Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Christmas

I'm almost headed off to the prophecy seminar, just wanted to post a few pictures from our Christmas events. It was nice being with family again. Christmas eve, we spent at my grandmother's place, and the traditional Christmas lunch took place at our house. Now as I can't see my folks all year round anymore, I enjoy it even more when I see them at these rare occasions, even though I don't really appreciate the commercial aspect of Christmas, and therefore would rather spend it quietly somewhere with friends.

Anyway, we had a blast. My cousin played the accordion, and my younger brother the flute. Of course I had to provide for my own menu, but all in all it was a blessing.

Flori and Antje playing
My brother and sister-in-law captivated by their eye-phones - hilarious!
My aunt Renate and uncle Hermann
Antje checking out her gifts
Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Christmas Caroling

The youth of our church had a special item on their programme this weekend. They went Christmas caroling at different homes of church members. Last year, they did this for the first time, and apparently it was a huge success. So this year, I decided to sign up as well. I actually considered it more an outreach event, and so I didn't expect them to only sing at my place. In fact, I sent out an e-mail to my neighbours inviting them to let me know if they are interested in having them sing. Only one lady replied saying that they would be glad to have them come to their house.

So all 20 participants (including children) arrived at my place and we had a great time. I think I've never had so many people in my living room, but it worked out well. They shared a few nice songs, munged on my cookies and pop corn, and then they went downstairs to also sing for my landlord. Then we went to the lady's house. They really liked their performance, and one of the men staying in that house also wanted them to sing for a friend of his who had his birthday. He only lived a few houses away, but the man figured that his friend was actually at the supermarket. So he ushered the whole crew to the store down the street, found his friend, and they started singing. It was good fun!

Our little intervention at the supermarket

And here is the little video I made.

And this is how my place looked like after the raid

So you never get bored with this church! The same evening, I also had a meeting with the responsibles of the other French speaking church concerning our Health Expo activities. After all, the training on children's Health Expo will already take place the second weekend of January; and then we need to find a place to do a public Expo (both for adults and children) somewhere in Brussels. I really hope it will work out. My biggest concern is the number of volunteers we will need. But the Lord will provide somehow, I'm sure.

Now I have to work only four more days and off I go to Germany. I'll be spending Christmas with my family, and then I'll be attending a one week prophecy seminar near Stuttgart. So my time in Germany will definitely not be boring. I would have wished to escape the winter again for a little while - just to get some warmth and sunshine in order to survive better until spring, but in February/March I'm going to spend a few weeks in the US, partly in California and Alabama, so this will probably be a nice compensation!

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Madou Tower

I'm not supposed to write about my work on this blog, but I'm just going to share about the building in which I work, so I suppose that this is ok (hoping that they will let me know if there is a problem ;-).

Anyway, it's already four weeks ago that we moved to another building, but only now do I find the time to blog about it. The background is that our growing Directorate-General has been spread out to several buildings, and although all of them only on walking distance from each other, this was obviously not an ideal situation. Thus, it has been decided to move the whole DG into a 32 story tower about 15 minutes walking distance from the previous buildings; and the colleagues currently occupying the tower moving into our buildings instead.

Of course this cannot take place all at once, so the maneuver already started this past summer, and is supposed to be finished by the spring of 2013. So about half of our Directorate had to pack their moving boxes last month, including our little task force.

Although it now takes me about five minutes longer to get to my office, I must say I like the new work place. It's more modern, and even the neighborhood is not as bad as I had assumed. I thought the next park would be too far away to get some recreational time during lunch break, but if I take a shortcut, it's actually not that remote. So far, the office situation is not ideal for us, since half of our team looks into the inside of an artrium with almost no sunlight (I don't know what kind of architect had this bright idea), but this situation will be remedied soon, and we will all have outside windows. We are on the sixth floor only, but if I want to see a beautiful sunrise/sunset, I can always go to a higher level. I actually look forward to that!

So all in all, I'm happy with the new situation. It's important to have a pleasant work place; you spend a lot of time there after all!

There are some other things I wanted to share, but I'm still behind with everything. I hope I can catch up in the next few weeks!

Madou Tower - view from my old office building
This is how my office looked like on the day I moved in
And a couple of weeks later - at my little Thanksgiving reception