Festivals, BBQ's, and Chocolat

Good morning, everyone!  Looks like I have a lot to catch up on today :] I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.

This morning, I went for a jog. It was a short one, only 15 minutes, but it was amazing.  It was about 55 degrees out (we have a high of 62 today, yay!) and it felt sooo nice.  My body loves running in Belgium. haha  However, my lungs were burning up a storm and I'm not sure if it was from not having ran in a couple of weeks or from the copious amounts of cigarette smoke I had to run through at 9:30 in the morning.  Everyone here seems to smoke all day long; I thought the KU campus was bad...not compared to Europe!  Anyways, it felt good to move my body and run up hills.  I did get some strange looks from people so I'm guessing not a lot of people just run through the streets for fun here.  I've probably seen one person out and about jogging through town since I got here.  Maybe everyone goes to a gym instead; I'd rather be outside as much as I can while it's so nice.

So this weekend provided a lot of firsts for Tyrel and me!  We gave in and bought some of Belgium's best known products.  Friday we went to the store to get groceries in case we weren't able to go Saturday because of the festival and since it's closed on Sunday.  We asked one of his teammates (Stephane) who is from Belgium what he recommended.  He said Cote d'Or and Milka are good, but Milka was white chocolate and we wanted the "black" kind as he described it, so we picked up a Cote d'Or milk chocolate.

It was REALLY delicious.  It had just a little bit of a difference in the chocolate taste than other milk chocolate I've had.  However, I do feel a little bit cheated.  This chocolate originated in Belgium and was locally made, but it has been bought out by Kraft.  I read this after we bought it and tasted it.  So while it IS a Belgian chocolate, I want to try one from a local confectioner.  Then I'd really feel like I had something completely authentic.  The chocolate's symbol, the elephant, is there because of the special cocoa beans they got from Africa to make the chocolate.

Another little Belgian treat we had this weekend was a vendor waffle.  We've had the ones from the store, as I posted a few days ago, and those are really good...but still not as good as the vendor waffles!

They are flaky and pastry like; so soft and tender on the inside and flaky and sugary on the outside!  They are like little pieces of Belgian Heaven.  Tyrel was wowed and felt like he could have eaten about 5 or 6. haha But for real...mmm...so delicious.  We only got the plain waffle (sucre), but I'm sure we'll test out a few more while we're here.  I discovered that they put "pearl sugar" in the waffle batter, which is like big chunks of sugar; it creates the crunch on the outside and syrupy flavor on the inside.  I found a website that describes a couple different types of waffles you can get here in Belgium and the recipes; it was really interesting (Waffle Site!). And another one that had the measurements in what we're used to (Easy Recipe).  I didn't bring my really awesome waffle maker that Tyrel bought me a while ago, so I can't really try these out until I come home sometime...so you guys should test-drive them and let me know how they are!!! They said pearl sugar is hard to come by outside of Belgium, but you could used broken up sugar cubes.

I also feel that as I've accepted my cooking situation here, my meals have progressively gotten better.  I'd say I'm a decent cook, so Tyrel is pretty happy haha Here's a picture of how I usually have our little baby kitchen set up while I'm making messes :]

It's actually pretty clean at this point! Our sink is tiny so I've learned I have to clean every dish as I go when I'm cooking here.  I make a TON of chicken and pasta, Tyrel's favorites, so he has no room for complaints.  He could eat that every day of the week.

We went to the music festival a lot this weekend.  On Saturday, we had to go down to the team tent and the guys had to sign autographs and talk to some of the fans.  The problem was, most of the fans only speak french...the majority of the guys only speak english! But they made it work; there were these two little boys that were completely star-struck and so cute around the basketball players.  By the way, it looks like Tyrel will be #13 this year!  In high school, he was #12 his sophomore through senior year, and of course you all know he was #14 at KU.  Lets hope he gets used to writing 13 instead of 14 or there will be a lot of confused people out there! Back on to the festival.....we walked around a lot and laughed hearing english songs sung in french or people with french accents singing them in english.  All of the food smelled amazing, but we tried not to waste our money on a lot of junk food.  There was a good amount of people out this weekend and the festival went pretty late; I think until 2 AM or so.  Here's a picture of one of the stages set up that was right outside of our apartment:

Tyrel and I also took this weekend as an opportunity to walk around our town a little more.  There are some really beautiful sights and I'm loving it more and more each day.

All the green makes me so happy!

This is right next to a round-a-bout close to our apartment.

This was kind of on top of a hill and we wanted a decent view of the city.  At the time, I didn't realize those people were waving in the picture!

This is what's on top of the stairs.

The train station in Verviers.

A War Memorial.  It was really cool; Dad and Papa Reed, you guys would probably like this. 

I just thought this building was very european looking and wanted a picture. haha There are advertisements EVERYWHERE and all over buildings so I was excited to get a picture of a building that didn't have any.

This was right inside the gates to a public park we walked through.

A gazebo in the park.  Very pretty :]

It was really a great weekend and we had fun doing kind of whatever we wanted to do.  Yesterday (Sunday), we had a barbecue with the team.  One of the head supporters had all of the guys and me over for lunch; it was so nice of them to open up their house and welcome us all in.  It was funny, because they told us to bring our swimsuits and we're all thinking "Dude, you are crazy, it is 60 degrees out!" But we found out when we got there that they have a heated pool.  Where they live is outside of the town and so gorgeous; I really wanted to take some pictures but it was hard to get good angles from their porch.  Their house was amazing, too.  It was one level but it was pretty big and decorated how you'd think a european house would be decorated.  I don't know how to describe it, but it was charming and sort of shabby-chic; though, everything was really nice in it.  I also got to meet Tyrel's coach's wife; she was really nice and I'm looking forward to getting to know her better.  I feel like if I have any questions about anything, she'd be more than willing to help.  

All in all, we've had a good first week in Belgium.  Today also marks us being married for exactly one month! Woo! It feels like our wedding was so long ago, but still only a week ago.  I couldn't be more blessed with an amazing husband who works his body hard all day to provide for us.  He's not just over here for a 10 month long vacation, he's actually working.  He's in the gym most of the day working hard for me so that we can someday go to KU Med.  Hopefully, I can hold up my end on this whole homemaking thing ;]  

Love you all  Have a great Monday.  The Lord is good!