A Taste of the Luxurious Life in Luxembourg

Tag: fulbright luxembourg

Posted on in 2022, Americans in Luxembourg, Luxembourg

A Taste of the Luxurious Life in Luxembourg

Nicole Duby was a 2022-2023 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Luxembourg. After graduating from the University of Arizona with degrees in French and Psychological Sciences, she worked as a language assistant in Clermont-Ferrand, France through the Teaching Assistant Program in France. In Luxembourg, she spent the 2022-2023 academic year teaching English at Lycée Hubert Clément Esch-sur-Alzette and the University of Luxembourg. We sat down with Nicole to hear about her experience in the Grand Duchy. Q: “Has Luxembourg been what you expected? In what ways has life in Luxembourg surprised you?” “Luxembourg has been both similar to and different from how I had originally envisioned it. While I had an intellectual understanding of how small the country is, it definitely shocked me a bit in practice. I saw the same people often, even when I was least expecting it, and so it led to a sense of camaraderie between me and those around me. I quickly established a routine and […]

by Fulbright
Posted on in 2022, Americans in Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Lunching in Luxembourg

The cultural differences I observed between the U.S. and Luxembourg can be summarized by a simple act: lunch. Almost every day, I eat lunch with my colleagues. I received a Fulbright Research Grant to complete a project on the gut microbiome at the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH). I was grateful for the opportunity to expand my microbiology skillset, especially in a lab abroad. The bacteria I study help us digest our food, and the composition of our microbiomes is largely influenced by our diet. Therefore, lunch quite literally affects my research, but my lunches in Luxembourg were so much more than that.  When I first came to the LIH, I was overwhelmed. The plethora of languages that my diverse colleagues spoke, not to mention the lab jargon and foreign measurements, made me feel unprepared. I spent the first few weeks learning as much as possible and trying not to ask too many dumb questions. The only time I truly […]

by Fulbright
Posted on in 2022, Americans in Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Charting My Year in Luxembourg

The best way to capture my Fulbright experience was presented to me on the first day of orientation. On September 15, 2022, 30 Fulbrighters, including me, sat in neatly-lined white chairs at the offices of the Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States, Belgium, and Luxembourg inside the Royal Library of Belgium. The Fulbright Program Officers presented numerous useful tips for living abroad in Belgium and Luxembourg – from how to set up a bank account in Europe to how to navigate public transportation. What I would come to find most useful, though, was a graph. This graph – albeit simplified – depicts the peaks and troughs, the shocks and adjustments, that one may experience while living 5,000 miles away from home. I found that my experience tracked the pattern of this chart. Arrival and Honeymoon On my flight from JFK to Brussels, I buzzed with excitement. I spent the past 1.5 years working on my application to serve […]

by Fulbright
Posted on in 2021, 2022, Americans in Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Lifelong Lessons Learned in Luxembourg

When I think back on the nine months that were my English Teaching Assistantship, I am appalled at the speed with which they went by. I think of the lessons I learned, both intentionally and a majority of them accidentally. Big and small. Easy ones and challenging ones. I remember the countless buses and trains. The sprints to catch them and the looks of defeat at missing them (both mine and those I saw as I sat by the window while we pulled off). I remember the language barriers, the feelings of unfamiliarity and the triumph when I understood that the cashier had asked me whether I was paying with cash or card in French. And more lessons. Daily, weekly, monthly lessons. Giving lessons while learning them. Like, lesson one (in case you’re ever in Luxembourg): bring the Öko-Tut! Öko-Tuts are these eco-friendly bags that you purchase at stores across the country and when the time comes to restock your […]

by Fulbright
Posted on in 2022, Americans in Luxembourg, Fulbright, Luxembourg

Embracing the moment

Perhaps the moment that best reflects my time in Luxembourg would be the night of my final Lëtz school. For a majority of my time in Luxembourg, my Wednesday night’s were spent within the walls of the monastery of the Brothers of Verbum Spei. Each week, the Brothers would welcome young adults to their home and present a seminar covering topics of philosophy and theology. Following the seminar, they would invite us upstairs to enjoy snacks, home made beers, and fellowship. It was a true community. When the night was ready to be concluded we would gather in their chapel to pray together before returning to our homes. During the closing prayer of my final Lëtz school the magnitude of the last nine months finally hit me. I remember as people left the chapel one by one I remained on the floor with tears in my eyes for the first time in a long while. Yet the tears were not […]

by Fulbright
Posted on in 2022, Americans in Luxembourg, Fulbright, Luxembourg

Trains of Thought

Over these last few months of my Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant, I’ve been enjoying my commute to school, gazing out the window of my train as it zooms past the mountains, the rivers, and the farms of Luxembourg. But I can still remember my apprehension when I first learned that I would be traveling 63 kilometers (about two hours) on the train each way from my host city of Esch-sur-Alzette, in the south, to teach at a wonderful secondary school and an amazing primary school in the small town of Clervaux in the north, an area known for its historical significance as a site of heavy combat in WWII’s Battle of the Bulge. After crunching the numbers, I discovered that I was traveling across approximately three-quarters of the entire country each way.  Despite the long distance, over the nine months of the grant, I’ve come to savor these long train rides. The trains have not only transported me from […]

by Fulbright
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