Well, it has been a little while since anything substantive went up on here, and there won't be substantial activity while my family is here (Mom-dukes and Brohan arrive tomorrow at the buttcrack of Belgian dawn--9:30am), so let's call this the seasonal post.

Since last we spoke, I experienced the Christmas market in Leuven and went on a pastry field trip to the capital of Wallonia. There was also an exam, an application and a lot of messing around. Let's take them in chronological order.

Phil and I had our Critical Theory exam on Friday the 15th, which was honestly easier than I thought it would be, but let's see what I get on it, that may have been a fatal misperception. I honestly have no idea what to expect.

After the exam, I went and bought beer glasses with Phil and planned to hang out with Marianne. Phil was going to some kind of lecture, but once a more relaxing alternative presented itself, he was easily dissuaded. So we're on our way back from the grocery store and we happen upon the christmas market that had completely taken over the Ladueze- and Hoover-pleins. I had never had the traditional gluhwein (sp?) or the genever (sp?) which is an original Belgian gin liquor, OR for that matter had the christmasy sausage sandwiches. So we stopped and had all three, to very pleasant effect I must say. I was utterly relaxed, though I did prefer the cherry genever to the mulled wine stuff, wine and I have never really liked each other.

We had plans to go out to dinner with Dave, and we convinced Phil to come (though he took a stonecold nap beforehand) and we called Cordelia, and Charles came with Dave, so really, by the time we got to the restaurant it was quite a party! The restaraunt (Muy Sapore) is really nice, the first time Marianne and I went there they treated us like queens because we were friends with Dave. It's Italian and Asian together on one menu, so there's something for everyone. We ended up staying up pretty late that night, went back to the christmas market just before it closed.

So that was Friday. Saturday morning Marianne, Mark and I went to Namur (the capital of Wallonia = French Belgium) on Mark's invitation to go to the best patisserie in all of Europe. It was indeed, quite spectacular. Like those dessert houses you see in period pictures about the aristocracy. We wandered around, I bought a new (blue) scarf, we went into this beautiful cathedral and made fart jokes (God better have a sense of humor). We also hiked up to this huge fort overlooking the city, which was something else. It was pissing rain though, and although I had an umbrella my boots were sodden by the time we left. I only have a few pictures, and none of them scenic, there was too much wet. I'll upload them when Photobucket decides to work again.

So yeah, those were two very full days. I had a few classes this week, that wasn't bad. I'm sad some of them are over, but I'm excited about only having two days of class scheduled next semester.

Have a happy break/religious holiday!

Cake

I have absolutely no energy to write anything, I'm totally burnt out. But I will compensate with a buttload of visual aides.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakerphotos/

Love,

Cakes

I'm hard pressed to take any decent pictures these days, kinda sucks actually because I sit down and realize that lots of interesting visual things have happened and I have absolutely no record of them. You'll just have to take my word for it.

In the news lately are a lot of Birthdays. My friend Viktor's birthday was on Friday, though he didn't care to celebrate. My friend Dave's was the following Saturday, and he threw a pretty splendid party at his and Frenchy's place (scene of the American thanksgiving bonanza). And now Phil's is today, so I spent some good currency on two beautiful fruit tarts and we'll be having a lowkey dinner at that house. I enjoy all the celebrating, for the most part everyone is very fun and gregarious and parties turn out to be really nice occasions, although the tendency to spill over into excess is pretty widespread, but ultimately I think that's probably a good thing.

Really the reason why I'm writing is to report the AMAZING concert I went to last night. It was Badly Drawn Boy in the Brussels Botanical Garden, and the show itself was almost the cherry on the cheesecake. The venue was beautiful. In order to get to the Orangerie (a smallish auditorium toward the middle of the main building) we had to walk through two beautiful indoor gardens, filled with large tropical water plants and those little white and orange goldfish you see in decadent places. The crowd was smartly dressed without being pretensious, and everyone was very friendly and I heard no fewer than 10 languages spoken. It was really wonderful, I felt encouraged on some existential level. I went with my friends Cordelia and Shannon, and we got there just early enough to get a good place in front of the stage. I was so close I could have pulled Damon's Gough's guitar cord if I wanted to. He played a lot of songs from Bewilderbeast, which I love as an album, some stuff from About a Boy, and then some of his new stuff, which I'll admit to not being terribly fond of, but they certainly play as a team and the drummer in particular was a thrill to watch. He looked like a blonde Toby McGuire, with that kind of sleepy, dorky slow smile. BDB himself played the crowd really well, alternating between Elvis-esque charm and completely insecure defensiveness, it was interesting to see. I know it's his trademark, but the knit beanie did not make any sense. It was so hot, and he was sweating profusely, and had a jacket on over two t-shirts! That seemed a bit silly, not that I'm to be excluded from such irrational practices.

What was a very special moment though, happened at the very beginning, before anyone played. Cordelia and Shannon went to the coat check and I stood around in our spot and people-watched etc. I was feeling pretty comfortable and pleased with the whole thing, thinking to myself how much better concerts are in Europe, and then the ambient music changed to the Kings of Convenience's "Homesick", which is one of my favorite songs of all time, but especially since I've been here. It was so perfect I almost jumped out of my skin, and I couldn't control my grin, even though I guess it's kind of a sad song. Sad songs that hit the mark are somehow not so sad really.

Anyway, beyond all that social stuff I've just been working. I actually started writing the intro to my thesis, which feels good, even though I know I'll have to rewrite it eventually. The idea is just to give a brief catalogue of all the references Lacan makes to Kierkegaard's Repetition, which are as numerous as they are impenetrable. The first one I site is from "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis", and just to give you a feel for Lacan's obscurity, the important sentence reads: "...the exhaustion of being consummated in Kierkegaardian repetition." Needless to say, I'm probably not going to be able to pull this one apart until the very end of my thesis.

I hope everyone is well, keep in touch.

Ashley