We moved to Belgium in the summer of 2009. We decided to live near the St John's international School in Waterloo. From our history lessons we know what happened in Waterloo with Napoleon. It's an historical area, with just outside Waterloo the lion on a hill, exactly where the battle took place in 1815. It is still for us a big surprise that the battleground is symbolised by a an artificial hill with a lion on top. The lion is in honour for William of Orange (Willem II) who got injured there. The battle was won by Wellington (yes the guy from the boots...). He also has a statue in Waterloo. On the parking lot, between the cars for the visitors that all climb the hill to look at the lion. Most people do not even known there is a statue for Wellington.

Every 5 years they play the battle in the fields around the lion.

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We lived on Avenue du Belier and as you can see the house is beautiful with a huge garden. Since we do not have green fingers, we should have realised that such a big garden looks nice but is very hard to maintain. We had a sit-on grass mower to help us and the children loved it.

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Waterloo is frenchspeaking. This should be translated into that most locals speaks French and English. Also most speak Dutch, until they notice that you are Dutch, than suddenly all Dutch and English is forgotten. So we always pretended to be English when we went shopping.

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Waterloo is on the ring of Brussels, a little bit on the South of Brussels. The ring road around Brussels was already there when Rob went on his first holiday when he was 5 years old to Luxembourg. And it has not been upgraded since. Every day traffic jams on the way to the office for Rob. It is one of the few countries where highways are with lights. Until these lampposts started collapsing during a storm. It turned out that they were corroded and since then, they were regularly checked. When corroded they were not removed, not replaced but simply cut short and a garbage bag was put around them.

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Since we lived very close to the Netherlands we often went to visit our families. Our start in Belgium was not easy. First Vivienne's Mum fell from a chair in the Netherlands and had serious brain bleeding. This meant that Vivienne went very often home to the Netherlands. When her Mum started to get stable and better, Viv was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

 

Robin and Jack finished their IBprogram here. Robin moved to Maastricht when we left for Finland and Jack stayed with the Ahmad Family to finish his last IB year. 

 

We had some great events in Belgium. It already started just after we arrived when my colleague Geert invited me and one of the children to a football match at KV Mechelen. When we were there Hugo was asked to do the kick off of the match. We also went to Studio 54 at Sportpaleis Antwerp. This was a fantastic event where everybody is dressed up to the extreme in Disco outfits. We have never ever seen so many limo's arrive at 1 location. 

And then of course "Het Witte Paard" in Blankenbergh at the Sea where we went to an original Revue Show with an atmosphere as mix of a Beerfest and a Revue.

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We've been a few times to Pukkelpop with the children, this is similar as Rock Werchter. Maan rock in Mechelen was also very special as we were back stage and even half on stage.