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 li
fe again..
fe 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
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