Grand Place Ice Skating

The local city of Mons holds a Christmas market during December. They turn the center of the Grand Place into an ice skating rink. After attending a local Winter Festival and seeing Santa and Mrs Claus. During the festival there were folks dressed up like tree nymphs and they were dancing to music. It was a lot of fun. We got to go ice skating the next evening. We had a great time showing off our skating moves. The kids did a great job and the lights on the buildings and trees were a nice backdrop to the occasion.

Saint Nicholas Day

One of the joys of living in new places is adopting local customs and holidays. Belgium (along with most of Europe) celebrates Saint Nicholas Day on the evening of December 5th. The tradition is that children leave their shoes by the fireplace or doorway in the hopes that Saint Nicholas will fill their shoes with candy and toys. Good thing for Buffy and her big feet and all. Saint Nicholas was originally from Turkey and delivered good things to children. In Belgium he travels around the countryside with his helper and a mule. Apparently if you are a bad child the helper whips you for your bad deeds. This gives you a few weeks before Christmas to straighten out your act so that maybe Santa Claus will bring you something. This year both Emilie and Tori were good and Saint Nicholas came to our house and left some treats and toys for them. It was a great experience for our first month in Belgium and the girls were very excited about his visit.

Maison Zukowski

We found a house in a neighboring town to the base. It's a hundred plus year old farm house in front of a sausage factory. The landlords own the business and are great folks. Here is the inside of the house before we move our stuff in.