Why would there be a bottle of spider spray here?

Hello friends and family!

After the excitement of last weekend, I didn't have much to write about during the week. I've been here for a month now, and every little thing that used to be new and exciting (taking trains, going to the grocery store, etc) is now just a part of regular life. I am really happy to be feeling so at home here, but it can lead to some boring blogs.. Therefore, no updates for last week, but this weekend definitely brought some fun stories!

On Saturday night, my team played the team from Franche-Montagne (a mountainous region on the border of France) at home. Their team has 3 Americans and several Brazilians, and they definitely gave us a run for our money. After winning the first set, we lost the second and third, won the fourth 26-24 (during which I managed to get elbowed in the eye and ended up with a black eye... who says volleyball is for wimps??), and had to play a tie-break which ended with us winning 20-18. It was fun to play such a competitive match at home, and I was happy to come out with a win!

After the match, I was approached by both a radio and TV reporter, who were asked to interview me as a highlight on the "new American." One can imagine that I get nervous enough in interview in the US, but trying to say the right things in French was even more nerve-wracking! My french teacher was looking on, and I managed to make it out alive, without too many mess-ups..

That night, Francine invited me to her house for dinner with her family. Pascal ordered pizza, and as always it was a really fun night of great food, great company, and great conversation!

A perfectly fun night ended when I returned to my apartment a little after midnight. I was innocently walking into my bathroom to brush my teeth when I saw an uninvited guest waiting on my bathmat. Charlotte, the biggest grandmother of all spiders, decided that she wanted to hang out that night, and I was not having it.. (literally, this spider reminded me of that pet spider Hagrid had in Harry Potter. Only not very endearing, and no Hagrid around to take care of her)

In case you didn't know, I am absolutely terrified of spiders. My family used to get annoyed at me, because I would cry when I spotted a spider in my room until someone killed it for me (mind you this is not at age 9, this is at age 19).. Needless to say, I was completely terrified, and I had to find a way to get Charlotte gone.

After asking her politely to stay put, I returned to my bedroom where I scanned for possible weapons. Using shoes would bring me too close to the possibility of a spider crawling up my leg, and if I were to throw a book, I would almost certainly miss and just anger the spider. I remembered a can of Raid-esque spray that I had spotted my first day here. It had a picture of a spider on the front, and I remembered thinking "Hmm.. I wonder why they would give me a bottle of spider spray? I hope they don't have a spider problem here.." Hah. Now I know!

After making sure that the grandmother of all spiders would not be joining me in bed that night, I brushed my teeth in the kitchen (I was being slowly asphyxiated in the Raid-ed bathroom) and dreamt of spiders. Now, I can't help myself from thinking about the spider family that will probably try to seek revenge on me someday..

After that lovely bedtime adventure, I woke up early on Sunday to coach my team of juniors in Vieges/Visp.

(Side-note: Have I explained yet how many towns in Switzerland have 2 names? Well many towns have names in both French and German, and sometimes in Italian or Romanche. And no, it's not like the difference between calling a town Bostonia and Bostonio. It's like entirely different names. For example, where Jac plays, the town is called "Dudingen" in German. In French, it's called "Guin". Dudingen and Guin are the same town... How much more confusing can it get?)

Anyway, I spent Sunday in Vieges/Visp coaching. We play the same games as I used with my teams at Vision, only we use a mix of French, German, and English to communicate, and we play in a gym in the Alps. It's the funniest thing for me, but the girls are adorable and I'm enjoying getting back into coaching!

Sunday evening I met with a reporter from the Lausanne newspaper who was also asked to do a piece on Cheseaux's new American. Again, I had to summon all my French skills to find answers to seemingly easy questions such as "What did you think about last night's match?" but I finished the interview feeling pretty satisfied.

After my meeting with the reporter, I waited in Lausanne for the arrival of my friend Taylor, who is the newest member of Crystal's team in Neuchatel. Taylor is a middle who played at the University of Wisconsin, and she arrived almost 2 weeks ago, so I had met her during my weekend in Neuchatel. Crystal and Jeff were spending the weekend in Paris, so I invited Taylor to spend the weekend with me so that she could get out of Neuchatel and we could find something fun to do together! After her train got in, we waited for Jac to get in from her evening class in Geneva, and then the three of us set off in my car to stay at Jac's in Fribourg.

We were all pretty tired after getting to Fribourg, so Taylor and I watched an episode of "Gossip Girl" on Jac's American channel before falling asleep. On Monday morning, we had a delicious breakfast a la Jac's boyfriend Alex, and we set off for nearby Chateaux-d'Oex where Jac had mentioned a hot-air balloon festival.

On the way to Chateaux-d'Oex, we saw the balloons that had already made their way down the valley, and started to get excited for the touristy excitement that awaited us. We arrived in the small town and poked around the shops, trying to find information about the schedule of the festival. At the tourist office, the man behind the counter told us that if we made friends with one of the pilots, we could probably find ourselves in a hot air-balloon! We laughed, but little did we know what the afternoon would bring!

We headed down to the launching field, where all sorts of balloons were taking off. We watched as a gal in a Super-woman type suit got onto one of the balloons, and listened as the announcer said that she would, in fact, be jumping out of that balloon... I tried to capture the craziness in a video, and I hope you can all see it!

Later, a nice group of hot air-ballooners from France approached the three of us, and we started chatting about their hobby of flying balloons. After several minutes, they mentioned that they had an extra spot in their basket, and that they would love to take one of us! Jac, Taylor and I looked at one another, and after a brief debate, we decided that Taylor should have the chance to go up (partially because Jac and I were freezing, and while the idea of flying in a balloon was fun, we weren't ready to get even colder!).

After watching them prepare the balloon, we watched as Taylor and the two pilots took off skyward! The other three men from their company told Jac and I that we would join them on their "retrouving" (fren-glish word similar to "retrieving") job, in the car that follows the balloon and picks it up at the landing zone. After walkie-talkie-ing the pilots, we realized that the wind at the moment wasn't too strong, and that they would probably be landing within an hour an a half, near the spot where they had taken off. With our retrouving duties on hold, our group headed to the "Cafe des Alps" for some coffees and hot chocolates.

We spent the next couple hours chatting and warming up while watching the balloons, and by 4:30 we got word that the balloon was ready to land. We piled into a land cruiser, and set off to pick the pilots and Taylor up from a farm where they had landed. After folding up the balloon and fitting it into it's stuff-sack (kind of like with a sleeping bag, only exponentially bigger, heavier, and generally harder), the group of guys took us back to our car and we set off for Fribourg where Jac had practice that evening.

During Jac's practice, Taylor and I went to dinner at a local cafe where we dined on delicious fondue. It was Taylor's first time eating fondue here, and I was more than happy to share in her experience!

After dinner, I dropped Taylor off at the train station and navigated myself back to Jac and Alex's apartment. Alex prepared a banana flambe for dessert (I know, how lucky am I?) and it was DELISH!!! We all went to bed close to midnight, and that was the end of my awesome weekend!

This morning I woke up to another of Alex's delicious breakfasts, and came back to Cheseaux for my french lesson at 10. I'll probably head to the fitness center at some point, and we have practice late tonight. Besides the situation with the spider, I had an amazing weekend and my time here is getting better and better!

Hope all is well!

Love, Anna

First home match and Bronco reunion weekend!

Hello Friends and Family!

It's Monday evening and I'm back in Cheseaux to relax after a fun-filled weekend!

The excitement started after practice on Thursday evening, when one of our setters (Kristel) invited me to her apartment for a dinner of chicken fajitas. Several of our teammates joined us, including Nadege (an outside), Aida (an opposite), Joelle (an outside), and Laila (our other setter). The six of us chowed down on Swiss-style Mexican food, and it was delicious!

After a great dinner, the girls decided that I should see a little more of the town. We ended up at a local club, where we listened to music that ranged from American hip-hop to old French movie theme songs. It was pretty amusing!

Nadege and I spent the night at Kristel's in Lausanne, and woke up early to set out on an adventure. I wasn't sure what we were doing, but I had heard Nadege mention ice skating and an apple pie. I wasn't about to complain!

After a short trip in the car, we ended up in the Valais de Joux, next to the Lac de Joux. This is a large lake, but due to the unusually cold winter, the entire surface is frozen solid this year! Apparently on the weekends the lake gets crowded with skaters, ice fishermen, and people who do something similar to wind-surfing, but on the ice. Since we were there on a Friday afternoon, the lake wasn't too crowded, so we walked around on the ice for a little less than an hour.

Throughout our walk, we kept hearing various creaking noises, which scared the wits out of me. Apparently that is normal, because the ice expands and contracts with any shifts in temperature. I wasn't too fond of the sounds, though, which led to us turning around towards shore.

After reaching solid non ice ground, Kristel, Nadege and I went to a tea room where I had THE BEST HOT CHOCOLATE OF MY LIFE. Really, it tasted like delicious chocolate ice cream, only in hot liquid form. It was perfect!

Saturday morning and afternoon were consumed with match preparation. Pre-game practice, video, and then I ate at Francine's parents' house nearby. That evening we played the team from Luzern, and ended up winning in 3 sets. It was my first match at home, and it was really fun to play in front of the Cheseaux crowd!

After the match I left Cheseaux to head toward Neuchatel where I was planning to meet Crystal, Jeff, Brody and his sister Robyn. Despite heavy fog on the autoroute, I made it to Neuchatel by 9ish, and met Crystal at the house of her friend Cameo, who plays on the Neuchatel professional basketball team. We had a big group of Americans and Canadians together, and it was refreshing to be speaking only one language for a change! (Don't get me wrong, I love speaking French, but it does get tiring, and it was nice not to have to guess whether I'm answering the right question!)

Sunday we went to Crystal's match in Neuchatel. Her team plays in a larger arena in Neuchatel, and they have a Brazilian band that plays flight songs in between points. It was fun to see her playing again, and her team won in 3 sets. We made a delicious dinner after the match, and hung out watching CNN and the pre-inauguration coverage.

This morning I came back to Cheseaux and met Francine for another day of adventure! It has been raining here, which is both good and bad. Good because it melts the ice that I tend to slip on every chance I get, and bad because it means that we can't go outside. Francine planned for us to go to the thermal baths nearby, but rainy weather killed that idea. Therefore, we chose the alternative plan, and went to Bern to walk around the covered downtown area.

The city itself is beautiful, especially the ancient-looking architecture. We stopped for tea in a small bistro, and I realized once again how difficult is is to be unable to communicate in German. I think I'm going to need to learn that language...

Tomorrow it's back to regular life, which a trip to the fitness center and then practice. I'm loving it here more and more every day!

Love, Anna

Lausanne sans GPS

Hello Everyone!

Over the last few days, I've been talking with people in California who have seemingly nothing to report except for how beautiful the weather is.... "Yeah, Anna, it's the middle of January and I'm wearing shorts and a tank top!!" and "Anna, I'm going home to LA for the weekend to lay on the beach! It's January 15th!! Can you believe it??"

Frankly, yes I can believe it, because every time I tell someone here that I'm from California, they say "Ohhhh, the sunshine and beaches!!" But until moving to this small Arctic region called Cheseaux, I hadn't really appreciated said sunshine as much as do now...

I think someone else must have feeling jealous of California, because today we in Switzerland bathed in sunshine as well! Sure, maybe it was still only about 35 degrees, but there was SUN, and that makes me happy!

Yesterday I had an amazing day of adventure in Lausanne. I had arranged to meet Crystal and Jeff at the train station in Lausanne, after I worked out and did some errands in Cheseaux. An unanticipated problem arose when my frozen GPS failed to turn on (yesterday it was still snowing...) So, how to navigate from Cheseaux to the train station in Lausanne sans GPS? I was in a bit of a predicament...

In a moment of Megan Pura-esque innovation, I decided to follow the train tracks that I knew took you towards the station. After 20 minutes of nerves whether I was headed the right way, I ended smack-dab in the center of Lausanne, with random signs pointed up and down different Euro alleys, telling me the direction to the station. Next thing I know, I had found a parking garage, and ran into Crystal and Jeff on the sidewalk outside the station!

We had a delicious lunch at an Italian restaurant, where our nice Swiss-German waiter recounted his stories about living in Minneapolis for several years. He was excited to practice his English with us, and was again somewhat surprised when we told him that we had left California to try life in Switz. "But don't you miss the palm trees??" Haha...

We spent the afternoon exploring the city on foot, finding a beautiful cathedral that was built in the 1200s and many cute boutiques. Jeff is somewhat obsessed with Starbucks, so we managed to find 2 of the American chains to satisfy his cravings. When Crystal and I got a sweet tooth, we went into a chocolaterie and the nice lady behind the counter gave me a free piece (duh, favorite part of the day!)

Inevitably I got lost on the way home, but I made it in time for practice, which is all that really matters. Kristel, one of our setters, and Nadege, an outside hitter, invited me to hang out with them after practice tonight and tomorrow, so we'll see what adventures that will bring. They've mentioned Mexican food and a hike to a frozen lake, so I'm sure it will be a fun time!

Talk to you all soon! All of you in California, please sit an extra minute in the warm sun for me!

Love, Anna

Snowshoe-ing in Les Paccots

Hello Everyone!

Right now I'm sitting in my bedroom eating the risotto that I got for lunch and talking to a friend from Santa Clara online. We have practice in a bit, but I thought I should recount my fun adventure yesterday before I forget!

After the long day of coaching on Sunday, I had almost forgotten that I had made plans with Louis to go snowshoe-ing! Thankfully he reminded me, and we left at around noon on Monday for a day in the mountains.

We had been driving for only 10 minutes or so when I noticed blue sky all around me. As I looked back, Cheseaux seemed to be engulfed by a thick bubble of fog, while the rest of the area was bathed with sunshine! I asked Louis why we were so lucky to be the ones in the fog all the time, and he explained that when it gets warmer at higher elevations, the fog sinks to the lower areas and stays there. Apparently Cheseaux is a "lower area," therefore we get the fog...

After parking the car in the lot of a closed ski shop, we strapped on our raquettes (snowshoes) and hit the trail. While Louis is old enough to be my dad, he is still in really good shape and apparently does these things often to where I was the one slowing our pace!

We took a trail from the base of a mountain around the back and up a ski area to the top, where we had an amazing view of Lake Geneva. Along the way we saw many old old old Chalets, and Louis told me how people often leave them unlocked for tired walkers to rest.. All I could imagine was people in Lake Tahoe keeping their cabins unlocked for tired people to rest! Haha... definitely a different culture here!

The way down was probably the most challenging, because you have to lean towards the mountain to balance down. People were skiing past us, and we decided that we should have brought skis on our backs for the way down! (I didn't admit that I would have been too chicken to ski down such a steep mountain anyway!)

After reaching the car, I looked at my watch, and it had been 4 hours since we had set out on the hike. My legs were tired and sore, but it was a great day!

This morning I had a French lesson with Genevieve, and I spend the afternoon at the fitness center where I ran into Fanny. Tomorrow I might be going to Bern with Crystal and Jeff to see the sights, but we still have to do some planning...

Hope all is well!

Love, Anna

I think I see an outline of a shadow....

Hello Friends and Fam!

It's Sunday night and I'm finally sitting down to record a whirlwind week. I can't believe I've been here for 2 weeks already, and at the same time, I can't believe I was in Boston only 2 weeks ago! I sometimes feel like I'm living in a time warp..

As I had predicted in my last post, Thursday ended up being a very exciting day! After a french lesson and a fondue lunch (ps. for future reference, fondue should probably not be eaten for lunch if you have practice later) I went to the fitness center at the University of Lausanne for the first time with my teammate Fanny. After our lift, Fanny took me on a short tour of downtown Lausanne, and the city is even more gorgeous than I had imagined! We returned to Cheseaux after less than an hour, however, for that evening's practice.

Friday I decided that I would try to find the fitness center myself. Surprisingly enough, I made it there in one piece, and was happily greeted by the outlines of my shadow as I crossed the soccer field outside the fitness center. SUNSHINE! It felt amazing to have some Vitamin D in my life again..

After practice that night, Francine invited me to her house for a "special dinner" with her husband and some friends. Little did I know that this dinner would consist of an appetizer of foie gras and toasted bread, an entree of hunt meat with delicious sauces, and a homemade apple tart for dessert. Needless to say, it was delicious! (I haven't exactly made up my mind on foie gras yet.. but I guess it's good to have tried it once!) We stayed up late enjoying the company and cleaning up after the feast, and I had a hard time sleeping due to excitement about our match the following day.

Saturday was consumed by match preparation (much like back at Santa Clara!). We met at the gym in the early afternoon to get on the team bus, and started on the 2.5hr trip toward Zurich where we were scheduled to play Volero. We stopped en route for a pre game meal of pasta and chicken, and we got to the gym at close to 6 pm for a match at 7.

It was really fun to play in a match again, and aside from the 5 different languages that are spoken on the court at any given time and the random 6'7" Belarussian outside hitter that can crush any spot on the court, it was just like any other game I've played in! We ended up losing in 4 sets, but we gave them a pretty good run for their money, and they're one of the top 3 teams in our league, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

After the match, Francine and I met some of the girls in Lausanne for some off-the-court hangout time. It was fun to finally spend some time with my teammates without a net between us!

Today I left at 6:30 am for a day of coaching in Valais. The town we were in is in the German side of the canton, therefore, out of my group of 13 girls, only 2 understood my French. Fortunately I had another coach named Martin helping me translate into German, but you can imagine how challenging a demo can be without being able to narrate what you want the girls to do! The upside of the day was that I got to see a beautiful sunrise and sunset above the Alps on my way to and from Valais.

Tomorrow I have plans to go to the fitness center in the morning, go snowshoe-ing with Louis in the afternoon, and hopefully hang out with the Swiss Broncos (Jac, Crystal and Jeff) in the evening. Every day here is easier and easier, and I realized on my way home from Valais that:

a) I'm somewhat starting to kind of know my general way around

b) I'm starting to be able to speak French without thinking my way into being tongue-tied all the time

c) I'm going to have to get used to smelling like cigarette smoke unless I want to dry clean my clothes and wash my hair after every time I walk into a restaurant, bar, train station, market, etc.

Hope all is well!

Love, Anna

Scuttle the Seagull...

Hello everyone!

I must start today's post with an obituary for the first victim of my driving in Switzerland. As I pulled off the highway next to Lake Neuchatel today, a group of seagulls chose the wrong time to fly within 2 meters of the ground. Therefore, Scuttle, may you rest in peace, and find your snarfblatts and dinglehoppers up in heaven.


While Scuttle's death was an unpleasant experience, the last few days on the whole have been pretty good! Monday morning I met Louis, the man whose house I am living under, for the first time in person. He's really nice (like apparently everyone else in Switzerland!) and he reiterated the idea that I can come up to the main house whenever. He's really fatherly, trying to help me figure out my cell phone situation, advising me to not use the ramp down to my apartment when it's icy, etc. I like him a lot!

Also on Monday, I was introduced to the restaurant where I will be receiving 5 hot meals per week, as outlined in my contract. I have this cool stack able lunch box thing, that has 4 separate interlocking bowls that carry different lunch items. For example, on Monday I got a baguette, carved ham, green beans, scalloped potatoes, and pea soup. It's delicious, and I can usually save half the meal for dinner and cut some costs!

Monday afternoon was spent coaching at a community rec center in Valais. It was a long afternoon, but a good experience. Until Monday, I had forgotten how much easier it is to coach in English! In order to communicate with the girls (who were mostly too young to have taken any English classes yet), I had to speak part French, part mime. At least the girls found me somewhat amusing...

Yesterday I had my first French lesson with the wife of the president of our club. Her name is Genevieve, and, like Louis, she is really nice. She gave me some lessons to do at home, which will hopefully help me improve my French rapidly so that I feel more confident speaking here!

Today I went and visited Crystal and Jeff in Neuchatel. The town itself is beautiful, and located right on Lake Neuchatel. It was nice to see some familiar faces again, but I only spent a couple hours there before returning for practice.

Tomorrow I have a fun day planned. French lesson in the morning, trying out the fitness center in Lausanne with a teammate at 2 pm, and I'm going to attempt to find a museum or something amusing to explore before practice tomorrow evening. I need to explore Lausanne a little more so that I can find things to occupy my time!

Love you all!

Anna

In Switzerland, you weigh your own produce...

Hello Friends and Fam!

I have now survived 1 week of life in Switzerland. Woohoo!

On Saturday, I had my first double day with the team. We had practice early in the morning, consisting of fitness, ball controll drills, and finally some playing. It is so funny how no matter what language they are speaking, every team does basically the same thing. We played a game of what literally translates to "drill of cleaning," which is exactly the same as the "wash" games I've played since my time at Empire! It's always comforting to find some common thread between here and home, and I find myself thinking of my coaches and teammates at Santa Clara as we play the same game across the globe!

After practice, we had a delicious pre-game meal at the same restaurant that I went for dinner last Sunday. We got mushroom raviolis, and they were SO GOOD (Mom, you would have loved them!). Definitely not a Steve and Kelby approved pre-game meal (or really anytime meal), but apparently that's how they do it here! The girls drank Coke with their food and had espressos after lunch, so one can imagine how different it is from the nutrition guidelines that we tried to follow at Santa Clara!

I had a little while between our meal and the time I had to be back at the gym for warm-up, so I decided to go to the grocery store while I could. Unlike the 24 hour Safeways in California, it seems like stores here are closed more often than they are open! That means that when you're starving at 10 PM (or even 5 PM!), if you forgot to go to the grocery store, you're entirely out of luck. Therefore, I jumped at the chance to get my meals for the rest of the weekend taken care of!

I grabbed everything I needed, including a bunch of things from the produce section. Onions, lettuce, broccoli, oranges, apples, carrots, you name it, I got it! When I got to the checkout stand (mind you there is only one!) the woman asked me if I had forgotton to weigh my carrots. Um.. yeah. I forgot? aka I thought you would just put it on the little scale and punch in the numbers like they usually do at Safeway? WRONG!!

To my utter and complete embarassment, the entire store waited as my really nice teammates went to the other side of the store with my bags of produce to weigh and price them all for me. There was a line of about 7 people waiting patiently, as Francine explained that this was only my 6th day in Switzerland. I was mortified! But everyone was nice enough about it, and I made it home with all my veggies and fruits in tow. You live, you learn!!

After that awesome experience, we had a friendly match against the team from Geneva. They were pretty good, and it was good experience for our team. We ended up winning in 5, and that concluded our long day of volley!

After the match, Francine invited me to go bowling. Cheseaux is so small that I feel like I'm lost in the middle of nowhere sometimes, but I forget that we are less than 10 minutes away from the 3rd largest city in Switzerland! So of course there are things like bowling alleys close by! Francine and I met 2 of her friends there for a meal and 2 fun games of bowling (it was a combo bowling alley, restaurant, arcade, and bar, and it was crawling with people on this particular night! oh. and did I mention that one of her friends is a former Swiss champion bowler, and he bowled a 253 in the first game alone, while I didn't break 100 until halfway through the second game???!!) We called it a night after my last ball ended in the gutter, and she gave me a quick tour of the area on the way home.

This morning, I decided that I wanted to brave the roundabouts once again to see the towns that I had seen in the dark last night! I jumped into the bloob and got on the road towards Geneva. I realized that I was having trouble with directions because the names of strees are never displayed, instead just the direction in which that street will take you is displayed (therefore, someone new who has no idea where they are or where everything is in relation to anything else obviously cannot make their way anywhere!! Totally logical...). I tried to follow the quick directions that Francine had given me, and I ended up making it to my destination, the town of Morges!

Morges is a small town right on Lake Geneva. It has a lakefront walking path that kind of reminds me of the Strand in Manhattan Beach. Theoretically, on a warm summery day (as opposed to a COLD WINDY AM-I-IN-A-REFRIDGERATOR?? DAY) there would be people out walking, biking, roller-skating, etc. Also, the lake is lined with beautiful mansion-style houses, with a really eclectic mix of architecture!

I walked around for a while and took some pictures until my fingers became numb and I was longing for the bloob's heater. So I hopped back onto the road, followed the signs, and made it back to my house! It felt so good to know how to get somewhere and back!

Later, I went to Valais with Francine and her husband Pascal for his rec-league hockey game. After dropping him off for warm-ups, Francine took me on a short trip to see the Alps. On the way up, she described the ski resort at the top called "Portes du Soleil" where one can take a lift up the mountain, and depending on which slope you choose, you ski down to Switzerland, Italy, or France! I took some quick pictures of the mountains and the chalets that are dotted along the hillsides before we had to return to the rink for the match. Hopefully this was only my brief introduction to the beauty that the Alps have to offer!

After the hockey game and dinner, Francine dropped me back off at home to relax and prepare for a long day tomorrow. I am scheduled to begin coaching tomorrow alongside my coach (Florian) and we are running 2 clinics tomorow afternoon from 3-6 and then from 7-10. (What could you possibly talk about for 2 sessions of 3 hours? I have no idea!!) The twist is that half of the lessons will be in French, while the other half are in German. The other twist is that I have no idea where this place is, and I'll be driving myself! Should be exciting.. am I getting any gray hairs yet??

Hope all is well and I'll talk to you soon!

Love, Anna

Happy 2009!!

Bonne annee!!


I'm sitting here with "Sleepless in Seattle" in French playing in the background. It's at the part where Meg Ryan is deciding whether she should go to Seattle or not. So good, even in French!



After my first 2 days in Cheseaux, I decided to brave the trip by train to Jac's in Fribourg. For any of you who don't know, I get a little anxious when faced with anything that has to do with public transportation (ex: I got lost while taking a NJ transit train over X-mas break and ended up on the wrong line and had to retrace my steps and start over... a journey of only a couple miles took me about 4 hours :), and this trip was no different.



I got off at the wrong station in Lausanne (at Lausanne-Chaderon instead of Lausanne-Flon, what was I thinking??) and I didn't know how to get to the main station (Lausanne gare) where I was meeting my train to Fribourg. In my moment of absolute oh-my-gosh-i-don't-even-know-where-I-am panic, I asked a passerby for directions to Lausanne gare. He told me that he was on his way somewhere and was going to go right by the station, so he offered to give me a ride. He ended up dropping me off right in front, after giving me a short list of what i should do during my time in Switzerland. Thank you Cedric!!! I made my train, and got to Fribourg at around 5:30 pm.




When I arrived in Fribourg, I jumped with excitement upon seeing Crystal and Bard. We made our way out to parking lot where there were supposed to be taxis, and ended up waiting for about half an hour in the snow. We were all so excited to see one another though, that it seemed like only a couple minutes! After several failed attempts in which people jumped into our cabs before we could make it to the door on the thick ice, we finally got one nice driver who ended up bringing us to Jac's.


Upon arriving at her appartment, Jac and her boyfriend Alex took out their new Christmas present: a Wii Fit! While Alex prepared the rest of the Tapas and poured champagne, we all tried downhill skiing, slalom skiiing (how do you even spell that??) and then settled on games of tennis and bowling. As some of Alex and Jac's friends arrived, Crystal, Jeff and I felt more and more like the children in the corner of the party, so we decided to open the game up to everyone and attempt to socialize like adults.. But then we found a stack of sunglasses and settled on having a photo shoot on the couch as all of the real adults socialized...



After ringing in the new year, Crystal had a brilliant beyond brilliant idea. No really, she is an absolute genius!! (Parent Trap anyone??) We decided to bundle up and go outside to sled down Jac's hill! It was a funny sight to see, and I wish I had taken pictures, but my camera had run out of batteries. Just picture a bunch of people in New Years party clothes and hats thrown on trying to sled down a hill with the steepness that would only allow us to go around 15 feet before grinding to a stop.. So maybe it wasn't a genius idea, at least it was entertaining!



The next day we stayed at Jac's until around 4 pm, when Crysal and Bard and I went our separate ways. On the train back to Lausanne, it was early enough for me to see the countryside approaching the city, which was absolutely breathtaking. Lausanne sits on the hill right on the edge of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). The hillsides are covered in vineyards, stretching as far as the eye can see. Soon after passing the beautiful vineyards, I arrived in the station at Lausanne and succesfully navigated my way to the metro station, where I almost lost an arm in the quickly-closing doors, but managed to get out with all of my limbs intact.


After the short trip back to Cheseaux, I walked back to my apartment feeling very accomplished! I couldn't believe that I had navigated my way to and from Fribourg, and I feel like that maiden voyage has opened the door to exploring Switzerland beyond the reaches of my little blue car!


Today we had a full practice, so I met the rest of the team as well as the head coach. The girls are all really nice, and I explained that I want them to speak french to me so that I can improve. As soon as I work up the courage to interject into a conversation at full speed, I'm sure that I will make some good friends! For the meantime, I got to talk to some of my best friends from home tonight, and I was happy to hear their words of encouragement about breaking into the social scene here!


Tomorrow we have a practice match against a team from Geneva, which should be exciting. I will be happy to get on a more regular schedule again and start playing volley for real!


Talk to you all soon, and HAPPY 2009!!


Love,

Anna