After a day of lounging and letting myself recover, I am ready to take on the world again. I slept until noon (which never happens). Even then, I stayed in bed, doing some… mildly frustrating… work things until 4 p.m. I found a restaurant outside of town and decided to venture out for dinner. Nothing ever goes as planned. The Plan There is a “National Brewery” of Luxembourg, Bofferding. I’m not sure if this is an official designation or just what they call themselves. They do not offer tours in the winter months, bummer, but I think you can still visit and sample beers. This is definitely the most prevalent beer in…
-
-
First week of class – Complete!
Today started like my other days: I had breakfast consisting of coffee, yogurt, and muesli, spent 4 or 5 hours in the morning lounging in bed doing work, and then headed out for lunch. I wanted to get my bus pass, so I decided to walk to the Garer Quartier and purchase one on my way to lunch. I took a different route this morning, as I had waited a bit late for lunch and was quite hungry. Having seen a photo of the chilaquiles at a restaurant called Agave, I decided I’d stop there. Finding lunch I walked that direction, through a much more modest neighborhood in the city,…
-
Recovery time
After a stressful 6 months of studying and stressing about this test, here we are. It’s over and yet we have no closure and no results. Somehow, I’m ok with that, as the relief of not having to worry about it has washed over me. Today will be a short day because I spent the first half taking this test, and the second half was spent recovering from the test. After the test, I went back to my room, and just spent a couple of hours on the computer. Working, sending emails, just trying to give my mind time to calm down and not continue rehashing the 10 minute test.…
-
De Sproochentest – Test Day
Today was the big day – the day I took the spoken part of the Sproochentest. A little background: the test is 2 parts, oral and listening. The oral part is 10 minutes long. You have to answer questions about a theme for 5 minutes, then describe a photo for 5 minutes. That’s it. 6 months of studying for a pretty subjective 10 minute test. (I am not a fan of subjective.) Then the listening part, which is in December, requires you to listen to a few news/radio clips and answer multiple choice questions about them. If you get more than 50% on the oral part, you pass the test…
-
First Day of School
My first civics class was today! My last Luxembourgish lesson before the test tomorrow was today ?! I will try to keep today’s post brief because I need to study. Working I started off at a leisurely pace, chatting with Joe on the phone for half an hour before getting out of bed. Then I went downstairs for breakfast and immediately went back upstairs and crawled under the blankets. I sat in my PJs and worked for a few hours on some […redacted…] features. And can I just say I don’t know why I don’t do that more often. I have a desk, of course. But staying in bed to…
-
The Lux Life
Today will be, I guess, my first ‘normal’ day of life in Luxembourg. I had places to go and responsibilities and bureaucratic hoops and fun night life. After another pretty restless night, I got up this morning, had some chocolate muesli and raspberry yogurt for breakfast, then headed out for a 10 a.m. American Women’s Club of Luxembourg meeting that I was invited to attend. It was a great way to meet some new people and chat in a relaxed atmosphere. Also there was a lot of great advice for adjusting to culture here. After that, I went back to my room and worked for a couple of hours until…
-
Luxembourg – Day 2 – The Jet Laggening
To sleep or not to sleep I managed to stay up until almost 8:30 p.m. last night, which was a good start. But someone in the house got up to use the restroom at around 1 a.m. and then I was awake. C’est la vie. Fortunately, 1 a.m. is mid-afternoon back home, so Joe and I spent some time chatting, which was nice. After 45 minutes or so, it became evident I wasn’t going back to bed any time soon, so we played some video games together. He called me and just chatted with me while I typed back to him, so as not to wake up anyone else. It’s…
-
Welcome (back) to Luxembourg!
Today I arrived in Luxembourg for my month-long sojourn in which I will also be very stressed and take tests and classes. There aren’t many photos because today was just a travel day, so unless you want to hear about how my transportation related adventures, you can skip to the end and see some delicious food photos. If you aren’t into that, I’m not sure I can help. I started off at home, frantically deciding to repack my suitcase. I packed 2 weekends ago, then re-packed this past weekend. But last night, I went out to dinner with Joe and it was *cold*. But it was the temperature that Luxembourg…
-
Back to Budapest
After my whirlwind trip through Prague, Bratislava, and Budapest in 2015, Joe surmised that, since I had returned safely from my trip, that it was safe enough for him to go. So one year later, we spent the next October 23, 2016 in Budapest, after a week in Prague. We did not stop in Bratislava this go-round. Below is a combination of my facebook posts and current (2018) reflections on that trip. Learning Hungarian I like to think that I write here from a place of honesty, so I’ll share this part with everyone as well. We planned our trip to Budapest almost as soon as I returned from my…
-
Hungary
My first trip to Hungary was in 2015. This was my first solo trip in over a decade, and I was very excited and grateful for the opportunity. The trip began in Prague for 4 days, then Bratislava, Slovakia for 2 days, and then to Budapest. I think that the layout of my trip really set me up to fall in love with Budapest. Cooking class Since Budapest was my last stop on the trip, by the time I got there, I hadn’t really spoken to anyone or had a real life conversation in a week. I don’t generally enjoy doing tours, so I never had a tour guide or…