Christmas Break

During the entire week of Christmas the lab is closed, so it makes for a nice long break. However, since Mindy is 35 weeks pregnant, we can't really go anywhere far away. Also I should add that Mia and I have been pretty sick since last Wednesday. Therefore, yesterday was the first traveling we had done that was further outside our front door than the Leuven city center.

I did some looking around on the internet for some World War 2 memorial sites in the southeastern part of the country. I found some good places that didn't have real specific directions, but we set off nonetheless. Our first stop was the Ardennes American Military Memorial. It is in Neuville-en-Condroz which is near Liege in the french speaking part of the country. It was originally set up to be a memorial for soldiers that died in the Battle of the Bulge, but is also the memorial site for many American soldiers that died in the air fighting as well. Here are a couple pictures we took. Click the sign and you should be able to zoom in enough to read the text.





After this memorial we headed south towards Bastogne. This was one of the major sites of the Battle of the Bulge and many American lives were lost fighting for this city. Because of this the Belgium people have erected a memorial honoring American soldiers called the Mardasson Memorial. We got there pretty late, so here is a picture of what we saw.



The town of Bastogne was very nice as well. The shopping district was very lit up and Christmas music was playing on all the streets. It was very different from most other Belgium cities we have seen.



Since I have some time off work in the lab, I think I am going to work on my Instrumental Analysis course notes and syllabus. Bruce managed to get a couple textbooks over here for me and now I can get some materials ready for the students I will have. This will be a fun challenge teaching such a course from here. Go technology!