Ths past week, my parents flew in from California to spend the week with me! It was wonderful to have a piece of home with me for a time. As much as I really like everyone at the program, I really enjoyed the time to catch up with my family and hear more English being spoken.

We took some day trips while they were here, first to Colmar in France, then to Basel in Switzerland, both of which are just over the border from Germany. In both places, we went to amazing museums and saw paintings by artist like Monet, Rembrandt, Piscasso, and Van Gogh. It was amazing to be so close to such masterpieces!

A Self Portrait by Van Gogh, Basel, Switzerland

Today, Tuesday the 3rd, the program took us to the European Parliament to watch a plenary session on Brexit and the UK’s exit from the EU. It was fascinating. There was no vite that we saw, but the gist of the arguments was that the UK feels the process is taking too long, and almost everyone outside of the UK thinks that’s because the UK government is divided on Brexit. At some points, politicians through shade the the UK representatives, which was very amusing. Unfortunately, my day was made less enjoyable by the fact that I accidently slammed my hand in my apartment door on the way to catch the bus this morning. I’ll spare my readers the details, but I’m mildly disadvantaged right now, as I can’t use my right middle finger. Thus, I’ll leave off here, and come back next week with a much longer update on my adventures in the EU.