Meet the bears party



The Girls- Malu, Me, Kathy, Lori



The boys, Tofi, Dior, and Jared



craziest, funnest, most insane ride i've ever
been on, it was at the fair
in downtown Leuven



Jared and Me at the Partay



The team held a huge publicity event on Tuesday night. It was pretty fun, (other than all of the speakers were in dutch). They introduced the team and after had a bunch of mingling and pictures. I've uploaded the video of Jared's introduction. Louis, the man speaking, is the team manager, and he was so proud that he was able to rhyme the whole intro.. even though he added some stuff.. like Jared is a fanatic reader.. which we all know is NOT true. hahaha. we laughed pretty hard.

After the party we went to downtown leuven and rode the ride.. it swung from side to side-- way high in the air, and turned you in circles. I was laughing SO hard at Jared and Dior.. who were both FREAKING out.

  

Another weekly update

Belgium is SO different than Utah.

This is a conversation from me and my mom on skype...

"Mom, It's just SO different here ," i whined while making a sad face...
"Stop COMPLAINING about how different it is and go out and enjoy the differences"

Best advice i've received since i got here.

A lot of your are probably thinking i'm crazy to complain.. i'm living the dream, right? Yes, at times it is sooooo much fun, when we can go out and explore. But you also have to remember that most days Jared is at practice all day and I am at home, which leads to me and my whining.

Although i still miss things like..

My Family

My dog, Leah (are you guys sick of hearing about Leah?)

Grocery stores that have instant food, that is still delicious so me and my lazy self don't have to actually THINK of meals to cook

Stores like Target, Wal Mart (yup I said it, cast your judgements haha) , Lee's and any other grocery store..

Restaurants like Costa Vida, Chili's, Bluebird Cafe, Olive Garden, etc..

A dryer that ACTUALLY dries clothes in less than an hour

My automatic car

my hair girl.. still haven't got my hair did..

I'm a BraT... and I miss these things, okay??..

I have found some things I love about belgium MORE than Utah.

Ice cream-- holy goodness. Delicious and cheap. need I say more

Waffles- Lori and I found the BEST waffles of the trip so far. thank you Knokke
** notice how I say trip-- it hasn't hit me that I LIVE here.

Chocolate- to die for

BEAUTIFUL buildings. everywhere. and sooo much history

a beach that is only 2 hours away- dear great salt lake-- you stink (literally)

random doors- every building/apartment has a cool door

Being in the middle of Europe and being so close to so many countries like the netherlands,
france, germany, england, italy, spain.. these are the places i want to visit most!

See Mom, my list is GrOWiNG, I promise.

As for Basketball it's been a roller coaster week again. They lost one game against Leiden, but Jared had 25 points! He is so amaz-z-zing! Then they won one against Zwolle. Both teams are from the Netherlands. Tonight is their last preseason game. I plan on posting his games on youtube once the season starts so that those of you who are interested can watch. The first game is October 2 at home.

Lori and I went to Knokke (pronounced Kah no kah.. i think) to watch them play zwolle. While there we went to the coast and saw the beautiful beach and sea! we looooved it. It would be so fun in the summer when it's warm. We also had the best waffles... best waffle i have ever had... at a place called home made austrailian ice cream. Here are a couple of pics from the trip

ummm. that waffle is making my mouth water.

on a side note... we've been asked a little about our religion from various people we've met here. Yup.. we are mormons- we are from utah- and we love it. mormon.org is a great website with some accurate information on the mormon religion. A couple of things that we believe in are: our savior Jesus Christ and His atonement, our Heavenly Father who loves and knows each and everyone of us, and the Holy Ghost who helps us throughout our daily lives, our living prophet, Thomas S. Monson, who receives revelation to help us be better people, Families that last forever even when we die, the book of mormon- another testament of Jesus Christ, baptism, and so many other happy and wonderful things.

Until Nexxt week.

Brussels, Games and More... excited?

Good Morning, even though most of you are still in a deep sleep. This last week has been pretty fun. Jared had a few games, one was fan day at their practice gym. They won. Yesterday they played the same team from the Netherlands that beat them last week and unfortunately lost again. It was a rough game.. let's just keep it at that.

These are Malu and John Tofi's kids. John plays on Jared's team. I'm missing one kid, Ioane, but they are sooo much fun. We love hanging out with them. The older one in these pictures is Tommy, and he's only 2! He's so tall, i thought he was at least 4 when I met him. The baby is Ernie, he's so sweet. He's turning one in a week or so. Everytime you take Ernie's picture he gladly gives you a big cheese. Soooo funny. Me and Lori were cracking up. Thanks Malu for sharing your kids with us!


Jared actually had a day off this week so we went into brussels to take a look around. We weren't there for very long but the city looks amazing. While we were walking down the street this strange parade came through. Silly men throwing out oranges.. one man even threw me one when i took his picture. haha.. no idea what they were doing, but i like oranges so i was happy. The buildings were amazing, europe definitely wins the coolest architecture award.
I'm having a lot of fun even though i really miss my family and...

MY BABY LEAH.

No speak American video

The video I made didn't have words so here is the music video. Seriously on the radio all the time... all the time. :)

Windmills

Welcome to the Netherlands!

There were bikes everywhere. I know this is hard to see but this is a bike parking garage. WHAT THE HECK!? Millions of bikes. millions.

This is me and Lori.

I had an amazing time this weekend with Lori. We went to Amsterdam, Netherlands to see Anne Franks house. It was really sad and interesting. I bought myself a copy of her diary which so far is amazing. I forgot most of what i read in the 8th grade so I'm very excited to reread it. I can't believe she died only a month before she got to go home. It made me so mad at Hitler. UGH. It's so crazy that people got away with treating other humans so horribly.

We also went to the Van Gogh museum which would've been way more interesting if I was into art. His pictures were amazing, and I found a few that I loved. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take pictures in either museum. I can't believe he killed himself over his artwork. He thought no one like it.. turns out he's a little more than famous.

American food is few and far between. On our drive we found this..

and this...
So happy for American food.. love it, although our Burger King wasn't near as yummy as home.

Saturday night we went to the game, where unfortunately the boys lost. They got killed by the number 1 team in Holland. It was a tough. It was in a city called apeldoorn which was about an hour and a half away from Amsterdam.

We stayed the night in Apeldoorn.

The next morning we drove back towards amsterdam to a place about 9 miles north.. called Zaanse Schans in Zaandam. This is where the windmills are! We saw a lot of windmills on the drive, but this had them all grouped together. It was beautiful. We actually got to go inside a windmill called de kat, which makes dye. they were grinding up chalky stuff inside. That's what you'll see in the video. This was my favorite place because it was gorgeous, and free!

This was the view from inside the windmill. pretty cool, minus the window was dirty

After the windmills we drove to Bergen Op Zoom for their second game where they killed the team! They won by almost 50 points. It was a drastic change from the night before!

This video is inside the windmill. The song that plays with the movie is all over the radio here. We no speak Americano is what it's called. haha. LOVE it. I couldn't find the version they play here.. but this is similar.

Game 2

Jared's team won on Wednesday. They played the Oostkamp Blackbirds and beat them 89 to 58. The blackbirds are a division 2 team, so we were glad to come home with a win. It was at home at their practice gym... and this time Jared made a dunk! He played really well, ending up with 13 points. Next time i'm going to try to keep stats... Unfortunately I'm a bad wife and I didn't bring my camera to this game. We leave this weekend for the Netherlands. Jared plays two games, one in Apeldoorn and one in Bergen Op Zoom. Lori and I are driving her smart car and plan on exploring a little bit of holland.