adventures.

To those of you paying close attention to dates, you’ll realize there’s something a little off about my first post… being that I got here to Lux on Wednesday the 25th… And that is because I thought I pushed the submit button on that post, but apparently did not. By the time I had free time in the chateau (aka free time with internet), I only had time to post it, not to add to it. But a lot of interesting things have happened since then.

First of all, we had our first confusion with public transportation! Aunna couldn’t quite remember how to get home, so Brad and I decided to ride the bus with her to meet her family and help her out. Once on the bus, we tried to follow along on the bus route on our map, and slowly realized that it didn’t quite match up to where the bus was actually driving. Long story short: we were trying to get to the outskirts of Differdange and ended up in a completely different city called Esch. Adventures! So we found the train station in Esch, caught a train back to Differdange, and then got pizza before Aunna and Brad tried all over again. Don’t worry; she got home that time. Come to find out, we had been on the right bus to get her home, but the buses and their routes change after 6:00. I decided not to tag along because we really had no idea what bus I would have to take back to the center of Differdange once we got her home. Moral of this story: ask the bus drivers for help when you get on the bus. They are very nice and helpful.

Today (Friday, as I write this once again in my room without internet) we had a few more orientation meetings and then ventured out into Luxembourg City for a scavenger hunt of sorts. I was in Dean LeTerre’s group and he was hilarious! He has only been dean for about a year, so he didn’t know the area all that well and claimed to be directionally challenged anyways. We started out pretty strong on the scavenger hunt part, but then we stopped for Magnum bars at a mini-golf course – not sure if these ice cream bars are Italian, but I had them in Italy so I had a little “aww I miss Rome… and gelato” moment here. Then there was a torrential downpour. It should be mentioned that it was absolutely beautiful, almost no clouds in the sky all morning, pretty much right up to this point. I was pretty much unprepared for any sort of weather because I forgot my sunglasses and didn’t wear a rain jacket, so I couldn’t see in the morning and got wet in the afternoon. Luckily I did have an umbrella. So after we finished our ice cream and were huddling under a shelter for awhile waiting for the rain to slow down, the dean finally said, “Well if we’re going to be waiting for the rain to stop, we might as well do it in a bar,” and so we spent the rest of our afternoon in a nearby pub. What a guy… So without much fanfare I tried my first beer. I’m not sure that it entirely counts because the kind I got was more like a cider and I didn’t even drink half of it because I hadn’t eaten much during the day, but it was pretty good. So… hooray.

After that we came back to the Chateau to have a BBQ with all the host families and that was really fun because I got to meet Aunna’s host family. I stayed afterwards to try to book train tickets in Italy (we’re planning a trip to ROME at the end of September… Plane tickets already booked – YESSSS!!) but there is some sort of problem with the site or my credit card… It’s very frustrating, but hopefully I can work it out tomorrow. I’m just so psyched to go back to Rome. On the way home from the Chateau I stopped for a few minutes to see a little live band playing out in a square. It was great because they were American songs, and it was a strange mix of country, blues, and jazz. Very fun… I soooo badly wanted to dance, but the only guy around who looking like he could do anything like a swing dance was this old Luxembourgish guy, and I wasn’t about to just go up to him and ask for a dance. That’d be a little sketch. Where are all my guy friends when I need them?