Week One

Sunday morning. I've made it to Sunday morning. I have officially been here for a week, but it seems like a year. No week in the history of my life has ever been as exhausting as this one.

So far I have: Visited three countries in one day, tasted wine in France, tasted more wine in Germany, hiked to an old Abbey, explored churches from the 1200's, ordered coffee in another language, ordered coffee in english when I can't remember how to do it in another language, toured military cemeteries, seen famous monuments, seen beautiful overlooks, oh yeah, and I had some classes. I haven't watched an episode of television, a movie, not even a YouTube video since I got here. Every day is constant motion, until I get home at night and fall asleep, usually in the middle of trying to describe all the above adventures to people back home.

This post is both my rough draft and my final, I'm just typing stream of consciousness. I need to reflect on this week, myself.

I'm a weird kind of homesick. I want to be here more than I have ever wanted to be anywhere. But I feel like I am missing so much of the lives of people I care about at home. I don't want to spend the whole trip glued to my phone because I don't want to miss things happening here, but as a result, I'm missing everything back home. Everyone is always excited to hear about the wonderful adventures I am having, but I want to know what they are doing too, because it's just as important. But there is never time for both. In case anyone was considering it as a family therapy strategy, or a way to make friendships more stronger and more interesting, I cannot recommend the six hour time difference.

But on a more cheerful note, it is truly amazing here. My friends and I decided to stay in Luxembourg this weekend, to save some money before our big week-long trip for the upcoming Carnival celebration. So yesterday, we took a train to Clerveaux in the northern part of the country to see a photography exhibit. We got off the train and decided to just take some time to get a cup of coffee and warm up before continuing on. We sat at a quaint hotel cafe with rain streaked windows and The Dark Side of the Moon playing quietly in the background and ordered enough cappuccino to earn our stay. We quietly played Euchre while local guests sleepily emerged from their rooms and took tables around us. Upon asking directions to the exhibit, we discover that it is closed for the entirety of January. It was January 30th.

Normally, this would be a day ruiner. But I've made friends with a group of people more interested in making an adventure out of a wrinkle in plans than throwing a fit over it, the right kind of people in my opinion. We instead researched a nearby Abbey and decided to hike there. We trekked through the pouring rain and biting wind up narrow, muddy trails and then tucked ourselves away in a old crumbling overhang right outside the monastery, where we ate our peanut butter sandwiches and the leftover fruit we have been stealing from school lunches. On the way back down we passed the time by singing (shouting) Bohemian Rhapsody and skipping down the road. We loaded ourselves onto the train, stripping off dripping coats and hats, dreaming of warm showers and pajama pants and chatting about our plans to visit the city that night. That evening was a whole different adventure in itself.

Although not at all the day we had planned for, it might have been my favorite one yet.

If I detailed my every adventure for you, this would slowly become a novel. So I will just stick to my favorites for now.

In case I haven't been able to contact you (reader of this) directly, I miss you very much and hope things are going well back in the states. As much as I wish time here would stop passing so quickly, I am excited to be home this summer to catch up with everyone. Until then, I will do my best with keeping this, and my Facebook profile updated.

This upcoming week is all classes (that's a thing, I also do school sometimes) immediately followed by a five day class field trip to The Netherlands. From there my friends and I are leaving for our week-long Carnival break where we will travel to Venice for a few days and then Nice, France for the remainder.

This week has taught me that the only kind of prepared I can be for this trip, is to prepare to not have any preparation whatsoever. Things change, trains are late, flights get booked, classes get cancelled, better things come up, people flake out, people want to join in, exhibits are closed and you can't know what's around every corner. But I think I like it that way.