no motivation to write this.

Not going to lie, I am so so so unmotivated to write this post right now. I've been feeling a little under the weather this week (and I'm pretty sure I had a light fever yesterday but I had no thermometer to find out). But I figured if I didn't post it before the weekend, I probably wouldn't do it at all and I do want to tell everyone about my exciting weekend in Champagne country!

Last weekend was another discovery tour organized by the student events coordinator, which meant transportation by bus! Much more convenient than train. So we kicked off Friday afternoon by driving to Verdun, the site of a large World War 1 battlefield. We visited a few monuments and saw some trenches and toured a fort, so that was pretty exciting. One thing that really struck me was how beautiful the area was. We see so many pictures of WW1 where the landscape looks barren and brown, but nature has completely taken over now and most of the trenches and craters in the ground created by bombs now look like beautiful rolling green hills. I don't know why that seemed so interesting to me, but it was.

After that we headed on to Reims, a really beautiful French city. I got a wonderful French dinner with my friend Alyssa because everyone else decided to go get Mexican food. Don't get me wrong; I have been craving some good Mexican food, but were were in FRANCE. And it did not disappoint. I shelled out for a good steak and some creme brulee and it was très délicieux. We wandered around the city and stopped for drinks the rest of the night and it was very nice. I really liked Reims.

In the morning we got to experience a nice French morning in Reims. We went to a Saturday morning market and I got some delicious strawberries and strawberry jam. AND I did it all in French. It was interesting; you hear so much about French being a little snobbish about their language, but I felt so much less judged stumbling through my broken French in France than I do in Luxembourg. I really wonder why that is... Every time I try to be polite and order something in French here (where French isn't the mother tongue, but is the official government language and the language on all the signs), people treat me like an idiot. Meh. Anyways, after the market I stopped with a few other people at a cafe and stupidly decided to save money and not get coffee. What was I thinking? After sitting out on the terrace for awhile, we headed over to the Notre-Dame cathedral. Not the one in Paris, but the one in Reims. This cathedral was where all the French kings had their coronations and Jean d'Arc visited it at some point. It was probably my favorite cathedral I've ever been in... And I can't really put my finger on why. I loved their chandeliers. The ceilings were enormous like any cathedral, but the chandeliers were on ridiculously long ropes so they hung just above your head. It somehow made the place seem more intimate. They also had beautiful modern stained glass windows in one section by Marc Chagall because many of the windows were destroyed in the wars. It's actually pretty amazing half the churches in France and Germany are even standing at all...

After some delicious quiche and an eclair for lunch, we went on to the champagne tasting at Pommery where we got to tour their extensive caves where they store the champagne for aging. Now that I've been on a few wine tours, it's really interesting to see the diversity. For instance, the last wine-tasting I went to was on a family owned winery in Germany, where the owner gave us the tour, showed us where he grew the grapes, and then explained each wine to us when we tried them - it was very homey and down to earth. In Pommery, even the caves had an air of refinement. They had art exhibitions throughout the entire thing and the entrance into the caves were these really regal steps. When we did the tasting, we were taken into a private, posh room and were given just one champagne. I liked both ways, and I'm glad I got to experience both. I bought one cute thing of champagne called POP, a new product from Pommery that is meant to casualize champagne. It comes in this vivid pink little bottle and it even comes with a straw to drink it like it was out of a 1950s Coke ad. I don't know if there's ads like that but it sounds right.

After that we loaded on the bus again to go to Belgium! We stopped at a monastery to do a beer and cheese tasting of the Chimay beer and cheese made by the monks there. Despite not liking beer, it was pretty good. The cheese seriously made the experience though. It was some GOOD cheese. After that we just headed home. We had the option of going to museums in Luxembourg City because they were opened until 1am for a special event, but I was exhausted and I just headed home.

On Sunday I had a grand plan of getting on the internet to research for a paper. Epic fail. I had FINALLY found wifi at a kebab restaurant the week before, but for some reason it stopped working for me on Sunday. Come to find out, I have free wifi in the park outside my house, so I ended up sitting out there instead. Unfortunately, children were screaming in the park all day and got kind of cold. I think sitting there all day was probably why I got sick this week. At night my host mom took me out to dinner and it was really really good. Then after we ate she asked the staff and it turns out they have wifi in their front room bar/cafe area, so I might go hang out there sometimes. I also got around to asking if I could just plug in my host mom's ethernet cable to my laptop, so now I finally can get on the internet at home... when she's not using it and when I want to go all the way downstairs.

The only other exciting thing that's happened this week is that I got sick and the US Ambassador to Luxembourg came to talk to us tonight at the Chateau. But tomorrow night I'm going to meet the British Ambassador to Luxembourg... so I'm going to hold off on writing about the US Ambassador until after that so it can be an ambassador themed post.

No pictures in this post yet because I haven't even put them on my computer. Maybe I'll get around to that.