This can't be happening, tell me I am having a bad dream.

It seems that Belgium is not the only country run by monkeys...

Bush moves to aid homeowners.
They are going to help people that wanted to show off by buying a home they couldn't afford. They thought they were getting rich in a few months, real estate never goes down, right?
Will the Government also refund my money (with taxpayers money)if my television drops in price? Or when I lose my stake at the tables in Las Vegas?
This can't be happening! This is all a bad dream.

Luckily I didn't pay a lot of the taxes they are going to use...

Pimp my ride (with pictures)

Whoehaha

That is such a funny cartoon LOL

I would be worried to

Belgian king is worried that he won't get any more money from the Belgian citizens. If Belgium cease to exist, he'll need to find a job. I will write him a letter that they are still searching for French teachers at our school here.

Meat the teacher night

Yesterday (Tuesday) we had a meet the teacher night, similar to an "oudercontact". Not a lot of parents showed up at David's class (8), Lisa had more(17) parents visiting her. But then again, she teaches mathematics.

Naomi's school delayed once again

Due to problems with some permits, Naomi's school will open on Tuesday 4th of September. So she has to stay a week longer at her daycare. She will probably have to take extra weeks of school at the end of the year. Which would jeopardize our return to Belgium for the month of June.

How to lure uneducated buyers in buying homes they can't afford ..

This is a real scandalic commercial. It let's the mother instinct of having a warm nest (home) prevail over that man's sense of reality. Realtors and mortgage brokers got their profits, too bad for them they will have no job in a few months...I don't have any sympathy for them, I don't sympathise with the devil :-)

Comic

source: The Big Picture blog

Naomi's Daycare

This is the website of Naomi's Daycare
If you click on the "about us" page and scroll down, you will see some familiar faces...

Our daily schedule

David wakes up at 5h30 and does some surfing, checking Belgian websites for news and stuff. Lisa and Naomi wake up at 6h15. We eat breakfast and prepare ourselves for school.
At 7h05 we leave our home and drive about 3 miles and drop off Naomi at the daycare. We drive to school and go to the copy center if necessary. Only 2 copy machines for 1100 students and 60+ teachers ...
We prepare our class and at 8h15 school starts. Lisa has 2nd period off, David has 6th period off. But that is going to change since they e-mailed me I will be teaching that 6th period... no breaks for me except for lunch which is about 38 minutes... But I will get paid for that 6th period... waaw cool, I really need that money ...
School ends at 15h23, Lisa stays until 18h00. David has always some students for detention from 15h25-16h00, sometimes a meeting afterwards. I will be picking up Naomi at the daycare and drive home to take a swim in the pool. We pick up Lisa and go home to make dinner or we 'take-away' some food.
We relax and surf on the internet, work on tomorrow's courses/classes and go to sleep at around 21h00.

Pimp my ride

We have a new CAR. A Cadillac Seville which has the same dark green color as our beamer(sniff sniff, I miss you). I will post pictures later, the 4.8 liter 8 cylinder 300 hp(pk) Northstar engine is very NICE for our 4 mile drive in the morning:-)

Here we go again

Belgian Politics

How are teachers paid over there?

If I would be working in Europe that would definitely be my first question. I won't put any amounts here but it will give you some idea. Let's take a look at a comparison of my pay:
Let's assume 1:1 USD:EUR for convenience
BEFORE TAXES:
US: +60% over Belgian paycheck

The US paycheck includes my health plan, in belgium health care is almost free.
Because the pension/retirement system is totally diferent, it is very difficult to compare "after tax" figures.
The school district takes 10% from your gross pay and matches this amount and puts it into the Arizona retirement fund. The first 10% is always yours at retirement, the part that they put into the fund will be yours when you stay in the district for 5 years. Taking this into account I receive about double in the US after taxes.

My US paycheck doesn't include the bonus I will receive if my kids reach the Arizona standards.(performance pay: +/-$1000 - $3000 extra for the year)

As a teacher you get paid extra for everything you do as an extra: coach for a sports team, being a mentor for new teachers, ...

I will also be tutoring at our school. That is one-on-one teaching and pays $40/hour (paid by the State).

A teacher can choose to be paid for 22 or 26 times. The total amount will be divided in 22 or 26 biweekly payments.

Teachers can have a second job or can do whatever they want during the holidays, in contrary to Belgium where you are not allowed to do extra jobs/work during the summer.

I pay 8-12% taxes on the gross amount of the paycheck.(State AND Federal taxes)

People are paid here every 2 weeks. It helps to keep the American shopping spree intact. Living from paycheck to paycheck is pretty common. We'll try NOT to do that...

Tv channels

An overview from my Cable provider:
Taking a brief view of all the channels it seems Bruce Springsteen was right: "57 Channels (And Nothin' On" (except commercials...)

Naomi playing with Ramses and Toshi (video file)

UFC

For the fans (and I can tell you, I am a huge fan) of ultimate fighting: tonight there are two important fights
Gonzaga-Couture (Heavyweight)
St Pierre-Koscheck (middle weight)

To watch them you have to pay (pay per view) but they are viewable on some obscure websites on the internet a few minutes/hours after the fight. If you need one of those websites, contact me.

Finally we will be able to watch some TV

We have a lot of real HD channels on the cable here. Will update on that later when we are used to the TV and the cable programming guide...
Devices behind the TV: Set top box with HD recording (cable), DVD player (upscaling from 480 to 1080P).

HDMI cables are real easy to use, just plug them in the 2 devices and they are ready to go. 1 small cable for sound and image.

Funeral Card Aunt Annemie

You were always positive and enjoyed life. We have always appreciated your positive attitude and we will remember the good times we had with you. Goodbye

Our family here mourns because

our Aunt Annemie has died far too young. She was 54 years old.

Isn't it IRONIC, don't you think?

White House press secretary Tony Snow will step down from his position because of financial reasons.

His 168 000 dollar salary is not enough to pay for his health problem. Would Bush consider stopping an unnecessary war against a country that didn't do the US any harm? And putting some money in health care? Probably not. He probably won't see the link, there goes the tax money down the drain.

His own secretary can't pay the health care bill, oh my isn't that ironic?
INCOMPETENT leadership!

High Definition

A few more days and we will be watching FULL High Definition (1080P) in our living room. No fake HD-ready but the real deal: 2 million pixels. (1920*1080)

It is now very clear that LCD is the way to go. A few years ago LCD and plasma were evenly matched but LCD has a definite advantage now.
Don't get fooled these days in buying a cheap LARGE HD-ready television. A bigger screen fades the picture quality. Hence the same amount of pixels are divided on a bigger screen. A 50 inch 1366*768 delivers only 800 000 pixels on a huge screen... image quality will be worse than a comparable 37 inch TV. Real High Definition has 2.5 times as much pixels on the screen: 2 000 000.

This will arrive in 2 days. It has the best rating available on Amazon.com. I prefer the next model of the Samsung line with higher contrast ratio but that was 25% more expensive. The fact that we paid less than a thousand euro, all taxes (LOL) and delivery included is a BIG plus. Cheapo America. Cheese is almost expensive as High Definition TV's.

We bought the HDMI cables and the upconverting (to 1080P) DVD player. So everything is ready for the HD hook-up.

Pets

We adopted 2 small cats from the animal hospital in Maricopa. They are both 4 months old, 1 male and 1 female. The female black with white feet is calles "TOSHI", the male orange/white is called "RAMSES the sixth" Video and pictures will follow.

Blood in the streets

Prelimenary results for housing in Phoenix:
Sale numbers (provided by a realtor using MLS)
AUGUST 1-14 1,272
JULY 1-14 1.638

auch, that is down 22% month over month (when August should be higher, seasonally speaking, than July)

AUGUST 1-14 2007 1,272
AUGUST 1-14 2006 1,990

AUCH, that is down 36% year over year.

School update

Apparently our day at school starts at 8h15 and ends at 15h23.
We teach 5 hours of 52 minutes and we have a 30 minute mini class. Class sizes vary from 26 to 32 (David) and 29-34 (Lisa) It is very busy right now and most of the teaching really goes well. Lisa's airconditioning unit died so it was 86 F in her room which is quite frankly insane. Hopefully they will sent a repairman real soon before she dies of the heat.

Duststorm in Arizona

What is a duststorm? (videofile)

Homebuilding in the USA

Click on the picture, I have added letters to the different phases.

Tell us something new

Windows Vista kicked out of Olymics pc's.

When you need a stable system use XP on a pc.

Sedona

Sedona is a small town in Arizona which was called most beautiful place in the United States on different occasions. (yahoo, forbes, etc.) Well let's take a look at home and land prices over there:
(difference = year over year)
1. Homes Above the $1,000,000
Median Price rose 9%Median Price now $1,405,000
2 year inventory

2. Vacant Land - SEDONA
Median Price has dropped by 42%
Median Price now $357,000
2 year supply of inventory

3. CONDOS - SEDONA
PRICES DROPPED BY 18%MEDIAN PRICE - $235,000
13 MONTH ABSORPTION RATE

It looks like land and home prices DO go down... even in the most beautiful place in the USA, the supply and demand theorema holds.

First day of School

13th of August and our first day of school as teachers in the USA. The Maricopa High School has about 1200 students now. The student staff is new for about 50% new, so it was a hectic day. As teachers everything went fine today. Students here have the same motivation as in Belgium...waiting until the bell rings :-)

Some amazing movies, really incredible!!!

Our classrooms (video file)

We have been working really hard the last week getting our classroom up to date.
Lisa's classroom:

Davids classroom:

Why is this happening?

First this:


Then this:


Luckily there is no "Volkert" around this time :-)

Then this? (just a little joke of course...)

These things end badly most of the time...

BEL20 (Belgian Stock index) on a 5 year chart

Great Text and Song

The new National anthem?
Lyrics

Classroom test

We are both working hard at the High School to get our rooms prepared for the first students. There will be a panel with pictures on the wall. Students will try to recognize them, see if you can with this sample:

Ron Paul on the move

The truth hurts ... wink wink



Who won the debat? LINK

New Sofa

We bought a new sofa for our livingroom. It was a showroom model, but oh my, furniture is expensive especially if you look for modern or contemporary furniture in Arizona.

Local Maricopa housing market

MARICOPA

JULY '07 - 958 Homes for sale; 64 sold (6.7%); 15.0 months inventory

avg. 2,184 sf - price $221,052 - on market 91 days - price per-sq ft $101

JUNE '07 - 915 Homes for sale; 68 sold (7.3%); 13.5 months inventory

avg. 2,219 sf - price $232,051 - on market 82 days - price per-sq ft $105

Oops that is a 4-5 percent decline in one month...

One year ago

AUGUST '06 - 756 Homes for sale; 65 sold (8.6%); 11.6 months inventory

avg. 2,119 sf - price $253,887 - on market 71 days - price per-sq ft $120

Oops that is a 20 percent price drop in one year

Beer lovers

As you might know, alcohol rules are a lot more conservative / strict in the USA. You are only allowed to buy and drink alcohol when you are at least 21 years old. Belgian beer as Leffe and Stella Artois can also be bought here. I have made a picture of the label of the Leffe and the Stella Artois bottle in our fridge, enjoy...

We bought a ...

SOFA for our living from this modern furniture store: ThingZ
The sofa will be deliverd this Monday, pictures will follow. So we still need to buy 2 big items LCD TV 1080P and a bed for us. The TV is the next thing on the list, this is the top favorite for now "Sharp AQUOS LC-46D62U 46" LCD TV 1080P". LINK

Is this the first BIG builder to go bankrupt?

Just a hunch, nothing more...Beazer Homes

Naomi's 8th birthday song

Title says it all:

Monsoon season in Arizona

Well, what is the Monsoon season all about: Rain, Thunderstorms, Lightning, ... and warm weather during the day: