers do not understand the vocal sounds my darling cherubs are releasing from their mouths...

Particular moments that spring to mind include little dude D ( 3 years old) who has a habit of calling anyone (young or old) who is bald - "granddad".  So as he is yelling "hi granddad" to the 20-something cool guy who has shaved his head, I can rest assured that he is more than likely not going to understand and save myself some embarrassment.  (And yes you may have guessed, his granddad does not have hair, hence  the association between lack of hair and granddad status).  This does not work quite so well in non english speaking countries or areas where the level of english is high amongst the general population. Little dude did in fact greet one of hubby's work colleagues (with excellent english) as "granddad" which was less than ideal for a first impression. 

Another slightly uncomfortable incident was when O (7 years old) decided that she would loudly count the number of muslim women on the bus during one trip home. Declaring that there were "7 of them altogether". Children can be so black and white, but also with such complete innocence.

As I have yet to discover a reliable volume control switch for my children, I remain grateful that most of what they say is unlikely to be perfectly understood by the majority of the other public transport riders here. 

Getting around and transport in Brussels...

WARNING- this post is not for the fainthearted, some traumatic incidents are detailed and may cause stress in some individuals... 

It is a beautiful spring day again. Really, Brussels is gorgeous in the springtime.  I am constantly amazed by the greenery and blossoms and flowers everywhere. I am grateful that my primary mode of transport is bus and tram as I can enjoy the scenery (rather than being underground in the metro not enjoying the dank smell of stale cigarettes and urine and feeling mildly guilty every time I pass a beggar).   I am sure that spring is beautiful everywhere in the world but the trees and the grass just seem greener than I remember from Brisbane. And maybe I am just more appreciative of the beauty here as it is all still so new. 

But I digress, my intent today is to freak you out with my stories of travelling on public transport with 4 children.  I have previously described the school horror run during our initial few weeks in Brussels, but I omitted a few incidents that gave us all a fright.  

Firstly, public transport is actually very good in Brussels, at least compared to anything we have downunder. Admittedly the 'M' is nowhere near as ubiquitous as what I was used to in Paris - where it is difficult to walk around a corner without encountering another Metro entrance.

But to compensate it has a wide network of trams and buses that cover the city pretty well if you can decipher the map. I don't think I had ever taken the bus when living in Paris which shows how widespread the service is, but here, unless you live very central, you are likely to take buses and metro and trams and the disadvantage is having to change transport in order to get to a destination.  This was particularly problematic during our horror school run as it meant making 3 changes and taking 3 different types of transport to get to school and back.  

Here are a few pointers we have picked up along the way: 

The bus: 

1) Brussels bus drivers (presumably like every where) are crazy. You get the good ones, who wait for you to enter or exit the bus before taking off, and the not so good ones who start closing the doors when you have only half of your brood of 4 chooks off the bus.  We learnt pretty early on, that if you stick part of your body in the door, they will not close and by doing so you can get the rest of the gang off the vehicle, as well as the gazillion jackets and school bags and other paraphenalia that has been carted along.  I am not 100% certain that some bus drivers would not take off with the doors half open though.....

Th tram: 

1) The trams are actually pretty nice, new and clean along the lines we take. They come frequently (every 4 mins or so) and are never late. However, we learnt in one scary incident, that trams have right of way over pedestrian GREEN LIGHT CROSSING SIGNALS.

Yes, see this signal- apparently, this does not mean cross, this means watch out for any trams that may be racing through as they will not stop.  Fortunately in our case, the tram did stop after the kids stepped out to cross on THE GREEN CROSS SIGNAL. Now we make sure to check for errant trams before crossing any road.  (As you can see by the use of CAPS I am still annoyed by this). 

2) On a lighter note, you are allowed up to 1 or 2 bikes aboard the trams, buses and metro.  Below is a fairly common type of bike which completely folds up into a backpack.  This guy is just unfolding his to get ready to bike off the tram.  Apparently only the flemish ride bikes (and all without helmets and with little baskets at the front, sitting straight upright), so I presume this guy is flemish rather than french.

The metro: 

1) I am glad we are no longer taking the metro on a regular basis. It was always a saga getting in to the station.  We had 3 swipe cards, and 5 people. The little two are free. But what this means is that they have to go with another person. And without fail there is a kerfuffle about who gets to swipe the card. They can actually go through the normal gates with one of the big girls, but they are "supposed" to go through the access gate for people with young infants, prams, luggage etc.  

As you can see from the sign, it says 2 people only. Pfft, says I. My little two are less than the equivalent of a single person.  So I press the button and bundle in with both little ones. Once you are inside the central portion you swipe your card and the second door opens to let you through to the station.  So I swipe my card ready to bundle them out the other side. Only to be blocked. Apparently the machine can count. I have exceeded the total people allowed in and I am not allowed through. I am now stuck in the access gate with two toddlers and my big two are on the other side of the gate as they have passed through the normal gates. It momentarily feels like a little glass prison cell. I am a little unsure how to proceed and more than a little worried that I may be stuck there.  fortunately as I turn around, the door of the entry opens and I am allowed back out. Sadly, when I go to try my swipe card through the normal entries, it does not let me pass as it has already been swiped once in this entry place.  Obviously too smart for its own good.  Begrudgingly I have to pay for another ticket in order to let myself and the little two pass through. 

Travelling with 4 kids (and 5 bags and 5 jackets and a few umbrellas): this is such fun (where oh where is my sarcasm font?).  One of the more stressful incidents (apart from almost being run over by a tram and getting stuck in the metro entry) was right at the start of our time here. It was at the end of an exhausting return from school and I managed to get all children off the bus with 4 school bags and all coats. I felt that something was not quite right though..... It only took a split second to realise I had left my handbag (containing my wallet, my keys, my phone, my passport) ON THE BUS. As I have already mentioned, the crazy belgian bus drivers are not ones for just hanging around.  Without even thinking I leapt back on the bus leaving my 4 small children on the footpath, using some special gymnastics/pilates manouevres I positioned one leg in between the bus doors (since we had already learnt previously that inserting body parts in the doors can stop them closing momentarily) and "excusez-moi'd" to grab my bag that was still sitting at the foot of the seat I had occupied (thankfully very close to the door). And I leapt out again. I still feel a sense of horror of what would have happened if the bus had taken off and my children had been left alone in the dark on the footpath watching me disappear. It is the stuff parental nightmares are made of....  Or if I had not realised in time and my handbag was gone with everything in it and being completely stranded with 4 tired kids  (this being of course the day that hubby worked late).   But neither of these things happened, and all that was left was to reassure them that it was ok and to brainstorm about what would have been some potential solutions if the bus had taken off with me in it.  

Lesser anxiety provoking moments have involved a lot of bodily fluids ending up on me during our horror school run... yes I've had it all. And not uttered a word.  I am sure on the whole, the other travellers have been oblivious to the moments I have been peed, pooed and vomited on... Such are the sacrifices of motherhood.   The one time (thankfully only one) that we had a vomiting incident, was with little S who had had a child vomit outside her classroom the day before (maybe this should have warned me but I was calmly oblivious to the upcoming event). She had been miserable the entire trip home with more frequent collapses in tears and squawks on the floor and I ended up carrying her for most of the journey.  It was just 1 stop before the end of the journey when she says she feels sick, and voila - vomit down my lap appears within seconds. The man seated beside me immediately gets up and moves without a word and I somehow think he may be going to do something helpful. Unfortunately no, he is just removing himself from the vomit projectile (which is probably fair enough).  I am left holding my breath and praying that there is no more vomit to come, because what do you do on a packed bus when there is vomiting???? I mean, who cleans it up, does the bus stop?  Luckily we got off at the next stop at which point she promptly vomits down my back. At least I am now symmetrical. There is nothing left to do but to get home and peel off these clothes and chalk this one up to experience.  I am not quite sure what I would have/could have done if the vomiting had started closer to the beginning of our journey rather than the end. Small mercies :). 

So our adventures in public transport continue.  Overall I have been impressed and pleased despite lots of moaning about it from other expats and belgians, I have never had any issues with transport running late or being cancelled or anything else really. As we are a "belle famille" (literally translated beautiful family but meaning big family- don't the french just do things better sometimes?!!) we get half price off our transport which makes it substantially cheaper than the costs of running a car. Plus, given that Belgians are the worst, most aggressive drivers in Europe, I have not started driving yet (more on driving to come...)