Competing in a weekend-long sporting event is both exciting and tiring. For many sports, a team might have to travel hours just to arrive at their opponent’s field, court, course or track. It is not as common, however, for students to leave the country to play a game.

For senior Kat Weimer and her sister, sophomore Holly, however, playing sports in Luxembourg often meant taking a weekend to go compete in a neighboring country

 From 1999 until 2003 Kat and Holly lived in Luxembourg, where they attended the International School of Luxembourg. Both girls were born in America, but their father’s job at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company gave the family the opportunity to move to Europe.

  Kat and Holly’s mother, Allison, wanted them to attend the International School of Luxembourg for one major reason: it is an English-speaking school.

“We thought it would be an easier transition for them and that they would be able to keep up with their academics,” Allison said.

The International School of Luxembourg is a liberal arts school focusing on the arts and music as well as other creative subjects. The school also starts teaches foreign languages.

“They start French lessons from day one because French is the legal language in Luxembourg,” Allison said. “Luxembourgers speak French as well as Luxembourgish.”

Class sizes at a liberal arts school like Luxembourg’s International School tend to have fewer students than the classes at Revere.

 Allison said that there were thirteen-to-fourteen kids in each class and only two classes for each grade level.

Although the class sizes at the International School of Luxembourg are small, the number of different ethnicities there is much greater than here at Revere.

“It has a lot more international influence. There were kids from Asia and other parts of Europe,” Kat said. “[At Revere], one or two kids are true foreigners, [who] aren’t from the U.S. and [in Luxembourg] there are a lot of kids who are foreigners, who aren’t even from Luxembourg.”

Interacting with all these culturally different people in their classes have exposed Holly and Kat to different nationalities.

The International School of Luxembourg has a much longer school year than Revere’s. When Kat and Holly attended, they began classes in late August and stayed in school until early July.

 “Luxembourg is a major Catholic society so for every major Catholic holiday, they’d have a week off of school,” Allison said.

The longer school year did not cause much concern for Kat and Holly.

“The school day’s the same length so you still have fun with your friends and have time to go out,” Holly said.

 As middle schoolers in Luxembourg, Kat and Holly looked forward to the same things students at Revere Middle School do.

Holly said that they had even more recess in Luxembourg than what they received here.

Some of their favorite memories from Luxembourg occurred while on the bus to school, which was different than the bus rides at Revere because the bus driver did not have a set of rules the students had to abide by.

“I liked [Luxembourg] because it was a different and interesting experience,” Holly said.

Kat and Holly traveled to fifteen countries while they lived in Luxembourg, both on family vacations and for school related trips and sporting events.

“An overnight trip would be to Switzerland and a day trip would be to Belgium,” Kat said.