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THE LOOP
Emmeline

Lux Go and Explore!

Pop Quiz! Who knows where Luxembourg is? If you said “nestled between Belgium, France and Germany”, you’d be correct! 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week I was in the area, and decided to take a trip to Luxembourg City, Luxembourg and see what the place was all about. Before I get to that though, here’s some information about the country:

 

- Size: 2586 km² (998 mi²)
- Compared to US states, Luxembourg is slightly smaller than Rhode Island (3144 km²). Almost 164 Luxembourgs could fit inside of California.
- Population: 582,291
- It is the only Grand Duchy in the world. And the Grand Duke is named Henri Albert Gabriel Félix Marie Guillaume, but they just call him Henri.
- The country has the highest GDP per capita in the euro zone. In other words, life is good.
- It has three official languages - Luxembourgish, French, and German.

 

      On arriving in Luxembourg City I expected grey skies and rain. But I was pleasantly surprised with sunshine all day long! So I enjoyed it by wandering through the city, along the river, over old bridges and city walls, through a drained moat, down one hill and up a steeper one, into the medieval casemates (from which one shoots cannons out of a fortress), through a senior home, past Louis Vuitton, and on and on and on. It was a wonderful day in one of the prettiest cities I've ever been to.
       
      A trilingual (quadrilingual if you count English, which is everywhere) country with its own regional foods, language, history, and feel. It had been so close by the whole time and I had had no idea! 
       

      How awesome is our world? And how often do we take that for granted? 

       

      Get out there and explore your own backyard. You don't have to move to Europe to find new and exciting places. Need motivation? Try geocaching, or finding a cool-looking restaurant on Yelp, or just get in your car or on a bike and choose a direction. 

       

      Olivia

      "Things I'd Rather be Eating" Thursday

      I'm passionate about a lot of things in life, food being one of them. Specifically, burritos. I don't know what it is, but I find that things often taste infinitely better when wrapped in a tortilla. I go hard when it comes to burritos. I'm THAT girl at Chipotle with the filling that bursts out of the tortilla because there's too much stuff in it and then they're forced to rewrap it. 

      As you can imagine, going to college in San Diego only added fuel to the fire. "Burrito runs" are a part of the culture there, so I fit right in! Dreams are made of these kinds of things, I'm telling ya. It was on one of these burrito runs that I was introduced to one of the great loves of my life: The California Burrito. 

      What is the California Burrito, you might ask? 
      A California Burrito, or Cali B as I like to call it, includes the following:
      Carne asada, cheese, salsa,  sour cream, guacamole, and..... FRENCH FRIES.
      If you didn't know you needed it in your life, now you do. It's worth the trip to San Diego, I promise.
      ALSO: Tomorrow will be the first installment of FRESH KICKS FRIDAY So break out those fire kicks 


      Courtney

      5 Things That Prove You're Smart

      A recent Forbes article I dove into explained the high costs of getting a truly accurate IQ test done. To be honest, I’m not sure I’d appreciate having an exact number to place my intelligence along a scale of people anyway, but a study of the numerous IQ tests taken over the years did find some correlations to higher numbered individuals, including these five:

      1. You’re anxious - yay! Not always a bad thing..this comes to people who can comprehend the ramifications of what may become..I guess you’re extra extra smart if you can harness it for good!
      2. You were an early reader - going to have to ask my ma about this one
      3. You’re left handed - Interestingly enough, this has also been known to correlate with the chances someone being a criminal..hmmm
      4. You took music lessons as a kid - The flute counts. I checked. Probably not as smart as those piano playing kids though..
      5. You’re funny - This correlates with both verbal intelligence and abstract reasoning, which gives me a new appreciation for Aziz Ansari


      Whether you have 1 or 5 of these qualities, I just saved a ton of money on IQ tests by switching to the Loop (;