This soup has a beautiful bright orange color due to the orange lentils and carrots. It has been nice to experience the different cultures brought by from the various immigrants who have come to Belgium over the years!
The rainy days have made me want to stay inside and read. So, to accompany my reading I have been listening to calming jazz. It has also been nice to listen to jazz while I sleep, because combined with the rain, it is the most peaceful sound ever!
Yesterday, I took the train to Brussels in the late afternoon to grab dinner with a few of the other Fulbrighters. One of them lives in Brussels, and the others like me travelled in from other Belgian cities. We went to a Vietnamese restaurant and had amazing soups and stews! Perfect for a cloudy day.
After dinner, we walked to the city center in an area called the Grote Markt, or Grand Market. It is basically a large courtyard surrounded by beautiful buildings, most of which have been standing for hundreds of years. We were there in the evening, and so the gold painted onto the sides of the buildings were reflecting the street lights. It was an magnificent sight!
I have been reading a novel by Haruki Murakami, a very famous Japanese writer, called "Kafka by the Shore." It is the fattest book I have read in a long while - over 600 pages! I will probably be reading this book for months, given that I am a slow reader. I bought it at a bookstore in London since the selection of books in English here in Belgium is limited.
