It's the final countdown

So it's Spring. And I'm very happy. I don't leave the house anymore without my camera. I'm so excited to wear shoes without socks again, and have bleeding feet for the next 6 months.
But really. I love nature.
So General Conference starts in 15 minutes. I have windows for KSL and BYU TV open, and I'm ready to hit the 'Download Live' button as soon as my computer clock turns to 6:00PM. GC till midnight! Gotta love time differences With a 2 hour break in between, no worries people.
I remember as a kid in Belgium my parents would actually dust off the satellite dish for conference, and after much cussing (dang, fetch...) we'd finally get the familiar message: "This is the English Language Channel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. If you are having technical difficulties, please call the number listed in your operator instructions."
I think I must have been about 7 or 8 years old when I had remembered this whole thing by heart. My English was prefect back then.

My parents would tape these conferences, and I'd listen with a half an ear in the kitchen, painting. Aaaaah...memories.

and now we are back in Antwerp, watching GC on my big screen laptop. aaah...i'm feeling all pioneer-y.

let's just hope my Internet is not going to explode.

One of my poems. you will be disappointed

Untitled 1

Time in the from of sand
gently flies across the beach.

The reduced mountains mingle with the fractured shells
carrying the memory of a life long past.

Time of all colors conjoints
waiting to be stroked by the breeze of the morning.

Being accosted by Oxfam

The other day I decided to show that my heart is in the right place, so I decided to buy some juice at Oxfam.

Now, that morning I had already noticed some Oxfam people in the street, holding clip boards, dressed for a long day out in the cold. Usually I can avoid these people because I listen to Nel (ipod), and because the collar of my coat has fur on it, which apparently gives me some kind of Cruella de Ville appearance. That, or just speak really loud in Flemish on my cellphone. (that worked in Provo too)

Anyway, I'm walking over to the Oxfam store to buy some juice. ipodless.
Now, if you are aware of the fact that there are Clip Board Ninjas out on the street, you should NEVER leave your house ipodless.
But you know, I'm going to buy something at Oxfam anyway, so I shouldn't feel bad about giving these people the cold shoulder. I mean, I rather buy some Bolivian juice, then give a stranger my bank account number.

So as I'm walking over the little plaza, an Oxfam Clip Board Lady approaches me.
Crap, here it goes. But hey, if I don't respond to them, they'll just leave me alone. Right?

My friends, these people have never learned about the etiquette of Street Clip Boarding. Cuz when she started talking to me, she noticed she wasn't going to get the desired response, so she put her foot in front of me, causing me to nearly plunge my face into the cobblestones. Before I even had found my balance, she had me pretty much cornered, and virtually shoved the Oxfam Pen up my nose.

I'm not sure how I managed to escape from her, but it was an escape that every football player should be jealous off. Maybe Antwerp-life has trained me to fend off Clip Board People.

So you can imagine why I was a bit annoyed when I reached the store. Good thing that my sole purpose at Oxfam was to support the Bolivian man. Cuz they know their juice down there. At least the lady behind the counter gave me a plastic bag to carry my bottles in.

gosh.

Of Cornet de Pates and Ellen

so today i saw the king of Belgium and the duke of Luxembourg.

3 feaking times.

funny that it was me. i would have gladly passed the opportunity to someone else.

Why do people care so much about a monarchy? I mean, it's not like seeing The Whites Boy Alive live or something. :-)

Walloons really seem to care more about the monarchy then the Flemish. When I was sitting in Dutch grammar this morning, we could occasionally hear "Vive le roi!" coming from the street.

but hey...I respect people's choice. If people enjoy being royalty watchers, they have every right to do so. If only my tax money didn't go to paying for the Royal's diaper expenses...

anyway, so there was this little folkloristic play that the locals put on for the King and Co (and also for the general public, but we go to stand in the muddy grass). There were some people that dressed up in medieval clothing. There were some men in, what I guess was a True-Namuroise Native Dress, and then some (I think) honor students of the FUNDP. Oh, and there was also a little fanfare, and the youngest member was (I swear) 83, along with a color guard. No, the youngest member of the color guard wasn't 83, but it came pretty close. Oh, and by color guard I mean 5 people with flags.

then, when I was trying to make my back to my studio, I was stopped by the police, because the King and Co were making their way into the City Hall. Behind police lines were about 100 little Walloon children waving Luxembourg and Belgian Flags.

so, since there was no way of escaping the folklore, i decided to participate and I got a Cornet de Pates (I know there is supposed to be an accent on the 'a', but I'm typing on an qwerty, and I'm too lazy to figure it out). See, i think a CdP is the coolest thing in the world. I didn't know this existed until i moved to Namur. But seriously, the idea of eating pasta on the go, out of a paper cup that one puts in the microwave for a few minutes just blows my mind! now THAT'S what i call culture and folklore!
I might try and introduce this at BYU. Maybe i can get ellie to join...

anyway, the rest of my day was pretty boring. I went to A's house in Namur to work on our dutch project, along with the 3rd member of our group M. We/I got a lot done.

I seriously loathe group projects with a fiery passion of a thousand suns.

Pumpkinsoup is good for the photographer's soul

it's late and i'm too tired to think, so i'm just going to upload some pictures i took today.

I didn't notice the crack in the window after I had uploaded the pictures, which make them 4 times as cooler. love live neglected student studio's!

It seems like everytime I express a thought on this blog, someone blogs about it as well

My post

Segullah's post

happy.

bombarded by blogs

So i relized today in dutch grammar that i've blogged a lot over the years. Xanga, Skyblog, Myspace...No i'm not going to post links, because i'm too ashamed....ahum...It's amazing how much one can change in between the years of 14 and 18.

So i've decided, since i have SOOO MUCH time on my hands with school, cleaning up the house, taking care of the elderly, fending off unwanted creatures...it would be a wonderful idea to gather the flock of blogs into a chronoglocial word document and eventually print them all off.

wow, that was a very ungrammatical sentence.

Little Miss Sunshine

So over the weekend I saw Little Miss Sunshine. And I'm in love. Despite the fact I was sitting next to my mom who thought this movie was just a nice comedy, I saw it as more life altering. It was like:'hey-this-is-how-I-experience-life-at-times' movie. Well, I'm not really in the mood to summarize the plot and get in trouble with copyright laws, so I'm just going to post this annoying video I found on youtube.Oh, and the scenes they selected actually aren't the best ones. But this will help for the plot:



So yeah. I love this movie. I love the shots in it. And I love the symbolism. Seriously though, life really is a yellow, broken down hippie van, and you need all the people you can get to push it into 3rd gear.
AND...nevermind...

So just ignore the swearing for a while and take a look at one of the most symbolic/sad/beautiful scenes of the whole move:



Ok, ok! Just one more little clip! It kind of defines the whole movie.



1. I'm afraid this is what's going to happen to the Volvo. Except the Mid-West scenery will be traded in for a muddy Belgian road.
2. I love how The-Guy-In White gets a push by The-Guy In-Yellow. *tear smile tear* Man, I'm so hormonal.

And I could go on and on. Seriously, I found another great scene on youtube, (that i rewinded back about 20 times) but I don't want to ruin it all.

So go see it kids! Or rent the movie. And then go on a doughnut run. And listen to Norah Jones.

Testimony Theorization

You know what's bad? Wondering if you have a Testimony.

Compared to other people, you may say I don't. I've never giving my testimony (ok, in seminary, but that might have been a spiritual form of peer pressure). And I hardly show any physical emotional outbursts in church, or any church related activity. But I have a Testimony.

It seems to me, that we have this idea that a Testimony has to be 'perfect.'
There have to be certain steps, certain processes that we have to go through, before we can call our Testimony real.
It's done unconsciously of course. I think one of the problems with this, is that we as humans have a need to express ourselves to others (says the blog-addicted girl...). We always need to explain to people WHAT exactly things are like. And I think, one starts to question their [in this case] Testimony, if it doesn't match up to the dominant example.
I think, that if one has a Testimony, that there is no possible way to express this through words. After all, a Testimony, to me, is a very spiritual manifestation, projected through our actions here on Earth. And then we must always keep in mind that we are humans, and far from perfect.
That's why people cry. Happiness makes you cry. But, there are always those few people who don't cry. Who are just...different. Just like the people who do cry.

I know I have a Testimony. I know I do. I may not be perfect, but I know I have a Testimony. And I may not have all the knowledge I need. I may not know all the things I need to know. But the things that I do know, I have faith in.

Viedejo!

It's even better if you watch it twice:

Silence

Has it been awfully quiet in your lives as well? Mine has been. Well, I guess no news is good news. Seriously though, nothing blog-worthy has been happening. Maybe I'll post something in the future.

The weather has been improving! Now it only rains 5.5 out of the 7 days of the week! Yesterday was a gorgeous day. You really can tell people are enjoying it. The good-human in them resurfaces. Well, it's raining again today. can't have everything in live.

and agh! I'm on such a shopping spree! Seriously, the prospect of it almost being spring and being warm makes me go out and buy skirts and sandals.

I'm going to back to utah in 5 months!