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my table in the cave at the chateauExams-
My last week of school was a crazy time. I had two exams on Monday and one exam on Wednesday. Monday I went in for the whole day. I had business in the morning and it went better than expected and then I had my French oral exam that afternoon. Both turned out really well so I was happy. All my French practice on trains and in other French speaking countries really paid off. Monday night we had our final dinner at Pomodoro, which is everyone’s favorite pizza place in Differdange, and had a good time there. Tuesday I spent the day at home. I finally got internet at the house so I had all my notes accessible to me at home. Pretty much for most of the day I worked on packing up all my stuff into my suitcase. The suitcase just did not seem to be as big as it was when I came. I also had to work on cleaning the room, after four months in the house we had collected quite a bit of trash. In between all of that I had to work on my French written exam. I had most of the questions so
it was just practicing using the tenses and memorizing vocabulary. I met Emily in the city after she was done at school and we picked up dinner and got our train reservations to Paris. It was our last time to get train tickets, so good for our wallets, but sad for us. Wednesday we had to wake up extra early to go into school for our last exam. Emily and I both had our French exams. I got to turn back in my books, for a little extra cash and then we had to say our final goodbyes. It was a very bitter, sweet goodbye. We were sad to leave all the MUDEC students, but we still have two weeks of travel to look forward to. It’s also so nice because we all go to school together, so in August we will all be back in Oxford and we can hang out there. Dinner parties, reunion parties and day trips have already been planned! We had to rush home to finish packing up all of our last minute things and make sure the room was clean. Then we were off to the train station for our last trip.
Munster-
We took the Wednesday afternoon train from Luxembourg to Munster to visit Emily’s aunt’s house. It ended up that another MUDECer was on our train heading to the Dusseldorf airport. Dusseldorf was a few stops before Munster so we were basically on the train together the whole time. We had our own little room of seats so it was fun telling stories one last time before she had to leave. When we arrived to Munster Emily’s aunt was waiting for us with her big red van. She welcomed me with open arms and was so excited that Emily and I came to stay with her. It was so nice to be greeted so warmly and have a nice place to stay. When we got to the van there were chains and ropes all over. I could not figure out what all this stuff was for. I even thought for a moment that maybe they were venders and just opened the van door to sell this stuff. Well prior to arriving Emily had ‘forgot’ to fill me in on what her aunt did. Her aunt is a dog breeder so they were not just chains and ropes; they were actually collars
and leashes. She doesn’t do agility training, but obedience training. So she focuses on teaching the dogs how to listen to her and follow orders without being on a leash. When we got to the house we were greeted by one of the furry little friends, Bozo. Bozo is a terrier dog. He was actually the cutest thing ever and he was so well behaved. No peeing on the floor or tearing up the house furniture. Lore, Emily’s aunt, made us a delicious dinner. She had homemade pastries filled with ham, a cheese sauce and fresh asparagus. Emily and I both exhausted so we just had dinner, sat around and talked with Lore and then had to go up to bed. Thursday we woke up and had a jam packed day of activities. Lore set up a whole day of site seeing activities so we could learn about and see Munster. We started off by taking a boat ride on the Aasee to the other side of town. From the port we walked into the center of the city. We walked around all the shops and down the main street while we waited for our walking tour to begin. Our
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hallway to our classroom walking tour covered the three main parts of town. We started in the Peace Hall where the Warsaw Treaty that ended the 25 year war was signed. Then we saw the main church in the middle of the city. It is famous for the three cages on the steeple part. This is because hundreds of years ago they killed three people for lying and hung them in these cages to let the rest of the town learn from this example. It is a little eerie looking at the cages. Our last stop was at the astronomical clock in Munster Cathedral. It was really interesting to see the clock because there are only six in the world and we saw another one of them in Strasburg as well. Unfortunately the walking tour was not in English so Lore had to translate everything for us. It has been so long since she has had to speak so much English at one time, so we got to play a little bit of charades with her as well. Our walking tour led us to our tram tour around the outskirts of the main city center. We saw some of the same sites, but then
also got to see the promenade and the university. There are a ton of students in Munster because of the university located there. The tram ride was in English and it was very informative so we got to learn all about Munster and its traditions. After our tram ride we walked around the back streets with a ton of other shops. We just enjoyed the beautiful weather and strolled around the area. We grabbed a bite to eat and headed towards the promenade. We got picked up at the park and then headed over to Emily’s grandma’s brother. He had invited us all over for tea and cake. When we arrived the china was set out and a huge strawberry pie and waffle cones were set out. It was so tempting not to just dive right into the treats. They were all delicious though! He did not speak very much English so we had to have Lore translate a lot of stuff for us. He seemed very nice though. He had just taken a 14 city tour around America for business so we talked about that most of the time. It was fun meeting all these members of Emily’s family.
After tea we headed back to Lore’s house and she whipped us up a pasta dinner. It was pasta noodles with a meat sauce. It was delicious; I had to go back for seconds to take advantage of the good food! The weather was just perfect so we spent the rest of the night just hanging out on her porch before heading off to bed. Friday we woke up and it was Memorial Day in Germany. Memorial Day is mostly celebrated by everyone getting out their bikes and riding around. Bike riders were all around. Since we didn’t have bikes we took out some of Lore’s dogs and went on a walk. It was another gorgeous day so it was really pleasant to walk around the country side. Her dogs are some of the most well behaved dogs. They listen to everything she says so well. All she had to say was plutz (lay down) and they would go to the edge of the road and lay down as bikers went by. Our next big trip was about an hour away to visit Emily’s great-grandma. Not only did we meet her great-grandma but also her second cousins and second aunts
and uncles. The whole German clan of Emily’s family was gathering for a combined birthday party and Memorial Day celebration. So not only was I getting to meet the family, Emily was meeting them for the first time too. We couldn’t stay very long at the party because we had to get back to Munster so Emily and I could catch our train to Florence. Lore got us a pizza and sent us off at the train station.
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