Tuesday, May 12, 2009

I'm alive and well.

I'll apologize to everyone for the recent month long outage.  Here's the deal:  I had to return to the US.  I last left with some words about an equine delicacy and a big french mess.  Immediately following an extended work session I went to deal with "visa stuff," only to learn that 7 days later I would be escorted out of the EU back to the US.  I basically had to rush to get all the paperwork done in Brussels that could get done there and then fly back and WAIT until my visa was ready.  

That brings me to a month of silence.  I'm sure it was based on a little disappointment that I had to cut my adventure a little short with a hiccup but in addition I didn't have many exciting things to write about.  Since I've returned every day is Saturday.  It is a wonderful break, but not one I was prepared for so it wasn't entirely welcome.  I will shortly write an update on what I've done while I was home.  It will mostly be about the disgusting but necessary food items I've digested while home.  But I will be scaling back my writing a little bit.  Once I return to Brussels (on May 21st) I'll be there for almost a year and it won't be as "new" as it was in January.  I'm still going to be as American as possible and maintain a healthy amount of exploration into embarrassing myself.  But I will only be writing 3-4 times a week.  I plan to write M-W-F and the occasional weekend.  This will allow me time to prepare and set up pictures and such.


I've also been a bit silent about the whole deal because I didn't want to write about how I "hoped" things were going.  Today the final piece of the puzzle (working permit) was completed.  I will be turning in the final paperwork for a Visa by the end of the week and returning to Brussels Visa in hand.  What you see in the image (which is a little small) is a piece of paper that says I can work in Belgium for up to ONE year.  I need to renew if I stay beyond that.  I'll explain a lot more about how this works in a following post as this is more of a teaser.  I will also be writing a post soon detailing all the 'catching up' I have done in the US as well as leaving Belgium shenanigans.  I'll say this much, 8 hours in Dulles Airport is not awesome.