6/17/89 Belgium Barbecue and birthday party

Randy, Ria and I took the company jet to Belgium this weekend, to visit with Ria's family again. Our visit coincided with a family birthday party for Ria. They called the event "Camp Ria", then realized that it was almost uncle Roger's birthday too, so they adjusted the sign a bit. It was in English, for our sake.

The first order of business was to sing a rousing song. The lyrics were printed out, but of course, they were in Flemish:

We did our best!

Ria's father Rick was in charge of the barbecue grill, fixing chicken and different kinds of links.

As soon as it was ready, we all sat down to a great meal.

Everyone was very friendly and relaxed. There was good food and a fair amount of alcohol, which probably helped!

Rick spoke enough English for us to converse, and some of the other guys had a smattering of English, too. They had a lot of questions about life in America. One thing we learned was that some of them thought most Americas' lives were similar to the Ewing' lives on the TV show "Dallas". I wish! We set them straight on that. 

Then they wanted to know American curse words. Randy did his best, but they had seen an Eddie Murphy movie, which means they already knew as many curse words as we did. Didn't matter - it was a good crowd!

Since this was a "camp" experience, several of the younger children and a few of their parents were going to sleep outside in tents. It was a great idea and I am sure they had fun, but when we left them, they were still trying to figure out how to get some of the tents to behave like tents.