Housewarming party on Saturday night- was a great night, lots of people and no major disasters!

Sophie, Kathleen and David, and their New Zealand sheepskin gift
At the bar
Mathijs, Dorien and Liesbeth catch up on university gossip
Fernando, Katrijn, Els and Stephanie
Dustbuster from work colleagues!

Chris the magnificent mojito maker

20 degree autumn

Parul and me are back at work after two days of biking around Amsterdam. Can't believe how many bikes with storage space: bakfietsen we saw there, we need one !!!

A warm, long, exciting and memorable weekend

Its Monday morning, and I am still recovering from the absolutely lovely weekend we've had.
Amy came to visit for four days, on her round the world trip, from Tokyo, and on her way to Zurich. It was great to see her and spend time with her, that didn't happen at the wedding last year. We chatted, walked, saw the sights, shopped for a wedding hat and a daypack, ate yummy things and baked in the sun. On Friday night Jeroen and I got good news, so the weekend was extra special. Saturday we had our favourite breakfast at the fresh food market and at night I had my first test run at Mmmmh. I noticed lots of mistakes, but the others were happy, so I guess it went well. The first workshop is on 26 September. On Sunday we went to Brussels for a Mussels and Beer festival... I think I am starting to appreciate mussels :-)

also met up with Karan and Alina (who are getting married in India in Oct 2006), Zoe and some of her friends. Amy had to leave for the airport at 4pm (after a mad dash to the train station, lost tickets and found tickets!) and we came back to Antwerp. The weather was still great, so we biked to Mortsel and had dinner in the garden with Jeroen's family.

A truly relaxed weekend :-)

aftersummer

while everyone has been complaining about a lousy summer we are now treated with a very summery week. It is great to be able to have dinner outside in a T-shirt.

Yesterday Parul's friend Amy arrived from Japan, oblivious to the exceptional nature of this summer-wave. Hope it stays on for a while!

 

skirting, what goes where?
jvh

Yay!

It worked!

Today is Wednesday, middle of the week, a good time to reflect on the first half gone by and the second half to come!
My boss is on holidays this week, well has been for the last two weeks, and though I had a lot of work to do, it has now all progressed to a stage where I need her input before finalising it, so twiddling my thumbs until she returns on Monday. Today I might start developing the template of a report due in December :-)

Yesterday we went to an AFS meeting where we picked up Kamilla, a Brazilian exchange student, who will stay for a year at Jeroen's parents. Poor thing was bloody nervous.. I wonder if I was the same when I was 17? Probably not :-)Should be interesting to see how well she fits in here...

This weekend I have a dry run for the cooking workshops I am going to give this year at Mmmmh! The dry run is for me to get to know the kitchen, the equipment and practice teaching to a group of people, though the group of people is other chefs teaching there, so not an easy crowd to please!

Sunday is autovrij zondag - Car free Sunday- in Antwerp. Will be fun if it doesn't rain.

Housewarming

Now that most of our boxes are unpacked, it's time to "warm" the house and do what I like best: throw a party!

The housewarming party is on Saturday 15 October. Hopefully we'll get some of the Londoners over.

I just discovered how to blog without having to post on the website each time! If this works, blog frequencies will drastically increase... inshallah!

Let's try this first...

cook here
jvh

study in this room
jvh

guestroom
jvh

room with bath
jvh

living the room
jvh

Honeymoon

Honeymoon was great! We went to the Atlantic coast, 100 kms from Bordeaux, and it was a warm, breezy 30 C everyday. This area was surprisingly well equipped for bikers- the bike paths even has roundabouts! So we hired bikes for the week, biked lots, ate lots and generally unwounded after a month of working in our new house.

I had to look up the address of the townhall in Berchem, where we have to register now and came accros the the colourful weaponshield of our new town. Apperently the three red stripes come from the king of Aragon, who gave them to the family Berthout who had protected him on three occasions.

But we live in a safe neighbourhood, I really enjoy having moved away from the centre in the protection of a street full of nice families. (We moved last weekend but before that we had already recieved a bottle of liquor from our neighbours.) Living closer to the station makes commuting by train to Brussels also so much more pleasant (read shorter).

too many holes
jvh

Lime paint or quince paint?

We started painting our house last week, as usually happens with renovations the work gets underestimated, so we spent the weekend just getting walls ready, plastering and sanding them. It is really satisfying actually to start touching up the place with the natural paint we selected. Here you see a trial in the bathroom, come and see which color made it.

The paperwork should be done end of this month so we can officially move in and start thinking of a housewarming party, this time in a real house.

We postponed the honeymoon plans because of our move, but latest plan is we'll take a week off in August and go to Bordeaux. Our wedding trip to India was planned a long time in advance so the honey moon destination remains open till the very end.

At home now relaxing after a nice evening at my parents place, we had dinner outside since summer has decided to come back after serious rainshowers and some cold days.

Going to join Parul who is ironing in front of the TV

toedels
J

Dadiji at our mehendi

I put this picture in memory af Dadiji, Parul's grandmother who passed away on Monday 19 June. Today there was a puja and prayer for her at the temple close to Parul's uncle's house in Delhi.

OBITUARY

	WITH PROFOUND GRIEF WE INFORM THE DEMISE OF OUR BELOVED MRS.VEENA GOEL ON 20.6.05 a PRAYER MEETING WILL BE HELD AT “MATA KA MANDIR” NEW FRIEND’S COLONY, NEW DELHI ON FRIDAY, 24.06.05 BETWEEN 5.30 AND 6.30 P.M.
24.08.1923 – 20.06.2005 Jagdish Saran Goel (Husband) Rajiv & Rekha (Son & Daughter-in-law) Jaishree & Chandra Mohan (Daughter & Son-in-law) Rakesh & Ranjana (Son & Daughter-in-law) Smt. Rajni Goel (Devrani) Pradeep & Rachna (Nephew & Wife) Grand children and Great Grand children

upstairs
jvh

the stairs...
jvh

downstairs
jvh