Our adjustment to life in Belgium began here - in an old (1930s) farmhouse, later purchased, renovated, and turned into rental property by our landlord.

The house had its points, good and bad.  One we could never quite categorize was the presence of our own little lake to play in after every rainstorm, which meant about 3 days out of four...

The train in the background, which looks quite close, is just that...  There were four train tracks there, on which ran all the passenger trains between Brussels and Antwerp (and cities beyond, including the Thalys high speed train which ran from Paris to Amsterdam), but it unfortunately also included all the freight trains between those cities, and of course freight trains aren't restricted to daytime hours in the same way as passenger trains are.  I grew up in a house which was on the flight path for JFK airport, but that noise was nothing like this.


Belgium, though, is a land of bicycles, and we quickly adjusted to this:

Karen could get both kids on her bicycle, which, unlike the United States, where you would almost never see someone with one child on a bicycle, finding people here with two children on a bicycle is not really that unusual.  The trailer, however, is somewhat unusual, and we've only seen one or two other people with such a contraption.  We thought the trailer would be much more useful, but it makes the bicycle a little unwieldy, and the kids don't like it quite so much, so we normally just bundle the kids on the bicycle.

Of course, there are some things which never change...

Lydia's first tooth!  She was thrilled about the picture...	John sleeping soundly with sheep (who's fallen out of favor recently)
The North Carolina family!  Presents sent to us by Mark's cousin, just to remind us of where we came from.

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