New Friends

Sick again. Either I never got rid of the first cold or I contracted a new one. Whatever the case may be, I'm down and out. I hear if you move to a whole new environment, it takes your body a while to build up an immunity to local viruses. Hopefully, mine builds up soon, cuz this is cramping my style.

So, we found out that our greatly anticipated visit from our friend in March won't be happening. His company postponed the trip. They've been postponing it since November, so who knows when he'll actually be coming our way. We're pretty bummed as we were looking forward to seeing him and taking some vacation time to see the sights together.

However, even though we won't be seeing one of our best friends next month, we are making several new ones here! Wednesday night we had a couple over for dinner that we've met through The Company. They're originally from the Trier area of Germany, but are living in Luxembourg for now. We've also made a connection with another couple living outside of Brussels who are originally from the Ukraine. We are looking forward to seeing them again in a couple weeks when we take the train there for the day. Through the Twitter and a mutual love of pro cycling, we connected with a fantastic Luxembourgish couple who we met last Friday in Lux City.

It has been an absolute joy getting to know all of them and learning about their backgrounds and culture. Our Lux friends are teaching us all about Luxembourg on everything from key Luxembourgish words and phrases to my new addiction, kachkeis cheese. Our German friends are teaching us all sorts of things, such as what German wood fire BBQ is and what dialect of German is the easiest to understand. Our friends from Brussels are sharing their experiences of moving to this part of Europe. I've found a kindred spirit with the husband, who is studying Egyptology and has been to many of the places I visited while working in Egypt in 2003 (oh my gosh, I can't believe that was almost ten years ago!).

I can't say enough about what a blessing it is to meet such a wonderful group of people and to learn from them. They've all been so gracious with answering questions and being patient with our ignorance.

Before we moved here, we were told that making friends with Europeans isn't easy because of our cultural differences. I say, and maybe it's the anthropologist in me, it's these differences that make the relationships so rewarding. Suddenly conversations about basic everyday things like cheese and mustard become fascinating journeys into exploration. It's also fun to share some American traditions too. Before you know it, four hours have passed and you haven't stopped talking. Sometimes, yes, language can provide a bit of a hiccup, but I'm always surprised by how the brain can work around that. Of course, folks here know many more languages than we Americans do, so they certainly are doing most of the work. I hope that changes after we get some German (which is spoken more than French in the Ardennes region where we live) and Luxembourgish under our belts. At this point I'm comfortable saying "hello", "goodbye", "please", and "thank you" in Luxembourgish: "Moien", "Äddi", "Wann ech glift", and "Merci" respectively. There, now you know a little Luxembourgish too! It's a start. If we learn some German I think that would help us understand a little more. They have many similarities.

We are truly having a wonderful time getting to know everyone and I look forward to seeing all of them again soon. If we had limited ourselves to only making friendships with other folks from the States, I don't think we'd be having this much fun.

Anyway, how else would I have discovered kachkeis (eaten with a little Luxembourgish mustard and black pepper)?