This past week was spent in Paris, France, and Echtnernach, Luxembourg. The dichotomy was fairly stark but I had pleasant times in both. Let’s start with the more fun:
Paris
It was my birthday! Thus I took the mere 2 hr train ride to/from Paris for a birthday weekend. I stayed with my friend, Lauren, whom I know from Edinburgh, and we had a lovely time seeing the city and celebrating. I got the chance to visit museums I had never been to, eat some delicious veggie food, and just hang out with a good friend, something I haven’t been able to do since I moved to Lux since everyone here is pretty new. We even indulged in some fantastic birthday cake, as my mom insisted on me getting, “the most decadent chocolate cake you can find.” I think we did a decent job meeting that criterion.
All in all, a very successful trip and a glorious way to kick of 27!
Echternach
My first task as a 27-year-old was to go to volunteer training, or “On-Arrival” as we call it. I will preface this section by saying that I have had a lot of volunteer training in my day. I’ve attended two pre-departure trainings (Boston and Leeds), and one On-Arrival in Belgium. I know all about the Intercultural Iceberg, the Emotional Dip Chart, and Learning to Learn. I’ve also volunteered in a foreign country/language and been expatriated six times. For me, I wasn’t expecting this to be a mind-expanding journey of new information and life-changing activities. Which is good because it wasn’t. I was, however, looking forward to meeting some of the other new volunteers.
Ten of us gathered in the north of Luxembourg at this small tourist city on the border of Germany. The location was scenic and the hostel nice, however I soon realized I was stuck in 4 days of what I like to call “this-piece-of-string-is-a-metaphor-for-real-life” activities and often pondered how I could get this piece of string to escape from training. These are activities where, despite appearances, you really weren’t just rock climbing, eating lunch, or trying to spell your name with a piece of string while blindfolded, no. These were in fact microcosms for my time as a volunteer or for life. It’s a good thing the scenery was so beautiful so I could roll my eyes while pretending to admire it :)
I don’t mean to sound like I went into this with a closed mind, because I did not. But I didn’t learn as much as I would have liked, which is a shame. I was, however, reminded of a few things when it comes to volunteering (e.g. setting goals for the year and thinking about how to achieve them), and, most importantly, met some very nice people. They come from Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Albania, and Hungary. I genuinely liked most of the people I met and I look forward to getting to know them better and sharing some time and experiences in Luxembourg. Most don’t live in Lux city, but the country is so small that it doesn’t make a difference and I’ve already seen some of them again!
My time in Luxembourg is progressing, but I’m still feeling quite homesick for Scotland. I don’t like it yet and it’s not yet home, but I have only been here for three weeks so I’m trying to stay positive and optimistic. So in reality, going from Paris to Echternach was really a microcosm for going from Scotland to Luxembourg, just minus the string.
xoxo
VB
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