Just a few things...

A) I am in Bath, England! It's beautiful. But FREEZING. Literally.

B) It feels really strange to be back in an English speaking country. For one thing, I feel all self conscious that everyone can understand what I am saying when talking in a crowd/on the bus/etc. And then there is the part where I throw out a bit of French or Arabic and no one gets it. But on the other hand, it is a great feeling--I understand everything! (well...almost everything--the accent is beautiful, but throws me off a bit) And no one makes me feel like an idiot for not understanding.

But, maybe just a little, I miss that feeling?

C) Adjusting back to Texas might be a bit rough. Prepare yourselves to hear me say voilà and ooh-la-la repeatedly.

D) The fact that it should be 72 (more than 4 times tonight's low) on Saturday when I get back to DFW should soothe my pain.

Week in Review: Week 12

Ah, my final week in review from Belgium! But, I'm soo tired, so just a quick overview (when I get home, I promise to fill you all in):

• My mom is here! We've had a tour around the "Belgian" part of Brussels along with the "Moroccan" part of Brussels, along with a day trip out to Bruges. Good times. 
• Thanksgiving was this week--so much to be thankful for! Especially for green bean casserole. 
• Tuesday we had a potluck/thanksgiving/end of course celebration in conversation. We had a nice mixture of Moroccan, African, Polish and American dishes. My students ended up staying hours late and it was a good time over all. 
• 2 of my students (the twins) gifted me a USB powered salt-rock lamp. The most random gift I have received, but awesome nonetheless. 
• Tomorrow we are headed to England! Yay for English!
• After all that complaining about French, the last few days I have realized just how much I have picked up over the last 3 months. Considering I came with little more than Bon jour and je t'aime I guess its not too bad.
• Today at church I said goodbye to a lot of people. I am not a huge fan of the goodbyes. 
• I might have to come back in March for our neighbor's wedding...
• I love our neighbors. 
• The Belgian Christmas market is up! So pretty!
• It has turned very, very cold. It's supposed to be -10 sometime next week. Tomorrow has a low of 18 degrees. That makes coming back to Texas all the more enticing. 
• I will be home on Saturday! Bring on the Mexican food and sunshine!
• Our neighbors made us a Moroccan tea tonight that contained absinthe--the plant, not the liquor. It may or may not have contained a drug. 

The end. I'll catch you all up later!

Fall

Fall, the verb, is decidedly not a favorite of mine. But fall the noun? As in the season? That one is a favorite.

(Blurry, but look! Bunnies!)

Week in Review: Week 11

It's the next to last Week in Review from Belgium! Here goes:

• Here's the count: 13 straight days of headaches, 8 full days of migraines. I've officially turned into a vampire. I'm ready to get off the migraine-train. 
• The painkillers are leaving me relatively "filter"-free. It almost seems appropriate for this time of the semester. 
• Speaking of...I FINISHED ALL MY COURSEWORK. I'll bring back my evaluation and then walk myself across the stage at graduation. Man, this has been a long time coming. 
• I think I've gotten dumber, not smarter, but I won't be opposed to you all calling me Master Brewer. 
• I've enjoyed helping take care of Phoebe this week, but it also makes me miss my little girls in Texas. I can't wait to see Madeline and Emma and see how much they have changed over the last 3 months!
• English classes have also been wrapped up. I have to put the finishing touches on the exams for levels one and two and then give them tomorrow evening. They will come for their grades and certificates on Wednesday. Tuesday we are having a potluck/Thanksgiving celebration in my conversation class. It should be interesting to see what kind of food my students turn up with. 
• With just 2 weeks left I officially gave myself permission to think about Mexican food and Dr. Pepper. 
• This last Tuesday was the Fête du Mouton, which is one of the biggest holidays in Islam. Families get together to sacrifice and eat a sheep in honor of God providing a sheep to sacrifice instead of Abraham's son (Isaac for Christians, Ishmael for Muslims). Part of the holiday includes sharing the meat with friends and the poor. Our neighbors said they would send over their son with some of the lamb, which turned out to be an entire raw leg of lamb. 
• I rode back to Brussels from the neurologist Wednesday with a family from the church who had gone to the hospital to visit Phoebe. The husband is Egyptian, the wife is Syrian. They have two adorable little hellians. He exhibited the best steering wheel drumming I have ever seen. (He drums at the church and was a professional back in Egypt.) They ended up taking me home with them for a while and fed me mashi (sp?)--little stuffed grape leaves. Very, very tasty. Also, I realized after almost 3 months that the husband speaks English! Who knew...
• I cannot say enough for the Flemish Belgian healthcare system. Everyone was ridiculously nice, almost everyone spoke English, and they all went out of their way to be helpful--the neurologist even game me his personal email should I need more information or help filing on my US insurance.  
• The amount I paid to go to the ER, have a CT scan, an appointment with the neurologist and an EEG with no outside insurance? 108.22 euro. Let's all say it together--government healthcare is not the end of the world. 

And, that's all. It has been a long week, but when I look back, most of what I remember is just cooking, cleaning and sitting in a dark room as much as possible. Maybe I'll remember some of the more interesting tidbits later!

Moussaka Bi Zeit

So while the last week has not been full of triumphal moments, I did have a strong showing in at least one area. As I attempted to get in touch with my Southern roots and cook up some casseroles, I decided to branch out a bit. Janee has a good Lebanese/Syrian cookbook and I found a recipe for Moussaka that I wanted to try. (As an aside, Lebanese and Syrian food is almost exactly the same. Hary says that even if the people are Syrian, they market the food as Lebanese because Lebanese food is more well known.)

Lebanese Moussaka is not the same as its Greek incarnation--there's no cheese or potatoes. Hary does tell me that there are different kinds of Moussaka. Moussaka Bi Zeit, or Moussaka with oil, is what I made and it is a vegetarian variety. Making it is pretty straight forward: you peel, slice and fry a few eggplants, add a layer of chickpeas, then top it with a mixture of sautéed onions, garlic and tomatoes which have been simmered together. To finish it off you top it with a layer of sliced up tomatoes, and then bake it. It can be eaten cold, but we ate it hot with rice.

I hadn't realize that Hary was coming back to the house the day I made it, but he was really excited when I told him what I had made. I was a bit worried for him to try it because it was my first go at moussaka, and I hadn't even tried it myself, but I am happy to say he liked it. Now honestly this isn't saying much because I have been around long enough to know that Hary will eat just about anything. Yet as the days went by and he kept eating it, meal after meal, I started to believe him. And the highest praise of all? He said it tasted just like an Arab woman made it.

Triumph indeed.

ER Adventures

So not long ago I ended up on a date with the Syrian Mr. Collins. This week? It was a date with the neurologist.

I should have never mentioned that the culture here reminded me of a Jane Austen novel. First the whole Mr. Collins thing, and then I also unwittingly acted out a scene from Persuasion. In the need of a brief novel to give my brain a break, I picked up Persuasion off of Janee's bookshelf. My mom and I are going to Bath in a couple of weeks, so I thought it would be a nice read. I hadn't realized a large portion of the plot revolved around one of the girls falling and knocking herself unconscious. I might would have avoided the book otherwise.

Anyway, we all know what I then preceded to do--I fell down the stairs and banged the back of my head into the concrete wall. That's nothing new though, I told you about that last week. Everyone kept insisting that I go get my head checked, but I refused. It wasn't that big of a deal. By Sunday though, I was feeling worse instead of better. The headaches were getting stronger, so much so that I thought I might pass out during church on Sunday. My vision was getting a little blurry and I was feeling dizzier than normal.

I started to rethink the idea of going to the doctor. (I've seen way too many medical shows where someone dies of an aneurysm all because they didnt go get their headaches checked out.) The system is a bit different here, so Janee suggested I go to the ER. At this point they were still at the hospital in the next town over, so I hitched a ride there with a couple from our church. After a 10 minute wait (!) I was back in the ER getting checked out, and then got to do one of my least favorite things--a CT scan. Thankfully it came back in the clear but the doctor scheduled me an appointment with the neurologist for an EEG the next day.

Really Lauren? I don't know how I get myself into these things.

The EEG in itself was an odd experience. She started taping probes on my wrists and ears and then pulled out a giant syringe. I panicked--nobody had mentioned injections! Thankfully it was just to squirt gel. She then pulled a cap with about 87 wires attached onto my head and started filling all the little holes in the cap with the gel. (Which I am still trying to wash you of my hair...) Once the test started it was a lot of open your eyes, close them, breathe through your mouth, breathe through your nose, and then a lot of try not to go into a seizure as we blink all kinds of colored lights in your face.

Anyway, I finally got to see the neurologist, who was incredibly nice. After doing a couple dozen little tests (and him squeezing the bruise on my foot!) he showed me my CT and EEG results. All in the clear. (Hamdula) He said since I have had migraines before it is probable that the trauma has triggered them. He said that Post Concussion Syndrome can explain all of my symptoms, and that it could last a week or two or a month or two (lets all pray for weeks not months!).

In the end he prescribed me some good painkillers (which I should probably mention I am taking at the moment...so if none of this makes sense, now we know why), we chatted about healthcare and Belgian and US politics, and he mentioned that if life were like Grey's Anatomy that by that time I "would have been whisked away to the OR for brain surgery with McDreamy." He then followed it up with "or whatever his name is." But it was too late, he was caught.

So in the end, it has been a long, strange week. My head feels like someone is massaging my brain with brass knuckles. But on the upside, they gave me my CT scan on a CD. How cool is that? And while I lament my ability to do the most ridiculous things, I figure everyone who's traveled to Brussels has seen the Grand Place and the Atomium. But how many have seen the inside of the neurology department?

That's right, probably just me.

Picking Up The Slack

Janee and Phoebe will be in the hospital until Thursday, and Hary has been back and forth between here and the hospital (which is in the next town over). I've been trying to pick up the slack around the house, which has meant mostly some cooking and cleaning (and like I mentioned, a lot of TAL podcasts!).

I made a list of goods I wanted from the store and headed off. While looking through the shelves, guess what I found?

Tortilla de patatas! Now the price on this bad boy was significantly steeper than the big ones we used to buy in Spain, but considering it taste just like I remember and didn't involve me frying potatoes all afternoon, I was sold. This sent me down Memory-of-food-I-ate-in-Spain Lane which caused me to remember (how could I forget?) that I bought this when we day-tripped to Germany:

That's right, Salsa de Pina y Curry! (Which also cost me an ojo de la cara, but who cares!) I will be eternally thankful to Kate for introducing me to what is definitely my all-time favorite salad. It consists of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), white beans, red bell pepper and avocado mixed together with a pineapple curry sauce. Eaten with potato chips it will change your life. Yum.

So here I present you, the best lunch a girl could ask for:

More on my the rest of my cooking adventures later.