My furnished place!

So my place is finally furnished, except for the mattress that still lives in the living room... I need some muscle to take it up the stairs... And it's awaiting visitors:) I also broke down all the 28 cardboard boxes for recycle pickup today, enjoy the pictures!

Wedding in Portugal

It was so nice to be in Portugal once again, if only for 4 days. My cousin was so happy at her wedding and it was really nice to see my family. And for those of you wondering, no I did not meet any cute prospective vriendin (got to practice my Dutch) at the wedding:P But I had fun, danced a lot, drank a lot:) It was also a great weekend, to see, smell and listen to the ocean again, eat fresh seafood from the daily catch at the street market, and just relax:)

Meanwhile I have two more stars at home to remind me of the White Mountains and our camping trips:) thanks Erin!


Soon I will have pictures of my humble abode with furniture! Still have to get the mattress up to my room, assemble the dinning table and break down and get rid of all the boxes.

The IKEA delivery saga comes to an end:)

So as promise here is a picture of the signs that you have to ask permission to put up so you can have a delivery look like. The orange car was not supposed to be parked there... We (the two delivery guys that only spoke French, the lady in the car that spoke English, Flemmish and French and I) called the police, they said they were sending a tow truck, two hours later a mounted (on bike) police arrives and I tell him that their help is not needed anymore, by then they had unloaded the truck (all the 28 packages to the third floor), I had gotten in a cab with the signs, had delivered them to the renting company and had got back by bike! I hope I never really need the police...

Baby seahorses and wrapping paper

Yesterday was a crazy day! First I jumped when I was about to leave home and the doorbell rang, it turned out it was the postman with a package full of star trek stickers for me:) You guessed where it came from! I loved everything that was in it and the apple cider mix warmed up my day, but I couldn't resist taking some pictures of the wrapping papers! Seriously! Where can you find wrapping paper that has dinosaurs and a quiz? That you actually scratch the answers and see smiley faces?? AWESOME!

Then I got to the lab and we had baby seahorses! This morning we had even more. I am not sure about the politics of sharing pictures from the lab so I will just upload this one.


Oh, and I ended up the day thinking that I would have to pay for a second IKEA deliver, since they did not let me reschedule. Fortunately, today after biking to the Police Parking offices on the other side of the city, reading a text in dutch to the receptionist, I was taken to a lady that actually spoke English and who told me that my permit to place parking signs for a parking ban had been issued and was on its way by snail mail and I had the go ahead to place the said street signs. So I biked again to another corner of the city and rented the huge no parking signs with the 20kg bases... Called a cab, of course... had to leave my bike there, and placed them at home. I forgot to take pictures but I really have to... I never heard of a country where to have a van deliver furniture you would need police authorization and had to rent signs and place them yourself! At least the permit was free, the signs... not so much. And then I walked to school, and managed to make it here by 10am! Today I was looking at more clear and stained specimens, pretty cool.

View from my apartment

Hi everyone,

Today is a gorgeous sunny day, if not chilly. So I took the opportunity to snap a picture of my kitchen view of Gent. I biked to the laundromat in the morning and now I am sitting by the window working on some applications for next year.

My bike!

Don't mind the impromptu rigging of my IKEA shopping:) The rest of my furniture gets delivered Thursday:)

My office and seahorses

So, what I really wanted was to post a pic of my amazing bikemobile:) but I keep forgetting to take a picture:( It's getting pretty cold here... 8C this morning, as you might have seen on facebook.

Meanwhile I started filming my seahorses and I can leave you with a picture of one. I also have some pictures of my office, including the zebra-like critter that someone that is visiting the lab from Rwanda gave me.

Blogging from my new apartment

Hi everyone!

I miss you all so much! I arrived in Gent last Sunday and this first week has been a whirlwind! Monday was by far the craziest day: picking up apartment keys and signing the lease, moving in, physical signing of the post doc contract, going to the lab, registering for Dutch classes (yes, because I was so lost during the day and resorted to speaking French with the power company) and going to my first Dutch class. So by the time I got home it was close to 10pm!

Tuesday was meeting with the boss to discuss a plan, going to retrieve my lost box of books in the middle of nowhere (I guess I forgot that the postman here is on a bike so they don't deliver big boxes that often) and after work a trip to IKEA (which turned out to be another adventure) by tram to get the basics for my place. Wednesday was a day to start working on data, returning some more paperwork to the real estate agency and 3h more of Dutch class at the end of the day. And today for the first time I got home before sunset. (It's getting pretty chilly in Belgium already... 10ºC overnight, that is 50ºF!) I tried to go to a 2nd hand furniture store, hoping to find nice book shelfs and side tables that I could paint in bright colors but everything in the store looked to be from before the WWII! Then I went to Brico, which should be the equivalent to Home Depot or Lowe's (or AKI in Portugal) and was soooo disappointed! I swear that plastic must be really expensive in Belgium! I couldn't find any trash can for less than 12euros! The store looked so cluttered and run down and I couldn't find an adjustable wrench or regular inexpensive screwdrivers! Seriously... It was a lost trip!

Some odd things I have found in this first week:

- in the department the ice machine is in the bathroom (which by the way is mixed),
- also in the bathroom there are really big signs saying not to steal the toilet paper, because if we do so the bathroom will stop having it!
- everyone eats "outside", rain or shine, if it is raining we go eat in the greenhouse!
- most of the people in the department eat sandwiches for lunch which consist of bread and a slice of ham or cheese
- cab drivers, cashiers and dining hall staff do not know a word of English or French
- most people in the department arrive after 9, leave before 5 and have an hour long lunch break!
- post docs think it is very common to be a post doc for many many years
- some beer companies offer free beer on the street
- In Dutch You is jij (it might be just me but isn't this the weirdest combination of letters?)

More to come soon!