the hills are alive....

My dear friend Jennifer, who studied abroad in Salzburg, Austria last year, returned there for this Christmas break. Since all the students here are busy with exams and will literally do nothing, I decided to go to Salzburg for the weekend and see her. We had soooo much fun! She hired her old cultural director (Andreas) to be our tour guide on Saturday....and apparently he had so much fun he called us on Sunday just to hang out!

For those of you who do not know, Salzburg is the home of Mozart and the home of the Van Trapp story and family. (aka...Sound of Music). We walked and hiked and walked all weekend to see every single inch of Salzburg. With the added "new age/energy" philosophy of our Andreas (apparently he has recently discovered American motivational speaker Tony Robbins. He practices everything Tony says!) and his incredible love for all things Sound of Music (including song) ....we had quite a good time and came home with stories of Salzburg and Andreas that will make me laugh for years.

The real Van Trapp house

The trick fountains (covered in snow)

The real gazebo

Jennifer and crazy Andreas

Dancing on a frozen lake....dancing=dopamine. Dopamine=happy. (or so Andreas said)

The gate the children stood at asking to see Maria

Maria's real Abbey

Overlooking Salzburg

The grave of Mozart's wife and parents

Mozart's birth house

The Holidays linger forever....

The holidays seem to linger longer here. Maybe its because people put there Christmas trees up later....but many homes and places around town still have their Christmas tress up and Christmas lights lingering in the windows and streets. Here are just a few more pictures of different holiday things we did with students and friends.

Sheila's Parents came to Brussels for Christmas.

Christmas Day with the Wilbanks' Children

Christmas Vacations 2010

Christmas come and gone. It seems a bit unreal that I already spent the first Christmas away from Oklahoma. Christmas break started, Sarah went home to California for Christmas, and I went to Switzerland for a bit of Skiing. I went with about 15 other people to Aldenbodon, Switzerland. After a 12 hour car ride (that google said was 7), we made it safely to our Chatel and realized I will never commit to a road trip with a breast feeding enfant!

The trip was amazing...the mountains were beautiful....the snow was amazing...literally all you could see was white! We skied for 4 days and were incredibly sore and bruised at the end of them. The first day I went off skiing alone and got incredibly lost. I found myself literally in chest high snow and I thought to myself "this is how people die in the mountains!". After 45 minutes of literally swimming through snow, I found myself back along the guided path. I learned my lesson and found a ski buddy the rest of the trip. Nothing broken or hurt....it was a very productive trip. The Alps lived up to all I had imagined!

Christmas Markets!

Christmas time in Brussels is amazing! The week of Thanksgiving they put up rows of Christmas markets that stay up all month long. The markets sell everything from food, to clothes, to random Belgian specialities that are perfect for Christmas. In addition to the markets they set up an ice skating rink, a huge ferris wheel, sledding, and the entire Grand Place is lit up and produces this amazing light show every evening. It is cold and everyone is bundled up and everyone has a hot drink in their hand! It really feels like Christmas! Here are a few pictures from Ice Skating with our friend Joana last weekend.

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving! We did it 3 times this weekend!

The best one by far was with our friends from Cafe Anglais. We invited them all over to Terry and Sheila's house and provided, for most of them, their first Thanksgiving meal ever. We looked all over Brussels and finally found a whole 16 lbs turkey Saturday morning. We ate and ate and ate.....shared what Thanksgiving is all about and got to hear what all the students were thankful for too. It was awesome to bring all our Cafe Anglais(ers) together and watch them all become friends!

Friends

Its been forever :) Normal life has been busy and filled with amazing things! However in the midst of all that craziness we had two friends from our training time in Virginia stop off and visit us. Our friend Hannah who is living in Mali, West Africa came to Brussels for a week on her way back to Mali from the states. It just so happened that our friend Amber in Milan had already bought tickets to visit us for a few days as well. We had a ton of fun roaming the streets and eating all the Belgian specialities!

the Wildcats

Most of you know that Sarah and I got new supervisors back in August. They are here from Paris for just 1 year and are absolutely fabulous! Since their arrival, they have changed our time here. They have brought tons of passion, energy, vision, and excitement for the work here in Brussels. But with them they also brought 2 girls that are FULL of life! During our first meeting with them, they quickly decided that Sarah and I should be called the Wildcats and somehow it stuck and now Terry, Sheila, and most of the Brussels team knows us and refers to us as "the Wildcats".

A few weeks back we had a "High School Musical Marathon", in which we watched all 3 movies in one day. We then played a version of pin the tail on the donkey, volleyball over a line of streamers with a package of tissue, and "troy says" ....all for Mary Kay prizes!

Also a few weeks ago I had them here at our apartment and the oldest was looking at pictures in my room. As she scanned the pictures and saw different boys she said "which one do you like?"...(she is 8...the other is 4). Because I love stuff like this, I gathered pictures and gave her 5 choices of boys and asked both of the girls which one they thought was the cutest. The oldest chose boy number 4....the youngest chose boy number 1. As we left my apartment, the oldest looked at me and said "Christie...this is what you have to do.....You need to send him an email tonight and ask him "Do you want to be more than BFF?" She paused for a second and then said "If you don't send this email, you will be 40 with a cat. Now do you want to be 40 with a cat Christie?" haha.....I have yet to send the email!

Here are a few pictures of a harmless afternoon with them and what we let them do!