A Tale of Lightning and Urine

You might be a bit taken aback by the title of my blog, but I assure you that in the end it will all make sense. I will start with the Lightning. On Monday night Oli and I went to sleep to the sounds of thunder and the flashes of lightning; we expected the storm would pass and that would be it, but we were wrong. BANGGGGG was the sound that woke both of us up out of a dead sleep just past 4am on Tuesday and there were bright flashes of lightning that lit up the entire bedroom. The storm was still going and harder than when we went to sleep. We did our best to get back to sleep and we woke up just past 6 to start the day. I started working at VBS (Vacation Bible School) on Monday and I had a great time working with the kids and I was excited to have my 2^nd day. The storm was continuing when we woke up and being new to Belgium I didn’t want to take the chance of driving in the heavy rain and the storm when I didn’t know the roads that well and I despise driving in the rain anyway. I called the woman who is in charge of the VBS and left her a message telling her to inform my Games Station partners that I would be unable to attend. I am happy that I didn’t attempt to drive in the crazy. There was A LOT of flooding, mud slides, fallen trees, and everything else that comes with a crazy storm.  At one point the sky had gotten darker than at night it was intense and the thunder rumbled most of the morning until the afternoon when it suddenly got hot and sunny like there hadn’t been a storm at all.

Today was a nice day. We awoke to a calm atmosphere and the day was nice with spots of sunshine. The kids at VBS are so funny. There are the younger kids who are 4-5 years old and then there is the older pre-teen group. We have to change some of the games around to accommodate the younger ones who would just be confused and for the older ones who would just be bored. The little ones can be crazy when playing the games, but so attentive when it comes to the lesson. The older ones were more into chatting. I am enjoying being out of the house and I am quite proud of myself making the long drive to church. The only issue with the drive is that there is major roadwork being done on one of the freeways I need to take and that really slows it down. It should take me 30 minutes to get there and today it took me an hour. Getting home Monday it took me 2 hours to get home, but today only an hour.

Speaking of the drive home I saw a man pulled over today while I was in traffic and he was literally urinating on the side of the road not even trying to hide what he was doing. He was the 4^th person I saw urinating in public in Belgium. The last two times I was in Brussels I literally saw it happen 3 other times and they were all not discreet at all and just peed. Today after I saw that I knew I had to write about it and then later today more pee. I was loading the laundry into the car and an older woman was sending her grand child who looked to be about 4 over to the bushes so he could pee. I figured that it wasn’t something that was discouraged because if a grandmother is letting a little boy pee in public then the people of Belgium really must not care. I asked Oli about it this evening and he said even though it is illegal most don’t care and if they have to go they will just pee and don’t mind being discreet at all. To me it is the lack of public toilets. At home in the States you can just walk in a store and use the restroom as long as there is not a sign stating that it is for “Customers Only”. Here most stores seem to not have restrooms and when you do find a public toilet there is an attendant and you have to pay for it. You literally have to pay to pee! I guess I have to get used to this peeing in public thing, it is super odd just to see someone being so brave and peeing in public. So that is my tale.