So first up...Music Class! Last Friday Autumn and I started our "Mommy & Me" music classes at La Chaise Musicale. We had heard about the class from a fellow blogger who took her daughter there a few years back. I was quite nervous about the class because it is in French and I wasn't sure if the teacher or anyone would speak English. I practiced for days leading up to it how to introduce myself and Autumn to the class in case that was asked of us. When we arrived the teacher came to greet us at the door and was talking very quickly in French. I sort of just nodded along until she finally stopped and then sheepishly replied with my favorite phrase "no parle Francais." She said "ok" and then continued right along in French. Ha! I guess since I said I didn't speak French - in French - she thought I knew some...not so much. Finally my blank stares did the trick and she switched to English for me. She then said "I'm going to teach the class in French" and I said "yes, of course, no problem...we'll just follow along the best we can." When we got into the room the other mothers were so welcoming and all spoke very good English so that was a relief! The class is very small...only 4 other mothers so it is easy to relax and get to know everyone...even when I don't understand what they are saying to each other. Autumn was quite shy in the class at first, but once we got going she really enjoyed it...she was dancing...going up and interacting with the teacher...and even singing to herself at the end. I think we are really going to like it!! We even made a new friend, one of the Mom's Barbara and her son Mateo were heading our direction on the way home so we walked and talked together. She is from Argentina and moved here to be with her now husband. Today we talked about getting together sometime soon for a play date! So we are very much looking forward to that!
On to topic number 2...working again....haha, I'm sure you're thinking I'm really working again, but I'm really just referring to the "Nearly New Sale" the Brussels Childbirth Trust put on last weekend. It is a children's resale event held twice a year by the Mommy's group we joined. Ali and I signed up to work the sale so we could have first dibs on the goodies! I was really hoping to find some cheap shoes for Autumn as she is just about to outgrow all the ones we have for her, but unfortunately the shoes in her size were really lacking at the sale. We did get some new fun toys and clothes though! All in all I think it was a success...and I would totally work it again if the timing works out. It was kind of nice to get out of the house and do something too while Autumn and Dad had some 1-on-1 time. They even took a bike ride in the beautiful weather we were having! The toughest part of the day (aside from people at the sale thinking I spoke French...I'm telling ya, it sucks to not speak the language here!) was a marathon/half marathon going on in Brussels. Many street were closed...including ours! So Ali had to find an alternate route for us, but we made it! Here is a pic from our window of the runners...we went and cheered for them for a bit because I felt bad that they didn't have anyone cheering them on!!
Last up...the Mountains...The "Ardens" are a beautiful mountainous region of Belgium that we attempted to visit last Saturday. I had seen in a magazine published by my Mommy group that a few towns down by the Ardens were having a "Wallonia Weekend" going on that day (Wallonia is the southern part of Belgium...where the main language is French). We picked two of the towns and set out to find the fun festivals they were promising. First up was Sambreville...where we could "ogle at exotic tortoises"...that sounded like something Autumn would really like. We drove to the city center, parked, ate some lunch we had packed and headed out to explore. Unfortunately what we found was NOTHING!! We looked all over the small town and could not find any sort of event! We even asked a nice gentleman that spoke English and he pretty much looked at me like I had two heads when I asked where the turtles were. So we decided to set out to our second town Neufchateau...were you could "enjoy face painting or story telling." The drive to this town was very pretty...we even stopped to take a few pictures at a World War landmark we stumbled across.
But as we pulled in to our second town we quickly concluded that once again, the only thing going on in this tiny town was a family moving or something. It was basically a ghost town...except one large family out on their front lawn...we joked "that must be it," but knew we had come up short once again. I was kinda disappointed that we had spent almost the entire day in the car chasing fun activities that we could never find. As you can see in the pictures it was absolutely amazing out and we spent most of it driving around...it was kind of a bummer! And last weekend was pretty much the end of that nice weather too...fall has definitely arrived...the temperature has dropped a good 20 degrees and it's around 50-60 now and the grey skies are back. Oh well, we'll make the most of it...and will look forward to seeing blue sky again next Spring!
Stay tuned next week as we have an exciting weekend planned...that I will tell you all about next week!!
Oh Maureen, your turtle story is TOO funny! It sounds like it was an adventure, if nothing else.
ReplyDeleteI hope you had a great weekend! Can't wait to hear about it. :)