A difficult month with moments of joy: facing changes and the weather

It's been a month since I last blogged and there have been many things going on both ordinary and extraordinary and internally too.

A couple of days after my first day in Belgium (Antwerp) I spent another meeting Caitlin (Aussie friend from Freiburg) and her friend Markus in Brussels. They had already been there a day or so and I anticipated going back sometime so we spent little time in centre (just to view the Grand'Place and have a quick cuppa coffee) and most of the day in the suburbs visiting Atomium (a giant model atom millions or billions of times the size of a real one = 50m/160ft high), its surrounding parkland and then a basilica. However the weather was nasty and we were happy to sit down for a kebab. There was a (second) rail-strike starting up at 8pm in France that evening so we were to take the train back to Lille at 5:30pm. The train was an hour and a half late and I was worried I was going to be stranded in Lille on arrival. I only caught the train back to Wavrin because it was also late then drove back into Lille, for independence from the trains, and ate with Caitlin, Markus and Michelle.
The next couple of days involved becoming accustomed to French driving with many trips back and forth to see Caitlin. Although I'd driven in the States, driving in France is more difficult for 4 reasons:
1. French drivers are crazy
2. French streets are tiny - especially compared with Texas super-highways (everything's bigger in Texas!)
3. I'm driving a manual here - only drove autos in the States and the gear-stick's on the wrong side!
4. All signs here are (of course) in French!
It was nice to see some more of Caitlin and to hang out in Europe again.
The strike lasted about a week and a half until the (government employed) rail workers gave up their unpopular demands.

After our trips to Paris and Antwerp Michelle and I realised that we need to be saving money for Christmas so we called a halt to trips of any significant distance (read: cost) and have been spending more time in and around Lille. We've been to the Christmas market in Lille a few times. Went to Bethune for a day trip - 3/4 of an hour from Wavrin - and visited the Christmas Market there. However for the past month the weather has been depressing. We've had three consistent weather patterns: overcast, drizzle and pouring. At times it's made it difficult to enjoy being here - especially since Michelle and I often meet in Lille where we have no place to escape the weather without buying something. Walking around all day in the cold and rain is not all that much fun...

On a more positive note a couple of weeks ago we found a church in Lille, St. Maurice's, with a wonderful Sunday evening mass. We'd been going in Armentieres (Michelle's French hometown) but found that we understood more or less nothing and apart from the communion were getting very little from the mass at all. At St Maurice's though it was a really intimate service in which the congregation formed a circle around the priests for the readings and the sermon and all walked together to the high alter for the communion. We understood a lot of what was being said, felt involved and both got a lot out of it. In fact it cheered us up greatly after a day of low spirits in less-than-joyous weather au Lillois.

Since November 5 Michelle and I have both been thinking heaps about our wedding and plans thereafter. It's been very exciting and at times disheartening throwing out ideas, researching their feasibility, discovering the intense bureaucratic and costly anachronism that is immigration policy and watching the "to-do" list seemingly expand exponentially on a daily basis. We've definitely made some progress and I think we're now pretty clear on what we want to do where but there's still a long way to go.
Thoughts, indecision, concerns about money and logistics have been causes of stress and even some sleepless nights. Throw some ghastly weather into the equation and it makes for not the lightest happy-go-lucky month of our lives. We are very much looking forward to a German Christmas/New Years holiday in a couple of weeks time.

That said we are definitely not depressed about being here or about wedding plans. Any negative wedding mood is far outweighed by the excitement of making a holy lifelong commitment together and celebrating that with family and friends. Above anything we are able or not able to achieve in this wedding these are the things that matter to us.