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