Discovery Tour in Reims, France

This week was much more relaxed than last week. I had a political science midterm on Friday but it was pretty easy and didn't require much preparation at all. I got some of my tests/papers back and I did well on those so I'm happy about that.
On Monday night Hannah and I ate at Pizza Hut with Josh and Luke in the City. Other than having the same name and selling pizza, this Pizza Hut pretty much had nothing in common with the ones at home. It was a really nice sit down restaurant and the food was awesome! It tasted somewhat like Pizza Hut pizza but also different. It was nice to eat there because the pizza Europe has pretty much has no sauce on it and it's really thin, and this actually had sauce and was a lot thicker. It was one of the best meals I've had since being in Europe.
The rest of the week nights, we came back home pretty early and played with the kids. We babysat Sam and Lynn on Tuesday night which was really fun! I love hanging out with them! They've become a lot more comfortable with us and now whenever we come downstairs Lynn stops what she's doing to come over to us and grab our hands and take us to the marbles to play with her. She's adorable. Also, Sam said Hannah and Meredith for the first time. He totally butchered my name but it was really cute. I think he's shy about speaking in English because he definitely knows some words but it's like pulling teeth to get him to say them. He is talking more though. Lynn pretty much shamelessly repeats whatever you ask her to say.
On Wednesday night we had our mandatory orientation meeting and this week it was a lecture from the mayor of Differdange. It was pretty boring and slightly awkward because he threw us all off by asking for suggestions on how to improve relations between Miami and Differdange. No one except a couple teachers said anything .
On Thursday, Hannah and I played in a euchre tournament. We lost in the final four 9-10. I'm convinced the team we were playing was cheating, but I'm over it. I left my cards at the tournament so I hope I can get those back. Also, I annoyingly left my umbrella on the train and realized right when it was too late to go get it. I'm using one of Danie and Carlo's but it's pretty sucky and I want my old one back. Oh well, what can you do?
Friday we left for a trip planned by the school to Reims, France. We first stopped in Verdun, France and went to a WWI battle site. It was a little erie because you could still see the trenches and some of the ground was still considered unsafe. Also, the base of one of the memorial buildings at the cemetery was filled with the bones of over 130,000 unidentified soldiers. It was really sad to see all of them. And yes, we could see the bones. There were windows looking into where the bones were placed. After Verdun we left and went to Reims. Reims is a decently small, cute French town. I really like towns in France. All the ones I've been to have been great. We got to our hotel (yes, I said HOTEL) and settled in and went to dinner. We ate at a really slow italian restaurant but the food was good. After dinner we all went to some French local bar hang out. There really wasn't anything special about it, and there were many creepy French guys, so we turned in kind of early.
In the morning, we all got up and went to a Champagne cave. I forgot to tell you Reims is Champagne Country. Our student activities coordinator couldn't get the tour at a later time, so we had a champagne tasting at 10am. Oh well, it was 5 o'clock somewhere. Actually, in Europe, they don't have a time rule. Everyone pretty much drinks all the time. Most people drink wine with lunch and it's perfectly acceptable. After the champagne tour, we went to the Reims cathedral. It was gorgeous, like most European cathedrals are. We walked around Reims, did some window shopping, ate lunch, and got back on the bus.
We went to Chimay, Belgium for a beer and cheese tasting (the school loves organizing alcohol tastings apparently). All the guys really talked up Chimay beer but I thought a lot of it was pretty gross.
We got back to Lux around dinner time, came home and made food, played some games, did some skyping, and went to bed. Today Danie and Carlo are making us a traditional Luxembourg meal for lunch. This includes Cow Tongue, Blood Sausage, and Kidney. Yikes. I'll let you know how that works out.