Exciting Opportunities

It’s always fun to have a few treats thrown into a week as opposed to, what my mom would call, snafoos. This week one of these wonderful opportunities was having a special visitor at our school. Kennedy and Ethan were able to participate in a small assembly where Marvin Hamlisch, the incredible, renowned composer spoke and performed several of his great works. They were thoroughly impressed. Ethan was even one of the students selected to ask a question. He was giving a concert in The Hague and staying with some friends whose children attend the school. It was quickly arranged for him to spend a short time talking with a group of students. What an amazing opportunity!! I was quite jealous! I wanted to get Emily and Abigail up from their naps so I could go but thought that could potentially be more of a distraction.

Ethan is enjoying playing on a soccer team again as he made the middle school’s U12 soccer team. They traveled to Hamburg last week. Dano took Erin and Abby to cheer him on whilst Kennedy stayed home to work on loads of homework and help me unpack, a task that is seeming quite daunting this time around. I was sad we weren’t able to go. I think it’s the last time I’ll let Dano zip on over to Germany without me, though. I heard a few too many times how much he loved driving on the autobahn! How easy the trip was because of the autobahn. How it would be so great to have a Porsche to drive on the autobahn. I think when we visit Germany, I’ll be doing the driving and Dano can do the sightseeing.

This week Ethan played against an international school in Waterloo, Belgium. Everytime I think of Waterloo, Belgium, ABBA pops unwittingly into my head and won’t leave! (Waterloo…I was defeated, you won the war. Waterloo…Promise to love you forever more… Now you try to get it out of your head!) Dano was in the States doing my shopping…er… at Greif board meetings this week so I would need to make the drive on my own. Surprisingly I didn’t give it much thought. We grabbed the passports but didn’t even need them crossing the border from The Netherlands into Belgium. Going between EU countries is like crossing statelines. Very simple. Though later when I was speaking on two separate occasions to Dutch people and mentioned our trip to Belgium, they guffawed at our trip and couldn’t imagine driving farther than Rotterdam (45 minutes away) to watch a sports game. Had I mentioned Dano drove to Hamburg to watch a game, they would have thought he was insane!

It was a beautiful drive of two hours. We watched a great soccer match against St. John’s International School. It was such a beautiful day and we were so close to the Waterloo battle site that we decided to take a tour.
I'm not sure why they have a statue of Napolean and not Wellington. Maybe because the Duke has his own small museum on the property. Perhaps this is also why this statue is located in the parking lot across the street from the Waterloo museum.

I didn’t realize I knew so little about the Battle of Waterloo. Okay, yes I did. But now I’m back on the historical track and so are the kids. We all thoroughly enjoyed our two-hour stopover at the local museum. Waterloo is considered one of the greatest battles in European history, marking the end of the French Empire and Napolean’s final defeat. Had they won, we may be working and living in France right now and attempting to learn French rather than Dutch.

We watched two movies, both in French (one of the two official languages in Belgium). Fortunately there were English subtitles. As they were fast and a little technical, I read them to Erin and hoped no one else minded the English narration loudly whispered (with great vivacity, mind you) in the back. We then proceeded outside and hiked Butte de Lion’s 226 steps to the monument erected to the memory of the battle. The kids were also quite pleased to find what had to be a Buckeye tree just before the path.

The lion atop the hill symbolizes peace which caused me and Kennedy to wonder if that’s why many European currencies and crests have a lion on them.
From the hilltop we had a panoramic view of Waterloo’s battlefield and tried to envision what it was like nearly two hundred years ago. So great was the impact of this great victory here in Waterloo that now 124 towns or sites bear the name of Waterloo. Maybe there's one near you! (Many others bear the name of Wellington, leader of the British forces at Waterloo.)
The kids stood under the monument in which is etched the final day of the battle, June 18, 1815.

Although I debated stopping since Dano wouldn’t be able to enjoy it with us, I’m so glad we took the exciting opportunity. We all loved it!