Stockel Market

Walking Eloise to her French school on the other side of the metro station is my favorite thing to do in Belgium so far. At dawn and mid-afternoon we get a charming 20-minute walk together through Stockel town center.

Three times a week—Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays—Place Dumon hosts a farmers market. If Chris is with me, we drop off Eloise and go back to the market for fresh, doughy-yet-crispy sugar waffles from the vendor his coworkers rave about. If I remembered my market basket, I get leeks, carrots, tomatoes, and winter vegetables. Sometimes I buy flowers.

The kids’ school schedules are always mismatched, so if Isaac is with us he gets a waffle, and one time we asked Eloise if she wanted a waffle before school, and she got all excited, and then when she realized she still had to go to school she was crushed.

Some days she likes school. Other days the boy in the yellow jacket pushes her to the ground and her classmates have to come to her rescue. “We will fight him for you!” they shout (according to Eloise). Eloise smacked him on the head. The next day he hit her with a stick and this was the only thing so far that escalated it to monitor involvement. I find European school playground brawling so disturbing. I understand the theory is to learn to work things out, but so far it’s just making for a difficult adjustment.

Moving mid-year is tricky, with friendships and crucial alliances already formed, and with the language barrier I’m never quite sure if we’re on the right page.

For example: her class goes to swim lessons on some, but not all, Fridays. We first heard about it when a kid in her class told Eloise, who told me, so I asked the teacher, so told me, oh yes, the pool, you need to pay the fees and wear a swim suit and bring a towel and another towel and buy a school-specific swim cap,! What if I hadn’t asked?!

Everything is so different I don’t even know what to ask most of the time until I see all the parents handing over their kids library books and realize we missed something again. Sometimes kids taunt Eloise for not speaking French, and, surprise, she’s quite rude back. Thankfully, her teacher is very warm to the children, and Eloise reports her classmates are all very kind. But school is boring because she has no idea what’s going on because lessons are of course all in French.

But then yesterday in the bath she started sing-song counting in French MUCH higher than I am able to, so even though she’s stopped talking at home half the time and just grunts, I guess she’s adjusting. Good heavens. One day when I picked her up she said, “MOMMY! GUESS WHAT! Today we went on the METRO and did art, and went on the metro AGAIN, back to school!” It was not a field trip, just an outing, because… it’s Belgian school, I guess?

Anyway, back to the market. Buying food is one of those things I’ve found unexpectedly difficult. It’s food! It’s the same! I have google translate! And yet I wandered around grocery stores for weeks wondering, “Where is the meat? Are they all vegetarians?!” before I realized the charming charcuterie down the street and the butcher a few doors down from that are the places for buying meat.

On my street alone there are shops for chocolate, cheese, baked items, meat, plants—even a wine shop, plus a poissonarie for seafood.

Sometimes this is very stressful: an expectant shopkeeper speaking in rapid french, a line of customers waiting impatiently—this is when the French I’ve been studying for nearly a year goes POOF and I freeze.

The farmers market to the rescue! Here, I can browse without entering into a shop and thereby committing myself to have a conversation and buy something mysterious. At the market, I can buy a rotisserie chicken from the friendly proprietor of the chicken stand. If I’m short on cash I can buy a little box of chopped cheese leftovers from the cheese stall, because they’re stacked up and I can point to it and smile without having to choose a cheese and accidentally end up with the one that will stink up the fridge for days (yes, that happened). I can wait until the veggie stand isn’t busy before pointing to what I would like. The waffle lady speaks flawless English and yet patiently lets me order in bad French, and even responds in French too.

On it’s own, figuring out the shopping would be no big deal. But oh man, every day is still an endless chain of Unknowns To Figure Out and Deal With. Someday soon I will bravely swan into the poissonarie on the corner and confidently order something in charmingly accented French. Until then, I’ll get by with the farmers market!