Bonjour and welcome to France!

Last weekend well, on friday we took a short train to strasbourg to meet up with the group there. We took a nice coach bus up to the mountains to see the only concentration camp from World War II on french soil. Needless to say, this was a depressing trip and no one talked throughout the tour. So lets move on to something more uplifting since its hard to talk about this experience. After this visit, we took the bus to the castle of haut koeningsburg and got a 45 minute tour in french. The whole time I was there, I was thinking about how cool it would be to place hide and go seek since the place was huge. The furniture and the paintings in some of the rooms were not from the origional castle, they were just there for show. We also went into this room with lots of weapons and the tour guide exlained to us which one was the best for getting a guy off a horse and then killing them. To make this day a little better, after the tour guide some of us went in the restaurant place and ordered german blackforest cake! yummm, it was the best thing ever! Then we got back on the coach bus and headed to kayersberg where we were going to have dinner. The town was really cute and selled kugelhopf ( which is pretty good). The dinner was even more amazing cause we got quiche lorraine as an appetizer. For our main dish we got some chicken thing, veggies, and potato. I think the dessert was a chocolate cake. This was a lovely end to our friday, and then the lc kids went to there hotel in strasbourg. The strasbourg kids offered to take us out and they showed us the bar they like to go to. It was nice and I ordered a peach beer. Then we went to this club and danced for a while but I was tired and left early.

The next day, saturday was free until our train at 5. We ended up going to this really cool contemporary art museum. I really liked the sculptures and there was this one funny video about throwing rocks. After that since this museum had given us a free pass to any other museum we thought we'd use while we were here. Laura, Karen and I went to this archaeological museum... which they never checked and ripped off our ticket. It was good cause the museum was really boring, lots of stones. They tried to integrate asterix but I was kind of confused. So then we went upstaires to the musee des beaux arts which was much nicer. Not to small, but it still had a lot to see. We ate our first kugelhopf for lunch, and it was pretty good. It had raisins in it and almonds on top, it was like a bread but shaped like a large muffin. I enjoyed sitting by the river and watching the tourist boats go by and all the people walking around. I heard a lot of german, or maybe it was alsacien. It is much more  of a tourist city then nancy which is why traveling to see it is fun, but to live there for a whole year.... im not sure. ok, its almost 3 am here, why am i writing this so late? who knows but I should go to bed. Hopefully this was a little insight on my travels. Tomorrow I think im going to this town called commercy where they make madelines! that should be exciting/ im excited to eat them! well I talk to you all later in my next post.

After paris is when our classes really started and we had a bunch more things to do. We are talking this french litterature class with madame Gilet. I don't really know what to think of the teacher yet.... but she seems nice. We get to pick our own book to read throughout the semester which will be nice. We have an arts and ideas class with our direction Ron Lyndaker. We will be doing a lot of cultural things like seeing the opera. Then we have a project village class with the best teacher ever Mr. Poret. In this class we have to do research on a certain village/ topic in the lorraine and write a 5-10 page paper on it. We are reguired to visit the town and talk with the locals. I think my project is going to be on cheese and the making of it. There are some cute towns he suggested where I can go and see how cheese is made. That should be fun, maybe not so intellectual but cheese is so good! We also have a french history and civilization class with the same man, haven't started it yet. Then we have to take some test this coming monday to get placed into a level of french, probably grammer or something, though im not sure. Our schedule is still up in the air and its kind of confusing. Ohh and we have to audit a class for the university. Im gonna audit this one called: the history of the french language. Should be interesting. AND my director said I could take a class in german so im gonna take: the history of europe in the 19th century.

Enough about classes on to the more exciting thing: Luxembourg. I decided with my friend laura from lc and a bunch of other erasmus students ( international ones) sort of spur of the moment to go to Luxembourg for this international festival of music.  We got there in the afternoon and it started to rain, it wasn't raining in nancy when we left ( it was beautiful and warm), and it was cold, really cold. The festival was in the main square, there were i think 2 or 3 different locations with bands playing. The bands were from africa, finland, italy, and other places. The music was really cool and we saw this marching band which was quite fun. For dinner we went to none other than Pizza Hut, but man i have never seen such a nice Pizza Hut. The restaurant was huge and there garlic bread was fantastic. After that we went back out to here more of the music. When that was finished we went to a bar and drank some beers. Then we went to this club where people were dancing. It was hot inside, and it smelled of smoke so  I ended up just sitting outside with this other girl. There were no trains back to nancy at like midnight or 1 so we had to take the earliest one in the morning which was at 5:30. Basically I didn't sleep all night until I got back to my house at 7:30. The experience was worthwhile, it was so much fun, but since it was so cold and i was not really prepared clothing wise the last few hours just sitting outside this club were horrible. 

If you have never been to luxembourg you dont really need too, it is like it looks on the map: a dot. The town is really small, we circled it a couple of times that night. lol. Luxembourg does bring in great musicians though, since its trying to boost its reputation. Overall I had a great weekend and cant wait till we go to alsace on friday with the strasbourg kids. I shall write more when I get back from alsace! talk to you all later :)