You should have seen the look on the guy's face when we pulled up. With nine suitcases.
Let me back up. We knew our "pack-up and move-out" would take about a four to five days. We knew that this would be exhausting. We also knew that at the end of that, we didn't want to wake up in the morning, get on a plane and fly away. So we planned an "in-between" week. Somewhere we could transition ourselves out of Belgium.
A key factor was location. We needed somewhere nearby so the kids could finish off their last week of school, and we could wrap up whatever was needed as we wound everything down. We found the perfect place.
We found a furnished apartment that was advertised as a bed and breakfast, and low and behold, it was halfway between our house in La Hulpe and the kids' school. Perfect. It was a loft apartment with one bedroom and a room with a kitchenette and a pull-out couch. We told them we wouldn't need the breakfast service. I don't think they knew what they were getting into when the agreed to rent us the loft apartment above their garage.
We settled in and as sad as we were to be out out of our home, we were happy to have one of the hardest parts over and done with and a quiet place to live out our last week.
We took the kids to school in the morning. We finished off the last of the football practices. With the cleaners hired, and football (soccer) practices behind us, that left us the weekend to be tourists. We took a day trip to our favorite Belgian town in the Ardennes (La Roche en Ardennes) and Sunday we went to the Christmas market in Brussels.
We celebrated Miss B's birthday on Monday with her favorite dinner (saucisse and frites) by temporarily stealing back the grill we had given to the neighbor and grilling at our apartment. Tuesday, we rented the upstairs room at the local pub and really confused our Belgian friends with the idea of an open-invite happy hour. Not having my class lists meant we couldn't send a mass invitation email, which meant that we had to rely on word of mouth, which meant that the kids were in charge of the invites. But in the end we had a great turnout and a fun night. Although, I really hadn't expected all of the going-away gifts and it just about threw me over the edge in terms of packing. Thank goodness John had reached his rainbow gold sparkly status at Delta and it no longer mattered how heavy our bags were.
That left us one last day of school. And one last night in Belgium, which was spent at a dear friend's for dinner. She helped drive us to the airport in the dark the next morning.
Of all of the trials and tribulations I have ever faced living as an expat in Belgium, the last day and night I spent in my beloved adopted country, was one of the most difficult days of my life.
It will be a long, long time before I can think about all of those goodbyes without tears running down my face.
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