And then there were two....

Amber left us this morning to move back to London. She is in fact stepping off her train in the UK as I type this. She arrived here 2 months ago and has since been quite a bit part of Myriam's and my life since then it seems like we've all been friends forever.
She is another one I met in my french class, a fellow jeune fille au pair in Brussels, but unlike my story she managed to find what was possibly the single worst family in this city. It never ceased to amuse/horrify me to compare our two lives. She worked 12-13 hours a day while I worked 3, she took care of 4 kids while I have 2, she was left alone frequently for entire weekends with some or all of the kids while her host parents went on holiday while Valerie is horrified if I'm left to deal with the boys for more than 3 and a half hours. The list goes on culminating in my 3 christmas dinners while Amber was sent to eat spaghetti with 11 (count 'em 11) kids and manage to get them all in bed while her host parents and extended family ate a 5 course meal without her. Almost so tragic as to be impossible.
So, while I'll miss her, I'm glad she got out sooner rather than later.



Here is the photo of Amber on the train going to Antwerp just before her birthday dinner. She's warming her shoes on the window vent. Poor thing, born in South African weather, was struggling with the cold. Myriam joked that this was her final descent into hobo. All three of us have made an art of looking about as homeless as possible; wearing several layers of clothing under our coats along with mismatched gloves and hats along with an astonishingly large sack each of all the necessities like tissues, cookies, maps, umbrellas, sometimes a change of clothes, you get the gist. It is surprising people never stopped us to to give alms.