je suis au luxembourg.

So here I am in Differdange Luxembourg… pretty exciting stuff! I’m writing this in my quite colorful host room (which sadly does not get wi-fi), resting up before I go to register as a temporary citizen in Differdange. Our first day here was pretty uneventful… lots of traveling, meeting our host families, and trying our very best to stay awake until sometime vaguely considered nighttime. I made it to about 6 o’clock, putting my grand total of hours I had been awake to 28 hours. That’s right; didn’t sleep a wink on the plane. I slept for about 12 hours and am still sleepy, but I’m attributing that to a pretty crappy sleep schedule the past few days and not jetlag… because I usually don’t get jetlag and I don’t want to say I have it.

::(My colorful room)::

I’m living with a nice older single woman named Fernande in the center of Differdange, about five minutes away from the Chateau where we take our classes. That’s convenient! She lives in a four story apartment and my room is on the top floor, which certainly made bringing up my two 50-lb suitcases great fun. Fernande also has two cats named Lilli and Lutzi (pronounced like Lucy) who are very sweet and fat and funny. She runs a photography business out of the two bottom floors of the apartment and she showed me around yesterday. It’s a little strange with it just being me and her, but it will definitely give me a chance to brush up on my French. Not gonna lie… I just really want to get to my French class on Monday so I can start talking to people even a little bit.

We spent the morning on our first real day in Luxembourg at the chateau going through some orientation. I learned a little more about the paperwork I have to finish to get my permit to live here, IT and library services in the chateau, and met the student events coordinator. She coordinates some optional group trips we can take, or even just day trips to things like museums during the week. I really liked her and I’ll probably go on a few of those trips because they’re to places that are harder to get to by train or plane.

Not a lot has happened yet to be honest. It’s hard to plan things without cell phones or a concrete schedule. We just wondered around Differdange for a little bit to get our bearings and most people ended up at a bar that a lot of Americans go to called Das Boot… but it’s like 2:30 (or should I say 14:30 since I’m in Europe?) and I’m tired. So I’m being a party pooper. I’m sure there will be another time haha.