Tom & Kay
Me & John
Duane & Susan
Barkley & Marina
And then John heard what he thought were footsteps coming down the stairs. JieJie and MeiMei had made us promise to wake them for the First Night fireworks, which we can see from our front porch, but it was the fireworks themselves that John heard. He went upstairs and came down with a sleepy MeiMei, who oohed and aahed at the pretty fireworks, and then we thought JieJie would be mad if we let her sleep, so he went back up and got her too (sans pants! Scandal!) and she watched sleepily. At 6pm, we told them it was time to listen to the Belgians ring in the new year on Radio2, and sure enough at radio2.be we heard "vijf...vier...drie...twee...een...en Gelukkig Nieuwjaar, allemaal!" and then a dance mix that somehow managed to merge Funkytown with Justin Timberlake with Prince with Kylie Minogue with goodness-knows-what...
So here's to you, 2007: one of the best years of my life, bar none. Traveling all over Europe with my husband, my girls....seeing London and Paris for the first time with them and Mr. K making the Eippel Tower light up...having our best friends and my parents come visit us in our home-away-from-home...realizing how much we can do, how much traveling we can do, how much fun we can have together, that we don't have to wait til they're older--and neither do you, if you're reading this blog for inspiration, just DO IT, just pack those bags and take those kids on the road! I will never forget, my friend M. from The Netherlands saying that Europeans learn as children how to travel, how to experience new places, new cultures (cause it's like going from Minnesota to Wisconsin, going from Belgium to Germany), so by the time they are adults they are far more gracious travelers, more gracious guests. I have to say I think this is true, and am truly grateful to our university for its studies abroad program. The benefits to the faculty and students are impossible to quantify. And yes, I'm feeling sentimental after too much champagne, but hey. It's New Year's night.
And being in Belgium changed the way we lived our lives when we got home. We spent months trying to figure out how to get back there, and now it's sort of like a low-grade fever. I've started my own business, and if all goes well, who knows? It's a portable kind of work that would allow us to live anywhere I had an internet connection, but it could take years to build up the kind of client base that provides a modicum of security. By then, the timing with the girls' school could be all wrong. Until then, I read blogs on www.expatica.com to live vicariously through other temporary Belgians.
So at this point we're trying to figure out how we can do some traveling in summer 2008, and today John hit upon a possible idea (which I doubt we will actually pursue): remember the quest for a second vehicle? Well, there are several car companies that will fly you over to their European plant and you can get a fairly deep discount on a new car (Volvo, BMW, some other companies offer this) by taking delivery there and having your car shipped to the U.S.--and Volvo practically has a travel agency associated with this overseas delivery program. You can get free plane tickets, hotel nights, all kinds of stuff, just for buying a car you might be buying anyway.
Who knows? We may go to Gothenburg...and my great-great-grandfather Frykman is supposedly an inspirational figure for Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, so who knows? We could do the Royal Tour of Sweden thanks to two of its great cultural icons!
Trust me, we're not really going to Sweden. It's the champagne. Right?
Happy New Year. I'm going to bed.
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