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