in the US

We landed in Philadelphia yesterday afternoon having survived an 8 1/2-hour flight from Brussels. We immediately experienced some authentic Philly culture in the form of a gravel-voiced waitress at a nearby diner (“What’ll ya have, sweet-haht“), where we got a quick burger-and-fries fix before sending Farrell back to the airport to fly to Colorado and …

our mini terrace

One distinctly unique behavior I noticed among my Belgian friends in Kyrgyzstan is that they were constantly talking about terraces. It’s sunny, let’s go sit on a terrace. We’ll order tea and beer and sit on a nice terrace. Farrell and I could never match their enthusiasm, especially in Bishkek where it was sunny most …

baby-centric Dutch

By the time I left Kyrgyzstan, my Russian was far from the fluent level I had dreamed of achieving when I first moved there. I will give myself credit though, for my taxi-Russian, my restaurant-Russian, and my Darwin-Russian. Babies are natural conversation starters, I find. Especially when Darwin was super small and squishy, strangers would …

house tour

To show you what a huge contrast this place is from the last place we lived in Bishkek (or any place, really, because plain white walls were a rare find in Bishkek). To show you what you could possibly rent for 760 Euros a month in Gent(brugge, technically just outside of Ghent). To have proof, …

should we buy a car?

Update! We bought a dang car. Thanks everybody for your responses! Quick post: help me, Internet. Give me your crowd knowledge. Here’s the situation. I got a job offer, and I’m patiently waiting for my work permit to come through. The job is in Bruges until mid-June, then it moves to Ghent. (Stay with me, …