Oops

Hello everyone! Sorry, I don't know how many of you anxiously await my blog posts on Sundays (if any!) but I completely forgot this week. I didn't even really realize it was Sunday, because there was no school the next day to remind me. So, a tad late, my blog post.

Last Tuesday was absolutely great. We went on a school ski trip to Valais. I thought it was going to be a long and difficult day and that I would make a fool of myself on skis in front of everyone, but it was amazing instead! In the morning we had to take all of our gear on the bus (that part wasn't fun.) When we got to school there was a tour bus waiting for us so we (like forty-five students I think) loaded our skis and what have you into it. It took maybe an hour and a half or two hours to get to the ski station up in the mountains. We split up into groups of at least three, for safety.. ours was five. The conditions were really great in the morning, with the runs freshly groomed and almost no one around. I thought the runs were really long but when I told that to people in my class they thought it was funny because for them they were super short. Apparently I am not Swiss yet. The steepness was pretty okay, though it got a little uncomfortable once I got really tired near the end. We skiied from ten to noon and then stopped to eat our picnic lunches at a little chalet cabin thing. After eating we skiied again from twelve-thirty until two. The runs had gotten pretty difficult since the snow was getting slushy in the sun, so I fell a couple times. At two I was really exhausted so I went to take a break (and take my ski boots off, which were, I guess, not a perfect fit since they were starting to hurt a lot) and the others continued to ski for the last half hour. Afterward we went back down to where the bus was (me in the télécabine, them on the slushy runs), loaded everything in, and took the trip home. We got home around five thirty, and then that night I went to bed around eight.

Here are some pictures of the ski trip (credit goes to one of the girls in my group.) I'm the one with the red/grey coat and silver/black striped helmet, in case you can't tell (but I think you can.) Go here for bigger versions.



On Wednesday it was April Fool's day so there were some very mild pranks. As in, a few unlucky kids in our class got paper fish stuck on their backs and there was an unsuccessful attempt to disrupt the math professor by having everyone yell at the same time (only one boy yelled while everyone else was silent, which was a failure but funny nonetheless.) Then I had an AFS stamm in Fribourg. There was a girl from Boston who had done an exchange last year in Paraguay and was here visiting another girl from AFS that she had met there (who is twenty but did an exchange to Paraguay a couple years ago and was back there last year.) We had Finland and Bolivia presented to us, and other than that just sat around, ate a bit, and talked. Afterward I walked to the train station with the girl from Boston and the Swiss girl and they took the same train as me to go home, they were really cool and nice.

Let's see... On Friday I would normally have had study hall the last two hours of the day, and the other half of the class would have had a science lab. However the science teacher had to take a sudden flight back to Belgium (where she's from) because her mom was having grave health problems. So our class went to the play that was going on in the theatre, which was normally just for the grade under us but there was a bit of extra space. It was called "Mange ta soupe" ("Eat Your Soup") and it only had four actors who also wrote the piece. I think they were from Switzerland. It was pretty weird, contemporary, and artsy, but entertaining. The loose theme was food, though they took that pretty liberally.

The weekend I didn't do a lot. Saturday afternoon I went with Andréanne, Béatrice, and Bernard to Le Lac de la Gruyère (Lake of Gruyère) where there is this island with an old ruined castle and church on it, which you can walk to at this time of year because the water is low and there is a strip of land between the two. So, we took a little walk. If you'd like to see some pictures of the little island, I forgot to take my camera but you can look here (none of them show it with the walkway, but you get the idea.)

On Monday in the afternoon I went to a shopping center where I met Sakshi and we browsed around and got coffee afterward. I actually was uncomfortably hot walking around outside in more than a t-shirt.. I guess it's not about to snow anytime soon.

For today, Andréanne and I had gotten public transport day passes for the day for 30CHF from the commune. We woke up early and took the train for two hours to Lucerne, arriving there at ten. It was absolutely beautiful out and Lucerne is lovely (there are a billion tourists there.) I took some photos which describe better than me. We visited this awesome lion carving, went to Starbucks (that was surreal and confusing- it really made no sense that I was in a Starbucks yet Lucerne was out the window.) We walked on the famous bridge. After eating lunch there we took a train around one to Interlaken. Man, that was a long, uncomfortably warm train ride. Lucerne and Interlaken aren't really far apart but we had to go up and down mountains, scale the sides of lakes, and stop at every single miserable alpine village for five minutes. However, the views were well worth it.. I think it would be hard to find a more lovely two hour train ride, especially when the weather was as nice as it was today. At Interlaken we stopped for just one hour.. we could have done two but Andréanne and I were both exhausted. The one-hour impression that I got from the town was that it is beautifully situated and that's about all you can say for it.. it is really touristy and doesn't feel very authentically Swiss. However I was only there an hour so I don't really know. After visiting we took the train to Berne, then switched and took the train to Romont, where Béatrice came to get us at the station.

Here's some pictures from today.. This is what everyone thinks of when they think of Switzerland, isn't it? There's more to the country than this though it's a lovely start.. Go here for bigger versions.