Beurgbrennen

This country is honestly so strange sometimes....

March 1st: Buergbrennen

This Luxembourgish ritual takes place in the evening of the first Sunday after Ash Wednesday.  The practice seems to have Pagan origins and is thought to be a purification rite to commemorate the end of winter or chase the winter spirit away.

People in the villages erect a huge straw-covered cross or wheel of wood, topped with an evergreen tree, and place it on a hillside.  According to tradition, the most recently married couple or large groups of children light the cross or wheel at nightfall in the presence of spectators.

Before the ceremony village youth go around ringing doorbells to collect bacon or money for supper, which takes place in a local cafe after the burning.  

Me enjoying some gluhwein 

(spiced hot wine that they serve at luxembourgish events)

The kids about to light the cross

Robyn and I (sneaky Marcus in the background)

Burn Fire Burn!

What Luxembourger doesn't love a good cross burning?

The flames dying out

gratitude for today

Pictures from snowboarding in the French Alps:

micah (my friend/snowboard instructor) decided it would be funny to take me through some powder which led me into an extreme frustrating pattern of riding for about 10 seconds then whipping out and then spending a good five minutes trapped in the powder using all my strength to stand back up for no more than ten seconds- I can only imagine how funny it was for Micah to watch

Our lovely lunch spot

Obviously taking a break from boarding to make a snow angel

beautiful view from the top

just hanging out on a mountain

Me in front of our precious little chalet 

(owned by a family from church so we got to stay there for free:)

I just got off the phone with a good friend from home and was talking about my experience over here and what a crazy year I have had and came to the conclusion that I dont think i will be able to fully appreciate all that I have seen and experienced until I am home and have the realization, "What just happened?" It is so crazy for me to think that last year I had only been to one other country besides my own and now I am sitting here looking at pictures from my trips to three different countries over the past three weeks.  I truly feel so blessed to be living this life and hope that I can feel that gratitude on a daily basis.  

So as I said the past few weeks have been a little crazy dublin, then the alps, then the canary islands and that is why I haven't posted in a while but I will try to be better in the future.

Expect pictures from the canaries soon, i promise!

My favorite city in the world...Dublin

I know this is a little late, but better late than never right?

To start off, here are a few pictorial highlights from the trip...

Me, doing self portraits...this was the low point of my thirteen hour journey to Dublin

The bar at the top of the Guiness Factory:
Doing a little taste test at the Guiness Factory

Me and Dublin

Troy and Dublin

Me, Troy, and Dublin

Out on the town

Wonderful street performers

Beautiful Trinity College

I spent last weekend in Ireland and I can honestly say it was my favorite city that I have been to yet.  I had a bit of a fiasco getting there (what should have been about three hours of travel somehow turned in to thirteen) but it was all worth it! I met up with Troy and his delightful friends and we had an amazing weekend.  We did a lot of sight seeing (Guiness Factory, Trinity College, Christ Church, etc.) and had an officially crazy night out on the town- Irish style.  I have seriously never wanted to not leave a bar so badly when they kicked us out at about 3 o'clock, definitely one of the most fun nights I have ever had out.  Overall it was a very memorable weekend and I came to one important conclusion that I would love to marry an Irish man.  They are truly the most kind and generous breed of people I have come across thus far, must be something in the water...or beer, not really sure.  Thats all for now, look forward to a post coming soon about my adventures in the French Alps...

off to Ireland

So not too much new going on in Lux besides the fact that I am leaving for Ireland tomorrow!! I am meeting my friend, Troy there and I am so excited not only to see a new place but to see an old friend.  I have found that it is very comforting seeing a familiar face in this large land of strangers speaking foreign languages.  So it should be a great trip and I will try to do a post next week filled with pictures and exciting Irish adventures.

Here are some pics from the last few weeks

with friends out on the town, that's Svana (another au pair from Iceland), me, and Rachel

I may have been rocking out pretty hard...

The boys that I spend most of my time with, Nathan and Colton, plus Nathan's best friend Braham.  Being silly before ice skating

I just taught with Mrs. Doubtfire

Hello friends!
So, the good news is that I officially survived three days alone with the boys. It was actually a lot of fun and way less stress and chaos than I expected. Some highlights included...
~Taking the boys ice skating=hilarious since Nathan had never been and Colton had only been once. They did pretty well but Nathan had a pretty bad fall and has a nice scratch on his cheek to prove it
~First trip to Pizza Hut in Luxembourg (way nicer than American Pizza hut and they even have a play area for the kids complete with a playstation)
~Family movie day on Sunday, we watched Kung Fu Panda (which was hilarious!), Eragon, and best of all I exposed the children to the wonderful world of Newsies!! They were so not excited about it but I was like seriously you guys, you will really like it, i promise. And I actually think they did like it, of course they both thought that Les was like the coolest kid ever, so I think he is their new role model.
I am subbing right now, and I was just helping out in a third grade classroom and the regular teacher was out sick so there was a sub and she was AMAZING! When I say amazing, i mean the doppelganger to Mrs Doubtfire, not even kidding! She had this amazing accent and kept calling the kids puppet (very Pirates of the Caribbean). Now I have a break for a few hours so I will most likely watch a few Gossip Girl episodes (which by the way is my newest guilty pleasure). In other news, I decided to go to Ireland next weekend. I talked to my friend, Troy who is studying in Spain and he is going with some friends for the weekend so I found a cheap ticket and was feeling pretty spontaneous. So I will be in Dublin for the 6th-8th. I am really excited because I really wanted to go to Ireland and I have heard Dublin is a really fun city. Okay, thats all for now, hope everyone is staying warm in America!

i might need some prayer for this one...

I am sitting on the couch right now watching the Inauguration Parade by myself as the rest of the family has all gone to bed. We spent the evening watching the coverage of the event live (through the Armed Forces Network and it was incredible). I was absolutely blown away by Obama's inspiring words, optimism, and spirit of hope... I don't think I have ever felt so patriotic. I cant imagine the energy that is being felt in DC, let alone in America. I could not be more excited about the future of our country!
Okay, enough patriotism for now. The past few weeks have been very busy with subbing almost everyday which is a little chaotic but actually feels really good to be busy and productive. I have a very exciting weekend coming up as Marc and Eleanor will be heading to London to celebrate their anniversary and leaving me alone with the two little angels. We already have movie marathons and ice skating outing plans so hopefully things will be more on the side of fun and organized than out of control and extreme tempers. I could probably use some prayers that I am able to stay patient throughout the four days.
Last weekend EJ, Marcus and I went to the grand opening of this new spa/fitness center called Les Thermes and it was unbelievable! It looked a spaceship from the outside and on the inside it was just all very modern. It was so crazy I had to take some pics...

Colton may have told me not to show this picture to anyone back home but instead i have chosen to share it with the entire internet community.

egg on my hamburger = steller '09

Well, here I am making my return to blogland and let me tell you, it feels fantastic.
Not only have I returned to the internet but I have also returned to pretend home for the year, Lux. While it was pretty hard to leave home after having an incredible three weeks with friends and family and has been a surprisingly easy transition. I definitely jumped right back in to things by flying in on wednesday morning and teaching thrusday and friday, so that was good because it kind of forced me to adjust and get my sleeping in order.
One of the most exciting recent developments in my life is that I joined a gym here in Lux. It is really nice and in a great location right by the school and I have already been there three times and love it! I'm fairly confident that when I return to America I will be unrecognizable because of my hut bod and bulgin muscles. Well that might be a slight exageration but I am really excited about getting in shape and it is great to have place to go outside the house where I can let off some steam and relax.
I also had a wonderful weekend, spent mostly with two of my closest friends here, EJ and Marcus. Saturday sat around for most of the day and then went to Marcus' b-ball game which was actually a really close and exciting game. And then after we were hungry so we went to this great restaurant in the city called "ques pasa"which sounds like it would be mexican but it is kind of like the sarkis of Luxembourg where all the drunk people go to get really delicious, greasy, cheap food. I had a hamburger type of sandwich with cheese, egg, and ketchup (sidenotes: they put eggs on everything here- ie: pizza, salad, burgers it's quite strange but i was actually pleasently surprised. Anywho, had dinner then went back to EJ's where we inteded to watch grey's anatomy but passed out. Sunday I sang in chruch then had lunch at EJ's then checked out this open house for this ridiculous pa of the future by EJ's house, I have pictures to upload but I have seriously never seen anything like it! Then we went to EJ's game, then we went back to her place where we had dinner and a rousing game of catchphrase (boys against girls, obviously we won!) then as i was about to leave EJ realized her heat had been turned off because her silly roomate forgot to pay the bill so we had sleepover round two at my place. Overall, great weekend!
Today, I am feeling so grateful for all the wonderful people I have met here, and how much God has blessed met throughout my time is this strange foreign freakishly small land. Cant wait to see what this year will bring, I know it will be great!

ps- I have lots of pics to upload as soon as I have some time